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The Dilemma of Separating the Art from the Artist Continues, This Time in the Church
It can be a conundrum
The issue of separating art from the artist who created it probably goes back to the first cave paintings; Algoreth’s stick figure rendering of a woolly mammoth trampling his dad may have been cool, but Algoreth was kind of a jackass, so should the wall be painted over or not? The dilemma continues to the present day in all of the arts, as I wrote in a piece about Bill Murray last year.
The question resurfaced for me in the most unlikely of places recently. While watching the FX documentary The Secrets of Hillsong, which chronicles the rise and fall of Hillsong Church NYC celebrity pastor Carl Lentz and global senior pastor Brian Houston, something was said almost as a throwaway line: churches around the world have stopped using Hillsong’s music.
If you’ve not been in a church over the past 30 years or so (at least a non-denominational or Pentecostal one), this might not seem like a big deal. If you have been, then you know how huge it is; Hillsong’s music is inescapable. In the realm of praise and worship music, Hillsong is the Beatles, the Stones, Taylor Swift, and Beyonce all rolled into one. Evangelical churches eliminating Hillsong music from their services would be like me not listening to Springsteen.
