{"id":2583,"date":"2009-08-10T00:19:33","date_gmt":"2009-08-10T07:19:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=2583"},"modified":"2026-06-12T07:06:54","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T07:06:54","slug":"religious-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/religious-art\/","title":{"rendered":"The Writing Room: If It\u2019s Religious, Can It Be Art?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Barbara Falconer Newhall<\/em><\/p>\n

Can a religious person be an real artist these days?\u00a0Can\u00a0“great” art be religious art? Can it address matters spiritual in the modern era?\u00a0It\u2019s the twenty-first century, for heaven’s sake. Skepticism and secularism abound in the\u00a0modern\/post-modern West \u2014 in popular culture, in academia, and in the world of literature and art.<\/p>\n

Which raises the question for those of us who are both spiritual seekers and wannabe artists: can a writer reveal her spiritual yearnings onthe page? Or\u00a0does she have to put on the armor of edgy cynicism in order to be taken seriously?<\/p>\n

Michelangelo, perhaps the West\u2019s most accomplished\u00a0artist of all time, was a devout Catholic. Bach, a Lutheran, wrote glorious church music. Poet Dante boldly\u00a0took on\u00a0all of\u00a0heaven, hell and purgatory\u00a0.<\/p>\n

Great artists all. But this is the modern era. Can art, if it is to be great, address matters spiritual?<\/p>\n

Gregory Wolfe on Religious Art<\/strong><\/h5>\n

In his introduction to Bearing the Mystery: Twenty Years of Image <\/em>(Eerdmans, 2009), Gregory Wolfe\u00a0quotes\u00a0a New Republic literary critic who asserts that\u00a0\u201cthe absence of God from our literature feels so normal, so self-evident, that one realizes with a shock how complete it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Wolfe goes on to\u00a0argue that God\u2019s absence from the modern art scene\u00a0is far from complete. He\u00a0points out\u00a0that books by three \u201cintensely Christian writers\u201d have held top spots in\u00a0the New York Times<\/em> tally of Americans\u2019 favorite twentieth century novels. The authors?\u00a0Marilynne Robinson, John Updike and Cormac McCarthy.<\/p>\n

\"Religious
Religious art goes way back: Shabti of Isis, ca. 1353\u20131336 B.C.E.\u00a0Courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Wolfe is the founder of Image<\/em>, a journal\u00a0based on the\u00a0premise that art and faith are not mutually exclusive. Four times a year, Image<\/em> offers fiction, non-fiction, poetry and criticism,\u00a0along with\u00a0several\u00a0glossy pages\u00a0devoted to\u00a0the visual arts.<\/p>\n

The Bearing the Mystery<\/em>\u00a0collection presents the work of nearly seventy writers and more than twenty visual artists, all\u00a0gleaned from the pages of Image <\/em>journal\u2019s first twenty years. Some of the artists address Christian or Jewish themes directly.\u00a0Others explore the spiritual questions less overtly. The writers include Ron Hansen, Denise Levertov, Marilyn Nelson, Ann Pachett, Kathleen Norris and Richard Rodriguez.<\/p>\n

And so, if you are\u00a0wondering whether it\u2019s possible to grapple with issues of religion and spirituality\u00a0and still maintain\u00a0your artistic integrity \u2014 and twenty-first century sophistication \u2014 this book is the place to get some answers.<\/p>\n

Read my my post on why John Shelby Spong’s<\/a> thinks some aspects of\u00a0 Christianity are not relevant today.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Religious<\/a><\/p>\n

Is religious art an oxymoron these days? Can “great” art address matters spiritual in the modern era? Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"Religious<\/a><\/p>\n

Is religious art an oxymoron these days? Can “great” art address matters spiritual in the modern era? Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,52],"tags":[376,34,153,154,377,23,378,130,69],"class_list":["post-2583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-on-writing-reading","category-the-writing-room","tag-art","tag-dont-miss","tag-gregory-wolfe","tag-image-journal","tag-kathleen-norris","tag-religion","tag-richard-rodriguez","tag-spirituality","tag-writing-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2583"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52700,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2583\/revisions\/52700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}