Many artists choose to visualize issues of faith in the grounds that they have some kind of spiritual inspiration that moves them that makes them have the need to express their religious beliefs. A good example of there is the artist Murray, who draws from inspiration by God to do so. He believes his drawing is a message from God hence considers himself a prophetic artist.
On the other hand, others choose to visualize matters of faith, as a means of interrogating the institutional boundaries of mainstream belief system. Doss uses the example of Hawkins, who drew a picture of the last supper and includes all races among the twelve disciples
According to Doss, issues of faith have been ignored in the study of modern art because most of the artist come from different backgrounds and express art in different ways.
In Secularization theory according to Sally, religion is as a child, immature, primitive, and group-oriented or a notion of modernism that is as an adult, with sophistication. It classes religious sensibility in of the modern American art from vantage of formal artistic experimentation rather than in terms that disclose religious content and meaning.
Doss considers America as a religious state. He does this by finding the number of people who find religion relevant to them and by what degree. The results he get show that majority of the Americans consider religion very important or ‘fairly’ important to them. All though this is a common statement by most Americans, the use of this characterization may not be accurate. This is because; consideration of religion may simply mean consideration and not the actual belief in religion.
References
Crown, C., Doss, E. L., University of Memphis., Florida State University Museum of Fine Arts., & American Bible Society. (2004). Coming home!: Self-taught artists, the Bible, and the American South. Memphis, Tenn.: Art Museum of the University of Memphis.
