Categories: uncategorized
Date: 22 May 2004 22:33:43
Had a weekend conference here in Glasgow on 'Being Religious'. Today we had Elaine Graham (Theologian (sort of...) Bioethics and posthumanism), Michael Northcott (Theologian - The morality of Making: Art, Technology and the ethics of Human Cloning), Michael Crumey (Novelist - Virtual Literature), Francis McKee (Mycologist, artist, lecturer, general experimenter and fantastic verbal rambler - Virtuality and Spirituality), and Will Duke (visual artist/photographer, reader of Russell Hoban, etc, etc - Technology, the Self and Art). And it was fantastic!!!! Putting some artists and theologians/thinkers on ethics, in the same room together and seeing what happens ALWAYS seems to produce much more great conversation than theologians 'talking' with other theologians. I say 'talking' but it often ends up as 2 (or more) entrenched views shouting at each other across an unbridgable divide. Why does it take a visual artist and an expert on mushrooms (as halucinogenics) to stimulate real theological engagement? Is it because so often theology provides a way for us precisely NOT to engage with the world? I kinda think so. But stick a couple of spiritually aware but, probably, in many ways anti-religious Dionysian artists in the room and the theologian can't take shelter in their normal hiding places. What difference would it make to the church if every parish employed a non-Christian but spiritually engaged artist? I think the church would be a very different place. Maybe I'd even go now and then.