Art Is Long

A few weeks ago my wife and I were guests at a meeting in Baltimore that introduced us to a promising development in evangelical circles. There has come into existence an organization known as the Fellowship of Christians in the Arts, Media, and Entertainment. Spark plug for the organization and the movement it represents is Irving S. “Shorty” Yeaworth, aided by his brilliant and energetic wife, Jeanne.

For some years now the Yeaworths have been making movies, both sacred and commercial, and have been involved with drama and TV. At present they have a large operation in Chester Springs, Pennsylvania, near Valley Forge, with three different producing organizations: Sacred Cinema, Good News Productions, and Valley Forge Films. Although Yeaworth is identified with sacred films and primarily committed to bringing excellence to such media, his enterprises are really carried by the commercial market, in which he is well established.

The purpose of the organization is to bring together at national meetings those who are engaged in the arts. Painters, writers, musicians, artists, film-makers, TV programmers, script-writers of all kinds, choreographers—all these are asked to join up, the prime requirements being that they make their living from what they produce in the arts, and that they be committed Christians of the type generally called “evangelical.”

A large and enthusiastic group was gathered in Baltimore. There is no question that the fellowship of like-minded people was one of the chief benefits. The Christian artist finds it hard to believe sometimes that there are others who “care.” And he finds it easy to get lost in a sea of secularism. This must be agonizingly true when the pressures of financial success play an important part in one’s creative efforts.

The chief difficulty in the Christian arts seems to center around what is called Reality. The question was posed over and over again. The consensus seems to be that in a “Christian” novel or film, there are certain things that have to happen to satisfy the Christian reader: a bad man is saved by the love of a good woman and after that their children don’t even need braces on their teeth; or a man’s business is falling apart but after he is saved everything goes well and even his partner sees the light; or a man begins to tithe and soon he becomes a millionaire. So it goes.

But Christian writers and artists just don’t believe that this is Reality. In terms of Reality, a Jeremiah can end up in a pit; a saint named John can end up in a lonely exile on Patmos. How things worked out for Hosea are quite unclear, and why the Holy God told his man to marry a harlot raises all kinds of questions. The fact that Job had all kinds of good things at the end of his life hardly erases the excruciating loss of loved ones along the way.

Artists generally believe that a non-Christian like Camus, for example, because of his integrity and his freedom from special pleading, is more likely to “tell it like it is.” Right there is the hang-up: How does a Christian tell it like it is and still make it sound Christian? That men and women everywhere are saved by grace cannot be denied, but such bliss as may follow such an event may well have its fulfillment in the next world rather than in this. There is also the hard question of “timing”; that a man is justified in 1966 does not mean that he is sanctified in 1976. The Old Adam, not to mention “that Ancient Foe,” is not downed in the first round. Even when the victory is assured, the battle is not over, and the mopping-up operations can be very painful indeed. Should a Christian artist portray saints or sinners? If he portrays saints only, he finds that saints are in very short supply for close study. A “bad” Christian on the way up is essentially in better shape than a “good” pagan on the way down. Just how does one rightly portray either man?

This leaves the artist with the problem of how to deal with sinful, fallen humanity and still make his writing sound “decent.” What shall be done with ugliness, brutality, vice, and plain meanness? Is it art to have a sand hog speak King James English, and if he was saved just last night has he quit swearing today? There are many broken-hearted alcoholics who continue to have troublous times, and reformed gamblers who slip now and then, and that all-time favorite, the golden-hearted harlot who supports her invalid mother and who worries nice Christians when she appears in print. All these are a part of Reality. The artist has the seeing eye and the understanding heart and the talent to enable us to see almost what he sees and hear almost what he hears. But what does he really see and hear? We must allow him his integrity.

Another concern is the battle Christian artists constantly wage against the trivial and the cheap. They simply cannot stomach the portrayal of the sublimity of their holy faith in tawdry forms. The pursuit of excellence in many other fields has somehow bypassed much of Christianity, so that often there is the quiet assumption that Christianity must make allowances for unworthy media because at least the wonder of the subject is somehow being portrayed. Poor writing, poor music, and poor pictures may be bad means, but since they serve good ends, all may be forgiven. One expects the film to break at a church movie; a cheap window can be forgiven because the people who donated it are so nice. All this sort of thing bleeds out eventually in a general sloppiness of dress, table manners, and housekeeping. That there is an essential blasphemy in all this is a deep concern of Christian artists.

Meanwhile I have a concern or two myself about Christians in the arts. When they tell it like it is, they seem to be too plain (or maybe too anxious) in depicting sin and entirely too vague (or maybe too apologetic) in depicting redemption. For example, that peerless observer of humanity, Flannery O’Connor, whose Christian and Roman Catholic devotion no one can doubt, insists that there is grace at work at some crucial point in all her studies. I must confess that the grace is sometimes very hard to find. Meanwhile one gets the impression that in order to make our total depravity plain, she makes too many of her characters bizarre. For example, in one of her great stories a woman with a wooden leg and a Ph.D. is seduced by a Bible salesman. That is not the sort of Reality I run into with any great frequency, which makes me wonder if that’s the way it really is. I know there are subtleties that I miss in every art form; there are deeps in the parables of Jesus, for example, that I never plumb. But it seems to me that sometimes, just sometimes, artists should tell it like it is on the side of the angels.

Maybe the Christian artists are running just a little behind in the sin business these days. That things are just plain bad all over is no great discovery since the depression and Hitler; everyone is aware of the Reality of the Mafia. To those who have never known Christ, the total picture is absurd, of course. What I need desperately is for someone who knows the Lord to make vivid for me, as only an artist can, that there really is truth and light and especially hope. I think the Prodigal’s Father can be portrayed just as well as the Prodigal Son. Let’s have a little more Paradise Regained.

ADDISON H. LEITCH

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