NT Wright on Art and Mission

We have lived for too long with the arts as the pretty bit around the edge, with the reality as the non-artistic thing in the middle. But the world is charged with the grandeur of God! Why should we not celebrate and rejoice in that?

Genuine art takes seriously the fact that the world is full of the glory of God, and that it will be full "as the waters cover the sea," and at present (Rom. 8) it is groaning in travail. ...Genuine art responds to that triple awareness...and holds them together as the Psalms do, and asks why and what and where are we. You can do that in music and you can do that in painting, and our generation needs us to do that not simply to decorate the gospel but to announce the gospel.