Faith and Art

I was raised on the Baltimore Catechism, the Nicene Creed, and carefully curated tales from the New and Old Testaments. Few kids in the Euro-American world have this experience today. And that’s a good thing!

Since 313 CE, Christianity had been the quasi-official religion of the Western World. Persecutions, heresies, schisms, and ‘reformations’ notwithstanding, the language of Christianity was the Lingua Franca of Western culture.…until c. 50 years ago.

The architects of Vatican II recognized that the Christian message was no longer resonating with the modern world. This Second Ecumenical Council sought to address this disconnect through a series of magnificent encyclicals and well intentioned liturgical reforms. Sadly, it didn’t work. If anything, Vatican II only deepened the epistemological divide separating the secular from the sacred. 

Baby Boomers were the last generation of children to be ‘churched’ in the traditional sense. Christianity is no longer the ideology of the Western world; it has been replaced by Secular Materialism. But for the most part, this message has not reached the Vatican. Ironically, the things the Church has done over the last half century to reclaim its relevance have mostly backfired. The harder the Church works to define and broadcast its message, the further it distances itself from the ambient culture.   

The problem is not a matter of faith but of language. Faith is alive and well. Young people today are just as hungry to find meaning and purpose in life as we were…or as the early Christians were. The problem is that the formulas of Christian doctrine no longer satisfy that hunger.  

As they evolved to meet the needs of an increasingly technocratic society, our Indo-European languages lost their ability to communicate the Christian worldview. Today, we speak the language of Babel, and we use that language to help us build our own 21st century towers. 

Our culture no longer seeks the Transcendent in the depths of meditation and prayer but in the construction of skyscrapers and the launching of missiles meant to carry us to the edge of the cosmos. We laugh at the foolishness of the Babylonians as recounted in Genesis, but we are the new Babylonians. The almost infinitely expressive language of Homer, et al. has become the medium of emails, text messages, power points and instruction manuals. 

A recent conference of Catholic artists and intellectuals, held in Rome, suggests that some corners of the Church may be beginning to recognize Christianity’s current predicament, and, more importantly, to diagnose its cause and propose a way forward.

In the 4th century, Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire; that, and a bag of denarii might have bought you a loaf of bread, a dish of olives, and a carafe of wine. Much of the Empire remained ‘barbarian’ and many of Rome’s citizens remained devout pagans. 

To make matters worse, Europe was about to face a series of challenges (e.g. climate change) that ultimately led to a sharp decline in prosperity and literacy. The groundbreaking philosophical stylings of John, Paul and the Patristics were of little use in evangelizing a world that no longer read, or even spoke, Greek. Fortunately, the early Church was creative in its response. To replace the largely indecipherable language of the faith’s founding documents, new forms of art and music took its place.

Eschewing the naturalism of Roman art, Christian art depicted Biblical figures and events in an iconic style meant to capture the spiritual core of people and places. Art no longer strives to be representational, but neither is it abstract; early Christian art is symbolic and spiritual. This is neither Rembrandt nor Pollack; it calls to mind Van Gogh’s portraits, figures from Picasso’s Harlequin and Blue Periods, Rouault’s icons, and Henry Moore’s sculptures.

A bit later, a deeply meditative musical form, Gregorian Chant, joined iconic art to create a wall to wall, multisensory Christian experience. It worked. It sufficed to carry the Christian message until Monasticism and the Carolingian Renaissance made the world safe for theology again. 

Today, once again, we find ourselves living in a post-literate age. If Christianity is to flourish now, it must find new media to carry its message. 

Stephen Callaghan, a playwright and director of the Archdiocese of Glasgow Arts Project: "The arts are about exploring what it means to be human, and the incarnation of Jesus Christ changed that forever…" Amen. 

According to The Pilot, Boston’s Catholic newspaper (2/18/2025), Callaghan said the church should not shy away from expressing its values through the arts, and he pointed to ways culture can become a bridge to evangelization." The church is not a moral watchdog on the arts -- it is the custodian of truth, beauty and goodness, and it is therefore of the utmost importance in restoring hope," he said.

This is crucial! Beauty (the Way), Truth, and Justice (the Life) are ways the Good manifests in our realm and God is that Good. Therefore, anything that expresses these values points to God. Art does not need to be didactic in order to be Christian. Anything that helps anyone recognize the Good in their lives can ultimately lead to an awareness of Christ.

Image: Rembrandt van Rijn, [The Storm on the Sea of Galilea], 1633. Oil on canvas, 160 × 128 cm. Whereabouts unknown since 1990.

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