wfn.org | Fine Arts Enrich National Council of Churches Celebration

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National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA
Office of News Services
Email: news@ncccusa.org
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Contact: NCC News, 212-870-2227
	50th Anniversary Newsroom - Nov. 8-12, 1999 call 216-696-8490

NCC11/11/99

FINES ARTS ENRICH NATIONAL COUNCIL OF CHURCHES CELEBRATION

Nov. 10, 1999, CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Though their value cannot often be 
quantified, the arts are the carriers of meaning and value and so are of 
great theological importance to the church, according to leaders of the 
arts program for the National Council of Churches' 50TH anniversary event.

"We ask the church to look to its artists," said John Gingrich, a New York 
City Presbyterian and editor of a new NCC music resource, New Songs for 
Unity in Christ.  "Our artists know what it means to seek perfection and 
perfect expression and therefore can teach us all how to 'practice' faith."

New Songs is a collection of seven new hymns commissioned from member 
churches by the NCC for the 50th anniversary celebration.  Dedicated at the 
event in Cleveland, it contains hymns contributed by the Moravian Church, 
the American Baptist Churches in the USA, the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of 
America, the Swedenborgian Church, the United Church of Christ, the 
Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and the Christian Methodist 
Episcopal Church.

The anniversary arts program is sponsored by the Center for Arts and the 
Church at First Presbyterian Church, New York, and produced by the center's 
director, Dr. Frank Lloyd Dent.

In his introduction to a dramatic reading, Here We Stand, on Nov. 8 at 
Cleveland's Old Stone Church, Dr. Dent said, "Artists remind us that we 
cannot be onlookers at the intersection of materialistic and transcendent 
values.  We are party to a fateful collision between qualitative and 
quantitative values, between reason and emotion, between sense and 
sensibility."

The arts program began Nov. 7, and among its first offerings was "The 
Chicago Jazz Mass," a full jazz liturgy to accompany the celebration of the 
Eucharist.  From a Coltrane-inspired "Sanctus" and "Gloria" to Preservation 
Hall-like arrangements of familiar hymns, the Jazz Mass combined exuberant 
praise of God with only-in-America improvisational musical stylings.

The mass was composed by Lutheran Andrew Tecson in 1985 and was played by 
an interfaith ensemble - Lutherans, Presbyterians and a Jewish piano player 
- that has been playing together for 18 years.  "I wanted to bring jazz 
into worship situations while respecting the worship traditions of the 
church," Mr. Tecson explained.  "Jazz adds colors to the rainbow of 
religious experience and, we hope, opens eyes and hearts to new meaning."

On Nov. 9, the Cleveland Orchestra performed a private concert for 50th 
anniversary guests.  Works by Berlioz, Debussy, Holst, Dvorak and 
contemporary composer Bernard Rands - who was present - illumined the theme 
of the evening, "Inspiration in Music."

Introducing the evening and its purpose, the Hon. Jane L. Campbell - vice 
president of the Cuyahoga County Board of Commissioners and daughter of NCC 
General Secretary the Rev. Dr. Joan Brown Campbell - said cooperation 
between arts and the church is essential to the revitalization of urban 
communities.  "Movement of the soul is what moves the community, and music 
moves the soul," she said.  "That's why music and the church must be 
partners to transform communities."

At a panel discussion following the concert in Cleveland's Allen Theatre, 
Mr. Rands described the spiritual power of music.  "The phenomenon of music 
is universal but at the same moment intensely personal - how it originated, 
God only knows, which, of course, must be the answer."

Panelist Dr. Melva Costen, a professor of sacred music at the 
Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta, responded, "Yes, music 
and religion have in common the task of expressing the inexpressible."

Other events in the 50th anniversary arts program include dramatic, choral 
and percussion performances by young people from the Cleveland area; 
Biblical storytelling; poetry readings, and a number of scheduled 
conversations on the arts and religion.

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