Last week I mentioned a couple of conferences I wished I could have gone to. Well I need to add one more to that list. The Festival of Faith and Music was held at Calvin College at the end of March. A friend and I talked about driving out there for this, but we just couldn’t make it work.
The Festival featured performances from and interviews with Sufjan Stevens, Neko Case, and Emmylou Harris as well as presentations from Lauren Winner and Steve Stockman.
The good news is that most of the lectures are available online via podcast. The bad news is that all of the live performances from the artists are not. But I’ll take what I can get!
I’ve listened to a few of the presentations and so far I think that Winner’s opening keynote address is a “must hear.”
Winner presented an argument for superfluous art—art that exists for itself, for beauty. She said that Christians should create art for art’s sake and not in the service of utility (ie. sermon illustrations).
In other words, it’s ok to celebrate art for its own sake. It doesn’t always have to have a deeper or theological meaning. According to Winner, creation simply for the sake of creativity is at the heart of what we as Christians are created to do.
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