Book Club Reflections: A Primer for Christianity and the Arts
Calvary CE Ministry Presents: Book Club - Pilot Season! ✈️
Book Club is a community of Calvarians coming together to wrestle through a particular topic over a season of reading, sharing and prayerful reflection.
For the pilot season (held over four Friday evenings from August to November 2021), we dipped our toes into understanding the place of the arts in a Christian's life. Members read 2 books that helped to frame our thinking towards the arts from a Christian perspective:
Art and the Bible, by Francis Schaeffer
Art + Faith: A Theology of Making, by Makoto Fujimura.
For the final session, we shared our reflections after watching Martin Scorsese’s 2016 film Silence , about two Jesuit missionaries who travelled to Japan to find out the truth about the apostasy of their mentor, based on the 1966 novel of the same name by Shusaku Endo.
Here are some of reflections and encouragement book club members would like to share to the wider Calvarian family:
Prior to the book club, I have always considered myself to be left-brained - someone who is analytical and methodical in his thinking. This was the way I dissect and understood the world around me and how I read the Bible and approached my own faith journey.
Joining the book club and going through the different books, it has given me a wider berth to help me see that my Creator God has created the many wondrous beauty around us today and will continue to amaze us with whatever lies ahead as well. In this narrative, God is the Artist and the Architect and He calls us to join him in co-creating. This has led me to a huge shift away from what I thought before to now - where I can appreciate that God does invite me as a little artist to join him in His narrative.
- C, Calvarian & Book Club member
I’m encouraged not to have a fear of the arts as a Christian, but to enjoy it with more freedom. With God being the ultimate Artist, we should enjoy his creation and give him the glory for it, including his creation of the arts.
- J, Calvarian & Book Club member
Book Club film recommendation
Note: Post-film discussion with Christian friends also highly recommended!
We often refer to God as the greatest creator and recognise his beauty in creation itself, though as Christians we overlook what that means to us in our roles and response to this truth of God. We see ourselves as admirers of his work but like every other aspect of our faith, He calls us to be more than observers but to partake in them. If God creates to express his glory, we as his disciples should do likewise.
Art, though difficult to quantify, has an important role in our churches. It leads us to worship, but also is our expression of worship. What we create reveals what we know of our state and more importantly of God. Some of the greatest “tools” we use to worship are works of art: hymns, songs, poems, and the Bible itself.
- N, Calvarian & Book Club member
Some of the Book Club members at our final session - good job on persevering through! :)
I brought with me questions and thoughts as I signed up for this book club season on “Art and the bible”. Having slowed down on my creative “service” or any other services for Christian ministry, it is a time of seeking God in his purposes for me, and reflecting through some emotions I have brushed aside for some time, not just as a Christian creative, but also as a child of God – blessed with many gifts including some skills I could effectively use to serve the church but have somehow grown tired and lost the drive along the way.
Over time I caught myself feeling bitter and disappointed, and at times rejected, for not having anyone understand what it truly means to me to create for God. Is there a place for creatives in today’s church? Will they ever be seen beyond the skills they can offer, beyond the work they deliver, of which often requires efficiency, some measurable standard and done within tight timelines? Being a Christian creative is a lonely journey, and the lack of creatives in church makes it worse.
I started reflecting upon great Christian art in history - beautiful murals in traditional churches depicting scenes in the bible, and at their massive scale and extravagant use of materials which communicated the magnificence and glory of God’s kingdom. In that essence, though its primary purposes were to fulfil a commission raised by a patron and convey beliefs of the religion, the outcome of it, an overwhelming grandeur of creation can be regarded as form of worship towards God.
I also thought about the works of Van Gogh and Makoto Fujimura – both artists sharing the same faith as me, with the former being one of my favourite artists, and the latter the author of “Art and Faith”, a book we studied in one of the book club sessions. Beyond their skillful command of their craft, they were able to encapsulate inexpressible distressing emotions and struggles in their works, the kind where no amount of words can accurately describe or articulate. They could potentially resonate and minister to a group of audience, broken and in need but have not found someone they could pour their hearts out to.
Journeying through these reflections made me realise how narrowed my thinking was before, in the way I have limited my creativity to merely the work of my hands and the reception of it. If I had taken another perspective on this - what would it be like to create for God and only for God as a form of worship? Perhaps it is fine to simply enjoy the process of creation and experience the Holy Spirit’s leading in it.
I am still pursuing God in what he has called me to be as a creative, and what is this unique voice I can bring to the world. It could be a lifelong discovery for me, but I would love to treasure and savour every bit of this journey with Him. What place is there in the church/ the world for a creative like me? I am thankful for this season of book club and my fellow peers for all the honest and fruitful sharing and discussions.
- J, Calvarian & Book Club member
Book Club will return in 2022 with other topics to wrestle through!
Sign up for the mailing list to stay updated of upcoming book club seasons, and also let us know what topics you would like to do for future seasons of book club!