Before there was Blogging.

Before there was blogging, there was "Speaker's Corner."

In Hyde Park, London, is a corner where Londoners come to preach, where Londoners come to discuss. This place is known as "Speaker's Corner."

Now the Torrey Honors Institute of Biola University is bringing Speaker's Corner to Los Angeles. Come hear thoughtful people who are creating art opine on their subjects, and come prepared to interact throughout their presentation. If you walk away with unanswered questions, you will have no one to blame but yourself. If you hate lectures, you'll love this.

Wednesday, March 16th, at Hope Hall of Biola University, we will inaugurate Speaker's Corner: Seeing Life through Painting, Poetry, and Film. Joe Carter of Evangelical Outpost has recently been blogging about the contemporary artworld. In his latest post on the topic, he writes:

But for Christians to salvage the visual arts we first must recognize the importance of art in creation. We must recognize, as Francis Shaffer contends in “Art and the Bible”, that art is important for those who take the Lordship of Christ seriously:

The arts and the sciences do have a place in the Christian life – they are not peripheral. For a Christian, redeemed by the work of Christ and living within the norms of Scripture and under the leadership of the Holy Spirit, the Lordship of Christ should include an interest in the arts. A Christian should use these arts to the glory of God – not just as tracts, but as things of beauty to the praise of God. An art work can be a doxology in itself.

Can Christians save the visual arts? Can we lift it out of the realm of toilets and theories and help restore its proper place in creation? I think we can. In the next posts, I’ll outline a modest proposal for how we can begin the process.

We would like to help in the process. If Christians are to redeem the artworld, they must try to understand the artworld. Insert Speaker's Corner, a one-night crash course in how three artists in three different artfields have depicted life. But remember--it's a night of discussion, and ultimately our presenters may learn something from you.

More details to follow.