Can the church be a home again for the artist?

The church once nurtured beauty, imagination, and artistic expression. Can it rediscover that calling in a world hungry for wonder?

Can you imagine a world without art, music, or story? What a bleak and colourless place it would be. And yet, is that the direction some churches are drifting toward – a world where creativity is stifled, where beauty is sidelined, and imagination no longer finds a home? Has the church, once a birthplace of artistic brilliance, become a place where creativity is quietly quashed?

But God is a Creator. The first glimpse of God we’re given in Scripture is not as lawgiver or judge, but as artist—imagining, shaping, breathing life into the void. God’s creativity is lavish, generous, and uncontainably expansive. Just look at colour. Why can we perceive millions of hues? Why do we respond so deeply to music, or story, or light? It wasn’t long ago we made do with 256 colours on a screen—or watched television in black and white. And yet for millennia, the natural world has dazzled us with beauty in full, infinite palette. All we had to do was make up names for them all.

Yes. God is a creative. And creativity is something to be enjoyed, valued, celebrated, and sought out.

The Artist’s Disconnection from Church

Yet, how does the average creative who walks through a church door fare these days? Is their creativity celebrated? Or are they more likely to be viewed with some suspicion?

” They are a bit uncontrollable these creative types… they don’t hold the party line … they might draw attention to things in a way that gives people a fresh and revealing perspective… They can be in the band, but don’t let them preach!”

But for many artists — poets, songwriters, designers, and dreamers, the question is existential:

“Is there room for someone like me here?”

It’s a shame really. They could add so much.

Biblical Imagination and the Craftsman of Exodus

Back in the time of Moses, when religious life was just starting to get organised, we can read that one of the first things God instructed Moses to ask the people for, was art supplies.

The Lord spoke to Moses: ² “Tell the Israelites to take an offering for Me. You are to take My offering from everyone who is willing to give. ³ This is the offering you are to receive from them: gold, silver, and bronze; ⁴ blue, purple, and scarlet yarn; fine linen and goat hair; ⁵ ram skins dyed red and manatee skins; acacia wood; ⁶ oil for the light; spices for the anointing oil and for the fragrant incense; ⁷ and onyx along with other gemstones for mounting on the ^•ephod and breastpiece.

⁸ “They are to make a sanctuary for Me so that I may dwell among them. ⁹ You must make it according to all that I show you—the pattern of the tabernacle as well as the pattern of all its furnishings. (Exodus 25:1–9, HCSB)

God had a master plan in mind to build a mobile sanctuary that would be suitable as a dwelling place for Him among the people. A fusion of engineering, architecture and art. Materials fit for purpose and the harsh environment.

Portable.

Functional.

And beautiful.

And to do this, God need artists to make it happen.

The Lord also spoke to Moses: ² “Look, I have appointed by name Bezalel son of Uri, son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah. ³ I have filled him with God’s Spirit, with wisdom, understanding, and ability in every craft ⁴ to design artistic works in gold, silver, and bronze, ⁵ to cut gemstones for mounting, and to carve wood for work in every craft. ⁶ I have also selected Oholiab son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan, to be with him. I have placed wisdom within every skilled craftsman in order to make all that I have commanded you (Exodus 31:1–6, HCSB)

Bezalel. Artist extraordinaire. Spirit-filled no less, with wisdom, understanding, knowledge. Possessing all the artistic skills to creatively direct the tabernacle project (Ex 31:1-11). That’s quite a gig!

Centuries later, a temple was built in Jerusalem. This meant lots of jobs for musicians — 17 verses of credits (1 Ch 6:31-47) plus another chapter naming the musicians in the ministry of prophecy (1 Ch 25). Music was a big part of the temple worship and is mentioned many times in 1&2 Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah. So much so, the musicians even built their own villages around Jerusalem (Neh. 12:29).

And then there were the poets and the songwriters. About a third of the Old Testament is poetry and there are songs to be found all over the Bible - not just in the Psalms.

Do we not need wordsmiths today who can teach us to cry out in our laments, give us the words to rejoice, and help us to see differently? Who can help us rediscover the sacred in the ordinary? Who can build cathedrals, not of stone, but of story?

The point here is that we can easily see that artists and musicians were celebrated, organised, and active in the worship life of Israel. They formed a needed conduit between God’s creative heart and our ability to comprehend, grow and enjoy it.

What Draws Us

When you stop to think about it, some of the most enduring and beautiful structures in the world are the ones built for the purposes of assembly, worship, and meditation. The Pink Mosque, the Lotus Temple, St.Basils in Moscow, St. Peters in Rome, and many others are huge tourist draw cards even today, for both the photographer and the faithful.

These are masterpieces of design and construction, often brimful of yet more stunning works of art. Of course, these are just buildings at the end of the day — masonry, tiles, marble and not a little gold.

They were built to project power as much as being a retreat, by a workforce who would certainly not have enjoyed modern workplace employment protections. But despite all of that, people are still drawn to see and experience them. They go. In their millions, every year. And behind each one there were brilliant artists and craftsmen, who conceived the inconceivable and left their mark, for centuries.

Oh, the eye, the creativity, the challenge of the artist of days gone by. Do they, should they, have a place in today’s church?

A Historical Detour

To further set the scene for this debate, we need a quick church-and-art history lesson. If you were a struggling artist in Europe in say, 1300 to 1600, the only gig in town was religious art. The church and the aristocracy were really the only ones with any money, and you could hopefully receive their patronage to churn out pious family portraits or other works to adorn the walls, windows, ceilings, stairwells and floors of cathedrals and palaces. Painting, sculpture, embroidery, mosaics, vestments, ecclesiastical objects of silver and gold. In music, plainsong was being replaced by polyphony. Your work was to glorify the divine, instruct the faithful and adorn sacred spaces.

The Reformation of the 16th century changed everything. No more paintings for the likes of Calvin and Zwingli! Sculptures of biblical characters, once venerated, were now regarded as idolatry. The worship space became simpler, stripped back, free from distraction. Music however thrived as congregational singing exploded. The Catholic Church fought back in the counter-reformation using art to stir emotion, awe, and devotion as the Baroque age took hold. For the musician there were great choral works, masses and organ works to compose and perform. Art and faith remained intertwined.

The Sacred–Secular Split

New thinking in the period of the Enlightenment and the beginning of the Industrial Age (18-19th C) tugged at this fabric, and art began to separate from religion. More gigs became available as private collectors, the academy, and the state become the new patrons. Meanwhile, back at church, practicality and moralism trumped beauty in the visual arts, but hymnody was just getting going. Art as illustration was ok, but not so imaginative please.

On to the 20th Century, and the fabric is now in two pieces. The “church” no longer really does “fine art”, and the feeling is mutual. Artists see churches as suspicious and even repressive. They are patrons no longer. The evangelical world tended to value utility over beauty. Music starts to become formulaic, and its role flirts with entertainment. Not so much in Catholic circles where liturgical art still found a home and even embraced abstract art sometimes.

In recent years, artists of faith have quietly gone about their work outside of church structures. On the music side, a whole recording industry has developed, and the worship band is now a virtual staple on a Sunday morning. Visual art though, has been relegated to light shows and PowerPoint backgrounds.

Now that was a very “Western Christianity” walk-through. In the Eastern (Orthodox) church, there was a whole other cultural world going on. In music, monophonic chants were integrated meaningfully with liturgy. The forms and theology of iconography were the chief expression of the visual arts. These traditional forms have been preserved in contrast to the continual innovation found in the West. And of course, cultures from all over the world have their own rich traditions of art, music, costume, architecture, calligraphy and so on. Perhaps there is a different problem for the artist in these settings. Rich traditions are great, but can you innovate?

Parable of the artist and the status quo

True artists have always been at the forefront of change. They are not afraid to challenge a status quo when they see it. In 1863, the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris rejected more than two-thirds of the works submitted for exhibition that year. The emperor decreed the rejected works be exhibited in a separate exhibition, the Salon des’ Refuses’, so that people could judge for themselves, rather than through the limiting filter of the Académie. These artists always seem radical at the time, but who wouldn’t want a Manet or a Whistler on the living room wall these days?

This story reads like a parable of the artist in the life of the church today. The artist in church is the “Refusés” at the exhibition. Many church leaders see a core part of their job as being the one to preserve and reinforce an existing culture, resist change, and so play the role of the Académie. Artists are to be controlled, resisted, or relegated, not celebrated, sponsored or engaged with.

People everywhere are looking for beauty and transcendence. God has given us the ability to both create and apprehend beauty, yet in many churches there seems to be a determination to banish it.

Lessons from History

It’s a fascinating history, and like all history, there are lessons to be learnt for the curious. Is the artist a prophet or a servant? Are they there to challenge the church or simply serve it? Is the role of art in church to be entertainment, or to inspire and lead into worship in other ways? Is art about what happens up front on Sunday—or the slow cultivation of beauty in community life?

But perhaps a more urgent question is, “Are there any artists left?” Maybe the question is no longer, “Should art be in the church?” but rather, “Can the church become a home again for artists?”

I suspect there are many artists who have genuinely been seeking God but quickly figured out that the church they went looking in was not going to be able to receive them. They either left or languished. The church is the poorer for it.

The way back: A better theology.

It has been said, “Sound theology leads always to the love of beauty. When there is no love of beauty . . . there is no sound theology [Douglas Jones and Douglas Wilson, Angels in the Architecture (Moscow: Canon Press, 1998), 24.]

So, what would it take for the church to become a home again for the artist? It would take intentionality. It would take the development of a theology that reunites beauty with truth and goodness. Beauty gets to have a seat at the table.

In my life, the role of beauty in spiritual formation has started to blossom where utilitarianism and fairly austere traditional thinking once stood. My theology is starting to embrace the power, joy and goodness of beauty, and my life is richer for it. Which means I have more to share.

And to illustrate intentionality in this direction I wanted to produce something that combined art, beauty, goodness and truth.

My own meagre artistic abilities are in music. So I sat down to write. It’s a short acapella choral piece using the words from John 17:20-23. Simple enough for non-professionals to sing in a congregational setting yet aiming to evoke. Perhaps you will feel something as you listen, and as a result, extra meaning will be added to the words of the text. When you have an un-rushed few minutes to spare, sit down, close your eyes and have a listen.

Not for them alone (Follow link to listen).

Can the church become a home again for the artist? I certainly hope so.