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National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA
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	50th Anniversary Newsroom - Nov. 8-12, 1999 call 216-696-8490

NCC11/11/99				FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

NATIONAL COUNCIL OF CHURCHES STIMULATES INTEREST IN THE ARTS

By J. Martin Bailey	

Nov. 11, 1999, CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Throughout its half century of history, 
the National Council of Churches has helped the Christian community in 
America affirm and express its faith through the arts.
	
In its early, more affluent years there were formal and funded programs 
that pioneered encounters with the arts and with artists.  One celebrated 
the interaction between worship and the arts.  The somewhat controversial 
efforts of Roger Ortmayer and others were both provocative and 
prophetic.  The financial and moral support of persons like J. Irwin 
Miller, and the collaboration of museum directors like Alfred Barr had a 
lasting impact.
	
I recall one intense discussion that involved Roger and some of the staff 
of what was then the NCC Division of Christian Education.  A special issue 
of the Council's International Journal of Religious Education was to be 
devoted to the visual arts. The hot debate concerned what should appear on 
the cover of the journal.

Some committee members felt that the prime example of religious art was 
Sallman's "Head of Christ." In those days, millions of copies of Sunday 
church school materials were illustrated with stereotypical biblical scenes.

With the prodding of Roger and others, the editors finally placed Van 
Gogh's "Starry Night" on the cover, supporting it by quotes from a Paul 
Tillich essay that defined religious art as more than biblical 
illustration, as that which evoked a vision of God's creative grace.

Some of the same people worked with the Art Institute in Chicago, mounting 
a massive exhibit that drew thousands of visitors during the Second 
Assembly of the World Council of Churches in Evanston in 1954.  That widely 
advertised show proclaimed an emerging theological interest in the arts 
that also was expressed in seminary classrooms across the land.

Music, poetry, dance, theatre and architecture were other art forms that 
the Council reclaimed for the church in the fifties and sixties.  I say 
reclaimed because during the depression and war years, the arts suffered 
their own dust-bowl experience in Middle America and people of faith seemed 
to be satisfied with a very bland diet.

A prominent program in the Council at that time, stimulated by leaders like 
Truman Douglass and Scott Risdon, was in the field of church 
architecture.  Hundreds of new church buildings were being constructed in 
the immediate post war years, and NCC urged a choice between mail order 
pre-fab houses of worship and striking contemporary expressions of faith in 
concrete and glass.

I once complained that there were so few exciting new buildings among 
mainline Protestants; a colleague suggested that creedal churches, which 
were clear about their beliefs, could afford to take greater risks with 
their buildings.

Photography, too, became a significant art and communication 
form-especially during the struggle for civil rights.  The brilliant and 
courageous Ken Thompson, working with the Commission on Racial Justice, 
documented the church's involvement in that movement with black and white 
photographs of museum quality.  They were published far and wide as were 
the images captured on film by John Taylor, an American who worked with the 
World Council of Churches in Geneva.

Here in Cleveland, on the 50th anniversary of the Council, it is a joy to 
see and hear and participate in a fresh encounter of "arts, artists and 
creative ecumenism."  There may no longer be departments in the Council or 
in most communions that focus specifically on the arts.  But happily it is 
not uncommon for local congregations to commission music and sculpture and 
even to provide studio space for "artists in residence."   Some of these 
contemporary programs in seminaries and local churches clearly have their 
roots in the pioneering work that was done in the early years of the 
National Council of Churches.
-end-

[The Rev. J. Martin Bailey began his work with the Council on the staff of 
the International Journal of Religious Education.  When he retired in 1994 
he was Associate General Secretary for Education, Communication and 
Discipleship.]