No Longer at the Margins of Theological Education
by Deborah Sokolove
Deborah Sokolove is the director of the Henry Luce III Center for the Arts and Religion at Wesley Theological Seminary, where she is also professor of art and worship. She received her B.A. and M.F.A. from California State University at Los Angeles; the M.T.S. from Wesley; and the Ph.D. in Liturgical Studies from Drew University. Before coming to Wesley as artist-in-residence in 1994, she taught art, design, and computer animation at the university level. Her book,Sanctifying Art: Inviting Conversation Between Artists, Theologians, and the Church was published in 2013.
Thirty-four years ago, when the Center for the Arts and Religion was no more than a single, two-credit course with a windowless, basement classroom converted for use as a studio space, the essential place of the arts in theological education was a radical notion. Today, the integration of the arts into the entire fabric of everyday life at Wesley Theological Seminary is so taken for granted that it is hard to imagine things any other way. Every year, increasing numbers of students tell us that they came here because they wanted to study theology at a place where the arts are understood as integral to learning and ministry; where studies in scripture, ethics, church history, or pastoral care might be approached through music, dance, drama, poetry, or painting in addition to text; where halls, offices, and classrooms feel alive even when nobody is there because of the works of art that cover the walls; and where courses combine training in technical skills in specific arts disciplines alongside theological reflection.
This integration of the arts into theological education does not happen by accident. Rather, it is the result of an ongoing commitment on the part of seminary faculty and administration to recognizing the arts as an equal conversation partner with more traditional fields of theological study. At Wesley, all of our M.Div. students are required to take at least two credits in the academic division called “religion and the arts.” Religion and the arts courses have the same standing as those designated “biblical interpretation” or “systematic theology.” Classes are frequently team taught by members of the religion and the arts faculty in partnership with professors of preaching, pastoral care, or church history. While some religion and the arts courses are offered during the summer or during January term, the majority are scheduled during the regular academic year, as a witness to the seriousness with which the arts are taken as a medium of theological discourse.
The presence of the arts is not confined to the classroom, but pervades every aspect of our life together as a spiritual community. While we have always had some students with an interest in the arts, two years ago there was a large enough group to begin a student arts group. They named themselves ASAH, from the Hebrew word which means “to make.” In their regular meetings, they share their emerging artworks, offering support to one another as they figure out what it means to be a Christian and an artist at this time in history.
The Center for the Arts and Religion, as the public face of the arts at Wesley, organizes and supports more formal performances, exhibitions, poetry readings, lectures, concerts, workshops, and other opportunities for participating in and experiencing the arts. Rather than list every event over the past year or so, perhaps the best way to share the breadth and depth of our arts activities outside the classroom is to describe three quite different offerings: one in the performing arts, another in the gallery, and a third that exists on the border between art and worship, to provide a sense of what our community is experiencing through the arts at Wesley.
For the past couple of years, we have hosted a Saint Valentine’s Day performing arts festival that we call “Heart the Arts.” Last February, twenty-three individuals and groups sang, danced, read poetry, played instruments, and told stories from the Bible and from their own lives. This was no mere “talent show.” This was an evening of professional-level performances by members of the student body, faculty, and staff whose devotion to craft was evident. As faculty member Tracy Radosevic told the story of Ezekiel’s vision of the dry bones with breathless pauses, looks of astonishment, and gestures that show what words cannot, scripture came to life. When student Ginger Medley sat on the chancel floor to deliver her “Monologue from the Perspective of the Jordan River,” the entire audience fell into silent expectation, wondering what she would say or do. Soon, the deep rhythms of her voice became as mesmerizing as a rolling river, lulling us with her story, only to startle us awake with a thunderous shout near the end. When program administrator Josie Hoover stepped out to dance “Deep Blood Red,” the grace and power of her movement invited us all to stretch out towards the divine, even as we remained riveted to our seats. And when the evening concluded with systematic theologian Kendall Soulen’s rousing banjo rendition of “Mississippi Sawyer,” everyone jumped to their feet with applause.
Like live performance, the visual and plastic arts are best experienced in person, with all the immediacy of a face-to-face encounter. However, they do have the advantage of remaining more-or-less in place for an extended period of time, so that visitors to an exhibition can visit them repeatedly, experiencing them in different moods or times of day. This relative permanence makes them a little easier to describe as well as to reproduce. For example, the exhibition that graced the Dadian Gallery in the fall of this academic year was called Our Lady of Perpetual Exhaustion. It takes its name from a mixed-media piece with the same title by Cynthia Farrell Johnson. When Johnson gave it to us at the end of her year as artist-in-residence, all I could do was laugh. Here was a woman with downcast eyes, a serene expression, and her hands in a position of prayer, but her hair was standing on end while all around her little girls played and cried, pages ran out of the copier uncontrollably, and one man stood expectantly behind her with a wry, amused smile while another proffered flowers with worried, apologetic eyes. Meanwhile, offerings of fresh fruit and canned goods labeled “faith,” “hope,” and “love” are piled up on the table in front of her, along with boxes that might contain cake or chocolate or some other sweet surprise, but are labeled “patience.” Who in our busy, multi-faceted, multi-tasking society has not laid an offering or asked for a blessing at the shrine of Our Lady of Perpetual Exhaustion?
Deborah Sokolove is the director of the Henry Luce III Center for the Arts and Religion at Wesley Theological Seminary, where she is also professor of art and worship. She received her B.A. and M.F.A. from California State University at Los Angeles; the M.T.S. from Wesley; and the Ph.D. in Liturgical Studies from Drew University. Before coming to Wesley as artist-in-residence in 1994, she taught art, design, and computer animation at the university level. Her book,Sanctifying Art: Inviting Conversation Between Artists, Theologians, and the Church was published in 2013.
Thirty-four years ago, when the Center for the Arts and Religion was no more than a single, two-credit course with a windowless, basement classroom converted for use as a studio space, the essential place of the arts in theological education was a radical notion. Today, the integration of the arts into the entire fabric of everyday life at Wesley Theological Seminary is so taken for granted that it is hard to imagine things any other way. Every year, increasing numbers of students tell us that they came here because they wanted to study theology at a place where the arts are understood as integral to learning and ministry; where studies in scripture, ethics, church history, or pastoral care might be approached through music, dance, drama, poetry, or painting in addition to text; where halls, offices, and classrooms feel alive even when nobody is there because of the works of art that cover the walls; and where courses combine training in technical skills in specific arts disciplines alongside theological reflection.
This integration of the arts into theological education does not happen by accident. Rather, it is the result of an ongoing commitment on the part of seminary faculty and administration to recognizing the arts as an equal conversation partner with more traditional fields of theological study. At Wesley, all of our M.Div. students are required to take at least two credits in the academic division called “religion and the arts.” Religion and the arts courses have the same standing as those designated “biblical interpretation” or “systematic theology.” Classes are frequently team taught by members of the religion and the arts faculty in partnership with professors of preaching, pastoral care, or church history. While some religion and the arts courses are offered during the summer or during January term, the majority are scheduled during the regular academic year, as a witness to the seriousness with which the arts are taken as a medium of theological discourse.
The presence of the arts is not confined to the classroom, but pervades every aspect of our life together as a spiritual community. While we have always had some students with an interest in the arts, two years ago there was a large enough group to begin a student arts group. They named themselves ASAH, from the Hebrew word which means “to make.” In their regular meetings, they share their emerging artworks, offering support to one another as they figure out what it means to be a Christian and an artist at this time in history.
The Center for the Arts and Religion, as the public face of the arts at Wesley, organizes and supports more formal performances, exhibitions, poetry readings, lectures, concerts, workshops, and other opportunities for participating in and experiencing the arts. Rather than list every event over the past year or so, perhaps the best way to share the breadth and depth of our arts activities outside the classroom is to describe three quite different offerings: one in the performing arts, another in the gallery, and a third that exists on the border between art and worship, to provide a sense of what our community is experiencing through the arts at Wesley.
For the past couple of years, we have hosted a Saint Valentine’s Day performing arts festival that we call “Heart the Arts.” Last February, twenty-three individuals and groups sang, danced, read poetry, played instruments, and told stories from the Bible and from their own lives. This was no mere “talent show.” This was an evening of professional-level performances by members of the student body, faculty, and staff whose devotion to craft was evident. As faculty member Tracy Radosevic told the story of Ezekiel’s vision of the dry bones with breathless pauses, looks of astonishment, and gestures that show what words cannot, scripture came to life. When student Ginger Medley sat on the chancel floor to deliver her “Monologue from the Perspective of the Jordan River,” the entire audience fell into silent expectation, wondering what she would say or do. Soon, the deep rhythms of her voice became as mesmerizing as a rolling river, lulling us with her story, only to startle us awake with a thunderous shout near the end. When program administrator Josie Hoover stepped out to dance “Deep Blood Red,” the grace and power of her movement invited us all to stretch out towards the divine, even as we remained riveted to our seats. And when the evening concluded with systematic theologian Kendall Soulen’s rousing banjo rendition of “Mississippi Sawyer,” everyone jumped to their feet with applause.
Like live performance, the visual and plastic arts are best experienced in person, with all the immediacy of a face-to-face encounter. However, they do have the advantage of remaining more-or-less in place for an extended period of time, so that visitors to an exhibition can visit them repeatedly, experiencing them in different moods or times of day. This relative permanence makes them a little easier to describe as well as to reproduce. For example, the exhibition that graced the Dadian Gallery in the fall of this academic year was called Our Lady of Perpetual Exhaustion. It takes its name from a mixed-media piece with the same title by Cynthia Farrell Johnson. When Johnson gave it to us at the end of her year as artist-in-residence, all I could do was laugh. Here was a woman with downcast eyes, a serene expression, and her hands in a position of prayer, but her hair was standing on end while all around her little girls played and cried, pages ran out of the copier uncontrollably, and one man stood expectantly behind her with a wry, amused smile while another proffered flowers with worried, apologetic eyes. Meanwhile, offerings of fresh fruit and canned goods labeled “faith,” “hope,” and “love” are piled up on the table in front of her, along with boxes that might contain cake or chocolate or some other sweet surprise, but are labeled “patience.” Who in our busy, multi-faceted, multi-tasking society has not laid an offering or asked for a blessing at the shrine of Our Lady of Perpetual Exhaustion?
Cynthia Farrell Johnson
Our Lady of Perpetual Exhaustion, 2012
mixed media
Photo by Archival Arts, Inc.
Used with permission
For Cynthia, however, just one artwork was not enough. With her enthusiastic, persuasive energy, she successfully proposed that we embark on a collaborative effort with the Watergate Gallery, a commercial gallery in the notorious Watergate complex on the banks of the Potomac River. Owner and curator Dale Johnson agreed, so for several weeks in the fall of 2013, fifty artists’ interpretations of the patron of all who work too hard and rest too little were on display simultaneously in the Dadian and Watergate Galleries.
Among this group of strange and wonderful embodiments of our collective fatigue, perhaps the loveliest, and certainly the most enigmatic, is Helen Zughaib’s Veil of Dreams. In 2005, the Dadian Gallery exhibited Helen’s poignant, precise, and vibrant paintings exploring her father’s stories. As the curator of that show, I wrote:
Among this group of strange and wonderful embodiments of our collective fatigue, perhaps the loveliest, and certainly the most enigmatic, is Helen Zughaib’s Veil of Dreams. In 2005, the Dadian Gallery exhibited Helen’s poignant, precise, and vibrant paintings exploring her father’s stories. As the curator of that show, I wrote:
Helen Zughaib’s complex, jewel-like, gouache-on-board paintings, selected from her series, Stories My Father Told Me, reveal a world of memories and dreams in which horses and cattle graze near old men telling stories, maidens bear water jugs on their heads, and children carry candles as tall as they are in the Palm Sunday procession. The traditions and customs of this world, that of Orthodox Christian Arabs, are unfamiliar to most Americans, but are the stuff of Zughaib’s own childhood memories as well as her father’s tales. The flattened perspective and dense patterning of these narrative images remind the viewer of Persian miniatures or magic carpets, evoking a sense of loss that colors the bright, joyful sweetness with sorrow.
Veil of Dreams, like these earlier works, is painted in gouache on board, but is much more restrained. Here, the bright eyes and forehead of a woman peek out through a thin scrim, the rest of her body entirely hidden beneath a veil of pink, white, and purple dots. On closer inspection, the veil reveals itself as the flowering branches of a single tree which glows against the flat, black background, and the woman recedes like a mirage or a dream. When I look at it, I think of the phrase “Arab Spring,” and all the hopes that sprang up as people all over the Middle East began to protest against tyrants and oppressors, and how many of their dreams have now turned into nightmares.
Helen Zughaib
Veil of Dreams
2013, gouache on board
Photo by Old Town Editions, Used with permission
Several years ago, artist-in-residence Lauren Raine came to us from Arizona, where the Day of the Dead is a much-loved celebration of the ongoing connections between those who are alive and those who have gone before. As the twin solemnities of All Saints and All Souls approached, Lauren suggested that we remember the saints of the Church Universal and of our own, Wesley community, by building an ofrenda in the narthex outside Oxnam Chapel.
This invitation to remember the dead proved popular, and has now become an anticipated opportunity for people to place photographs and objects in memory of loved ones. Last fall, as we covered an ordinary folding table with black and purple vestments; stacked open-fronted boxes to serve as niches for photographs and mementos; arranged paper flowers, electric candles, feathers, and calaveras (skeletons); and set out offerings of bread and salt, we remembered doing the same thing in previous years at the same time. Most of the objects we had gathered were the same as the ones we used before, but some were missing and others were newly offered.
Building the ofrenda is both art-making and ritual activity, responding to the changes in ourselves, in the materials, and in the community, with decisions that are both aesthetic and charged with meaning. As artists, our eyes are trained to look for balance, harmony, that elusive rightness that says a work is finished. As people of faith, creating a space for communal ritual, our hearts are trained to leave open spaces that others will fill in, to trust that the changes that others will make to our own effort will make it fuller, richer, more meaningful. This year’s ofrenda will be different from last year’s, and from the one that might appear next year in the same space. Each year it is new, yet somehow the same: a temporary, collaborative artwork that marks a particular moment in time; a ritual space for remembering those who have died in the last year or two; and an offering into the life of the ongoing yet always changing community that is Wesley Theological Seminary.
When he was Dean, Bruce Birch was often heard to say that his goal was to make the arts as ubiquitous in theological education as the Bible. What he meant by this was that, just as references to scripture are not restricted to courses in biblical interpretation, but pervade every area of theological study, so, too, should the arts be a common language spoken by everyone at the seminary, rather than an obscure dialect spoken only by specialists. We are not quite there yet, but we are well on our way.
This invitation to remember the dead proved popular, and has now become an anticipated opportunity for people to place photographs and objects in memory of loved ones. Last fall, as we covered an ordinary folding table with black and purple vestments; stacked open-fronted boxes to serve as niches for photographs and mementos; arranged paper flowers, electric candles, feathers, and calaveras (skeletons); and set out offerings of bread and salt, we remembered doing the same thing in previous years at the same time. Most of the objects we had gathered were the same as the ones we used before, but some were missing and others were newly offered.
Building the ofrenda is both art-making and ritual activity, responding to the changes in ourselves, in the materials, and in the community, with decisions that are both aesthetic and charged with meaning. As artists, our eyes are trained to look for balance, harmony, that elusive rightness that says a work is finished. As people of faith, creating a space for communal ritual, our hearts are trained to leave open spaces that others will fill in, to trust that the changes that others will make to our own effort will make it fuller, richer, more meaningful. This year’s ofrenda will be different from last year’s, and from the one that might appear next year in the same space. Each year it is new, yet somehow the same: a temporary, collaborative artwork that marks a particular moment in time; a ritual space for remembering those who have died in the last year or two; and an offering into the life of the ongoing yet always changing community that is Wesley Theological Seminary.
When he was Dean, Bruce Birch was often heard to say that his goal was to make the arts as ubiquitous in theological education as the Bible. What he meant by this was that, just as references to scripture are not restricted to courses in biblical interpretation, but pervade every area of theological study, so, too, should the arts be a common language spoken by everyone at the seminary, rather than an obscure dialect spoken only by specialists. We are not quite there yet, but we are well on our way.
