People don’t always show disapproval with words. They just make it very clear.
I’ve mentioned before that Protestant evangelical Christians have a problem -- they tend to promote overtly Christian art made for themselves, but not subtly Christian art made for the mainstream. I’ll refer to the artists who make these different kinds of art as “overtly Christian artists” and “subtly Christian artists” for the rest of this article.
One of the biggest ways this disapproval shows itself is actually in a subtle way. It’s not that Protestant evangelicals always criticize subtly Christian artists, although that definitely does happen. There have even been situations where extreme evangelicals outright demonize subtly Christian artists.
More than anything else, though, Protestant evangelicals show their disapproval by ignoring subtly Christian artists. There are subtly Christian artists out there who are successful and respected -- screenwriters like Randall Wallace, musicians like Bono, and painters like Makoto Fujimura. However, Christian media and groups simply don’t talk about them very much.
Even accounting for the fact Christian publications have covered more subtly Christian artists in the last decade -- Christianity Today published excerpts from a book on Bono in 2005, Relevant recently interviewed filmmaker Scott Derrickson -- the general trend has been silence.
It’s rare to hear Protestant evangelicals openly talk about subtly Christian artists. It’s unusual to hear subtly Christian artists get mentioned on Christian radio. It’s embarrassing how hard it is sometimes to find Christian publications which mention subtly Christian artists.
As I’ve discovered in my own life, this silence makes it difficult for subtly Christian artists to feel like they belong in the church. I grew up in evangelical Christian churches, and it was often hard to look at that world and not see any Christian writers I could relate to. As far as I could tell at the time, there weren’t many modern Christian writers who were writing subtly Christian stories -- the few that were, such as Ted Dekker, were writers my family didn’t care for.
I had to live with knowing I wasn’t really approved of in my own sub-culture, which often makes it hard to believe l belong in evangelical circles.
The reason this silence has such a negative effect is simple: people are motivated and inspired to follow certain paths when they find role models they can relate to.
Even people who chose to be trailblazers and forge totally new paths often take inspiration from somebody. Bono, sometimes cited as one of the first people to show someone could be both Christian and a mainstream rock musician, said in a Rolling Stone interview that he was partly inspired by John Lennon, whose secular songs occasionally tapped into spiritual ideas.
This means that when people can’t find other people like them referenced in media or consistently appearing in public forums, it’s hard for those people to believe they belong.
People from racial minorities tend to understand this principle very well, and often call attention to it. Academy-award winning actress Lupita Nyong’o admitted she often felt invisible growing up since she saw very few African-American women in media. “There was very little of myself that I saw on TV, or in the movies that I was watching, or in magazines that were lying around the salons or around the house,” Nyong'o explained.
Washington Post journalist Gene Park wrote an article on how Caucasian actors getting Hollywood roles written for Asian actors can isolate Asian Americans.
Odyssey contributor Julia Camara recently wrote about how even seeing minorities portrayed positively in films can inspire people to dream big and pursue their passions.
Artists -- in fact, human beings in general -- need examples they can relate to or aspire to follow. Too often, the Protestant evangelical community has not provided examples for subtly Christian artists and therefore implied they aren’t acceptable.
This goes a long way toward explaining why the Barna Group discovered in 2013 that many young artists in America are leaving Christianity.