Protestant Channel-SilasPartners.com - People of faith typically try to influence the world in one of two ways.
   
Some focus on preaching and proselytizing, believing that religious instruction and recruitment will yield morally improved neighbors.
   
Others emphasize social and political activism, believing that godly laws and policies will compel otherwise immoral neighbors to behave morally.
   
But Gregory Wolfe, director of the Center for Religious Humanism, believes that good art, literature and music represent humanity's best chance to change culture for the better.
   
"The common thread in everything I've done over the last decade has been the attempt to promote a deeper understanding of the human faculty we call imagination," says Wolfe, now in his early 40s. He is busy creating journals, writing books and planning events, like this summer's annual Glen Workshop, which brings together God-honoring painters, poets, and writers.
   
The imagination, Wolfe believes, is essential both to creativity and spirituality but is assailed by religious censors on the one hand and deadened by omnipresent entertainment commodities on the other. But through his far-flung activities, Wolfe is trying to help reconnect human creativity to an expansive theology centered on God the Creator.
   
Drawing inspiration from figures like Augustine, Erasmus, Milton and Dostoyevsky, Wolfe is trying to inspire a new generation of faith-based artists. "Religious humanists live with the creative tension of balancing commitment to the historic truths of religion with openness to the world," he says.
   
Since 1989, he has published Image: A Journal of the Arts and Religion. One of the few American publications that takes both religion and art seriously, the quarterly journal is also, as one magazine said, "a work of art itself." In addition to poetry, fiction, essays and interviews by writers like Annie Dillard, Paul Mariani and Martin Marty, each issue features glorious four-color reproductions of paintings or photos.
   
Wolfe also produces books. In addition to writing an acclaimed biography of British journalist Malcolm Muggeridge and a fascinating study of American artist William Schickel, he edited a 1997 collection called The New Religious Humanists, which features contributions from writers like Richard Rodriguez, Wendell Berry, Robert Coles and Frederica Matthewes-Green.

Courtesy of Pat Angelo
What role should art play in our churches?  In the education of our children? Have many churches reduced their ability to influence this image-conscious culture by eliminating art in their worship and the design of modern church structures? Give us your opinion at my2cents@corp.silaspartners.com