What Would it Take for Christianity to Dominate the Arts?

Excellent blog article Jennifer. Terrific topic!
@Meredith:  Did you EVER hit it out of the ballpark, way deep into center field! Wonderful summation! If there was one sad-sack “hymn,” (and I’m being extremely charitable by using the quotation hooks) it’s that funereal “composition” titled “God hears the cry of the poor.” Unfortunately,  I’ll bet the guy or gal who wrote that thing didn’t stay poor for very long if a lot of baby –boomer contemporaries and comrades of your “croaking … Mrs. Pillar-of-the-Parish” pushed it as often nationally as my former parish had during the late 80s. Oh, was that awful.
  I couldn’t stand it after a while and though my reasons for straying into the Protestant (first Episcopalian/then Evangelical) pastures were more seriously based than any excruciating mental agony endured from listening to those impoverished notes … it didn’t take long to see that the Evangelicals hadn’t come up with anything to ease the pain (besides sneaking down to “Fellowship Hall” for more coffee and donut holes.) When a close Vermont-native Yankee friend told me the Evangelicals were getting their “contemporary tunes” from the Catholics, I reminded him he got “my Irish up.”
  “What … No way, ‘Kumbaya’ and ‘God hears the cry of the poor’ were bad enough, but no way can we be blamed for the rest of the garbage,” I protested.
  When I returned to the Real Old Time Religion, (by 1,500 years) … was I in for a devastating disappointment. We had indeed allowed our Kumbaya-ites to wreck havoc on good Christian music and culture wherever Christians bowed their heads n’ darkened the doors of their respective “worship facilities.”
  If it was just superb music, a decorous liturgy and great preaching I needed to “get me by…spiritually-speaking,” I should’ve stuck with the Episcys. Salvation, the late Fr. Neuhaus, a convert from Lutheranism, or is it Woebegonism(?), comes from the Jews. True, but since a Divine Jew directly founded our Church, not another mere mortal wayward Christian, I knew where to return for more than just good music, decorum and great preaching. (One doesn’t need to hear a 30-45 minute “message” every week to be reminded how much God loves us, especially when there’s no crucifix hanging above or behind the messenger.
  There’s not a single power point “message” in the world that packs the power contained in the visual imagery of a man … not just any man, but that Divine Jewish man I referred to above … nailed to a crude pair of oak planks, both of which had a million sharp splinters sticking out to cause further pain to what Jesus was already enduring.  I knew my time at that Evangelical church were shortening when I heard a fellow congregant on the bus say she “had to leave the Catholic Church” because she could no longer stand to look up at the crucifix. “It was too traumatic.”
  Hmmm. Interesting enough. But not nearly as interesting as hearing the same church’s pastor during a Christmas Eve “message” say that our churches with their stained glass windows were making it harder for God to reach us. As a crafter of wooden Christian-themed artwork, hearing this was worth a half-gallon of coffee in a single swallow! Wow! There’s power in the wood and stained glass if it can keep the Almighty from reaching our hearts. I HAD to get my hands on whatever brands of building material he was referring to!
  All kidding aside, most of my life, I’ve been exposed to the highest levels of Christian artistic expression, (and yes, some of its more plebian variety.) As a military dependent who was blessed to be raised by two parents who grew up in the same parish (that IS rare in the Service, folks, very RARE!) and made sure their three sons would be readers and learn how to appreciate the arts, historical sites, and music they exposed us to – of course, regardless whether we cared to then or NOT, restless boys being restless boys—when I look back on all those years, experiences and lessons, I can’t help feeling somewhat brokenhearted for future generations.
  Okay, they couldn’t get me to break a bad habit of writing way too long run on sentences. On the other hand, they presented me with a lasting ever-youthful appreciation for the necessity of creating a life-long run-on sentence, so-to-speak, of never losing interest in the classical arts, especially classical ecclesiastical arts.
  I build Bavarian style (among other) nativity crèche display stalls for Christmas and historically-themed (i.e., Colonial, Federalist eras) decorative birdhouses. Why those topics? I was exposed to the German crèche making artists in Oberammergau in Germany whenever we visited that area, not to mention pay a visit to Him at nearby Ettal while lodging at Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Being a New Englander,  and a history buff, I’ve long been fascinated by all the old historical buildings up here.
  It sickens me to watch the constant erosion of appreciation for our deep spiritual, cultural and historical heritage. Perhaps the biggest reason for this erosion is the idiot box. Yet it doesn’t have to be because of the many wonderful shows that have been created to highlight the wonders of both our spiritual and historical blessings.
  The scariest thing for us “aging baby boomers” (Geeesh, I hate that term, along with buzz-cliches like “accountable,” “transparency” and “at the end of the day”) is to hear such sad laments about what our children and grandchildren are exposed to enough or not encouraged enough to get involved in; but also what they ARE exposed to participate more often in while playing computer games. (Computer games can be wonderfully instructive without being “nerdy.” Today, it saddened me greatly to hear Vermont’s Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thom Hartmann radio show recall how last week he went shopping for some games for his grandkids to play, and all he could find were imported games promoting nothing but violence (for its own sake.) Sen. Sanders didn’t have to give any titles: Yet, instantly “Halo” came to mind. (Love that irony!) No games promoting history could a U.S. Senator find presumably in our nation’s capital of all places. The last time I checked, the U.S. had a terrific treasure chest of historical events to produce many interesting games from.
  What next? Italian kids being told to ignore the greats from the Renaissance for the blandishments of modern “art” produced by Picasso,  and Jackson Pollack, et al.? Remember the old “Kid Pix” teaching game for kids released 20 years ago? You could reproduce exactly the level of Pollack’s “artistry” in a matter of minutes. What does that say? 
  It’s not that I want to shamelessly plug my crafts or interests here. There are beaucoup areas would-be or experienced Christian crafters or performing artists and writers can serve Him and improve their lives and the lives they love and enjoy being with. 
  The key to making sure our kids and all future generations receive the same blessings of such a rich spiritual/cultural and historical heritage is constant parental exposure to what St. Paul described in Phillippians. It means having “news of the day” and “what did you learn in school that was interesting today” every time at the dinner table. Get your kids to read more and describe what they read. What did they make in school or Scouts, etc. and how and why did they make it.  And parents… MAKE IT CHALLENGING AND ENJOYABLE!
  Don’t rely on public schools to make sure your kids get the exposure they need and DESERVE. In this day and age when school budgets are cut back by stingy-minded politicians at all government levels, you can count on the liberal arts being the first among other “luxuries” to wind up on the budgetary chopping block. “We must be competitive with the (next town over) and the Chinese!” Translated from contemporary educational politico-speak… “Dump art, music, and foreign languages, except Mandarin, and of course—make sure they get their math and basic writing skills up to snuff to pass the state tests!”
  With apologies to Mark Twain, the Good Lord made an idiot for practice. Then he got down to business and created both school committees and professional educational standard testing experts.  Which of course begs an obvious follow up question: Where does appreciation for the finer things in life, especially those relating to the “Godly skills” in fine arts, music, architecture, literary skills? Why, today some diocesan-level education officials and parish school committees have trouble meeting this simple challenge.
  Tip O’Neill used to preach, “All politics is local.” This also holds true for making sure our young ones are truly enlightened from their respective HOME precincts.  Parents CAN and MUST make sure their kids get the most well-rounded liberal arts education and exposure to the finer things in life besides rote skills in reading, writing, counting and test taking:; and this “rounding off” BEGINS AT HOME. If my wife, (a stay-home-wife n’ mother for our first 12 years, and school cafeteria worker, “Lunch Lady” thereafter) and I could raise four adult children through public schools, and for a while in a very liberal secularist college-town public school system, anybody can do it. We’re a mixed religion family and two of our children went to excellent colleges and graduated within 7 years. And, fellow parents, you don’t need to have doctorates or a fat trust fund to pull this off, either.
I’ve heard and read conservative Catholics and Protestants say in so many words, “Real loving Christian parents”  would “never”  put their kids in public schools and leave them “exposed to the secular humanist agenda of the public schools and teachers’ unions.” They’d (OF COURSE!) make sure their kids are home schooled, put in Christian academies or Parochial schools, no matter what it cost. Really.
  Ah, but when parents can by spending more time with their kids to teach them how to make something in the basement shop or upstairs crafts room, share how to play an instrument or read music … how much more is that costing them as compared to working two or three jobs to put these kids in private school or afford for one parent to home school the kids, on top of paying their college loans and mortgage n’ auto payments, etc.?  (At least while your kids are learning craft skills at home, and times are tight with the family budget, they’ll already have one leg up “competitively-speaking” over their classmates when it comes time to deal with the lack of crayons, scissors, glue, etc. At home you learn how to make do real fast and inexpensively till pay-day. The “pros” tell their teachers to pay out of their pockets or ask their students to ask their parents to cough up more.  Parents, tell the “pros” to go figure.
  It’s time for some parental pushback on behalf of preserving and promoting what St. Paul exhorted us to pursue. When this happens on a regular basis in every state, city, town, village, ward, diocese, parish, school, and most importantly…HOME,  that’s when the Mrs. Pillars and their guitars will vamoose for Kumbayaville in a heartbeat! They’ll finally know their gig’s over!