Art, The Church, and John Milton

As a student in the Department of Mass Communication and Mass Media, my studies include a history of media in America.  In fact, I'm taking an entire course in which I focus solely on the history of the media.

Interestingly enough, John Milton is mentioned in the very first chapter of my textbook.  John Milton is a familiar name amongst literature buffs and historians alike.  Before learning about him in this class, my first thought when I heard Milton's name would have been Paradise Lost, hands down.  It would be hard to think of a more epic piece of poetry than Paradise Lost  (I'm sure someone will get smart and prove me wrong, but I stand my ground when I say that it's a spectacular piece of poetry).

What I had not heard of before (I must have slept through that history lecture) was his work, Areopagitica, which is available in its entirety online.  In this work, Milton provides one of the most incredible arguments for freedom of speech and press ever written.  In fact, when America's founding fathers prepared to write our Declaration of Independence from Great Britain, John Milton and John Locke were two of Jefferson's biggest influences.  We owe Milton our gratitude for the inclusion of freedom of speech and press; nevertheless, I digress.

It is important to take into consideration the social and religious context in which this piece was written.  Milton wrote Areopagitica in direct response to the "powers-that-be" who would not let him circulate a pamphlet he had written about divorce.

What is most interesting is that Milton did not approach freedom of expression and freedom of press from a political viewpoint; he approached it from a religious perspective. His entire debate was theological:

As good almost kill a man as kill a good book: who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye.

Milton firmly believed that it was God's will for people to be free to discuss and publish whatever they wished.  This desire for freedom of expression is important because of the fact that Milton was a Protestant Christian.  In his day, Protestants wished to separate themselves from Catholic Christians by being more tolerant of opinions that differed from their own.  In a time when the Catholic Church was banning books left and right, the Protestants of Milton's time wished to support the arts, even if it meant allowing the publication of ideas that opposed their own beliefs.

As I studied this, it struck me as oddly ironic.  When I think of Protestants and Catholics today, it seems these stances have been reversed.  When I think of Christians, and I think of art and culture, I see far more Protestants staging an uprising against the arts than Catholics.  Today, I believe Catholics embrace the arts much more fully than many evangelical protestant churches. Thomas Merton, a Catholic writer, wrote in his book, New Seeds of Contemplation:

Better to be known first as a good artist than as a "Christian" artist, as your good art can lend credibility to your witness, while explicit art done poorly is more likely to disparage your witness.

By rejecting some art, simply because it doesn't completely align with their ideologies and worldviews, are many Christians missing out on opportunities to learn more about God through that art?  After all, we're all created in His image.