Erik Lokkesmoe offers a necessary corrective to many "conservatives" over-reaction to the degradation of the popular arts, and he does so in an easy-to-digest Top Ten List. A few of the items are common sense, others are known to anyone who has read the collected letters of Flannery O'Connor (The Habit of Being) or a collection of her non-fiction prose (Mystery and Manners), but it's an excellent little piece. Excerpts:
Mistake #2: We don't quite understand common grace ”“ the idea that the good, the true, and the beautiful can be found in the most “unlikely” of places (Broadway) and people (liberal artists). Without a strong belief in common grace, we will either get angry at the culture or withdraw from it entirely. . . .
Mistake #5: We champion prescriptive art. In other words, conservatives prefer art that shows the world as it should be, not as it really is. Curing rather than diagnosing. Descriptive art, on the other hand, tells the truth about the human condition, while offering the audience glimpses into a “world that should have been otherwise.”
