CIVA

Christians In The Visual Arts
Serious Art. Serious Faith.

In The House of My Pilgrimage by Grace Carol Bomer

About Civa

Founded in 1979, the organization’s longstanding vision is to help artists, collectors, critics, professors, historians, pastors, and arts professionals explore the profound relationship between art and faith. With this as a point of beginning, CIVA’s broad range of conferences, exhibits, programs, and publications exists to help the art and faith movement flourish both in the Church and in culture.

CIVA encourages Christians in the visual arts to develop their particular callings to the highest professional level possible; to learn how to deal with specific problems in the field without compromising our faith and our standard of artistic endeavor; to provide opportunities for sharing work and ideas; to foster intelligent understanding, a spirit of trust, and a cooperative relationship between those in the arts, the Church, and culture; and ultimately, to establish a Christian presence within the secular art world.

Mission and Vision

CIVA exists to further both of these pursuits and its mission is best expressed in three primary and longstanding commitments. CIVA and its members are:

Called to Creative Work

Artists create culture. They have eyes to see, ears to hear, and hands to make. The genius of Christian community is that all who belong are invited to participate, invited to bring their skills and their passions to contribute to the greater good. As men and women bear God’s image by all kinds of creative expression, CIVA equips those called to the visual arts to flourish in their holy vocation and to pursue it with excellence.

Devoted to the Church

The visual arts help the Church to rehearse and remember the biblical story. The visual arts help congregations worship more deeply. The visual arts help Christian communities build a bridge to the non-believing world. The visual arts deepen times of personal devotion and prayer. As the Church awakens to its need for art and the artists who make it, CIVA deploys its expertise and resources to help the Church embrace the visual arts and bring work of quality and substance into its centers of worship and learning.

Present in Culture

Culture is that place where we “live and move and have our being,” that place where, each day and in every way, God’s people either magnify the presence of God’s Kingdom or diminish it. As the world needs the salt, light, and leaven of those who follow Jesus, CIVA cultivates an incarnational presence in contemporary culture that is marked by serious art, learning and practice, intellectual rigor, prophetic voice, serious pursuit of faith, and a spirit of hospitality.