Art and Music

On Sunday, our Sunday school lesson was taught by a young woman who was a youth at our church when she was younger.  She is now working on her PhD in art history. It was a joy to listen to her as she led a discussion in our class about Luca Giordano's Saint Sebastian Cured by Irene.

Notice in the painting that the background is dark and the characters are almost spotlit in the way they are painted. It is dramatic. The painting was created in the Baroque period, which followed the Renaissance. Liz shared with us that the naturalism in the painting and the drama were reactions to people leaving the Catholic church - they were using art to try to attract people back into the church.

It reminded me of the way we have tried in the past to rely on contemporary worship and music to attact people. I'm not saying that either the art or the music are wrong, or even that it's wrong to adapt our practice of religion to speak the language of a younger generation.

What we might want to take care not to do is to rely on only these changes to evangelize. What pulls people into a relationship with Christ? I think it is probably evidence that faith makes a difference - that God makes a difference in our lives.