Christian Art

Elliot recently implied that "Christian" fiction isn't usually very good. I want to take that a little farther.

The tendancy of almost all "Christian" art is to be... sucky. The reason for this is that most art only gets qualified as specially "Christian" if it's not good enough to stand on its own as art. Most writers of "Christian fiction" write bland, absurd or just plain lame books. And "Christian music" is just as bad. If not worse. The horrible truth is that a vast majority Christian musicians are successful in the Christian community because within that community they are big fish in small ponds. The music on "Christian" radio stations tends to be just plain bad. All too often in consists of bands playing "Worship music", which, while it is often extremely valuable as worship, falls short of music. It is the kind of thing that a group of people singing together can make very powerful as a statement of faith, and of emotional closeness to their God, but which a band playing on the radio leaves a little flat.

But there are good Christian musicians. My personal favourite these days is Pedro the Lion, who is not so much a "Christian Musician" as a musician who happens to be a Christian. His faith figures very heavily in his music, simply because it figures heavily in his life. He writes songs about God's unconditional love, about how it feels to let God down, about feeling alienated from God, about being angry with God. He also writes songs about divorce, cheating girlfriends, and why women shave their legs.