How Can Skeptics Make Convincing Religious Art?

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
By Terry Teachout

 'Jesus Mocked by the Soldiers,' by Édouard Manet | Art Institute of Chicago.

ILLINOIS - Now that the boutique atheism of such aggressive secularists as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens has become chic, you might well ask yourself why any unbelieving artist would bother to turn his hand to the making of religious art. How can such folk take up their tools in the name of God—and why would they want to do so? An artist need not be an orthodox believer—or, indeed, any kind of believer—to be inspired by the eloquence of scripture and the transforming power of faith. We should all be such hypocrites. [link]

Noteworthy Artist-Skeptics:

• "Édouard Manet was anything other than indifferent to religion"
• "Giuseppe Verdi...was a freethinker so hostile to religion that his heterodoxy actually put a scare into his wife"
• "Vaughan Williams was a lifelong agnostic"