Towards a new Renaissance?

Schloss Mittersill is an imposing castle with a commanding view and a colourful history. Witches were tried there. Protestants starved to death in its dungeons. Queen Juliana and Prince Bernard honeymooned there. Nazi officers-including Heinrich Himmler-dined under its great wooden beams. And the post-war global jet set enjoyed shooting parties from its terraces overlooking the Austrian alpine valley, south of Salzburg. 

This last group included Clark Gable, Gina Lollobrigida (she left a pair of shoes there), the Shah of Iran, Henry Ford and King Farouk (who couldn't pay his bills).

More recently, the Schloss has been a retreat centre for Christian students under the leadership of Dr Andrzej Turkanik, aspiring to promote a Christian Renaissance.

Andrzej ('Andray' is close enough) admits the term 'Christian Renaissance' may sound contradictory. For many the Renaissance refers to a period that gave birth to a humanism which undermined Christendom in Europe.

"We long to see Christians 'living out' faith in all walks of life and across all strata of society," he says. Christians should be 'renaissance people', willing to ask bold questions, believes Andrzej. Believers need to network with others, artists with artists, bankers with bankers. They need to be equipped theologically and culturally to engage with Europe's cultures and to become an avantgarde influencing the marketplace of ideas.

Summit

The Schloss was an appropriate venue therefore for an artists summit earlier this month, convened in partnership by Arts-Plus, Creative Arts Europe, Crescendo, Stoneworks and Schloss Mittersill. 

It was also an opportunity for me to reconnect with the main speaker and instigator of the event, Colin Harbinson, former dean of the College of the Arts of the University of the Nations. Colin is a Lausanne Senior Associate for the Arts. He plays a frontrunning role in gathering Christian artists in various parts of the world, to encourage them to engage in the restoration of culture.

As the Soviet Union was crumbling early in 1991, I joined Colin in St Petersburg where he had been invited by the city council to hold a large arts festival. The city gave him the former communist party headquarters, the Red Palace, to use as the festival office. Those were heady days as we were chaffeur-driven through the St Petersburg's streets in an official car from venue to venue!  

Two years later, I met up with Colin again in Sofia, Bulgaria, during a similar event; and in 1999 I met Colin in Korea fresh from organising the largest cultural exchange in China ever, in Kunming.

Colin's message to the artists gathered at the Schloss reinforced Andrzej's vision for a renaissance. First, artists need personal and spiritual restoration, in preparation for effecting cultural restoration. The church also needed to be encouraged to embrace the gifts of the artist, he stressed.

Artists need to be encouraged to exchange mediocrity with excellence, irrelevance with contextualised creativity, compromise for faithfulness, lack of accountability for mentor relationships, and isolation for partnerships.

 Forgiveness

In a morning devotion, Diane Collard encouraged the artists to respond to rejection and misunderstanding within the church by forgiveness. She described her own journey from despair to hope after the murder of her son in 1992. Her recovery from hurt, anger and resentment began, she explained, standing in front of a painting in the Museum of Modern Art. Despite an upbringing without  any appreciation of art, somehow she felt deeply touched and healed by God through the colours and design. From then on, she began to encourage artists in their work. 

She wrote a doctorate on the role of artists in the German church, discovering that three out of four had either left or were considering leaving the church out of discouragement. At the HOPE•21 congress in Budapest in 2002, she had encouraged the artists present never to give up, and told a little of her story. A few years later, she heard an artist share at a conference that the only reason she had persevered with art was that at HOPE•21 someone had urged the artists to continue on against all discouragement. Diane later identified herself to the artist,     who said she had passed on that encouragement to hundreds of other artists. 

'So start your journey of forgiveness today,' Diane urged  the artists present at the Schloss. 

It could lead to a new Renaissance.

Till next week,

©YWAM Europe - Weekly Words are the personal reflections of Jeff Fountain and do not necessarily express the official position of YWAM.
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