Can Evangelicals Make Great Art?

Ever run across a lingering smell in your house? A weird smell. Or a lingering sound at work, a sound you can't track down or wonder whether it's in your head? Yes? No. Well, over the last few years I have kept running across a lingering suspicion that evangelicals, at the end of the day, are not capable, really, of producing great works of art. We can produce amazing spectacles (the Crystal Cathedral), we can create powerful vehicles for evangelism (the Jesus Movie), but we can't --we won't--generate a "classic" work of art. We're just too darn project-driven, word-centric, aesthetically minimalist. With all the souls that need to be won and discipled, who has time to slog through draft after draft, year after year, botched-effort after near-miss in search of great art?

Then again, we won't because we can't? We won't because we don't want to? Or we won't because we need a new nature, a new way of being evangelical--Christian?

That's the question.

Is it possible for us, as Protestant evangelicals, ever to escape our genetic inclination to protest? Will we always be bound by our innate, historically formed desire to protest "excess": liturgical, practical, artistic? Is a protestor anything richly positive?

More pointedly, I think, the question is this: Do we need to become a different kind of Christian (a Roman Catholic, for example, or a new hybrid species, neither purely Protestant nor purely Catholic) in order to foster an aesthetically rich culture OR Is there inherent in evangelical Protestantism an expression of aesthetically rich Christian faith that has not yet seen the light of day, but with a little more digging would expose a soil, a vein, a deposit of "being" that would make this possible?

I don't know.

My hunch is the latter, but I could be wrong. In the meantime I have set out on a journey to find all the examples I can of excellent artistry made by evangelical Protestants. I'll allow myself to hold a parallel category called theologically orthodox Protestant. That is, I don't know how much C. S. Lewis would have happily described himself as, simply, evangelical. He, along with a few notable contemporaries, probably thought himself in broader terms.

Nonetheless, it will serve my purposes, all things considered, to keep these two categories under one roof. Under other neighborhood roofs I will put liberal Protestants (who do have a thing for great art), Roman Catholics (because of the common tradition they share, not because they all agree on everything), Eastern Orthodox (ditto), and the generally spiritually sensitive person.

My doing this is not motivated by insecurity. I don't feel insecure about the dearth of great--"great"--art in the evangelical community. It's just a fact, not an absolute fact. We're growing, we're changing. We have weaknesses, we have crap, but the same intense energy that was given to missions in the late 19th century is now being given to art, and a lot of it is intelligent, carefully crafted, culturally resonant work. For many years I have respected and loved and learned a tremendous amount from my Catholic brothers and sisters. But I'm not a Catholic wannabe. I'm not an Orthodox wannabe. For the record, I'm a charismatic, high-church Anglican evangelical who feels a humble confidence and childlike excitement about the future of evangelicalism. (At the moment I am a non-practicing high-church Anglican, but that's where my heart lies. Some day . . . some day I'll find that foursome combo.)

With that said, I begin my list with the following examples and welcome any and all additions to the list. My search is for evangelical/orthodox Protestant Christians who have made or are making excellent art. By excellent I mean art that is metaphorically textured, imaginatively rich, and thematically complex, expansive and allusive.

Here then the beginning of a list: George Macdonald, C. S. Lewis, Dorothy Sayers, (Hans Rookmaacher, Francis Schaeffer, Calvin Seerveld, Nicholas Wolterstorff, Jeremy Begbie: none of which produced great works of art but certainly championed them), Erica Grimm-Vance, Timothy Botts, Madeleine L'Engle, Frederick Buechner, Luci Shaw, Annie Dillard, Wendell Berry, Walter Wangerin, Makoto Fujimura, Stephen Lawhead, Ed Knippers, Tim Hawkinson, Kathleen Norris, Lynn Aldrich, Calvin Miller, Virginia Stem Owens . . . for starters.

One more note. The list is here is predominantly 20th century and largely of the writerly type. My ignorance of the other media is obvious. I don't know any opera, symphonic or choral types. Also, for example, I'm inclined to include the filmmaker Scott Derrickson in the list, but I don't think he's made a truly excellent film yet. Yet. I would also want to include a heck of a lot of visual artists, many of them friends (e.g. Mike Hill, Ginger Geyer, Mary McCleary, Kathy Brimberry, Anita Horton, Tim High, etc, etc, etc), but perhaps I'm curious to find the most excellent and prominent figures.

Anyhoo, I'm open to hear any suggestions.

[A note on the picture. The photograph is from a "marionette" dance choreographed by Annette Christopher for the 2005 Arts Festival.]