Along with “Put money in thy purse!” the following two items nicely fit into the new posting category we’ve added to The Idyllist, “Arts Community”. As things like this cross our desks, we’ll pass them on to y’all in the Christian writers and arts community.

First, The Trinity Arts Conference is sponsoring its multidsciplary conference on Faith, Art & Integrity at the University of Dallas in Irving, TX (about 15 minutes from the Dallas/Ft. Worth airport), June 7 - 10, 2007. The title of the conference is “For All the Saints”. Speakers will include Gregory Wolfe and Mary Kenagy of Image Journal (dear to the hearts of all writers and fans of Catholic fiction), Lauren Winner, Ralph Wood, Mary McCleary, and Doug Burr.

This conference has long been on my list of reasons to “put money in my purse”. If anyone out there in Idyllist-land gets to go, please send in a report. There’s more information online here.

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Next, I just got a nice little flyer in the mail about a new “faith and culture” institute sponsored by King College in Bristol, TN. Here’s a sampling from the flyer:

“King College is please to announce the founding of a new institute devoted to exploring the intersections and collisions of faith and culture that define our times.Dedicated to the work and example of Frederick Buechner, the Institute will examine the ways in which faith informs art and public life. Minister, memoirist, essayist and novelist, Buechner has explored the engagement of faith and culture in more than 30 remarkable books….

The Buechner Institute will provide a venue for scholars to gather and think about the various ways that faith informs academic disciplines….

Conferences, lectures, and other events will feature the opportunity to think out loud about how the humanities and faith may continue to inform academic work in the twenty-first century work of higher education.”

King College is traditionally a Presbyterian Institute—wasn’t Buechner a Presby minister?—but this is obviously an inter-denominationally oriented venture, and sounds well worth keeping one’s eye on. I’ve only read one of Buechner’s books, The Storm, which I reviewed on Catholicfiction.net, but I was very much impressed with the man’s craft and sensibility, so if the new institute takes that spirit as its model, it is very likely to produce rich fruit.

Find out more about the new Buechner Institute here. .

Tags: faith and the arts, Gregory Wolfe, Writing