Art and Culture - “Healing the Imagination” with James K.A. Smith
Shownotes:
Christians spend a lot of time talking about what is true or exploring goodness, but we do not spend as much time exploring beauty, aesthetics, and the arts. In a world full of content curated to our specific taste, we need more time and space to fill our souls with the kind of art that breaks open our curiosity and makes us come alive. Where does God meet us in the beauty of our imagination? How does art and culture shape our desires and longings?
In this episode, Chris and Eddie are joined by James K.A. Smith, Professor of Philosophy at Calvin University and Editor-in-Chief of Image Journal. Smith aspires to bridge the gap between the academy, society, and church, and he discusses the art of culture-making as it relates to the Christian faith. Smith recognizes the tension between the view of culture as the result of a broken world and God’s vision for culture as creational good, and he calls us to recognize that we all take part in framing culture.
Smith believes that what we make of the world is much more of a reflection of what we want for the world than how we think about the world. He invites us to create habits of putting ourselves in the way of things we don’t understand and making ourselves available to be encountered. By expanding our imagination, we give our souls space to carefully consider the stories we carry in our bones and the ways that those stories frame our culture.
Resources:
Follow James K.A. Smith on the web:
Check out James K.A. Smith’s books here:
https://jameskasmith.com/books/
Read James K.A. Smith’s article Healing the Imagination: Art Lessons from James Baldwin
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Full Transcript:
Chris McAlilly 0:00
I'm Chris McAlilly.
Eddie Rester 0:02
I'm Eddie Rester, and welcome to The Weight.
Chris McAlilly 0:04
Today we're starting a new conversation on the podcast about culture and art. One of the things I think that Christians often think about is what to do. We talk a lot about ethics or what ought to be done. And that informs sometimes the political conversations that we've had or what to do about topics like racism. We've had those conversations on the podcast. This is a conversation that kind of precedes that. It's about our imagination. It's about the things that inform how we imagine the world that we're in, and the feel we have in the world.
Eddie Rester 0:39
And the possibilities for the world around us. I really enjoyed his take on the significant healing power that the arts have. And a lot of times people, when you hear "the arts," you think of, you know, plays or going to a museum to look at really old pictures, but he really throws the doors open wide on what that can mean for us how we encounter art.
Chris McAlilly 1:04
Yeah, this is a conversation with James K.A. Smith.
Eddie Rester 1:08
I guess we should say that somewhere along the way.
Chris McAlilly 1:10
Yeah. Jamie Smith is, he is a philosopher by training, working at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. And he's been the kind of thinker for the church through the years that has engaged questions of culture and cultural criticism and he's kind of done this long journey that's kind of brought him back around to the importance of the arts. He's also the editor in chief at the journal called "Image Journal," which has had a long history of putting faith and art in conversation. And we do a deep dive today.
Eddie Rester 1:49
Really, one of the most enjoyable conversations, other than conversations with you and Cody, that I've had in a long time.
Chris McAlilly 1:57
Yeah, I think that if you are concerned about the way in which we see one another... And are in some ways, I think our inability to see one another and to build relationships with people who are different than us or whatever. This is a conversation that I think will be interesting to you. If you've wondered, you know, why is it that Christians have not, they don't talk as much about beauty as they do goodness or truth? I think this is a conversation for you. If you've wandered around European cathedrals in the past or stumbled across Christian art in a museum. You know, I think that Jamie really kind of brings it home for us today.
Eddie Rester 2:39
So we hope you enjoy the podcast. Like, share, leave us a review. Let us know what you think.
Chris McAlilly 2:45
[INTRO] We started this podcast out of frustration with the tone of American Christianity.
Eddie Rester 2:52
There are some topics too heavy for sermons and sound bites.
Chris McAlilly 2:56
We wanted to create a space with a bit more recognition of the difficulty, nuance, and complexity of cultural issues.
Eddie Rester 3:03
If you've given up on the church, we want to give you a place to encounter a fresh perspective on the wisdom of the Christian tradition, in our conversations about politics, race, sexuality, art, and mental health.
Chris McAlilly 3:15
If you're a Christian seeking a better way to talk about the important issues of the day, with more humility, charity, and intellectual honesty, that grapples with Scripture and the church's tradition in a way that doesn't dismiss people out of hand, you're in the right place.
Eddie Rester 3:31
Welcome to The Weight. [END INTRO]
Chris McAlilly 3:33
We're here today on the podcast with James K.A. Smith. Thanks for being with us today.
James K.A. Smith 3:38
Yeah, my pleasure. Looking forward to the conversation.
Eddie Rester 3:41
Tell us a little bit about what you do. You're Professor of Philosophy at Calvin College, tell us what that work is and kind of what your areas of interest are.
James K.A. Smith 3:53
They're rather unbounded. One of the beautiful things about my life, I would say, is... So yeah, I'm a philosophy professor at Calvin now University, which means almost nothing in my experience. And my focus is on undergraduate teaching. We have a really wonderful, rich heritage of philosophy here at Calvin. But I also do a lot of research. so I have an endowed chair that frees me up to do a lot of writing and reflection and research. I think one of the things I love about teaching at a liberal arts college is, and in the department I am, is my colleagues give me a very long leash and let me sort of roam across the things that about which I'm curious. So my training is actually in French philosophy, but you might not guess that if you read my books. It's sort of hidden in footnotes and things.
James K.A. Smith 4:51
So I guess I'm trained as a philosopher who's interested in thinking critically and creatively about culture. And so both in the mode of cultural criticism, but also in terms of creativity, the arts, aesthetics, and I'm kind of promiscuous in the conversations I'd like to be part of, if that makes sense.
Chris McAlilly 5:18
Yeah, it does, for sure. And you know, one of the words that has hovered around in the background of our podcasts that we haven't really spent a lot of time directly addressing, and I think it's where we want to start today, is just with a question of what is culture? Culture is one of those words that is it usually it gets thrown around a lot as a complicated term. I wonder if you would unpack it, as you think about how you think about what culture is in your work.
James K.A. Smith 5:49
Yeah, I mean, the sort of root way that I have learned to think about it--this comes out of I'm a Protestant in the Dutch Reformed tradition, so I'm an heir of someone like Abraham Kuyper. And in that stream, I've learned to think about culture, I think, within this biblical imagination that associates it primarily with cultivation, with making. So in our reformed tradition, when we look at sort of that cultural mandate, that creaturely call in Genesis 1, we hear that as a call to unfurl and unfold all the latent potential and capacity and yeah, the sort of tacit possibilities that God has folded into creation, but he has deputized, crazily enough, human beings to unpack and unfurl.
James K.A. Smith 6:51
And so in that sense, if you think of culture, primarily along that language of cultivation, making, unfolding, then first of all, a lot of things that people might not immediately think of as culture are. Basically, culture is sort of the human layer of creation. It's everything that we make of things, in that sense. The Art Museum is a space of culture, but so is a family. So is a corporation. All of those are sort of workings of culture.
James K.A. Smith 7:23
The other thing, I guess the other feature of culture that I think it's important to emphasize is that it is inherently institutional. So I think that culture finds its expression in collectives, communities that sort of build institutions that we inhabit. And sometimes these institutions they're built, but they are so taken for granted. And they are so just part of the water we swim in that we don't realize that they're not natural. They didn't fall from the sky. They were they are contingent and historical. They're, they're things that we have made. So I don't know if that's helpful. Maybe that's still too abstract.
Chris McAlilly 8:03
No, it's very, very helpful. I think it's helpful, particularly because it begins to frame culture in conversation with theology or biblical theology, which is to say that culture is for you. And I think in the deep stream of Christian tradition, it's a creational good, rather than a product of a fallen, ruinous world. Would you talk a little bit about that? I mean, the way in which you frame the conversation about culture, not just you, I'm just saying, the way one frames the conversation about culture, either as a good or as a part of the fall, as a part of the ruined broken world really shapes the way you respond, or the way in which Christ or the church is in relationship to culture. Would you speak to that a bit?
James K.A. Smith 8:48
Yeah, absolutely. And it's, I think you're also getting at something, which is when there's a legacy of Christians thinking and talking about culture, that, in the very lingo, almost in the very taxonomy that they offer, culture is always something "out there." So like, for instance, I'm not a fan of this framework we've inherited from Niebuhr about Christ and culture, because I just think it tends to imagine that there's the church and then you're trying to figure out how to get it hooked up to the culture out there, which is the church is its own culture.
James K.A. Smith 9:27
So right, this sense that culture is actually built into the very calling of being human means that the work of cultivation, the work of building things that we share in common is not a regrettable, lamentable thing that we're trying to either avoid or escape. We're not redeemed from culture. So it's actually working out our creaturely calling to affirm that in a deep way, but to then also realize because culture is human making, and because it has collective and institutional and systemic expression, it also is clearly subject to the disorder of the fall, to the brokenness of sin, which is exactly how that we can understand why cultures can be destructive or oppressive or, you know, dehumanizing.
Eddie Rester 10:30
I really liked how you connect culture to cultivation. I'm just sitting here thinking about that means, again, it's not... Culture is not something out there. It's not something beyond. It's something that we interact with. It's something that we are forming or have the power to transform, I think.
Chris McAlilly 10:48
Yeah, I think the other thing about it, when you put it in the frame of cultivation, you know, there's the the agrarian past that's kind of assumed, and that assumes a community. You know, that a group of people is growing large enough to begin to cultivate the crops and everything else. There's a communal dimension, and ultimately, institutional. I wonder for you, and I think I think it's interesting, you bring up a neighbor, neighbors work of the mid 1950s. That's really a conversation about ethics. I think one of the things about your work that I find interesting is that if Christians normally begin the conversation around what should we do or even what should we think, you know, it's not ethics or ideas. You want to push deeper than that, or I guess maybe, prior to that, and think about our habits of perception that really precede thought and action? Where does that come from in your training or in your reading? How did you decide to make that move? Or how did you did you come to that insight?
James K.A. Smith 11:53
Yeah, that's an interesting question. So the theme here is that, in a sense, if we can connect it to this culture conversation, which is helpful, I think, what we make of the world is much more a reflection of an expression of what we want for the world than what we think about the world. So in that sense, our cultural making is governed much more by these habits of longing, desire, and imagination that are kind of pre-intellectual pre-conscious, you could almost say, and I guess what got me thinking along those lines, it's a combination of things.
James K.A. Smith 12:43
I'm trained in a school of thought in philosophy called phenomenology, which is not a household term. But the shorthand of it says, phenomenologists emphasize all the ways that our being able to be in the world is inherited and is sort of inscribed in our consciousness as a background that we never think about or see. So we are all heirs to sort of a background that shapes and kind of, what could you say, focuses our attention in different ways. And I think a lot of what I'm trying to do is to get people to dig down into and start asking themselves questions about what have they inherited in their background.
James K.A. Smith 13:31
The other influence here would be would be sort of virtue ethics, like someone like Alasdair MacIntyre, who I'm sure you guys talk about, which is, again, realizing that another way of saying the same thing is we are all inheritors of some tradition or traditions that have actually launched us into possibilities. But we don't always think critically, or even explicitly about what we've inherited in that regard.
James K.A. Smith 14:00
It's kind of an engineered thing about, it's like the operating system that drives your phone. It's simply there in the background humming. Runing.
James K.A. Smith 14:01
Yes, yes.
Eddie Rester 14:08
Kind of allowing, it allows what you can intake and even put out depending on which operating system that you have. And so...
James K.A. Smith 14:18
I love that, by the way, because then you also remember... And in a sense, we're not, we're on are all on our phone, we're not thinking about the operating system, but we're all dependent on it, and somebody made it.
Eddie Rester 14:30
Mm hmm.
Chris McAlilly 14:31
That's right.
James K.A. Smith 14:31
It didn't fall from heaven. Somebody made it and has an interest in how they made it.
Eddie Rester 14:37
Right. And an interest in how we use it. I mean, that the end goal of that is for us to... Anyway, we can go, I can go way down the tech road here.
James K.A. Smith 14:47
Yeah. Yeah, no, no no. It's a great analogy.
Eddie Rester 14:50
But I think what I'm getting at is that it predisposes us in some way. I think that's what you're talking about. We're predisposed to see the world, to see people, to see possibilities. You wrote a great article for Image magazine, I think.
Chris McAlilly 15:08
In the Image Journal.
Eddie Rester 15:09
Image Journal, "Healing the Imagination: Art Lessons from James Baldwin." And one of the things that you talk about is, "Our society is grappling with a soul sickness, that is ultimately an infection of our imagination." Talk a little bit about that kind of in the context of the conversation we've been having about this predisposition that we all have.
James K.A. Smith 15:34
Yeah, boy, this year, I've been spending so much time with James Baldwin, who I think is one of, if not the great, American writer. And the thing that's remarkable about Baldwin is, he got me to appreciate the extent to which, as soon as I glance at someone, before I've ever even thought about it, or asked myself a question about what I think about them or something like that, in a sense, already, in that glance, I have sort of categorized them. I have imagined them in some story. They fit my world in some way. I've just placed them, before I ever think about it.
James K.A. Smith 16:18
And one of the things I think we're realizing as we confront the realities of systemic racism is yes, on the one hand, we should be talking about those aspects of culture that are about laws and systems. On the other hand, there's still also this this interminable challenge of the fact that we have all... Well, sorry, I'm going to qualify this. White people in the United States have unwittingly been heirs to perceptual habits that we've never interrogated. We've never--and by the way, that we never were instructed in, obviously or didactically, that we kind of drank in with our mother's milk. And now we see the world through and because of that background, so there's a sense... And I think that also partly explains what's happening in terms of polarization in our country.
James K.A. Smith 17:17
So there's, it's what you see, in a glance that really tells you something about your pre-conscious habits of perception, which aren't biological or instinctual. They've been taught. They're learned. They're acquired, and they're acquired by the rhythms of rituals and routines that we've been immersed in.
Chris McAlilly 17:38
Yeah, so just to kind of summarize this and kind of keep pressing the point, I think, you know, so if Christians normally talk about what we do, or even the ideas that we think, what we're interrogating is this question of our habits of perception that precede what we think or what we do, and the word that you use in the piece, and it's not just in this piece, but it kind of runs throughout some of your work over the last decade or so, is the word "imagination." And I think the way that you use that term, and the way that we normally talk about that term, I think are slightly different. I wonder if you could just keep pressing in.
James K.A. Smith 18:16
Yeah.
Chris McAlilly 18:16
What do you mean when you say "imagination?"
James K.A. Smith 18:19
Yeah, that's a fair point. Because I think, let's say that more everyday use is sort of like the fantastical possibility, right? Like, can we, you know, an imaginary... I make things up if I imagine. I have my imaginary friend.
Eddie Rester 18:37
Imaginary Disney.
James K.A. Smith 18:39
Yes, yes. So the Fantasia of imagination. Whereas, yeah, I'm using it, and this again probably reflects my philosophical background in phenomenology. Let's instead think of the imagination like faculty of perception, although maybe that doesn't help. Think of the imagination as more like this pre-conscious, and I would also say, kind of gut level, feel for the world that we all have. So what I mean is that we imagined things before we ever think about them. I don't mean that we make things up. What I mean is, we make sense of the world through images, stories, legends, myths, narratives, characters, and that sphere of the imagination, which doesn't work like logic does. It doesn't go "if A, then B, therefore C," kind of thing. It's more aesthetic. It's exactly why I think our imaginations are formed by the images of arts, for example.
James K.A. Smith 19:53
But also why... Interestingly, Baldwin, in one essay, a remarkable essay called "The Uses of the Blues," so I think music, by the way, would be another way that our imaginations are shaped. But he talks about he says, you know, look, if you're Black person in the United States--he's writing in the 60s, I think--and he says, you know, we see icons, in which we, allegedly are supposed to see ourselves. And it's like Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben, and he says, I don't, know who these characters are, but for white people, they become these icons that actually inform the story that they impose on me, Baldwin says, when they see me. I know, I'm still being a bit amorphous and talking about the imagination, but I'm trying to name this feel for the world that precedes our articulation of it.
Eddie Rester 20:45
You know, one of the Scripture stories that you talk about in this article, I think it helps us as we kind of push into this, is the Good Samaritan, the "Who is my neighbor?" question that Jesus gets asked, and Jesus answers, not with a teaching, but Jesus answers with this grand story that people know of the priest that goes walking by the man who's been mugged, and he sees a thing to avoid. And yet it's the Samaritan whose imagination sees the potential for healing in that moment, not just a crumpled person who is different from him.
Eddie Rester 20:46
And so maybe part of this is understanding that when I look, you know, I'm sitting at a table across from Chris right now. When I look across the table at Chris, my imagination, as you're telling, it, says that I see certain potential for Chris and certain potentials that he doesn't have across the table from me, and that happens, when I walk in the room. I don't have to bring that up or think about it. So how do we begin to reshape some of that? How do we begin to have a conversation that pushes us to challenge some of that operating system that's beneath everything?
Chris McAlilly 22:07
I think one of the places that I'm interested in kind of moving the conversation is just the way in which art is a means. What is art for? And one of the claims that you make in the piece is that perhaps art is a way to heal the imagination. And I think if culture is really about this creational good that we're making something of the world that's beautiful and good and, you know, as we make things in the world, or we make images, that there is this distortion that can sometimes happen or a brokenness, that finds its way and fuses its way into the stories we tell and the images that we see and the monuments that we erect. And part of what I think is interesting is that you're kind of beginning to wonder with Baldwin, if there is a use of art that could be the healing of the imagination. Talk a little bit about that. What possibility or hope do you have for art to heal the imagination?
James K.A. Smith 23:15
Yeah, and and I mean, to build on Eddie's insight in question, I think it's interesting. I mentioned Alasdair MacIntyre before, and one of the most famous lines from his book "After Virtue" that I'm sure lots of people know, he says, at one point, he says, "I can't answer the question what I do, unless I can first answer the question of what story am I a part." So that, in a sense, the very perception of ethical duty and calling is already decided by the story that I carry in my bones. So in the parable of the Good Samaritan, there's some way in which the priest and the Levite are in a way governed by a different story. So it's not just that they do something different, I actually think they see something different. And therefore, the ethical call is experienced differently.
James K.A. Smith 24:18
And what I think Baldwin suggests is that if you are going to repair and restore people sense of calling to one another, people's sense of solidarity with one another, you really can't just sort of announce new rules. You have to transform people's imaginations by putting them in a different story. And that's why I imagined this resonance between story and imagination, art and imagination, image and imagination. And this is where you start wondering, could it be that the arts are more likely to move the needle on our collective perception of one another, for example?
James K.A. Smith 25:11
So I was just thinking again, this week for something I was writing about Alfonso Cuaron's incredible film called "Roma." Do you know it? It came out a few years ago, called "Roma." It is stunning, oh my gosh, it's just one of my favorite movies in the whole world. Set in Mexico, the time is a bit ambiguous to me. But think of it as this stunning black and white meditation on a domestic worker's hidden life in a family, a broken family, in Mexico. And to me it is... The film is much more powerful in generating an understanding and an empathy and a sense of shared human solidarity, then any number of op eds or dissertations, or do you know what I mean?
Eddie Rester 26:19
Facebook posts.
James K.A. Smith 26:19
Yes, Facebook posts. No tweet is going to change the world in this regard. And so this is why I think because the arts sort of pluck the strings of our imagination uniquely, by definition, that I think that's what the arts are. Insofar as we can imagine art that more and more speaks to the human. It's actually why I think what we need is a kind of new humanism, a Christian humanism. I think we are much more likely to transform our habits of perception.
Eddie Rester 26:25
So, and as you talk about that movie, I think about movies I've seen through the years that have significantly changed me in a moment. In high school, one of the youth leaders took us to see Mississippi Burning, and as a child of Mississippi who grew up 45 minutes from those killings, never been told the story and it transformed that moment, that art. So in your mind, obviously filmmaking, the use of video is art. What other transform... How widely would you describe, when you talk art or arts? How wide would you throw that door open?
James K.A. Smith 27:42
Yeah, let many flowers bloom. So this is something I also really have a passion for is just expanding, as much as possible what people hear when they hear the word "art." So I think maybe in many instances, there's still a little bit of a tendency, if you hear the word "art," you immediately think of painting, which is great. I'm all for painting. Love it, but I'm imagining just this plethora of expressions that includes literature, poetry, film, music, dance, sculpture, fiber arts, you know, I mean, there's just... I think one of the beauties of God's creation is that he left so much latent possibility to be unpacked beautifully in this regard. And so, yeah, I would love for people to think of that as expansively as possible. And I'm already mad at myself that I left out important things in that, off the top of my head.
Eddie Rester 28:46
You know, I spent part of my 50th birthday in a museum, the Ringling Museum down in Sarasota, Florida, which is fantastic in that it has all... Mr. Ringling of Ringling Brothers used his money that he made off of clowns and elephants to buy an unbelievable collection of art, and much of it early 15th, 16th century Christian art. So some of that stuff that you see in books, this guy owned. But to walk through that, to see what others have seen through the years, it's one of those things that I feel like, in our very pragmatic world, now we have--other than listening to, you know, whatever Pandora or Spotify tells us to listen to--we're not intentional enough, I don't think, about seeking out art that can transform.
James K.A. Smith 29:46
Oh, man, I just finished the draft for my next editorial, so I won't rush ahead, but I think one of the best disciplines that people can undertake in this regard is to just create habits of putting yourself in the way of things that you don't understand or don't immediately, quote, unquote, get, but to just build it into the rhythms of your life, to put yourself in the way of art. And thinking about that, again, more broadly, but I'll say one sort of committed practice that our family had, from the time that our kids were young, was whatever city we're in, we go to one of the art museums in town, and we try to sort of expand our exposure. And I would say, one of the real--my kids are all in their 20s now, married and things--one of the real delights for us is that now that's a practice that they've carried on on their own.
James K.A. Smith 30:44
And it's, to me, it's mostly about just making yourself available to be encountered by something that you never, ever would have guessed would have got hold of your imagination, right? It's about creating the capacity for that to happen. And one of the reasons why I think art can do this sort of work that we're talking about is that the goal and task of art is not simply to be beautiful. So this is a real sort of Protestant axe I have to grind about the arts, which is I don't think we should collapse art and beauty. I think beauty is a good thing. And I think lots of arts work to embody beauty in a particular way. But I also think that the arts are just an imaginative unveiling, an epiphany of the world in which we find ourselves or of a world that is to come. And in that respect, there could be powerful, powerful, moving art, that also shows us the brokenness and ugliness of the world, too. So that's why it's not all about what's pretty.
Eddie Rester 31:52
Well, as you say that I'm thinking about Jesus's parables, which I would throw in that art category.
James K.A. Smith 31:58
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Eddie Rester 31:59
Storytelling as art. And many of his parables were beautiful, but many of them were disturbing as well, off-putting even, as the people around him listened to them. So art has a function not only of making us feel warm and fuzzy, but probably pushing us as well. Chris is looking at me kind of weird right now.
Chris McAlilly 32:25
No, one of the... There are a couple sentences in the piece that we referenced at the beginning, the "Healing of Imagination" piece that, "I dream of a third grade awakening in which our imagination would be reborn, a sanctification of sight, baptized by stories and images, such that even our first glance is holy. The tents for this revival would be galleries and cinemas. We'll sing from poems and novels. The altar call will invite us to attend plays and contemplate sculpture."
Chris McAlilly 32:53
I think one of the things that I find interesting in that is just the way in which it kind of collapses the museum or the theater and the church. There's a kind of cultural liturgy there where the museum becomes the cathedral. And I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that. In a secular age, the way in which there's a kind of collapsing of the transcendent into some of these cultural forms that we don't think of as being religious, but there is a kind of--they're infused and embedded with a real religious dimension.
James K.A. Smith 33:41
Yeah, I think and there's very important ambiguity about it. So it's certainly true that for some people, artistic devotion is the replacement for religious devotion. It's what Bill Cavanaugh calls "the migration of the holy," and they can't believe in God anymore, but they can devote themselves to art. And you can understand... I guess I understand why art would be a candidate for the replacement in that regard. Insofar as there is something inherently transcending and opening and decentering about good artistic experiences that have the feel of a kind of religious and spiritual longing. And in that sense, I don't think Christians have to be allergic to that because I also then think art is one of the places where we still see cracks in the secular and you realize how much people are still longing for something else.
James K.A. Smith 34:51
The other side of the story, of course, though, is how much of the art that people go to the Met to admire is the fruit of the church. Do you know what I mean? Like, it's how much of still the incredible patronage of the arts by the church over the centuries. And which also continues. I mean, it doesn't have maybe the same cultural cachet that we imagine, but we do have to remember that is still happening in places. And...
Chris McAlilly 35:22
Where have you seen that happening? Because I do think this is one of the things that I've wondered about is, as we think about cultivating a church or community or body of Christ, even locally, that is in a town where, you know, the arts and culture are quite important to the fabric of our community. What does it look like for a local church or even for Christian collectives or whatever? Where have you seen Christians really embracing the arts as a form of, you know, I mean, kind of a counter to to apologetics or some other form of engagement with the world?
James K.A. Smith 36:00
Yeah, I mean, and, you know, you can think of this on multiple levels. I mean, this will sound like a ridiculous answer to your question. But on the one hand, the Vatican is still a huge patron of the arts. And it's really interesting to go back and read, Pope John Paul the Second penned a letter to artists, a kind of encyclical to artists, and it is one of the most inspiring visions for why the world needs the art. Right before he became Pope Benedict 16th, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger said, "The church has to..." what is it? "The church's great witness is embodied in her saints and her artists." So sometimes as a Protestant, I'm a little bit jealous of the rich legacy within Catholicism that does that.
James K.A. Smith 36:49
But on the other hand, it is happening. One of the beautiful things for me that has been true, becoming part of the "Image Journal" as editor and part of that community is you discover there's this rich community of Christians, and Jews and Muslims by the way, but religious folks who aren't, by the way, making subculture arts, right? They're not making religious. They are engaged in the mainstream. And I'm also thinking of a Presbyterian Church I visited in Indianapolis, no in Knoxville, Tennessee, where they bought this building right beside the University of Tennessee campus. And they have all this extra space that they didn't need. And so they actually turned them into artists studios, and rented them for like, a nominal fee of $15 a month, because they knew that A) artists don't have any money. But that this was a common, good investment in the city of Knoxville.
James K.A. Smith 37:49
And so this is, I think it's gonna be the next thing that I become a real evangelist for is why Christian communities, if they actually really care about healing the soul of a nation, could do no better than to invest in the arts. But not so we can go make Thomas Kincade paintings or Kirk Cameron movies or whatever. But so that we have artists who are actually speaking to our neighbors in ways that sort of meet them as human.
Chris McAlilly 38:23
But isn't, as you know, you referenced kind of the soul of the nation idea. I do think that this is just one of those places where I think your work is kind of interesting, because it kind of sits between, I mean, it's a little bit between kind of the Benedict option, Rod Dreher direction, that Christians sometimes go in the culture wars conversation, and the kind of more liberal, we're gonna baptize culture more broadly and really participate in the work of the nation state for its own good. There's a kind of awareness that I think it seems to me that you're trying to draw Christians, and really just, you know, folks more broadly to this awareness that cultural engagements are always need to be engaged both with the fullness of hope, which I think is where we're talking at the moment, but also with awareness of the ways in which our culture making is fraught with the possibility of sin and brokenness and all the rest.
James K.A. Smith 39:29
Yeah, and this is I think the reason I'm sort of pitched between these two is because I'm really an Augustinian. And so what I think that Augustinian vision gets you is, on the one hand, the fundamental affirmation of creaturely goods, but then what you might call the eschatological awareness that we have many miles to go before we sleep and nobody should ever confuse the earthly city with the City of God. So do you know what I mean? So you're pitched between those two things.
James K.A. Smith 39:59
I would say, I think I have to be honest, too, that the past four years has made me realize that just strategically, it seems to me that at this moment, reflective Christians should be leaning into what aspects of our calling build human solidarity rather than contribute to divisiveness. And in that, to me, redemption is the possibility that Jesus makes for us to be finally fully human. And in that regard, there can be so much work that's animated by incarnational convictions that is actually offered to all human beings as an invitation to become human. And it's in that spirit of image, we call it incarnational humanism. And I guess I'm kind of sold out on that project.
James K.A. Smith 40:55
But it's not because I have any particular interest in say, this nation state. Well, let me qualify that. It's not because I have an ultimate interest in this particular nation state. I do have an interest, because I'm called to love my neighbors and care, live in the secular, you know. If that makes sense.
Chris McAlilly 41:17
Yeah, for sure. I wonder, you know, because I know that recently you and your wife became became American citizens. Is that correct?
James K.A. Smith 41:26
Yeah.
Chris McAlilly 41:27
Can you just talk about that journey? Because the movement, I guess, from Canada into America, how that kind of journey towards citizenship has kind of shifted your opinons?
James K.A. Smith 41:40
Yeah. I have a lot... Yeah, it's interesting. I would say the shorthand version of it is, on the one hand, when a Canadian moves to the United States, start studying philosophy and theology, all of a sudden, you realize, whoa, American Christianity is wild. And so, it was understandable, I'll be very honest, I think it was really, really important and crucial that I went through a kind of Stanley Hauerwas phase, which woke me up to the disorder and the complicity and the dynamics of assimilation, but I absolutely needed to see that.
James K.A. Smith 42:20
On the other hand, I think since then, my deepened relationship with Saint Augustin helped me to come around to a place where I realized, okay, but in the meantime, even if this is just penultimate, I still have what I believe is a Christian calling to be engaged in a work of solidarity for the sake of the common good. And so yeah, very explicitly, we became citizens so that we could be invested in the political life of the place in which we feel called and planted, and in which we have flourished, to be honest. And so we're signing up for all the crap. But we do that now, with a sense of camaraderie with those alongside us. So maybe the difference of those who become citizens is we sort of you have to face chosen. There was definitely a place where I wouldn't have become a citizen. But that would have been from a certain illusion of purity, I think. You know, I think the most important lesson I've learned from this nobody's pure man.
Chris McAlilly 43:28
Yeah, so
James K.A. Smith 43:28
There's no purity.
Chris McAlilly 43:29
We, you know, I want to come back to this. You said you're sold out on on the image eternal work. And I wonder if maybe we could just come back to that at the end, because I think there's this larger set of commitments that we've talked about through the season, about what it means for Christians to be engaged in the political life of the communities they're involved. But I think what's fascinating about you is that you've really doubled down on art as a way of not just engaging in the politics of the day, or even, you know, shaping the ideas, but our perceptions or our imagination, the healing of our imagination to... Maybe just if folks don't know about "Image Journal," maybe we could end there with you. What is it about that project that's energizing right now? And why is it that you're so committed to it?
James K.A. Smith 44:17
Now, you discern exactly the trajectory I've experienced where I think there was a season where I thought the way to contribute and be a part of the solution, rather than part of the problem was actually to do political theology, write op eds and go work for a think tank in DC. I realized, maybe because I think the problem is so much deeper than politics. Politics is not going to save our politics. And so in that sense,
Eddie Rester 44:45
Say that one more time. I want to make sure people actually heard that. Say that one more time.
James K.A. Smith 44:48
It's important. Politics will not save our politics. Now, that is not a recipe to retreat into some sort of a political haughtiness, right. I don't think anybody gets to be apolitical either. But I guess I sense that I really do think it is a sort of sickness of the imagination that we are facing. And by the way, I think the church is facing this. And so insofar as I'm trying to be a scholar and writer who's serving this wider community, I feel like the best investment that could be healing is to try to contribute to the renewal of the arts.
James K.A. Smith 44:50
And that's kind of what "Image" has been about for 30, over 30 years. So, "Image Journal" is this gorgeous quarterly. And it's a whole network of events and programs. But really, what "Image Journal" is about is bringing people into this intersection of art, faith, and mystery through poetry, painting, photography, fiction, essays, just a richness and what my sincere hope is that it's just a kind of discipline, and an itinerary by which people keep meeting themselves, meeting God, and meeting others on that level of the imagination. And it's a long term project, right, like building a cathedral. It's a long term project to invest in the arts in this way. And it's been happening and it is happening, but I think it would be beautiful if religious communities and Christian communities poured as much energy into sustaining the arts as we did to try to, you know, win ballot initiatives.
Eddie Rester 46:35
I just appreciate your time so much today. If you're interested in checking out the "Image Journal," you can go to their website, imagejournal.org. You've also recently written a book "On the Road with St. Augustine" and my my favorite book of yours, just I'll advertise this one is "You Are What You love." So, a lot of great opportunities to engage James K.A. Smith, and we just appreciate you taking some time with us today.
James K.A. Smith 47:01
This has been great fun, guys. Appreciate what you're doing.
Eddie Rester 47:05
[OUTRO] Thank you for listening to this episode of The Weight.
Chris McAlilly 47:07
If you like what you heard today, feel free to share the podcast with other people that are in your network. Leave us a review. That's always really helpful. Subscribe and you can follow us on our social media channels.
Eddie Rester 47:19
If you have any suggestions or guests you'd like us to interview or anything you'd like to share with us, you can send us an email at info@theweightpodcast.com. [END OUTRO]