c. 1998 Religion News Service
UNDATED _ People of faith often try to influence the world in one of two ways.
Some focus on preaching and proselytizing, believing religious instruction and recruitment will yield morally improved neighbors. And in recent years, many have emphasized social and political activism, believing godly laws and policies will compel otherwise immoral neighbors to behave morally.
But Gregory Wolfe, director of the Center for Religious Humanism, believes 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, 39, who is busy creating journals, writing books and planning events.
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 as 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 said.
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”(Free Press), which features essays from writers like Richard Rodriguez, Wendell Berry, Robert Coles and Frederica Matthewes-Green _ a newly prominent group of religious intellectuals arguing for cultural renewal.
He also organizes conferences. Last November, Wolfe brought together Protestant writer Kathleen Norris, Jewish rabbi and author Chaim Potok, and jazz composer Dave Brubeck, a convert to Catholicism, for a New York City conference on the theme”Beyond the Culture Wars.” Two conferences are scheduled for this year: August’s”Glen Workshop: An Image Summer Institute”in Colorado; and a November conference in Los Angeles on religion and film entitled”Screening Mystery: The Religious Imagination in Contemporary Film,”which will be held in conjunction with the City of Angels Film Festival.
The son of a writer and grandson of a painter, Wolfe converted to Catholicism while working on his master’s degree in English Literature at Oxford. His approach is religious but not reactionary, Christian but not confrontational.”Faithfulness to the (Roman Catholic) Church’s teachings need not imply fundamentalism, Puritanism, or that strange mixture of nostalgia and anger that afflicts so many conservatives today,”he says.
Wolfe sympathizes with conservative Christian culture warriors, and even shares some of their values and concerns. But he seldom appreciates their tactics, and is critical of their emphasis on politics, which he describes as”an epiphenomenon of culture,”not its driving force.”Conservative Christians have become traumatized by the social changes of the 20th century,”he says,”and people who have been traumatized often don’t maintain a balanced perspective.”Unfortunately, these conservatives have failed to cultivate the arts and the intellectual life as a means of embodying their vision and persuading others that this vision is compassionate and just. Instead, they’ve retreated into a fortress mentality that is highly politicized and brittle. I believe that the fear and anger conservatives feel stems from a profound despair about their ability to influence the world around them.” Wolfe isn’t advocating a withdrawal from politics, but rather more emphasis”on the slower rhythms of real cultural change.” Taking a cue from Jesus, Wolfe advocates an approach he calls”incarnational.””This requires people to place contemplation before action, example before preaching, the long-term perspectives that art and education require rather than the short-term political battles of the moment,”he said.
Some in the arts community see Wolfe as too religious, while some in the religious realm have criticized Image for publishing stories and artwork they deem too raw and sexual. But he doesn’t feel like an odd man out.
As he savors the work of novelists like Ron Hansen, Doris Betts, and Oscar Hijuelos, or the music of composers such as Arvo Part, Henryk Gorecki, and John Tavener, he is reassured that”the Judeo-Christian tradition is far from exhausted, but truly remains `ever ancient, ever new.'””I’d be tempted to say that I’m quite lonely, except that I’ve met many people who feel much as I do,”says Wolfe,”And the Center for Religious Humanism was created to give these people a voice in the public square.”
DEA END RABEY
