Sanctifying Art. Deborah Sokolove
to thank me for the course and tell me how much she enjoyed it. But the rest of our conversation I can really translate in only one way. In the gentle but persistent style she naturally uses she said “It’s really too bad you don’t know more about art.”
Well, I actually agreed with this. So when she completed her Master of Theological Studies degree at Wesley in 1998 I invited her to begin team teaching the course on The Hebrew Bible and the Arts with me. We did so through several offerings of the course until I retired in 2009. I had become the dean at Wesley so I actually hired her to do this, and it was my joy that in my final year as dean before retirement I hired her as the second Director of the Henry Luce III Center for the Arts and Religion at Wesley Theological Seminary.
In the years we taught together I did become Deborah’s student in many ways as we created in our teaching team the very dialog between Hebrew Scripture and the arts that we were examining in the work of artists in every medium. Many times during those years I can remember saying to Deborah (as friend, colleague, and dean) that I hoped she was going to find a way to publish and share the insights she gave to us in class. Now she has given us a volume that does this, and in a wonderfully readable way.
Before I turn you loose to sample the treasures of these pages I do want to say something further about the author and then something about the volume.
Deborah Sokolove doesn’t seem capable of doing anything halfway. She was already a trained and successful artist when I first met her, but she was restless. She found at Wesley a context that valued the intersection of arts and theology. But neither of these were just disciplinary subjects to her. Deborah is a deeply passionate artist and a deeply spiritual person of faith. In her congregation she is one of the leaders and has used her artistic talents to great effect in the life of that community. At Wesley she could relate art and theology together in a community that valued the deep way she sought to do that. She had even completed an MTS degree and begun to do some teaching but she didn’t want to be considered an artist teaching about connections to theology and church. She wanted to be an artist and a theologian and therefore able to speak from the inside of both of these disciplinary worlds. She became a doctoral student in liturgical studies at Drew University and commuted from Wesley to Madison, NJ to complete the work for this degree. There are few in the world of theological education who have prepared themselves so thoroughly to invite, as her volume subtitle does, Conversation Between Artists, Theologians, and the Church. She invites each group as one of their own. Few volumes available in the field achieve this intimacy of invitation into conversation. She knows and anticipates the hesitancies, the stumbling blocks, the misperceptions, and the blind spots from each side of the dialogue because to some degree she inhabits both sides of the conversation.
Over the years I have read many volumes on the relationship of art to theology. The questions get shaped and reshaped, but you can almost always tell which side of the dialogue the author inhabits. The reviews then are predictable. Valuable insights but the author doesn’t fully understand my world (depending on whether the reviewer is an artist or a theologian). That will not be possible with Deborah Sokolove’s volume.
Sanctifying Art is a volume with gifts on many levels. It is written in a readable and accessible style and addresses issues in a way that will find audiences among theologians, artists, church people, and students alike. This is a rare quality and it does this with the intention that these communities might fruitfully find things to talk about together. She punctures pretensions, misconceptions, and narrowed vision that exist on both sides of the dialogue. She tackles deep philosophical issues long debated by both artists and theologians, like truth and beauty, and leaves the reader feeling like these debates have become fresh and worth pondering once again.
I cannot remember finding in any volume on art and religion a chapter that is the parallel of Deborah Sokolove’s chapter on “Art and the Need of the World.” She told me in a recent conversation that it was the hardest chapter to write, and I can believe that. It is filled with the passion of a woman who believes that both art and religion have failed in their purpose if their endeavors cannot positively effect the needs of the world. That introverted art or religion are not worthy of the calling they profess. This chapter alone is worth the price of this book.
But I am not writing a review. This is merely a foreword. It is a word that comes before from someone privileged to journey alongside a remarkable woman named Deborah Sokolove. She became my friend even while she became a trusted colleague and a valued teacher. We had adventures together in our teaching, and she even shares some of this in the volume. Having taken my own journey with her, and having read this volume now, I can tell you that you have a great journey ahead of you as you read on past this foreword.
Bruce C. Birch
Wesley Theological Seminary
Fall 2012
Acknowledgments
There are so many people to thank for the existence of this book that noting them all would take another volume of equal size. However, there are a few people deserving of special thanks, beginning with John Morris, whose careful reading and rereading have made this a better book; Denise Domkowski Hopkins, who read early drafts of the first few chapters and cheered me on through the rewrites; and Kendall Soulen, who disagreed with my conclusions about beauty but encouraged me to keep writing. Thanks also to Peggy Parker and to Ginger Geyer, with each of whom I have shared much laughter about our lives as artists sojourning among theologians and who have both been urging me to write for as long as I have been a member of this odd fellowship of artists in theology-land. I am grateful for Wilson Yates, Robin Jensen, Don Saliers, Frank Burch Brown, and the many others who have given so much of their lives to exploring the intersection of theology and the arts, and who have taught me and befriended me as a latecomer to their company. I am particularly grateful to Carole Grunberg and the late Kate Cudlipp, who gave me a place to stay where I could hear the ocean as I began the writing; to the members of my mission groups and many other members of Seekers Church, who have been praying for this project all along the way; and to my faculty colleagues in the Monday lunchtime prayer group, who soothed my fears and worries with wisdom gained from their own experiences as writers. Thanks also to research librarian James Estes, whose divine calling was repeatedly affirmed as he pointed me in the right direction in my quests for century-old journals and other obscure materials; to Bruce Birch, who introduced me to the ways of theological education and continues to mentor and encourage me; to Catherine Kapikian, without whose vision and energy the Center for the Arts and Religion at Wesley Theological Seminary would not exist; to Amy Gray, Alexandra Sherman, and Trudi Ludwig Johnson, who made sure that everything was running smoothly in the Center office even when I was too distracted to notice; and to our graduate assistant, Vanya Mullinax, who checked quotations and footnotes and asked good questions. Most of all, I thank my husband, Glen Yakushiji, who not only finds extra spaces and missing commas and points out when I’ve lapsed into incomprehensible jargon, but also brings me sandwiches when I forget to eat and invites me on bike rides when I’ve been at the computer too long; and my grown-up children, who have little interest in this subject but seem to be proud of me anyway. To everyone else who is equally deserving of thanks but whom I have neglected to note, please accept my apologies and silent gratitude. It takes a community to write a book.
1 / Prologue
A theologian friend recently asked me, Why does art matter to you? It was late, and I was tired, so I said that it simply does, and that I didn’t feel the need to enquire any more deeply into that particular question. The next morning, I found an email in which my friend said that, while my answer was all very well, the real question was, “Why should art matter to anyone else?” My friend went on,
I’ve done a little art and I like it. I’ve looked at some art and felt stirred by it, and not just beautiful art but also [disturbing] art . . . Still art clearly does not matter to me in the same way it matters to you. Are you writing just for yourself or are you writing for people like me? If for me, then I need some windows into your world.
This book is an attempt to open up those windows, not just for my friend and me, but for others—especially others in church communities—who are, like us, trying to find a way to talk about art that doesn’t