Pilgrim Steward

The Covenant College online student news site The Bagpipe Online reports the following.

Art professor Kayb Carpenter Joseph’s exhibit, Lotus Eaters, has overtaken the art gallery in Kresge Library, but only part of the presentation is up for display. The back wall remains totally blank with a placard explaining that the intended work was “not approved to be shown at this time.”

Two full-length nude photographs which Joseph created for one wall of the gallery have been left unused and away from the public eye.

They go on to explain that there was some confusion about the standards for what could be displayed.

While nude art has been shown before on Covenant’s campus, Hall explained that unlike a sculpture or a painting, a photograph requires a fully unclothed model, making it inappropriate for display on campus.

Really? That’s the standard of propriety?

The report does a good job of displaying the poorly founded thinking of most evangelicals in relation to the topic of Christian modesty as it relates to art. It seems that when Christians interact on this subject, no one bothers to ask how various degrees of artistic undress comport with biblical standards of modesty and sexual propriety. Rather, it appears that we simply assume the secular standard of what constitutes propriety in art, and then we may try to incorporate some connection to scriptural “ideals” afterward. Maybe.

That’s just backwards. We ought to start with biblical standards of modesty, and then develop our view of what constitutes a proper representation of the human form in art based on that foundation.

To help reorient our thinking away from the lewdness of the world’s standards of propriety and back toward biblical thinking on modesty, I recommend a small book by Jeff Pollard entitled Christian Modesty and the Public Undressing of America.

[HT: The Aquila Report]