‘Revival of Christian Art’: Movie Director’s Bold Prediction By Tré Goins-Phillips for Faith Wire
As faith-based entertainment continues working its way into the entertainment world, one film director is predicting Christian art could experience a renaissance in the coming years.
Matt Chastain, the screenwriter, director, and star of the Christian movie “Small Group,” coming out Oct. 6 on digital via Amazon, iTunes, GooglePlay as well as on Blu-ray and DVD, told Faithwire this week he believes the next decade could be see the rebirth of great Christian art.
“I think that the next decade or two has the potential to set up as a revival of Christian art,” he said. “Not to say that Christian art has been bad or anything — there’s tons of great Christian art out there — [but] I don’t think it’s at the forefront in a lot of cases.”
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Much of Chastain’s prediction is predicated on his belief that the Christian faith will be pushed further and further out of mainstream culture.
As faith becomes increasingly defined as “counter culture,” believers will have to resort to relying more heavily on subtext, a handicap Chastain said could produce higher caliber art.
“Counter culture tends to make better art,” the filmmaker explained. “Why? Because we kind of have to hide our art in subtext, in stories. And people are more attracted to something when they’re digging underneath the story to find what’s really going on.”
“That’s why in the ’60s, the counter culture, the sexual revolution, the drug revolution, that was very, very interesting to young people, because it was counter culture,” he continued. “Because Peter, Paul, and Mary weren’t singing up front and preaching about marijuana use. No, they were hiding in a cute little song called ‘Puff the Magic Dragon.’”
In the future, Chastain hopes Christians learn to “value subtext and story a lot more.”
