Jennifer Allen Craft. Placemaking and the Arts: Cultivating the Christian Life. IVP Academic, 2018. See here to purchase the book.
Jennifer Allen Craft has a Ph.D. from the University of St. Andrews
and teaches philosophy, theology, and the arts at Point University,
which is in West Point, Georgia.
As the title indicates, this book is about how the arts convey and
contribute to Christian place-making. Craft distinguishes between a
place and mere space. In reading that, I thought about a time when my
Mom and her husband moved into a new house. Initially, the house was
just space: empty rooms. When my Mom was through decorating it, it
became a home, bearing the family’s distinct personality and history. In
short, it became a place.
Craft discusses four topics, some of which overlap with each other.
The first topic is nature. Nature is beautiful, awe-inspiring, and worth
preserving, and humans have a divinely-imparted responsibility to be
stewards of it. The second topic is hospitality and homemaking. This
concerns homes and churches being hospitable, but it also has larger
social justice ramifications, such as the preservation of distinct
societies in the face of massive homogenizing interests. The third topic
is the divine presence and place: sanctuaries and places of worship, in
short. The fourth topic is God’s kingdom. This topic has the strongest
social justice element, as it concerns being inspired by beauty or
challenged by art and performing ethical action in light of God’s
eschatological in-breaking.
The chapters interact with authors, theologians, and the Bible. Craft
acknowledges tensions within Scripture: the tensions between home and
exile; between Jesus telling people to leave their families and Jesus
telling people to go home to their families; between feeling homeless
and finding one’s home in God and finding one’s home in home; and
between the priestly and Deuteronomic conceptions of the sanctuary. She
talks about when desires get misplaced, as the desire for sacred place,
when motivated by a desire to be like God, led to the Golden Calf.
And, of course, the work interacts with works of art that Craft
believes illustrates these topics. Most of the works are from the
twentieth-twenty-first centuries, but there are occasional exceptions.
Craft refers to an African-American community that has been making
quilts since the time of slavery. She briefly contrasts medieval and
modern art on the notion of sacred space.
This book did not get as much into the artists’ backgrounds and beliefs as another book in this series that I read, Modern Art and the Life of a Culture.
It did occasionally, though, as Craft honestly acknowledged that some
of the artists are skeptical of religion, or may be skeptical yet
respectful. She refers to Jacob’s statement in Genesis 28:16 that the
LORD was in that place, and he was not aware of it.
I liked the other book that I read in the series, Modern Art and the Life of a Culture, better than this book for a variety of reasons. I thought that Modern Art
got more deeply into the artists’ religious beliefs, the complex nature
of them, and the different scholarly conceptions of them. I also
thought that the Modern Art book discussed more the different
positions on art: how art performs a spiritual function. Craft’s book
struck me as more homogeneous, and a lot of the points that it hammered
over and over seemed rather obvious or conventional: beauty should
inspire action! This is an important point, and books should make it,
but it is also nice when a book can convey something fresh.
Occasionally, Craft’s book had interesting insights, as when she said
that Adam, in naming the animals, was giving them a sense of place. Her
discussion of the art may interest readers, since she talks about a
variety of pieces and thoughtfully details their message and
significance, or, more accurately, how they convey the same sorts of
themes in their own unique ways.
These are my impressions of the book. Others’ impressions may differ.
I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher. My review is honest.