The joys of Having: a Teenager, Faith and A Love of the Arts

Categories: uncategorized

Date: 30 March 2011 12:34:16

I have a typical humanities studying 6th former in the house. Her bedroom is adorned with books on Christian Ethics she has taken off my bookshelves, bunting, (a birthday prezzie last year from another wiblogger), various outfits which suit whether she is having Hepburn or Harry influenced day and the music she plays varies from jazz to easy listening to rock to rap to country. The DVD's she owns are equally eclectic and when completing her part of the census she grudingly admited to being an English speaker and having a UK passport, whilst declaring herself a citizen of the world. Oh and apparently her religion is "Christian Jedi". Her desires at the moment include a ticket for Reading, (because there is apparently something wrong with the world if your mum has seen the Strokes live but you haven't). As I say she is a stereotypical 6th former.

Yet, she is not stereotypical because even though she will put it with the term Jedi she retains the term "Christian" as part of her identity and continues to regularly worship in one place or another, (but please don't ask her for commitment in terms of aligning herself with a particular group). She has maintained and is growing in her faith. She is also learning how to put it into action via service and how to reflect maturely upon it. Yet, in terms of membership or even staying in one congregation long enough to become soley identified within it she is basically what I would call a commitment phobe. However, I am realising on many levels my assessment of my daughter and her faith is actually wrong. She is not a commitment phobe...she is simply someone who doesn't see why she has to make the choice and stick to it, for her the concept of choice is an ongoing rather than one off thing. Her faith takes exactly the same form as her view towards the Census form, music, art and so much else....sort of boho, intellectual, anarchist.

In terms of connecting with people like that what do we do? The system is set up to require commitment to a particular local context. It is not set up for floaters, yet it is what she does and it actually works well for her aslong as she can get the info to make informed decisions about what to slot in and out of. She does commit to different things and different people in different places and is actually quite loyal, (but...and this is the but), she is the person who could so easily slip through the net. She is also, I guess, sort of like alot her generation. For them choice and floating about is natural in a way I don't think it even was 10 years ago.

I want to suggest one way of connecting with these people is through art and the arts. For Third Party art isn't just something to be appreciated it is something you base your knowledge and life on. I don't mean it is a philosophy but rather for her and her generation retro is something which is appreciated in a way that most of us don't. For her history is not a subject, it is what influences "the look" for that day or the music you get on You Tube. It is not the past...it is the inspiration for the now.

Alot of her Christian faith was grown and nurtured via Greenbelt and encountering the eclectic mix of expressions of Christianity and the arts there. Equally You Tube and the "God" songs she sometimes listens to on there influence some of her theological thinking. Her faith has been influenced through the arts and "retro faith" (tradition - both ancient and modern) influences her decisions now. Whilst this can and probably does seem like a very consumerist faith it is one which I can actually see signs of the Spirit working in. She is not constrained and feels free to happily critique a range of traditions and mix and match them into her expressions of worship.

So going back to the arts. Today they got a kicking but as this BBC article about Writers in Prisons, (a project my dad has been involved in working on), shows they have a potential...a huge potential. In the current climate I wonder, as I wondered last year when Strawberry Fair got shut down by the forces that be for the year, whether there is a real role for churches to get involved in community arts. This shouldn't be a way of getting pew fodder, rather, we have public buildings which are ideal to use for show-casing and developing creative art in our communities....art that can really connect with people. If we were to stop worrying so much about what "low culture" might bring into these buildings I wonder whether we could revitalise alot of our churches aswell as helping revitalise some of our communities. Equally, if we were to stop seeing these groups as "users" who book the rooms and people to get engaged with and learn from could we find ideas about how to develop our expressions of faith for the now. What I'm saying in short is if we are to learn from people like third party should we be investing in using our premesis and people to support what might just get lost from our communities if we don't.