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On December 12, photographers across the nation will be taking pictures of people for free as part of the Help Portrait movement. Help Portrait is an attempt to mobilize the amateur, hobbyist and professional photographers of the world to bring some good to those in need.

The goal of the project is to provide family and personal portraits to people in need. For some, this will be the first and only portrait they ever have taken. Aside from taking the picture, printing it and delivering it, Help Portrait urges the photographers to take time to get to know the people they’re photographing: cook them a meal, talk to them, serve them.

The below video has more information:

So why is this important? After all, there’s a lot of money and time going into this movement that could be spent on other things. And more to the point, why is this important for Christians?

Personally, I feel that as children of God we’re called to celebrate the beauty in Creation. Yes, we live in a world tainted by sin, but art gives us an amazing outlet through which we can explore aspects of this world that still reflect, however dimly, the perfection of Eden.

Portraits in particular are a way to highlight hidden and often-overlooked characteristics of their subject. When a photographer—or any artist for that matter—lovingly crafts an image of a person, that image can show a side of the person you barely knew existed: the beautiful, the cool, the composed, the handsome, the joyful.

For the Christian photographer, showcasing the good and interesting in people also showcases the good and interesting in God. Art gives us a distant but compelling glimpse of God’s original Creation.

Do you know anyone who is involved with Help Portrait? Do you think you might volunteer to help out? How can photography and other art forms point the way to God?

Editor’s note: While Help Portrait is not explicitly Christian, it’s interesting to note that Help Portrait was partially inspired by Advent Conspiracy.

Did anybody else grow reading—and re-reading—Frank Peretti’s This Present Darkness?

Ever since my college experience changed (for better or worse) my ideas about what is and isn’t Great Literature, I have looked back at my teenage obsession with Peretti’s novels of spiritual warfare with a mixture of mild embarrassment and nostalgia. The characters and stories aren’t timeless (I can’t remember any of the details of those novels these many years later) and there’s undoubtedly much to take issue with in the theological and spiritual aspects of the tales. But while reading them I felt a vague sense that I was experiencing something new and interesting in Christian fiction.

At least one other person feels the same way. Take a look at In Defense of Frank Peretti by Joi Weaver at the Evangelical Outpost blog:

The criticisms of Peretti have quite a range: to some people he’s too overtly Christian, to others he focuses too much on the occult. For some the characterization of the people in his novels in the problem, and others find his plots too cliché. His books almost always include a dramatic conversion, angelic warfare, and New Age rituals that turn out to be Satanic in origin.

Though they might not rise to the heights of literature one hopes to see from Evangelical fiction, Peretti’s early books did something very important: they opened a door. With the popularity of This Present Darkness and Piercing the Darkness, up and coming authors were more free to branch out, to explore, to use other genres of fiction. In any Evangelical fiction catalog, one can now find detective fiction (The Danielle Ross series), comedy (The Wally McDoogle books), adventure stories (The Heirs of Cahira O’Connor series), and many more. It is even arguable that Peretti’s ground-breaking stories allowed Christians to be more engaged with the Harry Potter, Golden Compass, and Twilight series. Such books are no longer “off-limits,” but open for reading and debate.

I think Weaver’s definitely on to something. For me as a young reader, Peretti’s sometimes-clunky spiritual thrillers helped me see that C.S. Lewis, brilliant though he was, was not the only Christian allowed to blend faith and fantastic fiction. Other Christian writers like Stephen Lawhead and John White helped to push that door even further open.

I think Weaver’s final observation is particularly insightful; it may be that the most important legacy of Peretti and his peers is not the fiction they wrote so much as the way they encouraged Christians to approach the genres of fantasy and science fiction with a mind toward their spiritual aspects.

What about you? Did you, like me, spend many a childhood evening with your nose buried in a Peretti novel? What other authors might you add to the above list? And do you think these Christian fantasists have had a positive impact on Christianity’s relationship to literature?

Harry Potter, Transformers, and GI Joe may have dominated theaters this summer, but a number of interesting indie films have cropped up recently on DVD. Over at Past the Popcorn, Greg Wright interviews a trio of indie Christian filmmakers who have produced noteworthy films of late.

Each of the three filmmakers takes a very different approach to the art; it’s fascinating to read their thoughts on the various challenges inherent in creating art as a Christian. Should a Christian film be family-friendly? What additional pressures come into being when your art is being funded and supported by a church? Do moviegoers have misplaced expectations about Christian films? All good questions, and if you’ve ever grappled with the intersection of faith and art, it’s a conversation worth following.

The Christian church may not be the musical trendsetter that it has been in past centuries, but the church’s “cloud of witnesses” includes several of the greatest musicians who have ever lived. Today it’s appropriate to remember one of them in particular: Felix Mendelssohn, who was born 200 years ago.

Mendelssohn was a prolific composer; chances are you’d recognize several of his works today, even if you didn’t know Mendelssohn was the composer. He was an interesting character whose reputation was heavily attacked by anti-Semite critics. Here are a few places to read up on Mendelssohn and his contributions to the field of music:

• An overview of his life at Songs and Hymns, along with an MP3 of the famous hymn “Now Thank We All Our God.”
• The NPR website has a number of excellent features on Mendelssohn and his music.
• The Mendelssohn Project aims to restore Mendelssohn’s reputation and bring many of his lost works back into the public spotlight.
• The Christian History Institute relates Mendelssohn’s efforts to revive the music of Bach, another famous Christian composer.
• And lastly, an essay about the Mendelssohn family’s Jewish heritage, and the anti-Semitic efforts to erase Mendelssohn’s music from the public square during the Nazi era in Germany.

Today, a couple of quick updates from the COMIX35 ministry! COMIX35 is a Christian comics ministry that publishes and distributes evangelistic comics around the world. They also do a lot to identify and recruit promising comic artists from within the Christian community.

They’ve got updates on two comics contests that they’re running:

• They’ve launched the Christian Comics Competition for U.S. Prison Inmates as a way of identifying talented Christian artists in the US prison system. The first phase of the competition asks prison chaplains to recommend inmates who “exhibit exceptional talent in the areas of drawing and storytelling.” The three candidates who make it to the end of the contest will help produce a short comic for inmates and at-risk youth.
• The deadline for the Manga Messiah video competition has been extended to March 4 to give all “amateur and professional video producers, YouTubers, and GodTubers around the world” a chance to get their entries in. The competition webpage has full details on the contest, as well as free music tracks you can use with your video.

Take a look at these contests, and while you’re there, get to know COMIX35’s unique comics evangelism ministry!

Next month is the 2009 Academy Awards ceremony, when the best films and performances of 2008 will be chosen and honored. While the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences does the actual voting, that hasn’t stopped every film geek and blogger in the world from weighing in with their opinions. Here are a few Christian film critics with some interesting thoughts on the nominated films. How do their opinions match with your own?

• First, what films have been nominated? Hollywood Jesus helpfully lists all of the nominations. Elsewhere on the HJ site, critics Tim Berroth and Darrel Manson share their picks for the best films of 2008.
• Jeff Walls and Greg Wright from the Past the Popcorn crew weigh in with their own lists as well.
• Film critic Peter Chattaway’s thoughts on the Academy’s list of nominees.
• Jeffrey Overstreet of Looking Closer doesn’t think much of this year’s nominations, and proposes something different for Oscar night.

Enjoy the Oscars tonight (or not), and browse around these critics’ websites to see what else they’ve got to say about faith and film.

Image by flickr user Anne Siegel.

Note: this post originally mis-stated the date of the Oscars ceremony. The correct date is February 22.

Over the years, Comix35 has run a variety of contests showcasing the best in evangelistic comics. Their newest competition, however, branches into new territory: online video! The 2008 Manga Messiah video competition challenges both amateur and professional video creators to make their own video interpretations of the Manga Messiah graphic novel.

Entering the contest is easy; head over to the competition website to fill out the entry form and read the contest rules. Once you’ve registered, you can download official imagery from the manga to use in your video—and be sure to check out other free resources you can use with your creation, such as these Japanese praise and worship songs.

The contest deadline is December 31, 2008. The grand prize is a limited-edition hardcover version of the manga and an original sketch by the artist. So go find out more, and see what you can come up with!

For two thousand years, the cross has been a universally recognized symbol of the Christian faith. But despite the structural simplicity of the cross itself, artists throughout history have portrayed the cross in countless different ways, each rendition emphasizing slightly different things and glimpsing the Resurrection symbolism from a different angle.

The Billy Graham Center Museum in Wheaton, Illinois has a new temporary exhibit running through August 10 that showcases many different takes on the Cross of Jesus Christ. There’s a short article and a few accompanying images on their website showcasing the exhibit; to see the full exhibit, you’ll need to visit the Museum itself. The brief sampling on the website is certainly intriguing.

The status quo is never ‘”good enough.” And so, once a year, the staff of Hollywood Jesus gathers at Renton, Washington’s Harambee Church, for the Hollywood Jesus Annual Gathering—there to revisit HJ’s foundational goals, build bonds of fellowship, and hone skills in order to bring the best possible cultural insights to the web.

Better yet, the event is also open to readers, pastors, and writers from other publications! On tap for this year’s workshops—December 29 through 31—are writer and critic Jeffrey Overstreet, recently honored at the City of Angels Film Festival; Peter T. Chattaway, film critic for CT Movies and Books and Culture; Mike Gunn, Harambee pastor and co-founder of Seattle’s Mars Hill Church; James Harleman, Mars Hill pastor; author, animation scholar and educator Ken Priebe; Hollywood Jesus founder David Bruce; HJ Managing Editors Greg and Jenn Wright; and HJ Channel Editors Melinda Ledman and Maurice Broaddus.

That’s an impressive lineup of Christians on the cutting edge of faith and culture. If that sounds like something you’d like to participate in, you can read more about the Gathering and get registration info over at Hollywood Jesus.

Hollywood Jesus is a site devoted to pop culture from a spiritual point of view. Every week, they offer reviews and analysis of the latest movies, books, comics, and other pop culture artifacts.

You can keep up with their regular updates at HJ Live!. But in case you missed it, here’s a rundown of some of the new items at HJ this week:

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