Culture Care

January 9, 2017
Painter and speaker Fujimura (Silence and Beauty) invites readers to support the arts as a source of hope in a world starved for beauty. In prose addressed to Christian believers but hospitable to others, he offers an impassioned plea for attentiveness to the arts, encouraging readers to become patrons and producers of art, not mere consumers. Fujimura contends that culture today is utilitarian, reductionist, and consumerist, replete with dehumanizing ugliness. In contrast to this, he says, Christians are responsible for seeking after and supporting beauty, and rather than engaging in “culture wars,” Christians should engage in “culture care” by attending to the capacities that make it possible for art and beauty to flourish: generosity, for example. At his best when interpreting specific works of art and literature to illustrate his claims, Fujimura makes a convincing case for reinterpreting the spiritual value of art. Unfortunately, his argument falls flat when abstract philosophizing divorced from concrete examples takes over, as it too frequently does in this short book.