Religious art?

Religious art used to be inspiring, uplifting, challenging.

Now... hmm... (see left!?)

Well, "mainstream" religious art or statements aren't all that exciting. Sometimes they're downright scary. Or just deeply, deeply odd.

We get stuff like The Visitation, a Frank Piretti altar-call book made into one long-winded, poor quality altar-call movie. Loads of Hillsong albums which seem to have the collective level of engagement with issues of Christianity and the world as a one-legged cockroach does of mountaineering. The Left Behind series, which is disturbingly bad theology for a start...

It's like we've skipped over thinking and gone straight for "fluff" or "frighten the pants off of 'em and THAT will be sure to make 'em convert and fall on their knees and possibly give us money, too."

Surely there are some Christian artists out there who are going to present us things with some sort of intellectual and visual appeal! Things that are subtle, beautiful, honest, challenging, that allow people to explore their own faith, that doesn't Bible-bash or is the visual/intellectual equivalent of cotton candy...

Somewhere?

I hope so, at least!