You may have seen my tweet the other day that I think I’ve found my desired focus for my thesis. I’ve felt for a while that I would like to do something related to art, justice, and faith. Obviously that covers lots of ground. There also is lots of great writing and thinking that has been done on various relationships between art & justice, art & faith, and faith & justice. But what I haven’t really seen much of is anything trying to tie all three together. What I would like to do is write a theology of mission for artists and Christian creatives. I’m not arguing that I would have the definitive theological take on things when I’m done, but I think I can add constructively to the conversation about the role the arts play in church. I know that in some ways, it was only after I discovered Christians making great art who also happened to be passionate about justice issues that I really started to think about what I wanted to do with my photography. When I bought my camera, I thought I wanted to take pictures of trees and mountains. I still do sometimes, and I’m not knocking landscape photography, but I think to deny that I have an eye for documentary photography and can help give a voice to the poor and marginalized through my photographs is to reject who God has made me to be. That is why I think having a framework for thinking about and doing art that raises awareness of issues of faith and justice is a valuable tool for giving new artists a theological foundation to work from. And to set my ambitions high, I think the goal of submitting my final thesis as a book for publication would be pretty exciting. Who knows, maybe it would even get picked up! Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?

Anyway… in the coming months you may see me posting chunks here as I think through this issue and my thesis. I welcome your thoughts and comments now and in the future.

But first I need to make it through the next three weeks of the semester…

Filed under: life, photography by Jonathan