Preface
For much of the twentieth century, there was at least one issue on which the vast majority of both religious believers and the secular intellectuals agreed: that great art inspired by a profound grappling with the Judeo-Christian faith was a thing of the past. That there were a few exceptions, such as T.S. Eliot and a handful of other writers, only seemed to prove the rule.
The pious had become estranged from modern culture, reacting to the secularization of the modern era with fear, and withdrawing into their own increasingly isolated subcultures. Ironically, as those religious subcultures pulled away from the realm of literature and high art, they began to ape the forms of popular culture—merely substituting edifying religious clichés for the marketplace idols of sex, money, and power.
At the same time, the gatekeepers of high culture, following Freud, treated religion as escapism. To the extent that faith was an exercise in wish-fulfillment, it stood as the antithesis of art’s obligation to confront and penetrate reality. Thus the appearance of religious themes, experiences, or symbols in a work of art could only bring about a short-circuiting of the drama and persuasiveness of that work.
Though it ruled for most of the century, this strange consensus among intellectuals and believers began to break down toward the end. The secular master narratives, such as Marxism and Freudianism, had failed to live up to their initial promise; instead of bringing the light of scientific reason to human affairs, they left their adherents unable to account for the true wellsprings of good and evil. And among the faithful there was a growing number who felt that cultural isolation had reduced religion to rationalism and legalism.
The breakdown of that consensus led to an equally odd convergence: a hunger, on the part of both secularist and believer, for a deeper understanding ofmystery, that borderland where reason fails and only faith and imagination can go. These two faculties reach out beyond rigid and divisive ideological categories into paradox and ambiguity. In the end, the mystery of mysteries may be that only in paradox and ambiguity can truth be glimpsed.
It was at this moment of cultural and religious change that Image: A Journal of the Arts and Religion was born. Those of us involved in its founding were only dimly aware of those larger forces of change. Indeed, there was a great deal of self-questioning among us, not only about whether a literary and arts quarterly could be financially sustainable, but as to whether the work we hoped was being created was actually being created. Would we find material to fill more than three or four issues?
We needn’t have worried. What we discovered was that our interest in the intersection between faith and imagination was shared by myriad artists and writers all over the world. The goal then became how to present this creative resurgence on the part of artists grappling with religious faith to both the church and mainstream culture. The first principle had to be aesthetic excellence: what we published had to be good art, able to stand alongside the best that was being produced. It followed that Image had to be present on the public square, and not in some sort of self-imposed religious ghetto. For it is precisely in the imaginative space created by works of art that a diverse, multicultural society can explore religious matters without the divisiveness of polemics and propositions. Finally, we believed that the range of material we presented had to come from both those whose religious faith was more settled and those who were struggling with doubt and dissent. The interaction of these two groups helps keep each honest and open.
In a time dominated by political and ideological contention, Image gives primacy to the creative voice. The majority of its pages are filled with fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, and critical expositions of visual art, music, dance, and architecture. However, our habit has been to publish a brief editorial statement at the beginning of each issue. To be sure, it is difficult to generate sustained arguments in only one or two thousand words. But even here there has been a purpose: to keep the stress on meditation and reflection, to provoke thought rather than to exhaust it. Perhaps an analogy can be found in fiction where the tradition of the “short short” story provides readers with the prose version of haiku—the brief impression that opens up a space for further thought.
The editorials are printed in chronological order, rather than being grouped by theme or other contrivance. So they unfold as the journal (and its editor) moved through time. That there are a few repetitions in this book I hope the reader will forgive. My hope is that when they occur they will occasionally chime, sounding with a bit of resonance rather than merely falling flat. All errors of fact and judgment are entirely my own.
The meditations collected in this book are attempts to probe the ways that art and faith, poetry and prayer, can nourish and sustain one another. Too often these parallel enterprises have been collapsed into a single entity, with disastrous results. Despite the positive changes that have taken place in our society, we continue to live in an ideologically polarized world, where vacuous liberalism and rigid fundamentalism dominate public discourse. Into this fragmented and contentious world, art that engages faith can body forth an incarnational balance between the letter and the spirit, make ancient truths new, and allow the time-bound to briefly and tentatively intrude upon the timeless.
Seattle, May 31, 2003
Feast of the Visitation