Asian Christian Art Association

This short essay was prepared to outline or frame a discussion on the historical and liturgical contexts of Christian arts as it evolved through the centuries. It does not however go into the minute details of history, of liturgy and the arts in Western Christianity, or in contemporary global Christianity. It simply touches on how the logos and ethos of Christendom intersect with the Christian theological imagination and artistic objectivations— the relationship between the rise and fall of empires and the bondage and redemption of the Christian Liturgy and the Arts, i.e., Christian Arts. 

 

To begin with, I want to point to a survey made in relation to the ways in which Christianity and the arts intersect, and in particular, where the arts inform Christianity (Arts 11:2, 1999). Arts and worship intersects in several ways: firstly, in worship, where the arts serve as the primary medium of communication, or better yet, as the media that connect the human to the sacred; secondly,  in the way the arts and religion are one in raising questions or issues on the meaning and purpose of life; thirdly, in the arts serving as texts  mirroring the nature of historical and contemporary faith; fourthly, in the prophetic role the arts play particularly in the process of conscientization and, more directly, in its capacity to speak prophetically to us in our time; and fifthly – in the sacramental potential of the arts – to become a means through which the holy is experienced and comprehended albeit partially as in a dim mirror.  The above survey, indeed, speak of the common ground where the arts and Christianity or religion meet – of the common ground where the sacred and religious experience are objectified and the profane and corporeal experience transfigured, each one animating the other. Asian Christian Arts locate itself in these intersections

  

This survey of where arts and Christianity intersect indeed gives us a very good way of describing what Christian Arts is about. But what is suggested in our discussion of Christendom in the history of Christian arts is a qualifier, a historical qualifier. That Christianity is not as neat an historical entity and a movement. Christianity, in most part of its history, especially in its institutional form, was part of empires and empire building. And, in newer forms, this deep attachment to imperial politics remains – to this day, in some neo-Christendom form!  So that when we talk about the Christian in Christian arts we also need to talk about the institutional expression of Christianity: the church and Christendom. The above survey is mainly on how the arts are informing Christianity. But how is Christianity in its Christendom form informing the arts? Our clue to this relationship or interfacing of Christianity and the arts is the liturgy.  As already cited above, we need to locate Christian arts in its liturgical context. 

But before going into that, let me start with an exchange I had with Anna, a performing artist-friend. My good friend Anna was saying Christendom is a Swedish word suggesting ‘knowledge of Christianity,’ and which further leads us into the thought of Christianity as key to knowledge of everything, of universal truths, so that Christianity becomes, in effect, the ruling idea! Citing this Swedish etymological understanding then connects us to the vocation of Christian arts for a good number of generations, i.e. as a cultural partisan for imperial interests.

Christendom was historically the context of the exultation of Christian arts. Christendom can be defined i   n many ways. Historically, it was a political and cultural phenomenon that started initially with the toleration of Christianity by Constantine from CE 313. Sometime in CE 375, Christendom took an institutional shape when it was adopted as the quasi-official religion of the empire.  (It has its peak during the reign of Charlemagne and continues to manifest itself in many forms and embodiments in the present). There are many historical nuances in the development of Christendom that were related to the politics of competing centers of Christianity (Constantinople and Byzantium) and their corresponding historical landscapes.   However, I would not venture into the details of the history of European Christianity. It would suffice for our purposes this morning to define Christendom in relation to Christian imagination, theology and the arts. Historically, it refers to the ‘Christianization of public space (M. Stringer),’ and of the popular consciousness and imagination.

The history of Christianity as Christendom is a history of centralization, and consequentially, of marginalization and exclusion. It is a hegemonic process of empire-building aimed at maintaining a ‘center’s’ control over a subaltern marginal majority. In this process of hegemonization where’ societies’ discourses of consent‘ are controlled and regulated by the dominant discourse, the ruling powers also establish and consolidate themselves in positions of authority and power. The theological debates during the formative years of the empire church especially centering on Christology, for example, resulted to the tragic suppression if not persecution of those who challenged the center and its discourse. The consolidation of the center through the silencing of dissenting theological voices effectively established orthodox Christianity and laid down the institutional base of what would be the cultural, spiritual and political colonization of many societies from the centuries of Roman imperial rule to the most recent wave of proselytizing evangelization. In this process of hegemonization the liturgy plays an ideological role. In all its static (textualization, visualization) and dynamic (performance) objectivations worship became an important instrument in the institutionalization if not sacralization of the center. This was due in part to the fact that, in the Christian world, the period from the seventh to the ninth centuries was not so much noted for its literacy. Much of the popular media that were available to people outside of this period were remotely accessible if not outrightly banned by the empire church. Public worship and popular devotion became the primary formators of Christian culture, spirituality and discourse.  The control of the liturgy thus was crucial to the powers that be. Through the liturgical rite [and Christian arts], t he empire found its most potent means of self-communication and self-rationalization. In and through the liturgies consenting to and helping build hegemonic discourse Christendom  established itself – to provide the empire its most dependable, lasting religio-cultural and cultic base.  

In the contemporary world, Christendom has taken a new form in the alliance of Church interests with contemporary empire-building. In this contemporary neo-Christendom church, the liturgy maintains an ambiguous (a liturgy that is ‘of,’ ‘above,’ and ‘against’ the dominant secular culture [to use H. Richard Niebuhr’s typologies] at the same time) yet ultimately consenting, collaborative and ideological stance vis-a-vis the establishment.  As in Christendom, the art of contemporary establishment Christianity serves as the aesthetic rationalization and sacralization of the imperial structures of church and society.

Emmanuel Garibay’s christo-graphy in his Kristology, i.e., the concept of progressive incarnation suggests a post-Christendom route in the Christian arts. Christology in post-Christendom arts is beginning to take multiple incarnations and objectivations. No longer is Christology solely subscribing to imperial images and designs. Post-Christendom arts have bracketed off the Christological representations of the empire to encounter the Christ in the margins of contemporary empire-building. The externalization of this encounter, aesthetic wise, has now been objectified in the image of a subaltern dissident Christ. This objectivation of post Christendom arts is now providing and establishing an iconic center for mass dissent, where the masses are able to construct and evolve a new mythography for their emancipation. This process is most evident in popular resistance arts like in protest paraliturgies. Christian resistance arts, especially in its liturgical and religious context outsize and outperform the canvass and the stage to serve as a theographical and theological impetus for mass emancipatory politics. Christian arts and their larger cultic encasement owe their efficacy to their capability to visually, aniconially and physically mediate and communicate divine presence and message – speaking prophetically in our time, as the survey above puts it.  The image of the dissident Christ in particular sets into motion dissident energies to subvert the social, economic, cultural and religious structures that maintains imperial establishment

Post-Christendom arts, especially those that go astray into the dissident stream are, beyond the artists’ wildest intents and expectations, providing aesthetic resources in the construction and articulation of theologies of liberation and struggle.  If the icons of the ancient and medieval Christianty were able to nourish a spirituality of reaction, then a parallel role for contemporary dissident Kristological iconography can, in as powerful ways, serve as the lifeblood of revolution   towards social reversal. The cult and arts of Christendom had, for a long time, effectively kept the powerful in their places and the poor in their wretchedness. Through the same medium can the social cancer of radical disconnectedness be corrected – from the radical altering of mass consciousness [-- the re-Christianization of the public imagination] to mass upheavals. Here, the Kristology and the popular cult of colonial Filipinos come to mind, when they effectively nourished the revolutionary spirituality of the illiterate mass to launch one of the first anti-colonial upheavals in Asia. Theologies of Struggle – these are where dissident post-Christendom Christian arts may lead to. They witness to the continuing relevance of the arts and religion in the reordering of the cosmos, in the construction of a new world and the birthing of new life. It is this point of intersection between the arts and Christianity or religion in general that, finally, will bring the arts into the home and womb of real culture.