Both photography and music make me feel alive and when I’m standing in front of the stage capturing the band as they strut their stuff… it just feels amazing. The challenge comes in shooting under the coruscating, scintillating lights; they can change dramatically in the second between me seeing a great shot and depressing the shutter release.
 
I know God gave me this talent and the love of music and I’d love to see Him move within an industry that is full of drugs, alcohol and occult symbolism.
 
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William’s work was exhibited at the Everything Conference 2012 Art Exhibition.
 
To contact him, follow this photo@dkphotography.biz, you can also view more of his work on his website.

Sometimes we tend to associate God’s glory with the big and flashy things, and forget that the glory of God is also in the everyday. Everywhere we go, we can see examples of intelligent design, and that in itself is a glimpse of the glory of God. Through my works, I hope to capture and show the beauty of God’s creations to people. 
 
This collection of woven fabrics is based on the idea of instant metamorphosis; when we have an encounter with one of those moments - the very instant we are captivated and overwhelmed, our hearts are touched, our minds renewed, and we change.
 
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Wei Lin’s work was exhibited at the Everything Conference 2012 Art Exhibition.
 
To contact her, follow this dextrophobic_@hotmail.com.

I look for interesting angles on familiar scenes. There is something fascinating about being in the crowd but not being a part of it and thinking that He is the visible image of invisible God; all creation speaks of his beauty and might. Capturing that is a powerful thing that people can experience when looking at your photographs.

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Tanya’s work was exhibited at the Everything Conference 2012 Art Exhibition.
 
To contact her, follow this tatyana.marsh@gmail.com, you can also view more of her work on her flickr account.

The Sun-Space Modulator

In the ‘sun-space modulator’ sunlight is filtered through a series of layers onto a mist. The installation is designed as a panel, like a skylight, installed above the heads of the viewers. Two layers modulate the light in different ways.
 
The first layer is a grid which acts as a selective venetian blind only letting a small amount of light through at a given time. Each hole through the grid is orientated to allow light to pass through at a specific range of times in the sun’s calendar. The second layer is an array of prisms, each aligned to the opening in the grid above. These work to disperse the light into the spectrum. The split light is then displayed on a fine cloud of mist.

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Nick’s work was exhibited at the Everything Conference 2012 Art Exhibition.
 
To contact him, follow this nickcrrich@googlemail.com.

On one level the work also acknowledges that all artistic endeavour is ultimately re-expression of ancient truths, that ‘there is nothing new under the sun’. Far from being a depressing perspective, this helps us to know that we are still part of the vast dialogue of human culture, and that ultimately all of life will be renewed and perfected. The aim of the work is to give hope and prompt the viewer to engage in some way with the profound truths of our existence.
 
The banners displayed here combine a range of well-known symbols with more arcane ones. The device of the banner has been chosen for its military and heraldic associations. The hand-sewn, imprecise nature of the works suggests the makeshift battle-standards of times past, that would often be sewn by the soldiers themselves. They might also reference trade-union marches and collective efforts. In the church context, banners have recently become diluted objects of ridicule – lacklustre attempts to adorn anodyne contemporary worship spaces. The works here are attempts to reclaim the genre.

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Tom’s work was exhibited at the Everything Conference 2012 Art Exhibition.
 
To contact him, follow this tomhelyarcardwell@gmail.com and you can view more of his work by visiting his website.

‘Rendering A Moment’ seeks to encapsulate a place and time. A moment which slips so easily by in the busy day, often refused even a glance of acknowledgement much less appreciation. This project was started off by simply capturing scenes of London, through the medium of still photographs. However through influence of the notion that ‘anyone can take a picture, the question is, how are you going to use it?’, I was inspired to render the series of images I had to fully depict a moment in all its glory. Stemming from my own appreciation for our created world, I hope to draw our eyes back to the simple things of God’s design, through a medium this generation can relate to.

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Malcolm’s work was exhibited at the Everything Conference 2012 Art Exhibition.
 
To contact him, follow this w.malcolm@gmail.com and you can view more of his work at his vimeo account here.

For us mere mortals, the blank page is an exciting prospect but a daunting one. Think of all the notable works that began with a single blank piece of paper: Hamlet, Harry Potter, episode one of Neighbours, the screenplay to Police Academy. When you sit down with a pen hovering over the surface of the page, or a flashing cursor on a Word document that says in the bottom left: ‘Page 1 of 1, Words: 0’, you could be about to embark on a journey that takes you anywhere.
 
But the main thing is that you do it. Regardless of what you come up with – whether it’s a five-act play, a poem, or half a paragraph on your first day at school – I’d encourage you to write anything. It’s all good practice, and you’ll look in five years time at what you wrote now and see the changes.
 
A few weeks ago, I was fortunate enough to be invited to the Everything Conference, a fantastic day of speakers and listeners, hope and faith and conversation. And real building blocks. You could feel that there was a great thirst for and supply of practical encouragement to get things done, and get our lives moving in the right directions. Then I came on, told a few jokes, and had a great chat with Andy Tilsley, and he ended with the question: “What would you say to anyone wanting to become a writer?” And I flippantly responded, “Don’t bother – give up – we don’t need the competition.” What I should have said was what I’m saying now: we don’t need the competition, BUT we badly need Christians in the comedy industry. I’m sure most industries need them too, but I can’t speak for any others – all I know is that the more decent folks writing comedy, the better, and I know a great source of decent folks. They’re in church. You, as a professional writer, can change the cultural landscape of this country.
 
I’m not urging readers of this to become stand-up comedians (although the stand-up circuit does badly need revitalising too to find new, fresh, positive, hope-filled performers), because that’s a very niche line of work and certainly not for everyone. In terms of writers though, we need a constant supply of stories to tell, of jokes to laugh at, of situations we recognise and characters we love to loathe, or want to will on.
 
So if you’ve ever thought, yes, I’d like to get something written up and broadcast, or a play put on, what’s stopping you? It’s a long road of rejections and rebuttals, but if you can take a few of those, and have that urge to take the cursor from Words: 0 to Words: 10,000, then go for it, and persevere. Everything you write, whether accepted for publication or broadcast, or turned down by everyone you throw it at, will make you a better writer, so there is no substitute for writing writing writing. Invest in a couple of books on the subject. Teach yourself the craft of your chosen area. There are great books on sitcom-, film- and play-writing that will open your eyes to the structures you need to adhere to, or at least be aware of if you choose to create something different. It’s a lie that you can’t learn how to write. If you’re dedicated to getting something made, spend a bit of time learning about the twenty-two building-blocks, or the three-act structure, or the Refusal of the Call and the Innermost Cave… or any of the genuine writing techniques that can help you make it happen.
 
And I wish you well. Overtake me, please. The more Christians working in the media, and especially in creative roles, the more the whole industry becomes transformed, and the more opportunities there are for the rest of us to tell messages and be heard.
 
Don’t take this to mean I’m saying you need to retell the gospel in everything you write. Commissioners would be fed up quickly if they suddenly received an onslaught of thinly-reworked tales of a Messiah and his twelve friends. You can tell stories that hit home in your life – and you can even just tell jokes. Comedy doesn’t have to change the world, but it can improve it, even just a little bit, if there’s something over which we can unite, whether it’s via a laugh, a sigh, or a pull on the heartstrings.
 
And maybe one day, when you’ve half-written and redrafted and scrapped ideas and rebuilt ideas, you’ll have at the end of it a finished script or poem or book, and you’ll have looked at it and maybe you’ll have seen…
 
“...that it was good.” Genesis 1:10
 
 
- If you could write anything - any genre, any topic, any length - what would it be? A sit-com? A book of poetry? A fantasy novel?
- Could you find 10 minutes today to make a start? Why not share your first line, or your pitch, with us below? Every script of 10,000 words starts with a single word…
 
To find out just how funny Paul really is, check out this video of his stand-up slot at the Everything Conference, then visit his website for more details of his work and forthcoming gigs.

At home I work with mixed media, predominantly fabric, stitch and paint to recreate these special places, places of intimacy and solitude, places that lead somewhere, some doors are open and some are shut, waiting to be opened, but all are leading somewhere.
 
I like to use recycled ‘rubbish’, turning someone else’s trash into treasure.
 
I hope that my work makes people look again at the everyday, to see beauty in the ordinary. I hope that as you look at this work you have time to think, that it triggers your own memories and gives you a moment of solitude to contemplate the situation God has put you in, what doors are facing you, are you waiting on the outside or knocking to go in?
 
(Matthew 7:7)

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Nicky’s work was exhibited at the Everything Conference 2012 Art Exhibition.
 
To contact her, follow this mrsnkay@googlemail.com.

As a child, I had a dream from God who was showing me how I was born. After that dream, I believed in God.
 
I was interested in Fashion when I was in primary school back in China. Also, I have an eye for fashion vision.
 
Along the study journey in the London College of Fashion, I found out there is no such thing as fashion, but you can create it with your imagination/understanding. To begin with my shoot, I’m more into something under the surface. I like to explore the psychology of different kinds of people, then I bring that to my work, because fashion photography always relates to people and society.
 
As a Christian, I hope God can use my vision to transfer fashion into a different perspective which shows the truth of the heart.
 
It’s something REAL behind the work, you don’t have to pretend to be someone else. God provides confidence and wisdom for the people who love Him.
 
As God’s children, we can do so many things to please Him. Creativity is one of them. We have the lights in our work that can point people to the information we are going to bring out. When I use more and more of my skills in drawing, design and photography, I feel so joyful. Maybe that’s why you can always hear my laugh; it’s the mark of God’s love.
 
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Sissi’s work was exhibited at the Everything Conference 2012 Art Exhibition.
 
To contact her, follow this answeer222@hotmail.com.

Over the years this yearning has been outworked in various forms including film, video and motion graphics, however I’ve recently realised it is most personally satisfied in photography. Day to day I work for a Stand-up/Live comedy production (tours) company, then use the remaining hours in the week to practice my photographic craft and build my business.

Recently married myself, I find it a huge privilege to photograph other couples as they participate in the covenant ceremony of marriage, and to document their unfolding wedding story. I love being a part of preserving their special memories and capturing their joy and delight on their wedding day.

I hope the pictures I take will outlast my lifetime, be passed around and looked upon in wonder by future family generations, being marvelled upon as examples of strong marriages and commitment and ultimately as a mirror to God’s great love for us.
 
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Simon’s work was exhibited at the Everything Conference 2012 Art Exhibition.
 
To contact him, follow this simon@tohave-toholdphotography.co.uk or you can vist his website.

I work in photography and moving image. A lot of the work that I create tells stories and provides platforms for the voices of the marginalised and overlooked, the ones that are talked over and about rather than talked to. My work communicates the stories that resonate with me, the stories that could help change our culture and society.
 
I would like God to use me as a point of inspiration for my peers and future generations. We don’t have the best role models and the best influences but I believe that God can use any willing vessel, despite the limitations and inadequacies, to effect change.  Through challenging the dominant narratives and status quo and by encouraging other creatives and visionaries to do the same, I hope that I will play a part in transforming what could otherwise be a “lost” generation.
 
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Jeni’s work was exhibited at the Everything Conference 2012 Art Exhibition.

To contact her, follow jeni@jendella.co.uk or you can vist her website.

Charles Kingsley was a fascinating figure of the 19th Century. He was a priest of the Church of England, a university professor, a historian and a well-known novelist, writing books that still affect the hearts and minds of children over a century after his death in 1875.
 
He was born on 12 June 1819 in Holne, Devon, the second son of Reverend Charles Kingsley and his wife Mary. He studied at King’s College London and the University of Cambridge, graduating in 1842 and going on to hold many prestigious titles: becoming the Regius Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge and later rising to president of the Birmingham and Midland Institute.
 
Charles Kingsley’s influence, however, did not come from a career in academia or serving the church but instead from his writings. During his life he wrote poetry, political articles, several volumes of sermons and a total of 37 books including The Water-Babies, which is still a popular children’s book to this day.
 
The story of The Water-Babies is mostly concerned with Christian redemption but Kingsley also uses the book to question child labour, address the fact that England was treating its poor badly and as a serious critique of the closed-minded approaches of many scientists of the day as well as addressing other social themes. The popularity of The Water Babies helped to pass the 1864 Act for the Regulation of Chimney Sweepers, which imposed on any master-sweep who sent a child to climb a chimney a penalty of ten pounds, a considerable sum at that time.¹
 
His books have left a legacy that impacts far more than just the literary world with his novel Westward Ho! leading to the founding of a town of the same name - the only place name in England that contains an exclamation mark. The founding of Eversley School in 1853 was also largely due to his efforts when he came to the village as a curate and saw that none of the village’s labourers knew how to read or write.
 
While Charles Kingsley may not have had the impact that many of the great social reforms like Wilberforce had on society, he is an excellent example of living out God’s call on his life to the best of his ability. He shaped culture through the writing of books that have inspired and helped shape the childhood of thousands.
 
Have thy tools ready. God will find thee work. - Charles Kingsley
 
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- What books did you read as a child that affected the way you viewed the world?
- What books/pieces of writing have inspired you to influence culture?

God has given me a passion for drawing and telling stories and the ability to grow in these practically. He’s blessed me with hands that create and a vivid imagination; constantly inventing characters and stories I want to tell. I would love God to use these gifts he’s given me in creating comics, animation or even storyboards to touch lives and bring glory to the God of creativity!
 
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Sarah’s work was exhibited at the Everything Conference 2012 Art Exhibition.

To contact her, follow girlintherain@gmail.com.

Space didn’t allow us to exhibit all the artists’ work though, so to find out more about what they do and how they are using their gifts to engage, create and transform, we’ve brought their bios, websites and contact details together for you in this virtual catalogue.
 
Browse, listen, watch and be encouraged. Who knows, you may be inspired to create, cultivate and collaborate to the glory of God too!

What is Enter the Pitch?
 
It’s a competition to win £25,000 production budget and also a load of professional help to make a short film drawing inspiration from the Bible.
 
Where did the idea come from?
 
In 2007, Bible Society was working on a campaign in Manchester to engage young people. We wanted to come up with a film concept and that led to the idea of bringing together a group of people to support and initiate a competition. The connection between the Bible and Hollywood has been very strong, right from the word go, both in creating historical dramas and in terms of shaping the arc and the story line of many different stories. There are lots more cracking stories in there, though, that have never been made into epic films.
 
We wanted to see what people’s ideas were and then raise the game. One of the challenges for anybody who’s trying to progress in filmmaking is finding the funding to really raise their game. What is lacking in the film industry is people with pots of this kind of money. Offering a prize of £25,000 is about substantially raising the game to a industry level for short film making.
 
So where have you been able to get that kind of money from?
 
Our funding is drawn from a number of sources and individuals, I won’t state who the individuals are, but we’re very grateful for their support. The organisations that are currently participating in this are Pinewood Studios, The Grand, Clitheroe which has a solid link across music, theatre and cinematic arts – and crucially Bible Society. We’re increasingly seeing wider interest in participating in our project and we welcome and invite that.
 
It’s not all about the money though, is it, you’ve got some amazing people on board as judges, helping to make the films and giving of their time and expertise to the winners – Nev Pierce, Nick Park, David Suchet, David Oyelowo, Stuart Hazeldene and X-Men producer Ralph Winter to name just a few. How does a guy working for a charity based in Swindon manage to get these people to give such a huge amount of their time?
 
I am really thankful for the way this network has come together. I already knew Nick Park [creator of Wallace and Gromit], and without that, almost certainly getting contact with some of these people would have been very, very tricky indeed. I also owe a huge amount to Mark Blaney and Jackie Sheppard of Footprint Films who have been with me every step of the way as consultants to the project. They have been outstanding and tireless supporters of the project, bringing feature-level business skills to the short film format.  I’m also grateful to Nev Pierce [Editor-at-large of EMPIRE magazine], who was a contact through a former colleague. I’ve gone to these people because I’m interested in their work, and am committed to working professionally and at a proper standard with integrity. We’ve had to work slowly, building the relationships, the contacts, the networks that add up until the point where you have a certain momentum and others are able to join in.
 
For example, the screenwriter Stuart Hazeldene is on the panel this year, he joined us after David Oyelowo, on the panel in 2010, invited him to join us. 
 
In such a relationally-based industry, it has been important that the people who work with us have enjoyed it; they’ve found that it’s been encouraging to them and a positive experience. They’ve seen that we’re serious about what we’re doing; we’re not just trying to get a bit of free polemic or using it for a didactic purpose, but are genuinely interested in the process of creating something excellent, and just happen to have a particular source of inspiration.
 
Christian films tend not to do very well in the UK. Is part of the goal of Enter the Pitch to try to change that?
 
We’re not about making specifically Christian films. In fact our film makers are not necessarily Christians or of any faith disposition, and we welcome, and have welcomed, people of all backgrounds to participate in the competition. We are interested in the genuine dramatic human nature of the stories in scripture, and in drawing people to something which is enduring and universal. I firmly believe that film makers are the very best story tellers and are the very best at identifying those enduring human stories in a way that speaks to a new generation.
 
Can you explain how the process works?
 
We’re looking for a 2-minute pitch for a short film. To pitch you must upload a short film onto the website selling your idea. (The site will open to submissions in summer 2012. Register on the site to hear when dates are announced).
 
A panel will review all the pitches and create a shortlist which will then be uploaded onto the website. The public then have one month to watch a minimum of six pitches and vote for a minimum of three. The reason we do this is to ensure that people vote on the quality of the pitches, not just for their friends.
 
The top twenty pitches are then viewed by the judging panel, who whittle them down to ten. These ten finalists are invited to come to Pinewood Studios for a weekend to present their pitches live to the panel. We’re pretty unique in being a live pitching competition, and for those ten, the prize really is the opportunity to simply put their idea in front of a professional panel in the industry. You can’t buy 20 minutes with people at this level; you have to have shown your merit to get this far, and the experience people have gained from it has been a benefit in and of itself.
 
The judges then select a final three, who are invited to stay on and give a longer pitch the following day. Interestingly, our top three pitchers over the last two years have all gone away the night before and come back with a more thoroughly worked up and developed proposal. They have shown themselves to be adaptable to the critique from the panel. It’s a very creative and consultative process as well as obviously being quite nerve-wracking and testing. It means, though, that those who go through to the second day of the final weekend actually have shown their ability to address the weaknesses that have been uncovered in their pitch and take it to another level. That’s part of the business as well. If you’re going to a studio to pitch an idea anywhere in the industry, those kind of skills need to be developed, and they’re not necessarily skills that people learn in film colleges and places where they are honing their practical film making skills.
 
Wow, that’s an intensive process. It’s no wonder you’re able to come out with such high-quality films. What has happened to Simeon Lumgair and Rob McLellan since they won the 2009 and 2010 competitions?
 
Simeon has got several film festivals coming up, one based in Toronto, one in India and one in China, and he is working on a number of projects he’s got on the slate as well as running his film company, Quirky Motion.
 
Rob is just at the beginning of his year, he’s only just entering Rahab into competitions now, so we will see what the festival circuit looks like for him. He has had one invitation to screen already, so that’s looking very positive. He has also received an invitation to consider directing a feature in America as a result of his trip out there [as part of his prize], and has received a number of other professional approaches. So for Rob it looks a very, very positive year coming, though it’s always difficult to predict exactly how it will fall out. We are currently exploring the development of the Rahab short as a feature, following particular interest from the industry.
 
That’s amazing, so it really can launch someone into a career in films!
 
Yes, I’ve got a video of Rob in Hollywood, after we’d taken him to meet with the people at Industrial Light and Magic, and he’s really excited. He says, “You win the competition and that’s just the start. It changes your life forever!”
 
So for anyone considering entering in 2012, what are your top tips for making a stand-out pitch?
 
My top tip is that story is key. Make sure that your pitch really conveys your story, whether you do that by speaking to the camera or by showing a clip of what you think it’ll feel like or even by doing just story boards, you have to above all be telling us what is your compelling story. If you have not read Save the Cat by Blake Snyder you could do far worse than to start with that excellent book. Snyder would tell you that if you can’t sell your film with the title and the log line then you haven’t got it yet. With only two minutes to pitch, that is advice well worth following.
 
Secondly, think about how you change the context from how the original story was told to a more contemporary context. There are various techniques that people have used to avoid some of the more difficult comparatives, so horror or science-fiction genres enable people to leap to a different context and retell the story in a new way.
 
My third tip is avoid all polemic. It never works, whether you’re trying to make a point about how miserable and horrible this book is, or when it becomes nothing but a sermon on screen. Neither of those things belong in our competition. We’re interested in good human stories that have a enduring relevance.
 
Finally, I really think comedy hasn’t been plundered enough. It’s a natural human reaction to laugh at things we find difficult, and sometimes it’s a good way of exploring what we feel about those things. There is some laughter to be had at all the strange moments in the Bible.
 
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The winner of Enter the Pitch 2011 has just been announced and his project is now in development for a shoot later in the year. Submissions for the 2012 competition will open in summer 2012. Visit the website and register to be kept in touch with the key dates, but don’t wait until then to start finding your story and filming your pitch.
 
Main picture: After the announcement of the winner of The Pitch 2011: Right to Left: Winner Tim Bassford, runner up Jodi De Souza, Judge Nick Park (creator of Wallace and Gromit), Steve Lancaster (representing one of the sponsors: The Grand, Clitheroe), runner up Carolyn Goodyear and Producer for The Pitch Luke Walton.

The Gospel According to Peanuts
How A Charlie Brown Christmas almost didn’t happen

by Lee Habeeb
 
Few headlines about network television make me giddy. Fewer still make me hopeful that all is good in the world. But back in August of 2010, I read the following headline from the media pages with great excitement: “Charlie Brown Is Here to Stay: ABC Picks Up ‘Peanuts’ Specials Through 2015.” The first of these to be made, the famous Christmas special, was an instant classic when it was created by Charles Schulz on a shoestring budget back in 1965, and thanks to some smart television executives, it will be around for at least another five years for all of us to see and enjoy.

What people don’t know is that the Christmas special almost didn’t happen, because some not-so-smart television executives almost didn’t let it air. You see, Charles Schulz had some ideas that challenged the way of thinking of those executives 46 years ago, and one of them had to do with the inclusion in his Christmas cartoon of a reading from the King James Bible’s version of the Gospel of Luke.

The more things change, the more things stay the same.

As far back as 1965 — just a few years before Time magazine asked “Is God Dead?” — CBS executives thought a Bible reading might turn off a nation populated with Christians. And during a Christmas special, no less! Ah, the perils of living on an island in the northeast called Manhattan.

“A Charlie Brown Christmas” was a groundbreaking program in so many ways, as we learned watching the great PBS American Masters series on Charles Schulz, known by his friends and colleagues as “Sparky.” It was based on the comic strip Peanuts, and was produced and directed by former Warner Brothers animator Bill Melendez, who also supplied the voice for Snoopy.

We learned in that PBS special that the cartoon happened by mere serendipity.

“We got a call from Coca-Cola,” remembered Melendez. “And they said, ‘Have you and Mr. Schulz ever considered doing a Christmas show with the characters?’ and I immediately said ‘Yes.’ And it was Wednesday and they said, ‘If you can send us an outline by Monday, we might be interested in it.’ So I called Sparky on the phone and told him I’d just sold ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas,’ and he said, ‘What’s that?’ and I said, ‘It’s something you’ve got to write tomorrow.’”

We learned in that American Masters series that Schulz had some ideas of his own for the Christmas special, ideas that didn’t make the network suits very happy. First and foremost, there was no laugh track, something unimaginable in that era of television. Schulz thought that the audience should be able to enjoy the show at its own pace, without being cued when to laugh. CBS created a version of the show with a laugh track added, just in case Schulz changed his mind. Luckily, he didn’t.

The second big battle was waged over voiceovers. The network executives were not happy that the Schulz’s team had chosen to use children to do the voice acting, rather than employing adults. Indeed, in this remarkable world created by Charles Schulz, we never hear the voice of an adult.

The executives also had a problem with the jazz soundtrack by Vince Guaraldi. They thought the music would not work well for a children’s program, and that it distracted from the general tone. They wanted something more . . . well . . . young.

Last but not least, the executives did not want to have Linus reciting the story of the birth of Christ from the Gospel of Luke. The network orthodoxy of the time assumed that viewers would not want to sit through passages of the King James Bible.

There was a standoff of sorts, but Schulz did not back down, and because of the tight production schedule and CBS’s prior promotion, the network executives aired the special as Schulz intended it. But they were certain they had a flop on their hands.

“They were freaking out about something so overtly religious in a Christmas special,” explained Melendez. “They basically wrote it off, like, hey, this is just isn’t going to be interesting to anyone, and it’s just going to be like a big tax write-off.”

Melendez himself was somewhat hesitant about the reading from Luke. “I was leery of the religion that came into it, and I was right away opposed to it. But Sparky just assumed what he had to say was important to somebody.”

Which is why Charles Schulz was Charles Schulz. He knew that the Luke reading by Linus was the heart and soul of the story.

As Charlie Brown sinks into a state of despair trying to find the true meaning of Christmas, Linus quietly saves the day. He walks to the center of the stage where the Peanuts characters have gathered, and under a narrow spotlight, quotes the second chapter of the Gospel According to Luke, verses 8 through 14:

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace and goodwill towards men.

“ . . . And that’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown,” Linus concluded.

The scene lasted 51 seconds. When Linus finished up, Charlie Brown realized he did not have to let commercialism ruin his Christmas. With a sense of inspiration and purpose, he picked up his fragile tree and walked out of the auditorium, intending to take it home to decorate and show all who cared to see how it would work in the school play.

When CBS executives saw the final product, they were horrified. They believed the special would be a complete flop. CBS programmers were equally pessimistic, informing the production team, “We will, of course, air it next week, but I’m afraid we won’t be ordering any more.”

The half-hour special aired on Thursday, December 9, 1965, preempting The Munsters and following Gilligan’s Island. To the surprise of the executives, 50 percent of the televisions in the United States tuned in to the first broadcast. The cartoon was a critical and commercial hit; it won an Emmy and a Peabody award.

Linus’s recitation was hailed by critic Harriet Van Horne of the New York World-Telegram, who wrote, “Linus’ reading of the story of the Nativity was, quite simply, the dramatic highlight of the season.”

A Charlie Brown Christmas is equaled only perhaps by the 1966 How the Grinch Stole Christmas! in its popularity among young and old alike. Thank God the Grinch-like executives at CBS chose to air the special back in 1965 despite their misgivings. If it had been left to their gut instincts, we would have had one less national treasure to cherish come Christmas time.

— Lee Habeeb is the vice president of content at Salem Radio Network, which syndicates Bill Bennett, Mike Gallagher, Dennis Prager, Michael Medved, and Hugh Hewitt. He lives in Oxford, Miss., with his wife, Valerie, and daughter Reagan.

This article originally appeared in National Review Online. © 2011 by National Review, Inc., Reprinted by permission.

Uncertainty breeds faith
 
We find, in Hebrews, the famous verse, ‘Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.’  Faith is reliant on the unseen, the hoped for yet unrealised.  Without uncertainty, faith has no place.
 
When Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were presented with the fiery furnace, they had a choice, a choice to doubt for a moment, one moment of weakness, and kneel to Nebuchadnezzar’s golden image, or to trust.  What would come out of their trust was uncertain, unseen, yet hoped for, they had surely never witnessed God pluck others from a fiery furnace but their response is never in question, ‘We have no need to answer you in this matter,’ they say, ‘Our God, whom we serve, is able to deliver us . . . if not, be it known . . . we will not serve your gods.’ Never had their future been more in doubt, and never had they a greater opportunity to rely on God.  Great uncertainty breeds great faith.
 
For the artist, every new endeavour, every blank page in the diary, every bank statement is an opportunity to rely on God.  Seek, at all times, His ‘assurance of the things hoped for,’ His ‘conviction of things not seen’.
 
Uncertainty breeds works
 
Imagine a sport.  Two teams take the field, both knowing the outcome, knowing the eventual score line, knowing who’ll score, who’ll miss, who’ll leave the field injured.  Do you imagine the blood is pumping, adrenaline flowing, or do you see the inevitable lack-lustre affair?  In life as in sport, uncertainty drives us.  James contains another famed passage on faith, ‘Faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.’  Like the sportsman who believes, unknowing, in a favourable outcome, who sweats and strives for every moment of the game, every yard won, uncertainty demands we work, demands we give our all to grasp the hoped for, the unseen.  Without works, faith is dead.
 
Joshua never stopped striving for the unseen, promised inheritance.  When ‘all the people of Israel’ rebelled against God, and, in fear, refused to enter the promised land, Joshua, along with Caleb, still proclaimed, ‘The Lord is with us; do not fear them.’  When presented with the vast unassailable walls of Jericho, Joshua trusted in a plan that no human military strategist would advise, leading God’s people, step by step, undoubtedly hounded by taunts and cackles from the besieged city, on their circular march.  When ‘All the kings of the Amorites,’ were gathered against them, ‘Joshua [still] went up . . . he and all the people of war.’

Uncertainty, from a worldly perspective, leaves us slaves to indecision.  As Christian artists, great uncertainty leads to great works of faith.
 
Uncertainty Speaks of God’s Commission
 
When told by a certain scribe that he would follow him wherever he went, Jesus declared to the earnest man, ‘Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head’.  A life following Jesus is a life marked by uncertainty.  ‘Behold,’ Jesus said, ‘I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves.’  He never called us to a life of certainty.  ‘You will be dragged before governers and kings,’ ‘you will be hated by all.’  The expectation of the Christian should be uncertainty, an uncertain life on earth, knowing that we are a people sent.  Jesus sends us, not to a cosy, rosy existence, but to one of challenge, risk and uncertain outcomes, for every moment of challenge is a moment to trust and better glorify Him.
 
‘Do all things,’ persevere in every penniless project, perform at every tiny venue, pursue every commission, no matter how small, ‘without grumbling or complaining,’ in spite of the uncertainty, in spite of the challenge, in spite of the obstacles, ‘that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world.’  This is what he calls us too, for we are his servant, in whom He will be glorified.
 
A Note on Certainty
 
Faith, in the face of an uncertain future, sets the Christian apart, but it is not, like our analogous sportsman, faith in one’s own ability, it is a faith set in The Rock of certainty.  The most common promise in the Bible is one of certainty, ‘I will be with you.’  ‘I chose you before the creation of the World,’ I knitted you together in your mother’s womb, ‘the hairs of your head are all numbered,’ when you sit and when you rise, I know, I shall renew your strength, I hem you in before and behind and lay my hand upon you, ‘I know the plans I have for you,’ even though you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, you will fear no evil, for I am with you, ‘behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’ This is his certain promise to us, through all uncertainty, he will be with us, Immanuel.

Upon arriving at my destination, I read up on the poet. I’m no great aficionado of poetry and I had never before come across Anne Sexton, but from what I discovered, she was a troubled lady who grappled with depression and mental health issues, and who took up poetry at the advice of her therapist.
 
I don’t know enough about her to comment on her faith or theology; if indeed she ever possessed either. This poem comes from her final collection of work, The Awful Rowing Toward God. The story goes that towards the end of her life she met with a Roman Catholic Priest, who refused to administer last rites, but told her, “God is in your typewriter.” Inspired, she wrote this collection in twenty days, refusing to allow it to be published until after her death, which came in 1974, as she tragically took her own life. 
 
Since the Earth is the Lord’s and everything in it (Psalm 24:1), perhaps, just perhaps, God was in her typewriter. Not in some pagan quasi-pantheistic way, lurking beneath the ribbon, or ‘one with the keys’, but operating through common grace, providing glimpses of His truth and beauty.
 
What was it Paul said, after all, quoting some of the pagan poets of Athens?

‘From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. “For in him we live and move and have our being.” As some of your own poets have said, “We are his offspring.”’ (Acts 17:26-28)

 
Whatever Anne Sexton may have thought, felt, believed or meant by her writing, her poem lifted my head, caused me to look around and appreciate the morning in a new light. Everything does matter to God. It does all belong to Him. He is the source of every good and perfect gift, and Sexton’s words evoked a smattering of thanks from my lips. Perhaps they might do the same for you:

Welcome Morning
Anne Sexton
   
There is joy
in all:
in the hair I brush each morning,
in the Cannon towel, newly washed,
that I rub my body with each morning,
in the chapel of eggs I cook
each morning,
in the outcry from the kettle
that heats my coffee
each morning,
in the spoon and the chair
that cry “hello there, Anne”
each morning,
in the godhead of the table
that I set my silver, plate, cup upon
each morning.

All this is God,
right here in my pea-green house
each morning
and I mean,
though often forget,
to give thanks,
to faint down by the kitchen table
in a prayer of rejoicing
as the holy birds at the kitchen window
peck into their marriage of seeds.

So while I think of it,
let me paint a thank-you on my palm
for this God, this laughter of the morning,
lest it go unspoken.

The Joy that isn’t shared, I’ve heard,
dies young.

If you had to briefly summarise your message at the Everything Conference, how would you put it?

We are made to be culture makers - not primarily cultural critics or mere culture consumers. As image-bearers of God, our vocation is what I call cultivating and creating - both sustaining and tending the good that is already in the world, and adding new cultural goods to the world. And as Christians we are servants of the most culturally influential person who ever lived, who accomplished for us, and works in us, the cultural creativity that Adam’s descendants lost - so for us cultivating and creating culture is not just our human duty, but our Christian joy.

What were the highlights of your trip?

Well, the weather happened to be wonderful! But as is almost always true, the highlights were people - the hospitable, generous, and thoughtful leaders from all walks of life whom I met at ChristChurch London and at the Everything Conference. I also was deeply encouraged by being immersed in an expectant atmosphere of worship and prayer - it was quite moving and refreshing for me after a season of intense travel.

What were your impressions of the Everything Conference?

In addition to the heartfelt worship, I was really struck by the stories of small- and large-scale cultural creativity that were shared, from local churches to feature-filmmaking. I also sensed that the Newfrontiers movement is ready to take on a deeper sense of cultural responsibility - to see the formation of thriving churches not as an end in itself, but as a platform for equipping Christians to contribute in every walk of life.

Do you have any reflections on other aspects of the trip?

It was quite extraordinary to spend an afternoon with national church leaders who were so eager to learn from one another and support each other, to think both critically and creatively, and to see their congregations and movements grow, even if that required radically rethinking the church’s mission in order to include a calling that is bigger than just building churches.

What do you perceive to be the major differences between the US and UK contexts?
 
I suppose the biggest difference comes down to this: I perceive Christians in the US as over-confident in their own ability to transform culture. Whereas my sense of UK Christians is they tend to underestimate their capacity to make transformative contributions to government, media, business, and the arts. This may well reflect national character traits, of course! The other big difference is that American Christianity has a regrettable legacy of populist anti-intellectualism that really hinders serious cultural creativity, and that is much less prevalent in the UK. Culture making is both serious and joyful business, and I experienced a lot of serious joy during my visit.

What challenges do you foresee us facing as we pursue this agenda?
 
Cultures resist change. That is true not just of societies, but of our churches as well. If we are really creating culture, we will encounter real resistance, starting right in our own hearts and souls - we ourselves resist creativity and change. I do think the headwinds of secularism blow more fiercely in the UK, and any serious, large-scale contribution to culture in the UK will be met by serious resistance. We need to be prepared for that and have appropriately thick skins - not that we ignore our critics but that we not be defined by our reaction to their criticism. That has been one of the real weaknesses of evangelical Christians in the US - we allowed ourselves to become better known by what we are against than what we are for.
 
How can our churches better support people in creating culture?
 
In the church world, you get what you celebrate. Too often churches only celebrate leadership within the church, when we should be celebrating people who are following Christ in every sphere of life. So the number one change I would recommend is intentionally celebrating cultural leadership more often. This requires a kind of humility and courage from pastors, because they have to be willing to celebrate people pouring their energies into things other than the church itself. But I truly believe that kind of generosity will be more than compensated for by the energy that is unleashed when people realize the church cares about what they do every day of the week, not just Sunday.

What did you personally take away from the trip?

Well, to be very honest I was reminded of my deep need for worship, prayer, and dependence on the Holy Spirit. I came to faith through the charismatic renewal in the United States, but much of my time these days is spent in parts of the evangelical movement that are rather distant from the charismatic movement’s focus on daily, personal, intentional pursuit of encounter with God. Ultimately it is not enough for us to seek to be culture makers; we have to be transformed, ourselves, by the renewing work of God in order to have anything to offer. To borrow John Wesley’s famous phrase, my heart was “strangely warmed” by my time with you all, and I hope my own cultivating and creating will be richer and deeper for it.
 

Check out Andy’s talks at Everything 2011 at our Media Resources page.

These are some of the questions we considered in the first talk of the How to Change the World seminar stream at Newday 2011. Around 350 youth, aged 15-18, came to a week of seminars designed to help them engage with the world around them and make it a better place.

You can download the talk here and follow the interactive presentation below:

Dads chase renegade toddlers whose curiosity has taken them too close to the sheep or the open water; mums settle down on plastic picnic rugs; teenagers make the most of being released from school and parental control; students free of exams spend hard-earned loans on Suffolk cider. The rain mostly pours, punctuated by occasional showers, turning the ground to an indistinct mud lake and brightly-coloured wellies to homogenous brown. The occasion is Latitude, an annual weekend festival of music, art, poetry, theatre, comedy and every type of food under the sun – or rain.

Being very English, the weather brings us together. Huddling under umbrellas and shouting over the noise of the raindrops to the neighbour in the coffee queue, thoughts are exchanged on the best acts to see – those under any sort of cover, apparently.
 
The festival programme is a feast of delights, the creative capacity of human beings trying to make something of their world – money, hedonism, sense, fun – played out in glorious technicolour. Hilarious comedy sets, thought-provoking debate between MPs and journalists, frank interviews with charming actors, uncomfortably real theatre and achingly beautiful music, with a big welly-full of pop through the decades thrown in for good measure.  Artists stretch out their talent in questions and answers, and their audiences respond.  Adoring fans surge towards vast stages, pressing forward for a glimpse of their idols, hands instinctively lifted exuberantly high as symphonic melodies, soaring voices and flashing lights create a heady mix.
 
It’s easy to see why Suede have re-formed after so many years: Brett Anderson struts the stage, embracing the adulation just as he did fifteen years ago.  The music washes over the thousands who join in with The Naked and Famous singing, ambiguously,

“All of this is tearing us apart,
I don’t know where us or this start…
As the plans turn into compromise,
the promises all turn to lies.”

 
The lead singer of The National drops down into the crowd, and, with technical team clutching the microphone lead and racing after him, propels through his fans who reach out to touch the man whose whole body cries out,

“Sorrow found me when I was young,
Sorrow waited, sorrow won…
Don’t leave my half a heart alone
On the water.”

 
The remarkable Johnny Flynn defies explanation as he sings whilst simultaneously playing the violin, before exchanging it for a trumpet, followed by several different guitars. 

“We’re all digging, if you wanna know,
Fixing, digging far too slow, far too slow.
We dug for money, we shovelled four tons.
And the end wasn’t funny, though we’d all had fun.
Limping and broken, the tunnel fell in,
I’ve been limping from tunnels since my original sin.”

 
There is a curious mix amongst the artists on show of unabashed indulgence in their creation, or in the celebrity it generates, alongside an honesty that confesses neither artist nor their work can ultimately satisfy.  It is a truth most brutally voiced by an extraordinarily gifted young south London rapper turned poet named Kate Tempest, whose disarming, physical frankness has us spellbound.

“I’m out for the truth, I’ll shout it from the rooftops.
Too many are too lost…
It’s never too late to see beyond the surface.
I don’t care about the hype, what I care’s about integrity, cos you only build them up to burn their effigy anyway.
I’m so hungry for something sustainable, something with truth, something unchangeable.”

 
I left Latitude wondering if the 25,000-strong crowd, artists and punters alike, weren’t united beyond their muddy, musical weekend by a hunger for something greater than all the brilliance of creation they had witnessed.

How did you get involved with writing for Miranda?

I submitted jokes for the open-door show of its day, Radio 2’s Parsons and Naylor’s Pull-Out Sections. That producer moved to The News Quiz and took me with her. One of her successors moved to Lee Mack’s Radio 2 show, and took me with her. Lee moved to TV with the sitcom Not Going Out, and took me with him. Miranda Hart appeared in Not Going Out, then got her own show, and took me with her. So the lesson there: jump on as many coat-tails as possible. Then cling, cling.

What is it you love most about comedy writing?

What’s not to love about comedy writing? Apart from the loneliness and the sheer fear of facing a blank page with absolutely no ideas. When it goes well though, it’s great fun, cracking hours, you can often write from home, and you have a job that involves making people laugh. Any day where your work involves making people happier can only be good. The only other down side? I used to love sitcoms. I grew up adoring Blackadder and Fawlty Towers and Red Dwarf and Joking Apart and Murder Most Horrid and Bonjour La Classe and other obscure shows. Now I don’t so much laugh at sitcoms, as see them as work. Rather than ‘hahaha’, sitcoms illicit from me a ‘oh, that’s a clever use of the pull-back-and-reveal’.

How does your Christian faith influence your comedy writing?

My faith influences my writing in the same way it influences the rest of my life, and the same way it probably affects most people’s work lives. It informs who I am, the decisions I make (especially editorial decisions, what ideas I will and won’t entertain), but I wouldn’t say I approach every day thinking how I can evangelise with a script. I’m not in the habit of smuggling God into scenes so that every script has a message that we should all become Christians - mainly because that’s impossible. I work with producers, who have the last word (or the penultimate word, before the executive producer, the commissioner, or whoever else may be there between me and the audience). So instead it’s more about entertaining and informing, which I’ll always do from my perspective, as a Christian, as a father, as a ginger Cornishman.

An example: when table-writing (i.e. maybe eight of us around a table, working on a script for which one of us has written the first draft), I’ve encountered lines that include my saviour’s name, being used in a way I feel is inappropriate. I, personally, don’t mind the odd swear word, but I shudder at blasphemy, as many Christians do. So what do I do in this situation? Do I kick up a fuss, explaining to the table that as a Christian I feel we should not punctuate the script liberally with JCs and Gs? No, largely because I feel that this will cause the other writers to put their defences up, to treat me as a hurdle. Instead I set about thinking of better, funnier (and yes, non-blasphemous) lines that can replace it. My form of evangelism in the workplace is more often this: trying to do what I think and hope God would want, not by holier-than-thou complaining, but by better-than-blasphemy creating, constructively.

Is there anything about the Bible that has inspired your comedy writing?

In one sense, very specifically, yes. I wrote and performed a stand-up show at the Edinburgh Festival based on the book of Genesis. So that was as inspired by the Bible as it’s possible to be. The idea was for it to be the first of 66 annual consecutive shows, culminating when I’m 94. But I stopped, for now. Bit scared at the prospect of getting 60 minutes of entertainment from Micah. Genesis though - I wanted to bring it to a secular audience. The stories are familiar yet undertold. And I felt that the Bible as a whole is more than theology - it contains great history, great literature, and is something everyone should read more. Whatever your faith or lack of it, it’s such an important part of civilisation, we all need to know it better. I hope those who read it will be transformed by it. If they’re not, they should read it anyway.

In your opinion, was Jesus a comedian?

If he was - and absolutely no disrespect to my Lord and saviour - he wasn’t a very good comedian. But that’s a good thing! I don’t want my Messiah finishing parables with “But seriously…”. That said, Jesus was a brilliant communicator, he could improvise, had great imagination with the stories he would relate, and he was willing to adapt what he was saying to whoever he was addressing.

I’ve always pictured a Venn diagram of comedian, teacher and vicar, with a big crossover in the middle. I think Jesus had more of the latter two in him. All three have an element of crowd control, and consist of trying to get your message across to a potentially bored or uninterested audience. Jesus could certainly play whichever room or mount he was in/on.

Do you see comedy playing a role in transforming society?

It’s perhaps too grand to think that my little stage act, or contributions to sitcom scripts, have any effect on society, but I hope it’s cumulative, and that the effect is positive. We all do what we do to uplift and entertain. So yes, we want to transform society for the better, whether that means making people think more, or just making them laugh. Society has enough eroding influences - it would be nice to think that comedy can do some good. I’d love for people to walk away from something I’d written or performed thinking: “Comedy can be upbeat and entertaining without being nasty.”

This interview was originally published in Culture Footprint. Visit their website to get the Culture Footprint email delivered to your inbox.

Art takes many forms, and is found in many locations. It has the potential to be powerful, provocative, educational and captivating. If Van Gogh is correct, I would propose that art is at its most powerful when it is coupled with a deep love for people.

In 2008, Caleb Simmons, an illustrator and designer from Canterbury was commissioned to create some artwork for an interfaith chapel in a secure training centre for young offenders.
 
‘I was asked to create four stained glass windows,’ he explained ‘which would be printed on metre-squared transparent stickers, and stuck on the chapel windows. This was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up, to be able to create art that spoke of the grace and love of God to people in a troubled place.’
 
The windows were to serve as teaching aids in a religious space used by both Christians and Muslims. This raised challenges on a number of levels; cultural, logistical and theological. Stained glass windows are a regular feature of the Christian tradition, but don’t easily translate for a Muslim context. The content therefore needed to be strong enough to cross this cultural boundary. The second challenge was a logistical one. When the chapel was used by Christians, the whole space was open, but when it was used for Muslim worship, the Imam would pull a curtain across to cover up the altar, the cross and two of the four windows. This variable layout meant that the first two windows had to be applicable to people from both faiths, whilst the third and fourth windows could be explicitly Christian in content.
 
This provided the third challenge; a theological one. ‘I wanted to create a series of images that held together as a whole narrative,’ explained Caleb, ‘but which could also stand alone in their own right. I wanted to respect both Muslim and Christian worshippers, but without compromising on my own belief in the exclusivity of Jesus. As I researched, I found that both faiths shared certain foundational stories and principles upon which I could draw: an affirmation of creation, the stories of Abraham, Moses and David. I decided that the first two windows should depict some of these shared elements, in a way that respected Muslim beliefs, but provoked some curiosity about the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.’
 
By way of a number of recurring themes, weaved through the windows, Caleb sought to narrate a story that ultimately reached its climax in Christ.
 
‘The idea that held it all together was covenant. The narrative of each window is depicted by a series of lines that rise and fall with the story of humanity. From creation we follow the downward lines, which depict the fall into sin and slavery, then rise again towards the giving of the law. The position of Moses is deliberately lower than that of the initial creation, representing the fact that even the Exodus and the giving of the Law still falls short of fully restoring humanity.’
 
‘David’s story depicts lowly beginning of a shepherd boy, and his rise to prominence, calling to mind his humble prayer, “Who am I, O Lord God, and what is my house, that you have brought me thus far?” (2 Samuel 20:19). The descending lines of the third window depict the incarnation, and the subsequent humiliation of Jesus, before he is then lifted up at the cross. The fourth and final window begins low, at the tomb of Jesus, building through his resurrection towards and a renewed humanity even greater than that of Eden.’
 
Aside from the main narrative, Caleb chose to tell a number of sub-plots along the way. He particularly featured characters to whom the young offenders would be able to relate: ‘David was a youngster from an obscure background. He faced rejection, was pursued and fell into fear, lust, deception and violence. Similarly, Peter was a fallible disciple who made many mistakes, felt worthless, acted impulsively and violently. Mary was a woman who Jesus delivered from torment. He stood up for her by accusing her accusers. In the third window she is seen alone at the foot of the cross, looking abandoned and dejected. She was a point of connection for many of the female offenders who could relate to her experience, and needed a saviour like Jesus.’
 
Each of these characters served as a teaching aid for how the grace of God can restore broken people, and scattered throughout the windows we see glimmers of hope; A lost coin, a lost sheep and a lost son, all speaking of Jesus’ commitment to seek and save the lost.
 
I am drawn to Caleb’s story as a great example of a Christian taking their art and their faith seriously, and employing both in an effort to educate, as well as provide comfort and hope for the marginalised in society. His work demonstrates a commitment to portraying how all human longings are ultimately fulfilled in Jesus, whilst also displaying great respect for people of other faiths. It is a wonderful example of thoughtful, provocative, but winsome, cultural engagement.
 
__________
 
Caleb is a member of The City Church Canterbury. See more of his artwork at calebsimmons.co.uk

Discuss.

A month ago I knew very little about this subject. Then one afternoon I sat down to watch some TV over lunch. After flicking through my options, I ended up watching a documentary on Child Soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo. I am not ashamed to say that God unlocked something in me during that hour and I was in tears by the end of it.

Did you know:
 
- There are approximately 300,000 child soldiers in the world. That’s three for every hair on your head
- It is estimated that there have been over 100,000 child soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo since 1993
- Many of these children are taught to use guns, forced to mutilate or kill civilians, and are regularly abused
 
The stories of these children stayed with me for several days and I knew that God had done something in me – I was just not sure what yet.
 
A week later we were then given a new brief on our course. This was to visualise complex information in a way that would be simple to understand. By this point I knew I wanted to research more into the issues surrounding the use of child soldiers and thought this would be the perfect excuse to do so. I did not intentionally bring my faith into my work; it just happened, in a very natural and normal way.
 
I spent the next few weeks researching. What I read, heard and watched in that time made me angrier, sadder and more crushed than at any point in my life. However, I knew I had to keep reading.
 
My research and development of the project eventually turned into an exhibition; The Child Soldier Cycle. This installation was bigger than anything I had ever attempted before. To complete it was a relief.
 
However, during this process so much fruit had been gained. My passion for the subject had become apparent to my course mates and I even ended up chatting with each one of my tutors about my faith and why I cared so much about this topic. Again, this wasn’t forced. I did not set out on an evangelistic mission; God was just in it.
 
Many people walked through my exhibition following the life of a child soldier. They were led round to five main stations, showing the key stages in the child soldier cycle: instability, conscription, brainwashing, daily life and rescue. These main stages were separated by real stories and quotes from former child soldiers about their harrowing experiences. This again created amazing situations in which to talk about faith and God; situations I had been praying for.

To bring faith into artistic work must not be clichéd. I don’t think what I’ve done is particularly extraordinary. However, I believe that what God can do with it is completely extraordinary.
 
I’m just hoping for more opportunities like this.

Started less than a decade ago, the firm has made an enormous impact on the film industry. ‘Amazing Grace’, ‘Journey to the Centre of the Earth’, ‘Bridge to Terabithia’ and ‘Charlotte’s Web’ are just some of the movies they’ve produced in that time, breaking records along the way with their innovative, culture-transforming education programme. This Christmas the latest movie in the Narnia series is released – Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
 
Co-Founder and President of Walden, Michael Flaherty, has long been an inspiring model for anyone who wants to make a lasting cultural impact for the better. I recently had the opportunity to chat to Michael and find out a little more about the story behind Walden Media…
 
 
Can you briefly explain the vision behind Walden Media?
Walden Media was started to provide quality entertainment for families. We believe that quality entertainment is inherently educational. We have hung our corporate hat on our ability to create entertainment that ‘delights and instructs’, in a sense. We make movies we can take our own children to, without flinching or worrying. We make movies they and we would like to see, movies we’ll walk away with something to consider and reflect upon.
 
The image-obsessed Hollywood isn’t the easiest ‘marketplace’ for a film company with morals - what challenges have you faced in setting up Walden and what’s the reaction from Hollywood been generally?
I think it’s a great misnomer to apply as a blanket, to Hollywood—that it is somehow inherently amoral or immoral. What it is, is a business, a set of corporations, and to that end, maximizing sales comes first. 
 
Now, with that said, I’ll grant that as a parent it often seems as though the appeal is to the lowest common denominator. But for us at Walden it’s been different. We have seen that a compelling story, generally for us adapted from great children’s literature, is welcomed by audiences and successful at the box office. We hope our films cause moviegoers to step up, not down. And the tradition of stories, of storytelling as a means to offer or point to goes back to the time of Christ and His parables.
 
Obviously films like ‘Amazing Grace’ and the Narnia movies have been huge successes - what are your hopes for ‘Voyage of the Dawn Treader’ - out this December?
We hope that it delights and we hope that it edifies. We hope that it is successful and we hope that it makes children and families want to keep reading the Chronicles of Narnia. We hope to engender many discussions about what C.S. Lewis meant when he said that one of Eustace Scrubb’s big problems was that ‘he read the wrong books.’ What then are the right books? Why those? Lewis is asking us to consider how we navigate our own voyage through life. What makes up our moral compass, how does great literature help with the voyage, and in what ways? Who are the people we turn to when we have a crisis of faith or belief? And Lewis’ genius is that he doesn’t preach and he doesn’t tell, he offers, through story and lets children figure it out - because he knows they can.  One of the things I love best about Lewis is his complete faith in the faith of children - to see and to get it. I cringe when I read books that explain the Chronicles. I see them instead as parables; the more you think about them, the more their meaning goes on expanding.
 
I understand you’re hoping that C.S.Lewis’ ‘Screwtape Letters’ could be made into a movie - where are you up to with this?
We are no longer developing it but the project is in good hands with my friend Ralph Winter. It’s a tall order though. ‘From whose perspective would you tell the story?’, is one key question. Screwtape’s? The patient’s? Wormwood’s? And in the present day or during World War II? These are basic, central questions.  Lewis thought of the time during World War II as morally his most productive and fruitful –paradoxically—so what happens if you shift the struggles in Screwtape to our modern-day, even though what Lewis has written is timeless?  I am confident that Ralph will figure it out though.
 
What other films does Walden have in the pipeline? (Any sneaky cheeky exclusives would be welcome here!!!!)
We have an adaptation of American children’s author Beverly Cleary’s RAMONA QUIMBY books coming out in July. It’s called RAMONA AND BEEZUS and it stars Selena Gomez. It’s a riot and it’s very sweet. In the fall we have a documentary about public education in America coming out. It’s directed by Davis Guggenheim, who received an Academy Award for his film AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH. This film is titled WAITING FOR SUPERMAN. It’s a deeply affecting film in my opinion - unsettling, in the best of ways. It’s an unflinching look at education and why and how it might better serve all children, ‘other people’s children’ not just our own.
 
How do you pick the stories that will be made into films?
There isn’t really one set process. We keep our ear to the ground, look and listen, and see what people are reading and what’s happening in the world around us. We listen to what kids have to say, or try to.  But parents, teachers and librarians continue to be our greatest source of ideas.
 
And what about personal plans for yourself or other ideas to impact culture?
We want to tell stories that entertain and are worth telling, and if we can continue to do that, everything else is gravy!
 
What would you like to be remembered for?
Somebody who loved God with all his heart and all his might and adored every minute with his wife and children.  My quixotic dream is to help play some kind of role in helping the United States achieve 100% literacy by the time children turn ten years old.
 
How has your faith helped you in your own journey over the years?
It would be difficult (if not vanity) to attempt to put this into words. It helps me every waking minute of my life, whether I know it or not. Most of all it has helped me understand the realm of the supernatural.  I am particularly fond of the passage in Hebrews that talks about the substance of faith being a hope in the unseen.  I cling to that one quite a bit when I am trying something new.  My faith has also helped me understand that I can’t accomplish anything on my own strength, industry, or initiative.
 
We’re wanting to encourage Christians to play a shaping role in business, education, government, finance, media - every sphere of life. What advice would you give to Christians with a vision to shape culture?
Well, first the question would be why would this encouragement be limited to Christians? This is something everyone can work on, or are we singling ourselves out for the wrong reasons? The idea that stories offer us something without hitting us on the head, that one can see one’s self in a good story, that, in the words of one of the characters in the film and play Shadowlands, ‘We read books to know we’re not alone’. Well that’s a pretty good focus to stay attentive to! Good stories offer us what Tolstoy called ‘windows on divinity.’ In the beginning was the Word…
 
Where do you think the biggest needs are in terms of shaping culture?
In teaching people to be good readers, of life and culture and books. To understand what’s happening to them and to reflect on their own experiences. Art helps us do this. And in the telling and making of stories for children, understanding that children understand how stories work. They don’t need big people to explain them to them. It’s sort of like something Isadora Duncan once said, ‘If I could tell you what I meant I wouldn’t need to dance.’ The story IS the explanation, it’s the exploration, and doesn’t need some heavy handed adult to say THIS is what THIS means. Lewis would hate that. But we do it all the time. Lewis talks about this in a wonderful essay he wrote called ‘On Three Ways of Writing for Children’. It’s one of my favorites. Lewis trusted children - and he wrote for them as equals, in one sense.
 
Doing this (shaping culture) isn’t without its challenges or its critics - how have you handled this?
You don’t set out to shape culture, you set out to tell good stories onscreen or in print and the stories work their magic on us as a people, as a culture, or they do not.
 
What do you think are the biggest challenges coming up in the west in the next 10 years for people who want to positively impact culture?
Not bowing to commercialism at the expense of taste, or soundness or integrity. And learning to listen to those with whom we (think) have least in common.
 
Any plans to develop an office branch or an equivalent of Walden Media in London or the UK?
We would love to have an office in Europe.  How about we compromise and we put one in Galway where my grandparents grew up?!

In case you’re not aware, John Isner and Nicolas Mahut just played the longest game of tennis in history. They played for a total of 11 hours and 5 minutes over three days, with Isner finally winning 70-68.

They broke the world records for:
    * Longest Match
    * Longest Set
    * Most Games in a Set
    * Most Games in a Match
    * Most Aces in a Match
    * Most Aces by a Player

The reason it fascinated me was that nobody knew how it was going to end. That’s always true of sport of course. Perhaps more accurately – nobody knew how to end it.

I was amazed to see the players in discussion with an official at the end of day two, arguing over whether they should stop for the night. Commentators were speculating about whether they would just keep going, or have a tiebreaker, or some other option. Personally, I would have gone for rock, paper, scissors – but I guess that’s why I’m not in their job!

A tiebreaker wasn’t really a plausible solution – you can’t just change the rules on the spot and make an unprecedented decision like that! They had to play on until someone caved, and then review the process afterwards.

And no doubt that is what they are now doing – thinking of new rules or provisions to make sure it doesn’t happen again; putting in place guidelines for the maximum length of a match, or how to end a game in extreme circumstances. Isner and Mahut have changed the face of tennis and will be the answer to a million and one quiz questions over the coming years.

If the rules of the tournament are altered because of this, a number of things will be made impossible:
    * It will be impossible to ever beat their new world records
    * It will be impossible to simply play on beyond a pre-fixed number of sets. There will be some prescribed method of curtailing a game, which all tennis players will have to adhere to from now on.
    * It will be impossible to use hyperbole to the same extent anymore. No longer will calling a 5 hour match ‘epic’ seem appropriate by comparison (‘though if hyperbole were banned entirely, commentators would be at a total loss for things to say!)

Through sheer perseverance, hard work, and refusal to give up, these two men are likely to transform the culture of Wimbledon, causing new rules to be written, and parameters to be set. They didn’t preach against the system, lobby for rule changes. In fact they didn’t even set out with an agenda to alter things. By simply doing what they did to the best of their ability, they will affect change in this area.

As Newfrontiers takes up the baton and seeks to renew culture through initiatives like The Everything Conference there will no doubt be many different ways we will have an effect; lobbying, strategic planning, having influence in high positions. But it strikes me that we ought never to underestimate the power of just working hard, slogging it out, and doing whatever it is we are good at with all of our strength. It changes things in unforeseen ways.

All too often we ring-fence ‘Christian’ art or writing into what is acceptable, what lies within our comfort zones, what we perceive as Christian standards, but these are often just our cultural viewpoints. And yet our faith should free us to fully express who God has made us to be, to have an understanding of the human nature, to be able to communicate in word and pictures in ways that connects and talks to people. We shouldn’t expect Christian artists to box themselves into art forms that are Christian themed. That would be like telling a businessman to only sell products that reflected the glory of God.  No, being a Christian in the arts is about using the gifts God has given you to produce works of outstanding quality. Something that makes people stop and take notice.  It shows the world something through your eyes, and if you are being true to who God has made you, whatever the subject or theme, something of him.

A Christian in the arts is also at the forefront of shaping and transforming culture. Novels, art, poems all help reflect to us who we are, where we have come from, what we think about ourselves. It is one of the most powerful means of communicating that God has given us. And we must enter into that arena with pure motives. If we know deep within ourselves that we have been shaped to write, to paint, to create, we should seek to use that and enter the world of the creative. If we enter this world with motives of winning people to Christ as our primary agenda then we are being false to who we are. Our place is to know ourselves enough to pull out what God has placed there and to enter a world bringing our values, to serve, to affect the people around us both in our art and how we behave. 

Two years ago I started a literary magazine called The View From Here. I started it because I realised who I was, what God had made me to do both as a writer and as a leader. To date we have nearly 20 people on the team from across the world. It is thriving, growing and releasing people into their gifting.  These people are not all Christians. There is no hidden agenda to win people. It is not a Christian magazine. In applying godly leadership though, it is changing the culture, it is affecting the people working on it and in that it grows the kingdom of God. Time and again I hear stories of people that we have affected, stories of people not used to being released into who they are. How powerful is it to release people into their gifting both Christians and non believers? To provide them with an environment to grow, to flourish, to serve and help them become all that God has made them to be? It transforms lives and allows them to be creative. And in being creative people come out of themselves to find out who they truly are. 

So, if we are to engage with the arts then we must throw off our narrow concepts of why we should do this and what it should look like. Let God deal with the why – our role is to be honest about who he has made us and to have the faith that when things are hard, when we are misunderstood, when obstacles come before us, that we draw on that faith and our art is authentic, relevant and culture changing.

Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, Harold Pinter; representatives of what is often known as the ‘Theatre of the Absurd’, an art-form regularly thought to be esoteric, avant-garde and thoroughly incomprehensible.[1] It is not uncommon to hear their work referred to as meaningless, inaccessible, or downright odd!

Yet, I love it. I love the wittiness, the poignancy, the manipulation of language. I adore the physicality, and the humour of confusion. I am stirred by the combination of rich layers of meaning against a bleak, minimalistic set. It makes me giggle like a child and shiver like an old man, though in truth I am neither.

I have heard it described as a godless and irredeemable genre. Yet, as a graduate of both drama and philosophy, I have found myself fascinated with its potential, and the conundrum it poses: how, as a playwright, might I explore the Absurd for the glory of God?

Defining the genre

‘Absurd’ can mean many things, from ridiculous to incongruous, but as applied to theatre it takes its definition from Albert Camus. In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus writes: ‘A world that can be explained by reasoning, however faulty, is a familiar world. But in a universe that is suddenly deprived of illusions and of light, man feels a stranger. His is an irremediable exile, because he is deprived of memories of a lost homeland as much as he lacks the hope of a promised land to come. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, truly constitutes the feeling of Absurdity.’[2]

Martin Esslin, in his seminal work on the genre, comments that ‘Absurd’ originally means ‘out of harmony’, in a musical context. Hence its dictionary definition: ‘out of harmony with reason or propriety; incongruous, unreasonable, illogical.’[3] One of the key practitioners of the genre, Eugène Ionesco, writes, ‘Absurd is that which is devoid of purpose… cut off from his religious, metaphysical, and transcendental roots, man is lost: all his actions become senseless, absurd, useless.’[4]

Thus Absurd plays are typically marked by a combination of the following features; they may be menacing, apparently devoid of meaning, unstructured, depressing and seemingly incoherent. They are in a sense ‘anti-plays’, breaking many of the traditional elements of theatre-craft.

Esslin summarises, ‘If a good play must have a cleverly constructed story, these have no story or plot to speak of; if a good play is judged by subtlety of characterisation and motivation, these are often without recognisable characters and present the audience with almost mechanical puppets; if a good play has to have a fully explained theme, which is neatly exposed and finally solved, these often have neither a beginning nor an end; if a good play is to hold the mirror up to nature and portray the manners and mannerisms of the age in finely observed sketches, these seem often to be reflections of dreams and nightmares; if a good play relies on witty repartee and pointed dialogue, these often consist of incoherent babblings.’[5]

Each of these points stands at odds to the Christian worldview. Absurdism rejects the idea of a constructed plot; Christianity affirms that there is a meta-narrative to life. Absurdism depicts man as a mechanical puppet, controlled by malicious external forces; Christianity affords man dignity, being made in the image of the Almighty.[6] Absurdism promotes a cyclical view of time, with no beginning and no end, just mere repetitious monotony; Christianity affirms that God created time, works in history, and plans to bring the story to a climax in new creation.[7] Absurdism deals in menace and bleakness; Christianity promotes an optimistic view of life, with hope for those who believe in Christ. Absurdism devalues language through the use of (paradoxically well-crafted) incoherent babbling; Christianity upholds words as both the agent of God’s creation[8] and an apt description for the Son who took on flesh.[9]

In short, the worldviews espoused by Christian theology and Absurd theatre strongly contradict one another. For the Absurdist, we dwell in a bleak wasteland, cut off from all meaning and hope. We are born above a grave, ‘the light gleams an instant, then it’s night once more.’[10] We are simply waiting to die, and in the meantime we have nothing to do but endure our ‘metaphysical anguish’.

By contrast the Christian sees this as a good world, created by a good God. Life and creation have been marred as a result of our sin, but there is hope, for God has intervened in history providing a means for our forgiveness through a perfect sacrifice and a resurrection, guaranteeing that one day all of creation will be made new and death defeated.

The Absurd and the Almighty

So can a Christian promote a biblical worldview through the means of Absurd theatre? The answer, I believe, is yes… and no.

No – because the Absurd worldview is so antithetical to that of the Bible, that the two cannot be correlated without compromise.

Yes – because in depicting a bleak existence, I believe the playwright can entice the viewer to long for something more; a world full of meaning, and life, and vitality, and dignity, and coherence, and narrative, and truth, and hope, and God.

When I watch Absurd theatre, rather than seeing it as a true depiction of the world, and resigning myself to its misery, I see it as a vivid depiction of a life without God. Ionesco got it right; ‘Cut off from his religious, metaphysical, and transcendental roots, man is lost.’[11] Or in the biblical language, we are sheep gone astray[12], dead in our sins[13], alienated[14] and walking in darkness.[15]

The downbeat, monotonous, hopelessness of the Absurd worldview; the clamouring for meaning, the feeling of disappointment and an inability to satiate your deepest needs through the things of the world, points to the simplest yet most profound of Christian truths: man needs God.

There is a great power in the Absurd tradition to provoke questions and yearnings for God. Esslin admits this, writing, ‘In expressing the tragic sense of loss at the disappearance of ultimate certainties the Theatre of the Absurd, by a strange paradox, is also a symptom of what probably comes nearest to being a genuine religious quest in our age: an effort, however timid and tentative, to sing, to laugh, to weep – and to growl – if not in praise of God… at least in search of a dimension of the Ineffable; an effort to make man aware of the ultimate realities of his condition, to instil in him again the lost sense of cosmic wonder and primeval anguish, to shock him out of existence that has become trite, mechanical, complacent, and deprived of the dignity that comes of awareness.’[16]

In other words, there is something about the Absurd that stirs the emotions of the viewer to long for the very things the genre denies; meaning, hope, God. Could we not harness this as an emotive apologetic for man’s need for God?

Donning the Mask and Adopting the Voice

Whilst running the risk of shameless self-promotion, allow me to ground this through the example of one of my plays, The Green Stick.

It is a play strongly earthed in the Absurd tradition, where two men of indeterminable age spend every waking hour of every day repeating the same meaningless actions; digging, reading, exfoliating, urinating, philosophising… The sun rises and falls. They read poetry from books, kept fresh in the fridge. A stick is thrown onto the stage, yet the dog never materialises. They ruminate on life, death and truth, but ultimately find no answers. They are cut off from the world. It has all the hallmarks of Beckett…

… and deliberately so, for in the writing I had taken the decision to don his mask and adopt his voice.

I had set out to evoke the atmosphere of Waiting for Godot, through a similar set, structure, tone, and themes. I deliberately crafted the play in such a way as to make people feel like they were watching Beckett and it thrilled me to hear someone enter the theatre, see the set and whisper ‘it looks like Godot.’ They got it.

As the play progresses, the characters espouse a postmodern, quasi-nihilistic worldview. Igor, the more stubborn of the characters becomes increasingly entrenched in his misery, whilst Luka becomes increasingly liberated, as he realises the shallowness of his philosophy, and begins to question its foundations.

The play ends without providing any explicit solution, but entices the viewer to long for a new, better way of life. It raises questions in their mind; is this really how I see the world? Meaningless and void? Is this the kind of world I want to live in? Is there an alternative? If there were, what would I be willing to give in order to embrace it?

Rather than simply laughing it off and resigning themselves to their fate, the viewer is given the opportunity to reconsider his worldview. By temporarily donning the mask of Absurdism, we can unmask its philosophy. By adopting its voice we can show its words to be hollow and self-refuting.

Absurdism and Scripture

I believe there is a huge potential for expounding biblical truth through Absurd theatre in such a way as to encourage people to long for salvation. A number of passages of Scripture come to mind that have a distinctly absurd tinge to them. Take, for example, the musings of Quoeleth in Ecclesiates. His famous lament, ‘Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless’[17] is at once reminiscent of the tone of Beckett, and looks forward to Jesus who ‘came to give life to the full.’[18] Job’s question, ‘can a man live, though he die?’ expresses both the futility of impending death, and prophetically anticipates the one who will crush death underfoot.[19] The rich man crying out across the chasm to Lazarus evokes a sense of frustration at the inability to communicate, a prevalent theme in the Absurd tradition.[20]

Ionesco may have been closer to the mark than he realised when he wrote that, ‘The value of a play like Beckett’s Endgame… lies in its being nearer to the Book of Job than to the boulevard theatre or the chansonniers. That work has found again, across the gulf of time, across the ephemeral phenomena of history, a less ephemeral archetypal situation, a primordial subject from which all others spring… The youngest, the most recent works of art will be recognised by, and will speak to, all epochs. Yes, it is King Solomon who is the leader of the movement I follow; and Job, that contemporary of Beckett.’[21]

Conclusion

Absurdism in itself portrays a worldview that strongly contradicts that of the Christian faith, but properly harnessed can provide a powerfully evocative apologetic for God; causing the viewer to beg, plead, long and search for a world different to the desolate wasteland depicted before them.

Rather than being a godless and irredeemable genre, in the hands of a proficient and thoughtful writer, I believe the Absurd can cause us to look with sadness at the futility of a life without God, and then upward with longing, dreaming of a better world. And as we do so, we find, to our surprise, the very world we hoped for is promised in the pages of Scripture, and attained for us through Christ.

[1] Absurdism is not necessarily as inaccessible as it may seem. Although it was at its height in the 1940s-60s, its influence can be still seen in many modern art-forms, and it has its roots in many older, traditional theatrical forms. See chapters 7-9 of Martin Esslin’s The Theatre of the Absurd which explore its origins in the commedia dell’arte, clowning, thirteenth century nonsense poetry, and the works of William Shakespeare.
[2] Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p18
[3] Martin Esslin, The Theatre of the Absurd, p23
[4] Eugène Ionesco, ‘Dans les armes de la ville’, Cahiers de la Compagnie Madeleine Renaud-Jean-Louis Barrault, Paris, no.20, October 1957
[5] Esslin, p21-22
[6] Genesis 1:26
[7] Romans 8:19-25
[8] Genesis 1:3
[9] John 1:1-2, 14
[10] Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot.
[11] Eugène Ionesco, ‘Dans les armes de la ville’, Cahiers de la Compagnie Madeleine Renaud-Jean-Lous Barrault, Paris, no.20, October 1957, italics mine
[12] Isaiah 53:6
[13] Ephesians 2:1
[14] Colossians 1:21
[15] John 3:19
[16] Esslin, p400
[17] Ecclesiastes 1:2
[18] John 10:10
[19] Job 14:14, 1 Corinthians 15:25-26
[20] Luke 16:19-31. See for example Happy Days by Samuel Beckett or The Bald Prima Donna by Eugène Ionesco.
[21] Eugène Ionesco, ‘Lorsque j’écris’, Cahiers des Saisons, Paris, no.15, Winter 1959

In the Old Testament we hear about the elaborate craftsmanship and artistry employed in the construction of the Tabernacle and Temple. The Bible itself is a literary work consisting of various separate art forms: prose, poetry, narrative, rhetoric and so on. Ultimately we can conceive of God as the master-artist. It is in this fact that we can grapple with the notion of a specific Christian aesthetic.

But we might well begin by asking the question whether it is even right to conceive of a particular Christian aesthetic. Some if not most branches of evangelicalism have not really considered the theme of aesthetics. Take the buildings we use as meeting places for example. Surely the emphasis has not been on creating buildings that are beautiful, pieces of art in their own right. Perhaps it is because our theology tells us that these buildings are just ‘rain shelters’ in which the church can meet, we haven’t given much thought to how these buildings look, feel and act.

We have rarely thought how the Bible would have us approach the issue of aesthetic quality. My own experience is that I have never been properly taught how as a Christian I ought to approach any creative act I might engage in, whether that be producing a meal, a piece of rhetoric, decorating my home or putting together the church magazine. I cannot recall hearing by way of application in a sermon how something I create should be ‘beautiful’ or should accomplish it’s task well, or how it should reflect my Christian world-view. Perhaps the closest thing to this is being told that I should do everything to praise of God. But what does this mean?

I want to suggest some ways in which we should approach our aesthetic task as Christians. What will be peculiar about a Christian aesthetic?

Beauty
‘Beauty’ it is said ‘is in the eye of the beholder.’ Is beauty quite so subjective as this? Or does the Bible allow us more objectivity? Does the Bible help us know what is truly beautiful? This is the place we need to begin since aesthetics might be defined as the enquiry in to the nature of beauty. But can we say that anything is beautiful, and other things are not?

To begin with we should say that the Bible tells us that God himself is beautiful. David write in Psalm 27:4

“One thing I have asked of the LORD, that I will seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple.” Hundreds of other passages praise God in aesthetic terms: ‘O Lord my God you are very great; you are clothed with splendour and majesty.’ (Psalm 104:1); ‘Sing to the LORD and praise him for the splendour of his holiness’ (2 Chron 20:21).

An ultimate, originating ‘divine beauty’ might then be said to exist. Augustine said ‘The beautiful things of this world kept me far from you [God] and yet, if they had not been in you, they would have had no being at all.’ (i) In other words Augustine recognised that beautiful things only existed in the world because God himself is beautiful. Beauty finds it’s origin in God. ‘Just as God is primordial being, the ontological ground of all that is, and just as he is the foundation of ethics, the axiological ground of all values, so is he the foundation of aesthetics, the ground of all beauty.’

The Bible notes that some things are clearly beautiful. Primarily, the creation that God made ‘was good’. We understand by this that part of this inherent ‘goodness’ was that it was beautiful. The objectively beautiful God had made a creation that was objectively beautiful. And God has given men and women the ability to make items that the Bible declares to be objectively beautiful. We read that Solomon ‘adorned the house [the Temple] with precious stones for beauty’ (2 Chron 3:6 Amplified Bible). The stones did not perform any other practical function. They were there for the sake of beauty. The same chapter in 2 Chronicles goes on to describe the lavish beauty of the Temple. Carved cherubim; fine gold; a veil of blue and purple and crimson fabrics; and two towers in the Most Holy Place that served no utilitarian function whatsoever. This was to be a work of beauty for the sake of beauty. It was meant to be beautiful because God is beautiful.

So we can say that God himself is beautiful. He is the source of beauty. And things created by man which are beautiful reflect the divine beauty and indeed have their origin in him.

Genuine creativity
In the beginning, the first verse of Genesis tell us, God created the heavens and the earth. Our world was not an accidental or unwanted by product of the gods; rather it was a deliberate, planned and executed piece of creativity. What is more the refrain in Genesis 1 comes again and again: ‘and it was good.’ The creation that God had made was a perfect creation.

As the pinnacle of the creation God created mankind. This ‘man’ (who was created ‘male and female’) was made in the image of God. Whatever that exactly entails, it must surely include the ability to create something new, as God can. Adam was given the task of working the ground of Eden. He was given the responsibility of re-fashioning a world that had already been made perfectly. This is some task. Dorothy L. Sayers wrote ‘The idea of art as creation is, I believe, the one important contribution that Christianity has made to aesthetics.’ (iii) She goes on to ask to what extent we can consider mankind as being like God in the creative task, and answers that the fundamental difference is that whereas humans are limited to creating out of that which already exists, God is able to create out of nothing. Nonetheless, are still able to create something and in doing so we image God. Sayers makes the point that a distinctively Christian aesthetic requires the production of pieces of art that are new. We should not settle for simply copying that which already exists. This is not a hallmark of a genuine Christian aesthetic since it fails to accomplish that act of ‘working’ the creation. We should remember that art is always a kind of work: A work of art emerges only when an artist takes chisel in hand and chips away at stone, heats up a furnace and pours bronze, picks up a lump of clay and turns a pot, takes up a brush or knife and spreads paint around, selects from the verbal stock of his language specific sequence of words… The fundamental fact about the artist is that he or she is a worker in stone, in bronze, in clay, in paint, in words, in sounds and instruments, in states of affairs. On some bit of the concrete materials of our stage he imposes order. (iv)

Copying is not creating something new. So a Christian aesthetic requires that there will be newness about that which we create. Spiegel warns that a lack of creativity might break out in various forms of artificiality: popular kitsch (tshirt designs, car stickers, coffee mugs); hackneyed formulas in music (like the key change towards the Westlife song) and ‘maudlin dramas that oversimplify the complexities of real life moral problems and dilemmas (e.g. “Yes, Jane, your pregnancy out of wedlock is a serious problem, but if you just trust the Lord…”).... Perhaps the best (or worst) example of this is the widespread use of musical accompaniment tapes. (v)

Reflecting the Christian world-view
Schaeffer says that the saddest artist to witness is the one who is a born-again Christian ‘who does not understand what the total Christian world view should be and therefore produces art which embodies a non-Christian world view.’ (vi)

Across an artist’s entire body of work we should expect to see a Biblical world-view reflected. It is inappropriate for the entirety of a Christian artists work to heavily reflect, for example, that there is no meaning to life, since there is meaning to life. It is inappropriate for a Christian artist’s work to largely reflect that all is despair, since it is not. It is not a Christian aesthetic if the body of work tells us that there is no hope of redemption, since that is the Christian’s hope.

It is important that we stress the need to contemplate the artists entire body of work in this respect. Schaeffer makes the helpful distinction between a ‘major’ and ‘minor’ theme in art. The major themes that will be reflected in the Christian’s art will be those of hope, redemption, salvation, creation, forgiveness, restoration, joy and so on. However, a Christian is not removed or immune from the suffering and brokenness of the world, and as such her art, if it is to be credible, should also reflect this ‘minor theme’ of feelings of hopelessness and despair, the sense of lostness and depravity. Our Lord Jesus suffered for us in our broken world. God suffered and died! A Christian aesthetic will reflect on the themes of brokenness. It is when we have experienced darkness that we can appreciate light.

Technical excellence
When God created the universe, not only did he make that which was perfect, but we understand that the act of creating was a perfect act. His creating was technically perfect. He controlled his instrument – his word – to perfection. He didn’t make any mistakes. So another aspect of Christian aesthetics will be a striving for technical excellence, since this reflects the work of God. A painter will work hard to control his brush. A pianist will endeavour to master the scales. A dramatist will seek to perfect her ability to utilise dramatic tension. Striving for excellence is also an act of love for our neighbour since no one likes to hear a violin played badly for a prolonged period of time. A parent may put up with it in the house for a period of time in the understanding that the son or daughter will eventually improve!

Moral integrity
God is altogether good. In his work of creating he acted with complete integrity. And so we must aim for integrity in our works of creativity as we seek to image God in the creative task. We are people called to live lives of moral obedience to Jesus, and this obedience certainly extends to our art.

Our art must not, for example, seek to sell a lie (Phil 4:8). We must not use art to make an attack on another person. We will not use art to perpetuate injustice. Christian art will not be pornographic. Christian art will not demean the Lord Jesus in any way. Our art must not aim to provoke others to sin. We are called to prefer the needs of others to our own, and so our purpose in creating art should not be to serve ourselves but to serve others. We will not worship our art, since that is idolatry.

Trinitarian reflection
The God of the Bible exists as Trinity. He is in himself a community of persons existing in perfect harmony. He is Father, Son and Spirit, yet he is One.

Surely this must impact upon our distinctive Christian aesthetic. Our art should reflect the theme of different parts working together in harmony. The way in which the painter brings together differing colours to produce a single painting on canvas. The manner in which a choir fashion a rich variety of voices into one voice.

While (following Schaeffer) we might sparingly use elements of disharmony to reflect the reality of brokenness in our world, we will seek to emphasise themes of harmony and unity.

i Augustine, Confessions X, 27 (New York: Viking Penguin, 1961), 232.
ii James S. Spiegel, Aesthetics and Worship (available online).
iii Dorothy L Sayers, Towards a Christian Aesthetic
iv Nicholas Wolterstorff, Art in Action (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980), p. 91.
v Spiegel, Aesthetics, p. 48
vi Francis A. Schaeffer, Art and the Bible (IVP: Downers Grove), p. 69.

Article reproduced with kind permission from Ian Goodson