What would you do if a local theater put on a play sympathetic to homosexual practice—funded by tax dollars? Write outraged letters to the editor? Picket the theater? Organize a boycott?
Christians have tried all the above, and I’ve promoted them myself—rightly so. None of us can sit by quietly while tax dollars support art that is pornographic or blasphemous. But we can take a lesson from the folks of Cobb County, Georgia, in what our broader strategy should be: They not only opposed bad art but also started funding good art.
The story began when citizens of this Atlanta suburb found that the national controversy over the National Endowment for the Arts was heading their way. A local theater put on a production of Lips Together, Teeth Apart, which sympathetically portrays homosexuality. Concerned that the arts might soon be used as a front for social radicalism, county commissioners passed a resolution to fund only projects that support “the traditional family structure” and “community standards.”
But these days, it seems, local communities are not allowed to set their own standards. Two national organizations—the American Civil Liberties Union and People for the American Way—accused the commissioners of censorship and threatened to sue. The commissioners responded by cutting off all funds for the arts. If taxpayers’ money cannot be limited to projects that taxpayers support, they reasoned, it is better not to spend the money at all.
A majority of residents supported the decision. But opponents were infuriated. National media turned a spotlight on Cobb County, reporting the story as an example of redneck small-mindedness.
But the media are wrong, and the county is right. Projects receiving public funds ought to serve public purposes. This is not censorship; it is accountability. Those who insist on accountability are not narrow-minded Philistines. Nelson Price of Roswell Street Baptist Church in Cobb County told reporters that “theater should feed the aesthetic taste and inspire and uplift rather than glamorize sexual distortion.” These are not words of an art illiterate.
“Historically,” Price reminds us, “Christians have always used art as a vital means of communicating. Tragically, in the twentieth century, the Christian community has virtually divorced itself from this arena.” The church needs to regain its lost heritage, Price argues, by once more supporting the arts. And he is putting punch behind his words by raising private funds from local businesses to support local cultural organizations. The goal is to raise $130,000 in private funding to replace the money these groups lost in the general cutoff.
This ought to be a model for Christians everywhere. There are times when we have to stand against decadent art, especially when paid for by tax dollars. But that should be just the beginning. We also need to be positive: articulating a biblical basis for the arts and providing practical and financial support for high-quality art.
The biblical justification for art is clear: We are called to live out the full image of God in every area of life. When God created the world, he cared enough to make it beautiful. His people ought to value creativity and beauty as well.
In State of the Arts, Gene Edward Veith describes a little-known biblical hero named Bezalel. In Exodus 31 we read that Bezalel directed the construction of the tabernacle, that God equipped him “to devise artistic designs, to work in gold and silver and bronze.” The Lord “filled him with the Spirit of God, with ability, with intelligence, with knowledge and with all craftsmanship.”
This is a remarkable passage. It teaches us that the Spirit of God does not equip people only for spiritual ministry alone, but for artistic work as well. Creating “artistic designs” can be a call from God.
Reclaiming beauty
The ancient philosophers listed three absolutes by which we judge things: the true, the good, and the beautiful. Most Christians study diligently to know the first two: what Scripture teaches as true and what it teaches about how to be good. But we rarely think about beauty. As author Ken Myers says, Christians largely ignore the realm of culture until it hits close to home: until Penthouse shows up at the corner drugstore or we discover our taxes are funding blasphemous paintings. Even then our response tends to be political and economic—protests, boycotts—making it easy for our enemies to paint us as anti-intellectual, anticultural reactionaries. Myers comments, “There is more talk about de-funding the National Endowment for the Arts than there is about funding creative work that could be a healthy cultural force.”
But God does not call his people merely to dissent. He calls us to renew culture by creating things of beauty. The truth is that the best way to drive out bad art is to encourage good art. As C. S. Lewis wrote, “If you do not read good books, you will read bad ones.… If you reject aesthetic satisfactions, you will fall into sensual satisfactions.” Since human beings are created in the image of God with imagination and aesthetic sense, they will create culture of one kind or another. The only question is whether it will be a decadent culture or a godly one.
In 1703 Andrew Fletcher wrote, “Give me the making of the songs of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws.” He was right. Cultural change precedes political change. The first line of attack for Christians should not be attacking the government but reforming the culture.
Price and the sensible citizens of Cobb County have given us a good lesson in doing just that.
