Hey All,I know that no one really checks the blog any more, but I thought it would be a good idea if we used it. I’m gonna start by posting some stuff from some papers that I have been writing for school. The first paper is “Art and the Church.” The whole thing is 15 pages long, so I am only going to post a section at a time. I am going to try to post a section each week as well as my weekly sermon. Feel free to comment. I have not included the footnotes, but I site the source pretty well (other than the page #’s).“The loss of creativity is where many of us feel our spiritual need….We envy the unbridled liberty of the “rock star” artist, who is able to channel inspiration like an epiphany. I wouldn’t be the first to suggest that the quest for artistic freedom is a veiled hunger for God because, as an imprint of our being, creativity is closely linked to spirituality.” (Mark Scandrette, Soul Graffiti)IntroductionFor centuries, the idea of the church’s engagement with the artistic as well as the culture in general has been debated. How does the church engage with art? What is the artist’s role in the church? Is it appropriate to read poetry, perform plays, or paint in the context of a community of faith? What role does the creative process play in theology? In a church culture that still is very much steeped in an Enlightenment view of truth, the arts have pretty much lost their place as anything other than a reinforcement of spoken or written truth statements.Madeline L’Engle says of art, “Many atheists deny God because they care so passionately about a caring and personal God and the world around them is inconsistent with a God of love, they feel, and so they say, ‘There is no God.’ But even denying God, to serve music, or painting, or words is a religious activity, whether or not the conscious mind is willing to accept that fact. Basically there can be no categories such as ‘religious’ art and ‘secular’ art because all true art is incarnational, and therefore ‘religious.’”I spent my high school years working in a “Christian” bookstore. All books and music had to come from “Christian” distributors. This got very sticky, however, because this particular store also sold office supplies and educational supplies, mostly not from distributors that identified themselves with such labels. It seems as if, when confronted with pieces of art, Christians feel the need to neatly place it in one of two categories: “Christian” or “secular.” However, art doesn’t seem to do well with categories. Instead, Christians should see art as “good” or “bad”, “authentic” or “inauthentic.” This causes more difficulty. Distributors don’t label their music that way. A book publisher doesn’t classify their newest release as “inauthentic.” My friend said to me last week over coffee, “I am convinced that Christian should never be used as an adjective, only a noun.”Have a great week!Preston