Holy Smoke: can art lead non-believers to Christianity?

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4.4 • 785 Ratings

🗓️ 28 July 2020

⏱️ 38 minutes

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Summary

The new Holy Smoke episode is a significant departure from our usual formula. It’s a discussion about the profound and neglected meaning of Christian art. Professor Ben Quash of King’s College London is interviewed not by me but by Carmel Thompson – my sister, who has appeared twice on Holy Smoke to talk about her battle with ovarian cancer but is determined not to be defined by her illness.

This is a truly engrossing episode inspired by Carmel’s conviction that art depicting Christian subjects – and that includes most of the great art produced in the West up to and including the Renaissance – is too often examined from a purely aesthetic point of view.

Obviously you’ll get far more out of this discussion if you can see what Carmel and Ben are talking about with such infectious enthusiasm, so here are the artworks chosen by Ben.

Holy Smoke is hosted by Damian Thompson, who dissects the most important and controversial topics in world religion, with a range of high profile guests. Click here to find previous episodes.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The Spectator's podcast now have a newsletter.
0:03.3	Sign up for free at spectator.com.uk forward slash podcast dash highlights.
0:09.3	To get the Spectator's podcast highlights in your inbox every Monday.
0:17.8	Welcome to Holy Smoke, the Spectator's Religion podcast.
0:21.6	I'm Carmel Thompson.
0:23.6	Now you may have heard me on two previous podcasts, I was talking to my brother Damien about my cancer journey,
0:35.6	from the time of my diagnosis to living with it in
0:39.1	lockdown. But although I'm doing really well, I'm pleased to say, I don't want that to be seen as my
0:45.3	only reason for being. And I've been given this rather lovely guest opportunity to talk about
0:51.2	something else other than cancer, which is also a bit of a change from
0:55.3	one of Damien's topics. That is art. I'm rarely happier than when I'm getting my cultural fix
1:02.4	of going around exhibitions, particularly paintings. But Damien would be the first to admit he's very
1:07.6	lazy on that front and I think he's missing out because art can be a very
1:13.4	powerful soul-centred experience if you like and a source of consolation in times of stress and
1:19.9	anxiety and difficulties like illness something really scary like that because being face to face
1:26.3	with the piece of art i, is much more than an aesthetic
1:29.6	encounter. However appealing that can be, I mean, whether it's the capture of expressions, the
1:35.7	gorgeousness of skin or fabric, the richness of a landscape, the depiction of light or form or
1:42.1	texture, whether it's something that speaks of great talent or of the
1:46.4	diversity of human experience. I was reading an article in psychology today that said,
1:53.0	Art asks something of the viewer in terms of emotional and spiritual sensitivity. It said that art can
2:00.0	release something that's imprisoned if we pay excessive
	...

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