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Chris Greene's avatar

As a child of the 90s and periodic artist who often found Christian culture hostile to any art that was not Christian or even sufficiently theologically accurate (I once had an argument with a pastor over whether it was ok, much less good, to read *Lewis*), this is a fantastic piece. Souls and societies thrive when they order themselves rightly. Make art and artists the be all and end all—the source of gnostic wisdom—and we suffer. Paint art and artists as fools and pitfalls to be avoided—dangers and temptations to sin and worldliness—and we suffer. We need art and beauty; we need things to help teach our hearts to love good things, and art is wonderful at training our hearts. But, if we forget the artist is also human and fallen, we risk dropping our guard and allowing our hearts to be taught to love the wrong things. I definitely have fallen into the liberal side of that fine line before. This is a great reminder to work to keep things in their proper places.

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Austin Gravley's avatar

This problem compounds when you factor in the overlap of Christian artists as worship leaders.

The Great Worship Market Consolidation of the 2010s mostly flattened out the CCM industry to where separating the artist from the purpose and destination of their art (or the context where they performed it!) wasn’t a meaningful distinction anymore. Most of what you heard on Christian radio were songs you’d never hear sung during a Sunday service; now most of the songs you hear are songs intentionally meant for corporate worship. Worship artists were a subset of the industry, now they’re easily the majority of it.

I’m thankful to know a great group of leaders at my church who resist this dynamic, but for artists with a “priest complex” serving in a priest-adjacent ministry position within the church, there is an entire industry of inspiration and peers passively reinforcing the distinction that they’re different, elevated, special from other believers.

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