By Kymberly Oliver (BA 27)
The School of Arts and Humanities at Grace College includes everything from visual and performing arts, to English and Spanish, to history and communication. Culture is a key part of each program. How is it being cared for?
In the following interview with Dean Dr. Kim M. Reiff and Associate Dean Dr. Walter Brath, they share how caring for students’ culture is essential. They work to encourage creativity and strengthen students’ faith while preparing them for their futures and lifelong calling.
What does culture care mean to you?
Brath: It’s caring for the souls of people. As Christians, whether students are majoring in arts and humanities or not, we all have a responsibility to care for our souls. All of us need to foster creativity and imagination as something God has given us. If a culture is healthy, it will generate truth, goodness, and beauty. Caring for culture is providing an environment where people are free to grow in their God-given creativity and imagination.
Reiff: When I think of culture care, I think of caring for one’s mental, physical, and spiritual well-being. It can be about anything, whether it’s knowledge, health, or a work of art in the gallery. How are we caring for these things? How are we teaching others about art, music, or communication, history, theater, or languages? Culture care is about being a caretaker and the idea that ultimately, we’re caring for each other. We’re caring for our environment, and that includes being good stewards of nature. We’re caring for everything that we can as creative artists, writers, poets, or historians. Culture care holds the knowledge that we are caretakers of everything around us that God has created.
How does Grace College already incorporate culture care?
Brath: Culture care is part of the reason we have core classes. The Grace Core exists because we want every student at Grace to foster their creativity, engage their imagination, and broaden their understanding of others. We’re not just consumers of culture, and we want to remind students that all of us have a God-given creative capacity we want to foster. We’re made in the image of God, who is creative and imaginative. As we reflect His nature, we’re actively worshiping Him. We want students to know that, no matter their major, they have the opportunity to glorify God by exercising their imagination and creativity. This is why liberal arts education is so important. It helps you see God in many different disciplines.
How do you want culture care to be incorporated into arts and humanities majors?
Reiff: I think of the terms goodness and excellence. When God spoke light into existence, He saw that it was good. I teach my students that the most we can hope for is to say our work is good. To do good work, we have to be mindful of doing everything with excellence, because no matter what it is, we’re imaging God. Culture care is really part of our human condition. In this environment, we’re caring for one another through our God-given gifts and disciplines. At Grace, we have the opportunity to learn how to do this well. If you’re a gardener, you demonstrate care for somebody else when you give them something out of your garden. In our institution, we care through the disciplines we are involved in, no matter our field of study.
How does Grace encourage arts and humanities majors to engage with culture while maintaining their faith?
Brath: First, through our worship culture. Worship is not going to be the same for everyone. When you think of the Word of God and how Christ is the Lord over all of His Creation, you see there are biblical truths that are transcultural – they are the same for all of us. And then there are elements where God calls us to be countercultural. When we see certain things in our world that are contrary to what pleases God or His creativity, we need to confront that. We are called to contextual culture – there are certain things that are going to vary according to the local context. That’s the value of taking students on Go Encounter trips. These trips are where you get to experience a different culture where values and expressions are different from ours.
Reiff: I think of beauty as an invitational approach. When someone looks at a work of art or hears a musical composition and feels that it is beautiful, there is an opportunity to provide the glory to God. It’s the idea of crossing that border into someone else’s world to offer an invitation that I think is so important. You may not know another person’s history or lived experience, and this concept is something that we can bring to the classroom. We have students from different locations and/or cultures, and we can bring our faith to our discipline as an invitational approach for them to know that they are cared for and that they can also grow in their gifts and faith. If you can build bridges to places where you invite others in, it’s a good way to care for others.
How does Grace College prepare students for careers in creative industries, education, or cultural institutions?
Reiff: Wally and I associate culture care with all that God has created – us as well as our environment. We see it as multi-faceted. It feels like a puzzle that students are piecing together as they go through their programs at Grace. When we consider character, competence, and service, we can ask what character, competence, and service mean as it relates to our culture, as it relates to care. When we talk about it in this context, it helps students see how to put the pieces together. We try to walk through this a little more holistically because we have different categories, but it is often when a student graduates from college and lands a job or starts a family that they begin to see the benefits of all the things they learned at Grace. They realize, “Oh yeah, I can do all of these things, or I have an understanding of how to look at this situation.” And they look at the beauty and care they have experienced at the college level, and they can then model that in their new roles as they lead or collaborate with others.
How do you see the arts and humanities majors preparing students for their careers, lifelong service, and calling?
Brath: We want to equip students for whatever God has in store for them. That’s part of the undergraduate experience. The education tends to be more general for a reason, so that students can be well-rounded. In the book “Culture Care: Reconnecting with Beauty for Our Common Life,” Makoto Fujimura discusses the purpose of offering an arts and humanities education. He says we provide arts and humanities education so that we can have better teachers, doctors, engineers, mothers, and fathers. With our education here, we need to exercise our creativity and imagination, even our curiosity, so that we can become all that God wants us to be.
Reiff: It’s one thing to care for culture, but it’s another to be a caretaker. We continually care for our culture. My hope is that when students graduate, they can go into the world wherever they are and be disciples there. The idea is that you’re going to go in and you’re going to do your job well. You will be known by your work ethic first, and then you’re going to be seen as caring for a culture, whether in the workplace, home, or church. We want to integrate our faith into practice wherever we go. If you’re a person of faith, other people will see that you’re different or see that you’re a hard worker or see that you’re taking extra time to do something well. Maybe you are helping a colleague finish a tough project, offering hope to someone who is facing sadness, or volunteering in your community. That is living your calling through your career. You stand out.
Curious about the School of Arts and Humanities here at Grace? Check out each department to find what is best for you!
