"Christian art is by no means always religious art, that is, art that which deals with religious themes. Consider God the Creator. Is God's creation totally involved with religious subjects? What about the universe? the birds? the trees? the mountains? What about the bird's song? and the sound of the wind in the trees? When God created out of nothing by his spoken word, he did not just create "religious" objects. And in the Bible, as we have seen, God commanded the artist, working within God's own creation, to fashion statues of oxen and lions and carvings of almond blossoms for the tabernacle and the temple.

"We should remember that the Bible contains the Song of Solomon, the love song between a man and a woman, and it contains David's song to Israel's national heroes. Neither subject is religious. But God's creation--the mountains, the trees, the birds and the birds' songs--are also non-religious art. Think about that. If God made the birds, they are worth painting. If God made the sky, the sky is worth painting. If God made the ocean, indeed it's worth writing poetry about. It is worth man's while to create works upon the basis of the great works God has already created.

"This whole notion is rooted in the realization is not just involved with "salvation" but with the total man in the total world. ... We must be thankful for salvation, but the Christian message is more than that. Man has a value because he is made in the image of God and thus man as man is an important subject for Christian art. Man as man--with his emotions, his feelings, his body, his life--this is an important subject matter for poetry and novels. I'm not talking here about man's lostness but about his mannishness. In God's world the individual counts. Therefore, Christian art should deal with the individual."


Francis Schaeffer, Art and the Bible