In An Experiment in Criticism, C. S. Lewis argued that encounters with great literature or art are capable of producing “an experience so momentous that only experiences of love, religion, or bereavement can furnish a standard of comparison.”
Indie musician Sufjan Stevens agrees. During a lecture at Calvin College’s recent Festival of Faith & Music, Stevens expressed his belief that art should not be “a tool in which we advocate our causes” or a “medium we manipulate and meddle with in order to follow our beliefs.” Instead, he said, “Our sacred calling is supernatural expression in which we endeavor, through a creative act, to participate in all creation.”
This year’s FFM featured Stevens, American music icon Emmylou Harris, singer-songwriter Sarah Masen, engaging newcomer Neko Case, and writer Andrew Beaujon, the Managing Editor of The Washington City Paper and a Spin contributor who wrote the acclaimed 2006 look at the Christian music scene,
Body Piercing Saved My Life.
The biennial event is part of the Grand Rapids, Michigan-based school’s mission to be “agents of renewal in the academy, church and society.” The gathering provided two days of lectures, roundtables, showcases and concerts for more than 1,200 attendees, which is six times as many as turned out for the last festival in 2005.
Ken Heffner, Calvin’s Director of Student Activities, said the festival was intended to “provide a more historic Christian model of how it is we can understand our place in the world. If Christ is making all things new, what does it look like in the popular culture?”
Artists like Stevens performed and spoke about faith and culture. During Stevens’s performance he and band members donned giant bird wings and feathered masks, tossed inflatable Superman dolls into the audience and utilized a kaleidoscope of video footage to enhance the iconoclastic music.
“I perceive the term ‘artist’ as a pretentious nomenclature, self-conjured description indulged by high-profile personalities who invest more time and energy in executing their role as an artist than in executing their art,” said Stevens during his lecture. He also talked about the paradox of faith:
“Isn’t this one of the insurmountable conundrums of our faith: to yield ourselves enthusiastically to a belief system that requires participation in a community, a church, a fellowship of believers, often rotten, nasty people, woefully misled…gossipy, condescending, weird, wild, culturally inane people—and I am one of them. But there you are, worshipping beside each other regardless of whether or not you like each other.
“This is the main enterprise of Christ’s salvation: to know death face to face, so that we may celebrate in the reconciliation of the body, mind and spirit to God, the Father…[and] forego all the drudgery of our calculations, speculations and intimidations.”
Saved My Life has received positive reviews in YouthWorker Journal (Sept/Oct 2006) and other publications. In his lecture, Beaujon challenged a new generation of Christians to devote as much energy redeeming art and culture as Jerry Falwell’s generation devoted to politics.
“Until Christians come to grips with the idea that they’ve got as much at stake in pop culture as they do in political culture,” he argued, “there will always be a barrier.”
Other workshops featured Paste magazine co-founder Josh Jackson, who said, “The idea of a whole generationof Christian artists told that their creation has to follow a prescribed Christian structure for a limited Christian audience is devastating. We copy the same styles of our culture, but we sanitize it.”
Wrapping up the festivities, the weekend’s performing headliner, Emmylou Harris, mingled spirituality into seemingly every lyric. “Music is like my church,” she revealed at one point. “It infuses me with a reality that I cannot explain. I’m just grateful to be a part of that very mysterious process.”
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Nashville music buff Andrew Greer wrote a longer version of this article for our sister publication CCM, which now devotes more energy to covering mainstream and indie artists.
