Art is confrontation. It widens the audience’s reality, allowing them to glimpse life through a different window. One with the potential for a glorious new view.

Would a return to art’s ancient, primal function of elucidating religion signal its death? Or is our culture beginning to see the wisdom of a narrative that includes reconciliation, restoration and redemption?

Like our own imagination, art can wander off, seeking out the edges, the borderlands, the mysteries. Indeed, this autonomy is art’s power and part of its emotional appeal. But this very ability to separate from everyday material life may also make art impotent in trying to shape the world from which it has escaped. At most it can be a nudge or a