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"I think Christians who are writers have been given a freedom in the last few decades to learn more about what it means to be a true artist," she says. Part of creating art means letting go of one's impulse to control everything—every paragraph, every step of the process, the outcome. "When you are a true artist, you aren't so concerned about controlling the material. Today, more and more writers are discovering the freedom to trust the Holy Spirit to speak truth."

Christian publishing, she says, has not historically been geared toward nurturing artists. "We started out publishing collections of sermons, after all." In the absence of community support for art, which evangelicals at mid-century too often fearfully lumped together with what was worldly, evangelical writers have taken awhile to explore their artistic gifts and worry less about the outcome. Evangelicalism "is, with good motivation, a tradition concerned with living inside certain boundaries and following certain commands," Wright says, but "it does short-circuit creativity at some point." More and more Christian writers, she says, are learning that Christians can work with words, craft characters, sketch plots, and shape paragraphs. "We can learn a creative process, and we can trust the gifts God has given us."

Why Christians at the turn of the 21st century should be poised on a new relationship with art is anybody's guess. "This may just be a natural evolution of the relationship between Christianity and the culture," Wright says.

And why not? Evangelicals have reclaimed the political as a sphere in which we belong; why not reclaim art from the cultured despisers of religion?

"I suspect it also has something to do with ecumenism," Wright says. "We feel freer to learn things from Christians in other traditions, and that can only improve our craft." Wright herself grew up in a low-church evangelical household, but she has been experimenting with more liturgical forms in the last decade. "Liturgical traditions tend to welcome mystery," she says. "The faith tradition I grew up in didn't do much with mystery. My creativity has been helped by breaking out of a tradition where you have to have a Bible verse for every issue and by embracing the mystery of the liturgical side of the Christian tradition."

It is hard to talk to Vinita Hampton Wright and not come away expectant and enthusiastic and encouraged about a new generation of Christian art. Above all, Wright's work calls Christian artists to take risks. "I see creativity as a very spiritual act," she says. "That doesn't mean everything created is wonderful and spiritual and good. But as creators we are imitating God. We have clamped down on that out of fear of breaking rules."

In truth, what appear to be artistic risks are not actually risks at all—they are acts of profound trust in God. Wright dabbled as a songwriter when she was in her teens and 20s. Her songs, she says, were always "very agenda-driven." What has often killed the artistic part of Christian fiction, she says, is a similar agenda. "Whenever a political or religious agenda drives art, the art is going to suffer at some point. You don't have to make a point; the point gets made as you tell a story. When Christians tell the truth about our lives, we tell true stories about redemption and forgiveness. As evangelicals, we grow up thinking that anything we do has to have a purpose. We don't always realize that as long as we are telling the truth about how God works in the world, the agenda will take care of itself."

Lauren Winner is a contributing editor for Christianity Today and books producer at Beliefnet.com.

Copyright © 2001 by the author or Christianity Today International/Christianity Today magazine.
Click here for reprint information on Christianity Today.

Lauren F. Winner reviewed Velma Still Cooks in Leeway for Beliefnet, which also offers a mini-review, an excerpt and discussion list.

Publishers Weekly also profiled Wright.

Velma Still Cooks in Leeway can be ordered at ChristianBook.com and other book retailers.

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April 23 2001, Vol. 45, No. 6