blog excerpts: theater as a christian

2
The bottom line for worship is expressing love and adoration for God through thoughts, words and actions (Psalm 96:5-8, Deut. 6:4-5, Matthew 22:36-38, Mark 12:28-30, Luke 10:27). But “theatre” implies an audience. A moment of theatre requires an action and a viewer. So, if church becomes theatre, then it is dead because you have some people worshipping, and some people witnessing, but not participating in it. If worship is happening, no one is outside the “performing” circle. No one is in the audience except God. But, I can love God in a beautiful moment of theatre. When theatre is good, my thoughts turn to God. As a theatre person, I need to do my best work in order to bring my faith and art together. That doesn’t mean adopting a Christian pose, or having Jesus in a play, it means creating the play with integrity. What makes that effort “Christian”? I believe for my work to be called, “Christian”, it needs to arise out of the Christian community. It’s not enough for me to do a decent production of Moliere and say, “this is a Christian production because I did it with integrity”. I think that the work needs to address core spiritual experience, and be a voice of the Christian community or speak to the Christian community. https://theartsenginetransmission.wordpress.com/2011/05/26/theatre- asin-worship/ ----- God is creative (Job 38:1-41, Ecc 3:11) and he is the source of human creativity (Ex 35:30-35), which can be used in the service of God (Ex 36:8), the worship of God (Ps 92:1-3, 98:5, 144:9, 149:1-3) but which can also be abused by sinful human beings and used to dishonor him rather than serve him (Hab 2:18). So drama, as an expression of God- given creativity, may have a place of honor in the life of faith. The nature of both theatre and church is that to be successful they each need to have community in order to challenge and communicate.

Upload: enu

Post on 14-Dec-2015

3 views

Category:

Documents


1 download

DESCRIPTION

Excerpts from two bloggers reflecting on what it means to be a Christian in the theater/performing arts industry.Blog citations provided in the document

TRANSCRIPT

Page 1: Blog Excerpts: Theater as a Christian

The bottom line for worship is expressing love and adoration for God through thoughts, words and actions (Psalm 96:5-8, Deut. 6:4-5, Matthew 22:36-38, Mark 12:28-30, Luke 10:27). But “theatre” implies an audience. A moment of theatre requires an action and a viewer. So, if church becomes theatre, then it is dead because you have some people worshipping, and some people witnessing, but not participating in it. If worship is happening, no one is outside the “performing” circle. No one is in the audience except God.

But, I can love God in a beautiful moment of theatre. When theatre is good, my thoughts turn to God. As a theatre person, I need to do my best work in order to bring my faith and art together. That doesn’t mean adopting a Christian pose, or having Jesus in a play, it means creating the play with integrity. What makes that effort “Christian”? I believe for my work to be called, “Christian”, it needs to arise out of the Christian community. It’s not enough for me to do a decent production of Moliere and say, “this is a Christian production because I did it with integrity”. I think that the work needs to address core spiritual experience, and be a voice of the Christian community or speak to the Christian community.

https://theartsenginetransmission.wordpress.com/2011/05/26/theatre-asin-worship/

-----

God is creative (Job 38:1-41, Ecc 3:11) and he is the source of human creativity (Ex 35:30-35), which can be used in the service of God (Ex 36:8), the worship of God (Ps 92:1-3, 98:5, 144:9, 149:1-3) but which can also be abused by sinful human beings and used to dishonor him rather than serve him (Hab 2:18). So drama, as an expression of God-given creativity, may have a place of honor in the life of faith.

The nature of both theatre and church is that to be successful they each need to have community in order to challenge and communicate. When we understand the importance of community, mutually challenging and jointly communicating, and its place within the creative universe of God, then we will abide in "the joy of God and the enjoyment of each other in God" (Moltmann p80, 1973). We will be truly performing, worshiping and living "for what it's worth." Not with any human cleverness, or pretend piety, but with our hearts full of the joy of creating as our Father creates, bringing meaning out of suffering as Jesus does, communicating deep truths as we allow the Holy Spirit to groan within us.

Moltmann, Jürgen: Theology and Joy, SCM Press Ltd, London 1973

http://www.quodlibet.net/articles/magorrian-theater.shtml