adminChristian Entertainment Stanely Mushava
The current deluge of evangelically-themed writing may be theologically sound but writers need to revisit presentation for greater impact. John Bunyan points out in his “Pilgrim’s Progress” afterword: “No one throws away the apple for the core.” As much as a message is important, it matters how it is packaged. Reach, influence and durability depend on presentation.
It is almost impossible to imagine Christian writing today as the same tradition which produced all-time notables such as Bunyan, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, C.S Lewis, John Milton, G.K Chesterton, T.S Eliot, John Donne, G.M Hopkins and Leo Tolstoy.
There is need to intersect Christian writing and great world literature. New creative thoroughbreds must stake Christianity’s claim in the monuments of classic literature.
Christian influence in literature was washed away at the high tide of modernism early last century. Since then, countless faith-based books have been written but few of them can be classified within the creative domain.
What we have, for the most part, are ephemeral pamphlets of varying volumes not works of enduring literary value. This weak link compromises the vast potential for transmission of the gospel message through art.
When writers recycle scriptures in technically bankrupt paraphrases, they short supply the self-replicating creative potential of the Bible.
To reach the world with the gospel, Christian writers need to master the beauty, melody, colour and potency of language.
Yes, the power of the gospel is not in “enticing words of men’s wisdom” but the simple message of “Christ, and Him crucified.”
To enable a portal for the message, though, it is necessary to break up the fallow ground; to confound the wise on their terms and thaw the hardened by their own implements. This is where art looms pertinent.
The Bible has remained the unimpeachable height of writing not only because of its message but because of the writers’ painstaking commitment to quality.
That is why millennia after canonisation, the Bible remains the principal worldwide best-seller and most influential reference point.
Asaph, David, the house of Korah and other psalmists had the authentic message but if they had not set it to the melody of great poetry, they would not be inspiring generations of musicians to date.
We see allusions to folk songs of the day, “The Dove on the Distant Poplar” and “Do Not Destroy,” in the Psalms, demonstrating that the psalmists located their mandate with the setting of popular culture where everyone could relate with their message.
The universal import of the gospel is short supplied when more Christian writers present their work as denominational bulletins instead of art.
Self-publishing has opened a floodgate of possibilities for inspirational writing but most of it is not supported by corresponding quality.
Denominational bulletins are interest closed circles and are seldom of significance to those outside the fold.
Art, however, is a medium which commands universal attention and defies the frontiers of space and time.
Outsiders are disposed to resist rigid denominational indoctrination but they are prone to be carried along by the infectious facility of art.
Held, overtly religious writing is a function whose place in the church cannot be gainsaid for avoidance of ambiguity.
We live in an age of moral upheavals where hitherto contemptible subcultures are becoming the fashion of the day.
In this cultural state of emergency, it is necessary to communicate plainly without equivocation and hesitation.
There is also need for Christian writing to defrock its mystic specialisations, assume an academic tenor and contend with counter-attitudes in the sceptical circles.
However, the case for Christian writing as an art cannot be played down because art is the global battlefield of ideas.
The functionality of art is visible even where exponents argue that they are doing art for art’s sake.
Whether deliberately or inadvertently, by design or by default, art is value-laden to affect recipients one way or the other.
Art is a precipitant of cultural patterns and a vehicle for ferrying ideas across demographical confines.
“Art is a human activity, consisting in this, that one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that other people are infected by these feelings, and also experience them,” Tolstoy explains in “What is Art?”
There are situations vacant for Christian writers in the art of our day, when works are in bad taste get the loudest applause. Christians need to explore the possibilities of going big in the ranks of world literature.
Bearing the cross as a literary artist comes with reproach but this does not mark down the value of a great artist.
Arguably a leading, if not the leading, poet of the 20th century, T.S Eliot had to negotiate his way past the disappointment of literary peers when he set out to be a Christian poet within the mainstream literary tradition.
“I have had a most shameful and distressing interview with dear Tom Eliot, who may be called dead to us all from this day forward. He has become an Anglo-Catholic believer in God and immortality, and goes to church,” Virginia Woolf wrote a friend after Eliot’s conversion.
“I was shocked. A corpse would seem to me more credible than he is. I mean, there’s something obscene in a living person sitting by the fire and believing in God,” she wrote.
Eliot, like Tolstoy who was derided for his religious views as having “a crack in the head,” shrugged off discouragement and became the institution that he is today.
We need more such forceful writers to straddle Christian writing and classic literature and so perpetuate the great tradition.
Stanely Mushava blogs at profaithpress.blogspot.com
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