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The Beauty of the Cross

From the earliest period of its existence, Christianity has been recognized as the "religion of the cross." Some of the great monuments of Western art are representations of the brutal torture and...

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Culture Making

It is not enough to condemn culture. Nor is it sufficient merely to critique culture or to copy culture. Most of the time, we just consume culture. But the only way to change culture is to create...

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Refractions

Makoto Fujimura is a contemporary artist whose home and studio are near Ground Zero. Out of a response to the attacks on 9/11, he began to set aside time every Saturday to write. This was a time to...

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Hollywood Worldviews

Do you watch movies with your eyes open? You buy your tickets and concessions, and you walk into the theater. Celluloid images flash at twenty-four frames per second, and the hypnotic sequence of...

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Saving Leonardo

Is secularism a positive force in the modern world? Or does it lead to fragmentation and disintegration? In Saving Leonardo, best-selling award-winning author Nancy Pearcey (Total Truth, coauthor How...

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Steve Taylor on Recent Christian Art

A lot of the church’s art in the last 50 years has become very sentimental and very earnest. And of course there’s nothing wrong with being earnest, but I don’t see that as a particularly Biblical way...

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Thomas Frank on Creative Genius as Consensus

Far from being an act of individual inspiration, what we call creativity is simply an expression of professional consensus. Using Vincent van Gogh as an example, the author declares that the artist’s...

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Anne Lamott on Discipline as Freedom

I always say I’m so disciplined in my writing because very strict discipline is the only way I’ve found any freedom as an artist. Like meditation or in my spiritual journey, or exercise – hiking … you...

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Steven Pinker’s Sense of Style

In a recent interview, “‘Literally,’ Emojis, and Other Trends That Aren’t Destroying English“,  Steven Pinker directs his usual optimism to writing style. I’ve been guilty too often of reckless...

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Iñaki Ábalos and Renata Sentkiewicz on Dualism in Architecture

Much historic architecture takes its compositive tension from two theoretically incompatible morphological organizations that correspond to different universes or languages. This technique leads to a...

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Beholding the Glory

Although the arts have played a significant role in both world history and Christian history, the contemporary church has often shunned them in favor of a more intellectual approach to theology....

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Camille Paglia on the Truly Subversive in Art

Although I’m an atheist who believes only in great nature, I recognize the spiritual richness and grandeur of the Roman Catholicism in which I was raised. And I despise anyone who insults the...

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Gary Kamiya on the Avante Garde

Again and again, the authors of these manifestos open with a mighty trumpet blast, issuing the most lofty and passionate denunciations of the imbecilic, stale, decadent, safe, bourgeois, vile,...

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The Creative Call

Perhaps you’re a “closet writer” who’s been scribbling in journals for years. Maybe you once had a passion for playing the piano or violin — a passion that is still flickering somewhere deep inside...

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Faith and Beauty: A Theological Aesthetic

“Aesthetics” and “theological aesthetics” usually imply a focus on questions about the arts and how faith or religion relates to the arts: only the final pages of this work take up that problem. The...

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Art and Soul

More Christians than ever before are studying and working in music, painting, sculpture, theater, television, film, architecture and more. Are you one of them? If so, you, like artists in every...

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Eric Metaxas on Art and Evil

What Christian films — and Christian “art” in general — have lacked is a willingness to portray evil convincingly. It was Milton’s Satan and Dante’s Inferno that made them two of the most powerful...

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A Dictionary of Christian Art

The Dictionary of Christian Art, now rebranded in the best-selling Oxford Paperback Reference series, is a unique and fascinating exploration of the art and architecture that has been influenced and...

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Theological Aesthetics: A Reader

While interest in the relationship between theology and the arts is on the rise, there are very few resources for students and teachers, let alone a comprehensive text on the subject. This book fills...

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A Sense Of The Sacred

There have been many histories of Christian art and architecture, and many that have paid attention to the various cultural, social, and economic contexts in which the architecture and art appeared....

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