Christian art misses the point of art.

In which I slam Hobby Lobby, K-Love, and The Kendrick Brothers (in love, probably).

Now, I’ll be upfront and let you know that if you clicked on this post based on your intrigue relating to the title, you have, to some degree, been click-baited. I adore Christian art. In many ways, my criticism of certain pieces of contemporary art is that they aren’t Christian enough. I mean this in the sense that they don’t adequately point us to the goodness, truth, and beauty that trickles out of the holes of the Savior’s hands. If they do point to one or more of those things, they point to it as an end or a means in and of itself, not as something derivative from an ultimate good.

So, what do I mean? Let me first define “Christian art” as I use it in the title. I don’t mean all art created by Christians, nor all art with a distinctly Christian end in mind. Many of the most incredible, captivating, and effectively catechetical pieces of art in all time and space would fall into these categories. Michelangelo, da Vinci, Raphael, Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Jan van Eyck, Lewis, Tolkien, O’Connor, Berry, Manley-Hopkins, Donne, Herbert, Endō, MacDonald, just to name a few off the top of my head. Their work is legendary (sometimes literally).

No, my title isn’t meant to critique this kind of art. I mean to critique a meta-category that has taken up a significant amount of our culture. A very un-nuanced, crass, but fairly useful shorthand term could be “contemporary evangelical art.” For the record, the incessant condition of grumbling I have has nothing to do with the fact that it is contemporary, nor that it is evangelical, or at least, not much. 

When I studied music in Bible college, my feelings of dissatisfaction became clearer and clearer, seeing as I was a Christian in a Christian context, studying art, studying Christianity, and studying Christian art. My studies were simultaneously artistic, spiritual, and academic. A kind of trinity. I double majored in an arts (Music) focus and a science focus (Biblical Studies), and I think that opened up my perspective even more to engage in that kind of “trinitarian” criticism. In the music department, we studied what made music good. In the biblical studies department, we studied what made Christianity good (or, rather, what made good Christianity). 

Despite one program being an arts focus and the other being a science, I found a common lesson in both areas of study. Just because something can be included in a category of a thing (music, “Christian”) doesn’t make it good. There is a lot of music out there that isn’t good despite arguably counting as “musical.” Likewise, there is a lot that can be considered to be “biblical” or “Christian” and not actually be good. This common lesson was most clearly demonstrated regarding the genre of contemporary Christian music.

Now we’re finally getting to why I’m writing this in the first place. Apologies. My long-winded roots from the Baptist church are coming out. I might even get digitally sweaty and loud. It is my assumption that when most people hear “Christian music,” what they think of is that colloquial kind of “worship music” (whatever that means) or the kind of music usually playing on K-Love. This is an odd development in how we think of Christian music. Historically, Christian music wasn’t a genre; it was the music made for the liturgy of the Church. It was Palestrina, Bach, Handel, Mozart (Mozart’s personal life is debatable; that’s not my point), etc. It wasn’t music made for church the way we often conceptualize church today; this detached, invisible organization of people who want to “get their worship on!” with their buddies. 

It was made for the Church as an institution and those sacral moments in time that are demonstrated in the divine liturgy. Because of the nature of the setting for the music, it was the best music out there. Christian music was the best music. Because of the cultural mind towards Christ and the Church (despite the inevitable rise of deistic ideology and radical reformation movements), even well past the reformation, it was highly honored for a composer to write a requiem mass. Even today, Handel’s Messiah is widely considered one of the most compelling masterpieces ever written, so much so that when I attended the NYC Philharmonic, I watched an audience likely full of atheists and unbelievers stand for the “Hallelujah” chorus. 

Fast-forward to the 70s and the Jesus Revolution (big fast-forward, I know, bear with me). Hippies start finding Jesus in droves and not only get baptized but decide to baptize their music, too. Yet, they didn’t really change anything but the lyrics. There was no distinct Christian sound, nothing that made Christian music a distinct genre. No, this is an even later development that our generation has had the unfortunate privilege to witness. Now Christian music is identified by a specific aural aesthetic. Its aesthetic is comprised of a variation on the same 4-5 chords, a memorable and simple melody, an “uplifting,” “inspiring” (again, whatever that means) sound that resembles some Christmas bells, electric guitar swells, and a keyboard ambient pad. Christian music is no longer considered Christian music simply because it is music made by a Christian or music made to a Christian end but rather is in and of itself its own “vibe,” genre, and industry. 

I choose the word industry extremely deliberately. Christian music, with its vibes and surface-level lyricism, has become a multi-million-dollar entertainment industry just like any other. It would be more fitting to put it under the category of the elusive term “inspirational” than “Christian.” The inspirational industry. Because it’s not really popular because it’s Christian. 

Yes, people who identify as Christians are the consumers of these products, but there’s a bigger thing going on. It’s popular because it matches a kind of aesthetic that easily fills a kind of emotional hole. It’s popular because stuff that’s vaguely “inspiring” or “uplifting” marketed to a culturally Christian area sells! I’m talking about the simple, catchy Jesus-themed choruses, easily capable of pumping somebody up on a tough day. The Hobby Lobby canvas signs with Bible verses or some quip in cursive designed to match a certain “Live, laugh, love”, middle-aged, southern, pumpkin-spice loving “blessed mother of three” sort of aesthetic. Christian movies using the same tropes and themes ad nauseam without a shred of nuance or creativity. As somebody who was deeply involved in this industry for a while, most examples of nuance and creativity are specifically avoided. Making the audience look for a message would be asking too much, and potentially cause the already (comparitively) low ticket sales to drop further.

I suppose all of that is fine in its own right. Maybe we all need an “inspirational” message sometimes. I don’t know. If that’s what inspirational is, i’m not convinced. Don’t get me wrong, something that doesn’t require us to work very hard at extrapolating meaning and just be reminded of truth in a simple way can be genuinely profitable to a certain end. Most good works of catechetical art communicate truth in a simple, yet creative way. The problem is when simple is replace with surface-level and when beauty is replaced with cookie-cutter mass production. I suppose if we’re just leaving all this up to preference, that’s fine for some people. It’s just not good art. 

I’ve written in the past about my issues with “book-tok” and the fact that it contains almost no sliver of genuine creativity and thrives off of predictable “tropes” through and through so that its uncomplicated consumer base can be sure of what to expect. It doesn’t tell the reader anything subtly. It doesn’t demonstrate any message with nuance. It doesn’t require the reader's participation but rather the reader’s passive observance. You see, in this way, the problem with inspirational art is the flip side of the same coin as book-tok reading. It isn’t principally designed to be thoughtful; it’s designed to stir up comfortable feelings. To fill an emotional hole of some kind. Now, granted, the inspirational one has a significant advantage because it’s better to sit back and relax with comfortable feelings or have an emotional hole filled with entertainment that is concerned with Christ rather than erotica, but the problem remains. That purpose, that end, is not principally what art is for, and when it becomes made for that end, it ceases to be good art. Only Christ, the God-man himself, fills the hole, gives fulfillment, and provides balm to the senses. Not consumerist, mass-marketed products that give us Jesus feelings. A mentor of mine always talked about “means” and “expression” and the danger of getting those two mixed up. Is art the means of my fulfillment or an avenue where I can find expression for it? Christ is the means. Art is the expression. Not the other way around.

K-love music, Hobby Lobby signs, and inspirational/life-change Christian movies (I know I referenced the Kendrick Brothers in the title, but that’s mostly because I just saw their latest film, and they were on my mind as a catch-all for movies of the same ilk) are all part of the same corporation. The wholesome, low-effort, feel-good corporation. It’s consumerism, not art, folks. This may seem like a lot over nothing. I get it. But let’s compare this so-called “art” of our 

current time and place to the masterful art of the Christians gone by I mentioned earlier.

I am sick of our generation’s Christian art being awful just because it’s trying so ridiculously hard to avoid requiring any effort from its audience. I am sick of Christian artists selling out to big companies and lazily refusing to create anything past the cookie-cutter mold of what the culturally Christian brand has labeled as “Christian feeling.”

Again, I don’t mean to dismiss people being inspired by something simple. There is a lot of good in the fact that people are being reminded of the Lord and His love for them, even in some small way. Even if it’s K-love, Hobby Lobby signs, or PureFlix. What I do mean to criticize is the blatant lack of creativity, effort, and intentionality behind these things and the widespread culture of settling and ignorance that they have created. I hate that mainstream Christian art today feels lazy and boring. Even if everything else is just my opinion, the effort, creativity, and intentionality in what is popular right now objectively cannot hold a candle to any of the masterful, historic Christian celebration of God (or, in other words, art). When we have such a wealth, a treasury of Christian art to learn from at our disposal, and when we serve such an incredible, beautiful, deep, mysterious God, why would we settle to make art that is surface-level, cliché, low-effort, platitude-rich, and designed to get a buck out of other Christians?