A few days ago we ventured to do some sightings of public religion in the arts, drawing on a tenth anniversary issue of IMAGE and its "State of the Arts" symposium. Having scanned in the last Sighting the print media, let's look at other arts as examples of religion-in-public.

Gillette Elvgren, from Regent University in Virginia and a former resident director of Pittsburgh's Three Rivers Shakespearean Festival, speaks up in interview form in the symposium. No, in theatre there has been no significant shift towards religious themes or experiences in the last ten years. He spends considerable time on Christians producing for Christians but also lists some "Biblical worldview professional Theatre Companies" as signs of vitality. Either theatre is slight in the area of religious themes and experiences, or Elvgren is overlooking something.

Film? Here Richard Alleva, film critic for COMMONWEAL, has more positive things to say. "No, there won't be a big, significant shift to religious themes and experiences. But there may be a lot of little shifts in that direction made by independent directors and writers trying to find their way." "Clergymen are everywhere in old movie land," he notes, in the daysof Father Pat O'Brian and the like, but we don't look for such portrayals these days. And foreign films, which used to do well, don't hit much of the American market these days. Robert Duvall's THE APOSTLE gets positive mention, and Alleva implies there will be many more. But since THE PRINCE OF EGYPT, aimed to be a blockbuster, did only reasonably well, don't expect others to venture on such scales.

The visual arts: Theodore Prescott, a Pennsylvania sculptor, senses spirituality in a major figure such as Anselm Kiefer and mentions a couple of less well-knowns. "So, yes," he writes, "there is a shift towards religious themes and subjects, but a lot of bad faith, my own included, makes it hard to see." And he does not find enough for us to do our seeing.

Classical music: John Mason Hodges mentions several major figures who do express themselves religiously: Henry Gorecki, Arvo Part, John Tavener, Charles Wuorinen, James MacMillan. "Composers who are specifically Christian have found that their works are commanding the attention of the world again," he concludes. "At their best, these composers have recovered a healthier, more fruitful balance between the old and the new."

Finally, Jan Krist, a singer and songwriter, reviews ten years of trends in popular music. She concentrates on "Christian music," a very profitable sector of the music scene, but a topic for a different kind of day.