Bruce Herman: Building in the Ruins

As an artist working at the cusp of the next century, I take for granted a certain breakage and spiritual homelessness in our times. Beyond the obvious wreckage wrought by a century of global conflict, the homelessness I speak of is an acute sense of our dislocation in terms of a shared cultural vision. We have no model of things, no worldview, no sense of what ultimately matters. I find myself working out of an increasing feeling that things have fallen apart—a feeling shared by most of my artist-contemporaries, Christian and non-Christian alike.

Oddly enough, however, I feel elated rather than defeated by this state of affairs. I honestly believe that St. Augustine’s vision of the City of God is what we Christians (especially the artists among us) ought to be looking for—not a revival of Western culture, which has been on the skids for generations. If we identify too closely with any culture we’ll miss the work that the Lord is doing in and through culture.