Items included on this page come from a variety of sources. The perspectives conveyed may or may not express a Lutheran ethos. They can serve our instruction as discussion-starters, examples (positive and negative), and illustrations of intersections between God’s two kingdoms, intersections sometimes characterized by tension, sometimes by congruence. Inclusion does not imply endorsement.
Rutgers Removes Artwork of Jesus on Dartboard: Rutgers University at New Brunswick has removed from its art library a piece of art (at right) that depicts Jesus on a dartboard, with darts that have been thrown on to him. It remains unclear how the art was selected for the library.
Freedom and Intellectual Life: This essay makes a case for the arts and humanities. “As enrollments decline, programs are cut, and tenure diminishes, mainstream educational institutions are becoming uncomfortable places for teachers who want to pass on a zeal for humanist learning. This is a crisis of confidence among ourselves, a crisis caused by a […]
Was Blind But Now I See: This page at the Religious News Service is a catalog of articles on religion and the arts. Included are pieces on artists, liturgical arts, art in church history, and other brief, useful starter items for instruction.
How Hieronymus Bosch Defied the Ideals of an Age: Bosch (c.1450-1516) did not celebrate human folly. He painted it as an affront, innate perhaps, to God’s order. Mankind, for him, found it so much easier to disobey God’s strictures than to obey them, and humanity was one long parade. The people in his pictures – the misers, […]
Can religious art be taken seriously again? Many of the currents in 20th-century culture made it hard to imagine the phrase “contemporary religious high art.” Says author Aaron Rosen, “Religion and modern art continue to be typecast as mortal enemies.” But the very context in which he makes this statement suggests that a truce may be in the […]
God, Cancer, a Videogame: This case involves the arts, journalism, health concerns, the problem of evil, addressing grief, and mediums for Christian outreach. The linked article is a commentary on the story of the case in Wired, January 2016. The instructor will need to determine whether and how to adapt the case to course content.
Can the Greatest Religious Painter of the 20th Century Make a Comeback? French modernist Georges Rouault completed his expressionist landmark in the 1920s. New York’s Museum of Modern Art, among other top-notch museums, owned one of its 450 initial copies and repeatedly celebrated an artist it called “the greatest religious painter of the 20th century.” Yet the Parisian’s reputation has faded […]
Making the Garden: There is a necessary connection between God and architecture, and that this connection is, in part, empirically verifiable. Further, the sacredness of the physical world—and the potential of the physical world for sacredness—provides a powerful and surprising path towards understanding the existence of God. (An essay by Christopher Alexander, emeritus professor of architecture at UC, […]
Of Course Religion: In this free-ranging interview, a Christian and a Muslim discuss their common ground of art and its capacity for changing us: “The average Christian no longer knows his own religion. His religious knowledge has trickled out as from a split-open bag. And so it happens that Navid has an advantage: he’s a […]
ISIS obliterates oldest Christian monastery in Iraq: Published at Crux (The Boston Globe), this is the AP’s thorough coverage on the destruction of the St. Elijah Monastery by ISIS. The oldest Christian monastery in Iraq has been reduced to a field of rubble, yet another victim of the Islamic State group’s relentless destruction of ancient cultural sites. […]
