Courses on Art & Faith in Beautiful British Columbia
I may be biased but I don't think I am. Regent College has the best summer course program of any seminary I know. Partly I think it's due to the seminary's original vision to provide educational opportunities to the laity. Partly it's due to a fabulous team that pulls together some of the most interesting people to teach everything from "St. Augustine's Pilgrimage of Grace" to "Christianity and the Political Economy of Capitalism" to "Living Elders in a Dying Church" to "Technology, Wilderness and Creation."
They also of course have planned an impressive line-up of courses addressing the arts. In short:
1. "J.R.R. Tolkien: Writer for Our Time of Terror" by Ralph Wood
2. "Faith, Hope, and Poetry" by Malcolm Guite
3. "Believing in Documentary" by Iwan Russell-Jones
4. "Modern Literature and the Question of Belief" by Roger Lundin
5. "Hollywood Cinema and the Christian Imagination" by William Romanowski
See here for details on all these courses.
And watch these two videos to get a more specific sense of what to expect with two of the courses.
Iwan Russell-Jones: Believing in Documentary from Regent College on Vimeo.
It'll be a fantastic summer of course study that you won't want to miss. Did I mention it's in beautiful British Columbia? Did I say that Vancouver is quite possibly the best city to visit during the summer? Did I already tell you about the tantalizing line-up of Evening Public Lectures? And the ocean, the skiing, the forests, the food? No? Well it is. Trust me. I've tasted and I've seen.
And you might too.
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Comments
. . . but I feel like it's my duty to point out that none of them are related to the fine arts, the plastic arts.
This isn't in any way to disparage Regent; from my distant observations, I think your own assessment is probably right. And perhaps they will offer, have offered or even this year are offering (though I didn't see it in my cursory research) classes on the fine arts.
But whenever I see things about art and faith that mention literature, cinema, music and theater while failing to address fine art, I'm reminded of why my idea for a faith-based art center that focuses on the plastic arts is such a burden, why the felt need persists.
Despite the church giving more attention to fine art in the past 10 or so years than, perhaps, the previous 50, this attention is still desperately insufficient from what I can tell.
See in particular these two instances in 2010 and 2012:
http://civa.org/civablog/regent-college-summer-2012-arts-courses/
http://issuu.com/regentrosi/docs/regentcollege
. . . like I said, duty, for better or worse. Hopefully better.