Welcome to The Lost Knowledge of Christ, a new multimedia research project on spirituality and art. It’s a new 3-way exploration between ancient religion, contemporary spirituality and the arts, and it’s coming to some surprising conclusions.
This is the website for the book, The Lost Knowledge of Christ: Contemporary Spiritualities, Christian Cosmology, and the Arts, published by Liturgical Press (Collegeville, Minnesota, USA). As you’ll see, there’s a page on this site for every chapter of the book, providing all the images and other media item, as well as a quick summary. To read more, order the book here!
The Lost Knowledge of Christ 
Thank you for writing this book, it has been very helpful to me. Also thanks or recommending Stratford Caldecott.
Thank you for writing this book, it has been very helpful to me. Also thanks for recommending Stratford Caldecott.
This is a most inspiring and helpful book. Dominic White has outlined a structure within which it is possible to create a relevant theology of art in the West. As an artist I have undertaken several commissions for the church both in India (where I lived for 12 years) and in the UK. In the Indian Christian context of “inculturation” I always had a clear brief. The nuns or priests who were commissioning me said, “We want it Indian and Christian”. There was a lively ongoing debate about how the Gospel could be interpreted from the Indian roots. This allowed for a very positive approach to the body, the cosmos, the feminine and the religious imagination. When I returned to the UK in 1988 and continued to do Church commissions, I encountered an entirely different approach. The briefs I was given were vague “Please create an atmosphere of prayerfulness”. When dealing with art and architecture committees, there seemed to be no agreed theological framework. At its best this afforded endless freedom to the artist. But in reality it led to misunderstandings and confusion.
Fr Dominic shows how positive approaches to the body, the feminine and the cosmos already exist here in the West. This is music to my ears. He also communicates a sympathetic approach to the “spiritual but not religious” people and to the New Age. This contrasts with so many Western Christians who dismiss these groups without ever having experienced what they have to offer. It was only after I had been involved in the life-giving Christian culture in India that I had any idea about why the body and the imagination are so important for religious life. After my twelve year absence from the West, on my return I was forcefully struck by the contrast between the church culture and the sense of the sacred in the New Age/spiritual but not religious circles. My need for imagination and a sense of the sacred has been nourished through going to the Sacred Arts Dance Camps or local rituals organised by spiritual but not religious people. At the same time I regularly attend my local parish church, take my turn at reading and have a deep appreciation of the sense of community and care that this entails.
In The Lost Knowledge of Christ Fr Dominic is sympathetic as well as critical of both groups. He articulates what I have felt for a long time that the Church and the spiritual but not religious need each other. In The Joy of the Gospel, Pope Francis says that inculturation is no longer just for the so called “New Churches” in India and Africa but also for Europe and America. This book opens up a theology and sociology for an inculturation project in the West. This is a project I would like to be involved in.
Caroline Mackenzie (www.carolinemackenzie.co.uk)