Arts Across Cultures: Reimagining the Christian Faith in Asia

In today’s highly-connected world, many people are still unfamiliar with the “good news” of Christianity. How do we invite them to think afresh about the Christian message and the Christian faith? What is the role of the arts in mission? How could we explore ideas about mission as artists? This book seeks to address and answer these questions by showing the potential of the arts in impacting the life and mission of the church. It suggests how the arts can enhance worship and witness, and help to transform the wider world. It demonstrates what being a “missional artist” means – explaining how the two parts of that vocation fit together – and examines the nurture and training that such artists need.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Regnum Books International
• Release date: Sep 13, 2022
• ISBN: 9781914454424

Book preview

Introduction

The biblical studies theologian N. T. Wright has issued a challenge to Christians to think more deeply about the role and the importance of the arts in terms of Christianity:¹

The arts are not the pretty but irrelevant bits around the border of reality. They are highways into the centre of a reality which cannot be glimpsed, let alone grasped, any other way. The present world is good, but broken and in any case incomplete; art of all kinds enables us to understand that paradox and its many dimensions. … Perhaps art can help us to look beyond the immediate beauty with all its puzzles, and to glimpse that new creation which makes sense not only of beauty but of the world as a whole, and ourselves within it.

Writing recently, as both a theologian with an interest in the arts and as a musician, Jeremy Begbie has noted some encouraging developments:²

The ferment of theology and the arts shows no sign of waning. It burgeons in colleges, universities and churches. Theological internet watchers observe its fast-expanding presence and publishers are beginning to see it as a serious niche market.

Arts in Mission

At a time when there is a renaissance of interest in the relation of the arts to Christianity, this book offers an informed and practical guide for one particular group of people: it seeks to explain the relevance and potential of the arts for Christians who work across cultures and who have artistic skills and gifts. By drawing on examples and studies from the field of Mission Studies as well as the Arts, this book aims to offer fresh perspectives and encourage those who want to share their faith through the arts as they serve across cultures.³ Whether their identity is that of an artist now involved in missional projects or those in Christian ministry who have artistic backgrounds and interests, they will find foundations, insights, ideas and resources and an introduction to a range of artists and artistic activities in Asian settings.

The book seeks to deepen an understanding and appreciation of arts and mission, both in theory and in practice, help readers in very practical ways to develop their artistic and cultural understanding, and enable them to engage more deeply with the arts in mission so that the arts do not remain an untapped resource⁴ for mission.

Book Idea

Shreeves, K. Art for Mission’s Sake: Announcing the Gospel through the Creative Arts. Grove Mission and Evangelism 119. Cambridge, UK: Grove Books, 2017.

With its focus on the missional dimensions of the arts, this booklet gives an informed but practical introduction to the topic. It takes a constructive approach to the arts in mission, builds a theological rationale, and then looks at how the arts can form part of a missional engagement in both the church and the world ‒ recognising that there are sometimes barriers and misconceptions that need to be addressed.

Arts across Cultures

The phrase arts across cultures reminds us that as one journeys between cultures there will be a change of artistic experience. At the heart of this book is a stress on the importance of exploring the different expressions of the arts that artists who cross cultures will find in new cultural settings. Cultural learning and engaging with local culture and local arts are vital. However, there are some situations in our ever more connected global world where artistic forms travel ‒ particularly into and away from cosmopolitan settings. The relationship of the global north and global south, the connection of the history of mission to European centres and to some extent European arts, all play their part in the complex issues that need to be negotiated.

There is a striking series of questions from John Mbiti⁵ ‒ directed at theologians in the global north who are aware mainly of global trends ‒ which challenges them about how they engage with the local and, by implication, the other in terms of theology: We know you theologically. The question is do you know us theologically? If we were to replace the word artistically for theologically in Mbiti’s sequence, it would prompt some searching questions for those who are missional artists⁶ and who would like to engage in arts across cultures.

We know you artistically. The question is do you know us artistically? Would you like to know us artistically? Can you know us artistically? And how can there be true artistic reciprocity and mutuality, if only one side knows the other fairly well, whilst the other side does not know or does not want to know the first side?

This stance of being open to other cultures is critical at many levels but it is especially important if missional artists are to have the capacity to identify with the choices that local Christians want to make in terms of local arts as opposed to global arts. Such identification demands that missional artists are open to the local so that they can appreciate, engage with and ultimately embrace local arts in a specific culture.⁷

Reimagining the Christian Faith

There is a critical connection between imagination and the arts that is seen in the reflections of artists, writers and, indeed, some institutions.⁸ The title of this book is Arts Across Cultures: Reimagining the Christian Faith in Asia. The phrase Reimagining the Christian faith in Asia reminds us of the crucial role that the arts can play in helping to translate the Christian faith into other cultures. The question might be asked: why reimagining ‒ why not just imagining? Reimagining is used in two senses. For missional artists who cross cultures there is a need to recognise that the cultural transition necessitates a reimagining of Christian faith from their own context to another context. Secondly, it is used to mean that in the engagement between missional artists, local artists and local Christians there is a joint labour of reimagining the faith as insiders and outsiders strive together to look at the gospel and the Christian faith with new eyes ‒ an artistic outworking of Walls’ envisaged global hermeneutical community.⁹

Implicit in this term is the idea that the life of the church is a constant reimagining of faith as the church interacts globally through time and as it encounters the kind of global‒local interplays and pressures that are discussed in this book. For example, Ed Lapiz, who is engaged in projects adopting traditional and indigenous dances in the Philippines in relation to the Christian church, reimagines the role of local dance in Christian settings through a process of redefining and redeeming indigenous dance.¹⁰ Given the existing spread of Christianity in Asia, the role of reimagining is clearly not done by missional artists alone ‒ but a sensitive appreciation of local arts can help missional artists to be catalysts and to offer perspectives on global arts, glocal expressions of the arts and the use of local arts in Asian settings. In many situations, missional artists will do this alongside local artists.

In some instances, local artists who are beyond the church may also be interested in the way the Christian faith can be interpreted through local artistic categories and may be willing to share their skills and resources.¹¹ Artists such as Roberta King have been interested in the relevance of inter-faith dialogue; there are situations in which shared artistic identity allows space for shared endeavour that can bring about fresh understandings and renewed perspectives.¹² Certainly, there needs to be empathy, openness and a sense of expectation in the process of engaging with arts across cultures and in the imagining and reimagining of Christian faith. This kind of interaction can be a rich and rewarding learning experience and offers the potential for engaging meaningfully with local people as well as local arts across cultures. It has a particular significance in the fact that an attitude of local identification, following the pattern of Jesus’ incarnation, lies at the heart of what it means to be Christian and missional.

Further Reading on Imagination, Theology and the Arts

Dyrness, W. A. Reformed Theology and Visual Culture: The Protestant Imagination from Calvin to Edwards. Cambridge: CUP, 2004.

Hart, T., G. Hopps and J. S. Begbie. Art, Imagination and Christian Hope: Patterns of Promise. Ashgate Studies in Theology, Imagination and the Arts. London and New York: Routledge, 2016.

Kilby, C. S. [W. A. Dyrness and K. Call, eds.] The Arts and the Christian Imagination: Essays on Art, Literature, and Aesthetics. Brewster, MA and Barga: Paraclete Press, 2016.

Watkins, J. M. Creativity as Sacrifice: Toward a Theological Model for Creativity in the Arts. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2015.

Insights from World Christianity

Those who work in the discipline of World Christianity¹³ are well aware of the challenges of sharing faith and reimagining faith across cultures to make the church ‘A Place to Feel at Home.’¹⁴ Reflections and insights from World Christianity can usefully be applied to the arts and adopted with profit by missional artists. Concepts such as translatability¹⁵ and the promotion of the vernacular¹⁶ are relevant not just in general but also in relation to the arts in mission. These concepts all reflect the Christian interest in the theology of incarnation and its implications for identification with culture. The work of Lamin Sanneh has shown that where local languages are used in Bible translation, there is a real impact on identity and the sense of worth of local peoples. The act of Bible translation is not just an affirmation of the local character of Christian faith, but it is also an act of identification with the local culture which allows Christian ideas and concepts to be shaped by a local culture in its own terms. The idea of starting from a local language (and the Bible) and working out from that to promote local vernacular culture is both a profound insight and a powerful lever in strengthening identity and nurturing local cultures.¹⁷

At a deeper level, the promotion of vernacular cultures through acts of translation and of identification sends out an important message. It affirms that all cultures, though distinct and different, are valuable in God’s sight and that each local culture can contribute through its artistic expressions to the global church. Melba Maggay has suggested that the reversal of the Babel event at Pentecost¹⁸ is part of a process that continues towards the vision of the church at worship before the throne of God in the book of Revelation¹⁹ ‒ where representatives from every culture, language and tribe are present. Missional artists need to engage with local arts so they can share in that process of the promotion and appropriation of the local in their artistic work.²⁰ Such an endeavour begins with an engagement and embrace of local