Tiffany Thompson: Welcome to The Understory podcast. I’m Tiffany Thompson, the executive editor of Comment magazine.
Friendship was a central theory of change at the Understory, revealing itself in main-stage debates and quiet corridor chats. Few panels demonstrated the power of friendship more potently than David Bailey’s discussion around arts and patronage. David is a musician, author, producer, and founder of Arrabon, which helps all manner of faith-based organizations live into their call to embody the reconciled community.
David beautifully wove together his longtime friendship with renowned artist and author Makoto Fujimura, alongside their mutual friend, producer and philanthropist Roberta Ahmanson, and with justice advocate Haejin Shim Fujimura, Makoto’s wife. The four artistic leaders explore why patrons in earlier eras believed they were responsible not only for funding works of art, but shaping the world people lived inside.
Roberta describes the compelling life of Gregory the Great and his belief that the beautification of a space was as important as the healing social work that occurred within it. She states that beauty and service cannot be separated. Makoto shares his story of meeting Roberta and her husband decades ago, and Haejin describes a deeper understanding of patronage as being an advocate and father figure to someone.
Whether you are an artist looking for guidance on how to develop meaningful relationships with patrons, or a patron desiring to deepen your conviction and broaden your reach as a trust-based philanthropist, this conversation amongst friends will leave you inspired to act and content to pray.
David Bailey: Hey, my name is David Bailey. I have the honor and privilege of being your host today about arts and patronage. I’m so glad to get a chance to have this conversation with three really dear friends that are independently dear friends, and two of them decided to marry each other. So it was great. Right?
But to my left, we have Roberta Ahmanson, who is a very thoughtful philanthropist, patron of the arts, also someone who knows a lot about church history and cathedrals. We had a privilege of being able to spend eighteen days together—Turin, Rome, Florence, Venice, Brussels, and London, if I remember everywhere. We went to Germany. We went to a lot of places and saw a lot of basilicas, a lot of cathedrals, and really got a chance to understand the theme of New Jerusalem, going from Jerusalem all the way through this theme of church history and art history.
And she is actually working on a book that is really looking at that theme, particularly looking at the church’s history around art and justice and beauty, particularly as a foretaste of the kingdom of God that’s to come, and how the church understood its role. So that would be a little bit of the angle she’s coming from.
Haejin and I met in a spiritual formation cohort, in a small group together. And Haejin has been a lawyer. But one thing I love about Haejin is that she loves—she, like, really prays. Like, we were at this Christian leaders’ thing and I thought, like, she was kind of putting on, you know—she’s like super fervent and praying about everything, and I was like, what’s gonna wear off in three months? But it didn’t. That’s just who she is.
And has been really committed to the work of justice. And God began to awaken her heart, saying, you know, “I feel like God’s telling me to be open to get married.” And we’re at a retreat, she says, “Hey, I met this guy. We’ve been in the same circle for a long time, but finally met. He’s an artist.” I said, “Is it Mako Fujimura?” She’s like, “Yeah, you know him?” I was like, “Yes.” You know, and Mako—
Makoto Fujimura: Steer clear.
David Bailey: Mako and I met probably sixteen, seventeen years ago, in the fledgling beginnings of Arrabon. And when I was particularly working as a professional musician at a wedding, we talked the whole reception period of time. I was like, “Hey, man, can you help me to get my equipment back to the place?” And he gets to my small car, does that.
And then I go look him up, and I’m like, oh, he’s like a real professional artist that does real stuff, but a really humble brother, and has some really great writings about arts and culture. Culture Care—faith and art—is a must-read for anybody who loves Jesus. And this isn’t just people who are artists. I think it’s just a really great way of understanding the world. And both of them have a new book that just came out that you can actually get upstairs, called Beauty and Justice.
And so we’re here just really looking at the role of patronage in the arts, in a time where one might even ask the question: with so much brokenness going on and so many things to lament, why in the world would you spend money on beauty and arts when there are people that are having real suffering right now? But that’s actually the very reason why we need actually beauty and art—is to reimagine a world in a very different space. And actually, beauty and justice, they aren’t that far apart from each other. They’re actually very interrelated in what can we imagine.
So, you know, before we begin this panel, what I’d love to do is just maybe have Roberta to start off with. There has been a long tradition of the Christian faith engaging in the world of commissioning and engaging in the works of arts. We are in a cathedral, and yet it’s not as common as—that’s something that this is part of Christian duty and responsibility.
So, Roberta, I would love for you to just maybe help us to kind of jog our memory. Well, for some, this actually will be the first time even maybe even hearing about the church’s history and patronage in the arts. And so just, yeah, give us a little bit of a briefing, and give the 101 version. Not the three-hour version.
Roberta Ahmanson: I was sitting here. David was talking. I was thinking. You know, the church arose at the height of the Roman Empire. And, you know, if you look back in ancient culture, at the center of every city is their temple or their shrine. And architecture spoke what the people believed. So the creation of beautiful spaces was an embodiment of what people believed. It was understood.
And Caesar Augustus had planted his symbols all across the empire—and there are books written about this that I’ve read, at any rate. And so the Christians knew that you’ve got to do the same thing. You’ve got to fight. You know, yes, the body of Christ is when we’re all gathered together—when two or three are gathered, he is present. But God created a great, huge icon called the cosmos. It is beautiful. It is wonderful. It is beyond imagining. And so we are made in the image of that God who creates to tell who he is.
And one of the things that has happened, I think, particularly in Protestantism—but some of my friends get on me because I blame the Protestants too much, and one of them’s in the room, so I better be careful. It’s not all the Protestants’ fault, but especially in the United States, I think, the understanding that beauty and action are one has been lost over the last centuries.
And so the church goes along and they understand that the church buildings are three-dimensional icons of the New Jerusalem. You can still go across Europe and up to the time of the Italian Renaissance. And being in the center of a city, there is a beautiful cathedral. It’s gorgeous. It’s open to everyone. It is beautiful because it’s a three-dimensional icon and embassy of the New Jerusalem, of the kingdom of God.
And most of those people had read their Augustine, who wrote the book that came out—well, he wrote it after 410, I think it was done in the 420s—where he points out, the first half of the book, which seems to go on forever, is explaining to the Romans that they were in bad shape already. It isn’t because the Christians made them stop sacrificing to the gods that Rome was sacked. The second half of the book, he explains to the Christians, there’s another city that is your citizenship, and it is that city that informs your citizenship wherever you are on earth. It is the template for how the world is supposed to be. And the church is to be beautiful as an icon of that.
And when you go, it’s like—you go, I mean, I drove up Embassy Row. When you’re in any one of those embassies, you’re on the ground of Turkey, you’re on the ground of Mozambique, you’re on the ground of wherever the heck it is. And that is where we are when we are in a church. We are on New Jerusalem ground. They understood it that way, and it had to be beautiful—not so some king could show off how much money he had, which sometimes they did. Because guess what? They’re sinful humans. I’m a Calvinist. But that wasn’t the only reason, and that wasn’t always the reason.
And what you will see in the centers of European cities—and we took David to the church that Gregory the Great, who I’ll end with him, okay? I’m looking at you because, click, click, time.
Across the street will be—I think, I’m going to be in Toulouse, France in two days. Across the street from the pilgrim church, which is a beautiful place, Gothic cathedral—well, it’s not a cathedral. It’s not the bishop’s seat. Well, it might be. I can’t. No, it’s not. I know it’s not. At any rate, across the street are still—there’s a building, the foundations of which were the hospital. Next to it was the almshouse for the poor. And across the street, there is still a school.
You can see this in Bruges, Belgium. You can see this in Nuremberg, Germany. You can see this. You go all over. Augsburg, Germany, there’s low-income housing down the street. You learned in the beauty who you were. You also learned who God is. And you learned what God wanted for everyone. And so you did what you came out of the church. You built the institutions that would bring that beauty, that life, the life that will be experienced by every believer in the New Jerusalem, our ultimate citizenship, according to St. Augustine, who, of course, is always right. I’m a fan of Augustine. I had an Orthodox prelate tell me, “Who needed Augustine?” And I thought I’d better walk away before blows came, so I did.
You know who you are by being in this beautiful place, and you learn what that means for your life here on earth by what the New Jerusalem is like. No sadness, no crying, no death, no sickness, and a garden full of beautiful trees and streams running down. And all of that is the image of what we’re supposed to be bringing to this earth. And the churches did it, and lived it, and you can see it.
What’s been bifurcated—and I’ll end with this—is, well, no, I’ve got to mention Gregory the Great. In 590, he became the pope. He didn’t want to be a pope, but he became the pope. And the Lombards were attacking all over Italy. Rome was down to 30,000 people. People were starving. Refugees were coming in. The buildings are falling apart. The aqueducts aren’t working. And he’s the pope, and there’s virtually no civic government functioning.
He becomes the person who sees to—he didn’t do it all himself—restoring aqueducts, restoring the buildings, including the churches, providing places for the refugees to live, providing people who prepared. He pulled in the monks of the monasteries. They did the work of providing the food for the refugees and the poor, and it all went together. He was making the place beautiful and he was serving the greatest need. He even went out and negotiated with the Lombard general so he wouldn’t sack Rome again.
And he’s one of my heroes, Gregory. And I’m just now reading Isidore, because I’m on my way to Spain. And Isidore’s Sentences—he got a lot of it from Gregory. The morality of how to live as a Christian in the world.
David Bailey: So I got one more question for you. So, like, when it comes to a patron going back to 590, or just that period of time, kind of post-Augustine, City of God—what did the patron understand his or hers role in this work of the art, New Jerusalem patronage? How did they understand that? And then my second question is, what’s the gap between their understanding then and our understanding now?
Roberta Ahmanson: That’s a tough one, David, in a way. I’m thinking of San Vitale in Ravenna. I’m thinking of the churches in Rome.
You know, sometimes the other thing I’m thinking about is—David—Ward-Perkins, about how the built environment deteriorated between 400 and 800, because the only buildings of any significance that were built in that period were churches. Which tells you something. The Christians understood the story wasn’t over. So they built churches. As society was deteriorating. The churches were building while things were being deconstructed. It’s in Ward-Perkins’s book. I read it with great interest, as you can imagine. The only buildings of any significance built in that period were churches. Who had hope for the future? The Christians did. They knew the story wasn’t over.
So what were patrons? Well, it varies, but usually it was for the glory of God and the understanding of the need of the people to come together. Some of them actually understood what I just said. Clearly understood it. Others—I mean, there are venal reasons. You know, you could go into the Middle Ages and the corruption that came by the time of the Reformation. But even then, there were people who understood that they were creating beauty to bear witness to who God is. And they were also providing places for serving the poor, the uneducated, and the sick.
In Bruges, Belgium, across the street from the main cathedral, Saint-Sauveur, or whatever it is anyway, is the hospital. And guess who they got to do the art for the hospital? Who was that? Hans Memling, a little local artist. You know, that’s who did their art. You know, I mean, it’s that kind of thing. And the hospital had as great art as the church.
David Bailey: That’s great. So what would you hope somebody today listening, a patron today—what would you hope that a patron today would learn from hearing this historical lesson?
Roberta Ahmanson: I hope that they would learn two things: that beauty and service can’t be separated, both for the person you’re serving, because beauty gives them hope. It also may give them conviction of their sin, but it gives them hope. It tells them who they are, that they are important, and beauty tells you that you matter, that you’re in a beautiful space.
The other thing is to understand that you’re giving to places that are training grounds for people to understand that beauty and service cannot be separated, and that also are a part of that story. And we all have different callings, but that they can’t be separate. I mean, I can give examples of things we’ve done where the two go together, like the rescue mission.
David Bailey: So, Mako, you know—so where do you see art and patronage becoming—there’s a transactional dynamic that can happen. What Roberta just shared was a transcendent vision, but there can be a transactional way that could diminish people and communities. How do you personally recognize when something that should be life-giving is becoming instrumentalized?
Makoto Fujimura: Thank you. First of all, just as a context, I began my career in New York in mid-’90s. And I remember giving an artist talk and saying how I am grateful for people who came to support my work. And in that room, there were no Christians. This was in New York. I established my career championed by people outside of church.
And at one point, I had a—I think it was like a leadership gathering, and I lamented on this fact that I am a Christian, and I’m pretty explicit about this, but there are no collectors who are Christians.
Roberta Ahmanson: Watch it, Mako.
Makoto Fujimura: I know. I know. I didn’t know you then.
And one pastor raised his hand. His name was Phil Ryken. And he came up and said, “I want to be your first Christian patron.” And he ended up with a print piece, which he has in his Wheaton president’s office.
And then a few years later, a friend of mine, a filmmaker, introduced me to Roberta. There was this gathering happening in Orange County, Newport Beach, and I had no idea where I was being taken to. Great mini cathedral of a house done by Italian stonemasons, and a feast, and a conversation about what really matters.
And it was the first time I met Roberta and Howard, and it seemed so miraculous to me at the time that they were thoughtful people who believed what Roberta just said—that actual, you know, that beauty matters, and what I was doing as an artist, you know, was not this waste or wasteful extravagance, but that it had real meaning and it had significance in the kingdom. Roberta was the first, and I’m grateful for that, because there’s a side of me that really just exhaled, you know, that I can actually have my paintings be in the presence of somebody who really understood the depth of what I was doing.
I was reading City of God. I was thinking about what it means for an artist to create for the kingdom, to invoke the Spirit, create a portal into new creation—all of that. Those are things that I cannot say in public in New York City. But I could say them here, with this group that Roberta was gathering.
So that being said, I think we’ve come a long way since then. I think there’s certainly a significant movement of a lot of artists being supported by institutions and individuals. And I’m grateful for that. And yet, you know, many of the struggles that we have as artists of faith is still that, you know, you cannot be too open about our faith. There’s just a bias against. You know, and I’m probably an exception. I put all my cards on the table so people know.
But, you know, we do think that part of—and that, you know, I realized one time I was writing an essay, which ended up in Culture Care book. I was on the plane to advocate for modern dancers for National Endowment for the Arts. And so there’s a completely secular thing, right? You go and advocate for these people who have to pay out of pocket to rehearse, right? So I’m trying to get funding for them. And I’m asking myself, like, why am I so passionate about modern dancers? And I was just thinking behind, you know, thinking and just tracing my thoughts.
And I just—I remember that moment on the plane. I said, no, this is not about the arts. This is about the gospel. This is about why Jesus came. Why—reality of us, salvific reality has happened, but it’s also about resurrection, it’s all about ascension, Pentecost, and post-resurrection reality of new creation. Dancers embody ideas into being perhaps more than any other artist, art types. And that’s why I’m passionate about them. That’s why they need to be supported, whether they are Christians or not, it doesn’t matter. Because they’re committed to doing this with much sacrifice. And Christians ought to be the ones patronizing them. We should be the first in line. But we’re not.
So there’s a theological problem. It’s not a problem about the arts. It’s about how we understand the gospel. We don’t fully understand the story of God’s redemption and new creation. So, yeah—understand the story of creation and new creation. Because oftentimes, like, I think our understanding of the gospel, if it’s about sin, like the fall and redemption without any story of creation and new creation, then arts doesn’t matter.
David Bailey: So, you know, Haejin, you know, this has been a theme already, just about kind of how beauty and justice is inseparable. So why is that important to hold these two things together? And that’s been a theme here.
Haejin Shim Fujimura: You might be wondering why a lawyer is talking about patronage with an art historian and an artist. And that’s precisely because the word patron invokes advocacy. So patron—the word itself came from this Latin word that means advocate, defender. And the root word of that is actually pater, from which we get the word father. So literally patron means acting as if you are a father of someone.
So if that’s the case, and if we see, you know, historically, in a kind of—I don’t have the kind of art history background like Roberta does, and I always love to listen to her. In the Roman times, when—so Roman’s time was a time where patronage was much more like a daily life. It was very much a social norm.
So, you know, the wealthy and the people with capitals—and we’re talking about not just financial capitals, and Mako talks about in his Culture Care book, we have—he categorized it as financial capital, which we understand very easily; social capital, right, the connections and influence that you have; and creative capital, right, the ability to create something and make something. So when you have these capitals, you have certain influence, and you support someone so that that person can steward what they’re called to steward.
But many times it was more of the royals or the high class supporting someone who is below them in terms of caste. And as a kind of transactional reality, was they will owe loyalty to that person. A lot of times also a freed slave will be automatically attached to the family that you were a slave for. And then the owner and now free slave will become part of the family. But there will always be this hierarchical reality. Patronage was prevalent, yet unequal.
Now, many, many, many centuries later today, we see also patronage not only in art, but also politics. And how that is played out is in a way that, of course, churches have been forefront historically to be a patron of universities, hospitals. You know, we’re the ones who built schools all around the world more than any government. However—I think hospitals, yes. But however, I think there is a room for much more redemptive imagination of a patronage, where we are not just supporting someone, but we’re doing it in a way that we challenge the condition that actually creates the need. So it’s not short-term, one-time, or even individual level—that must be accompanied by churches being the forefront of thinking about the structural norm that actually calls for this patronage.
I think when I think about patron from that perspective, where the word came from, historically how it was played out, I think about throughout the scripture, God says, “Defend the fatherless.” That means become a patron of this child, right?
I want to mention Vivaldi, if that’s okay, because we’ve just been hearing Vivaldi at this festival. I don’t think we think about Vivaldi as this financial patron who supported a lot of artists. Yet, I think he was one of the greatest examples of a patron with the redemptive gospel message.
So he was a priest at the age of about thirteen, as well as a composer, of course, but he couldn’t really preach because he had asthma. So instead, he really focused on composing a lot of music that we enjoy so much, and even at this festival. Now, there was an orphanage that was attached to the church, and he taught music there. For thirty years.
And those girls who learn music as a vocalist and instrumentalist—lots of violinists, actually. One of the most well-known violinists of the time in Italy was from that orphanage and was a student of Vivaldi. But the way that he shared his creative capital and his social capital—because Vivaldi’s concert was the top event of Venice of that time. And he was the advocate and defender of these girls.
Now, the social norm at that time did not allow girls and young women to perform in public. So what did Vivaldi do? He innovated, because he was a defender, a patron, a father to these girls. When your children are stuck in a social norm, you will innovate. So what he did was, he will have these girls, young musicians, in this balcony of the second floor of his church, and a curtain in front of them, so they can perform. So the audience will have an immersive experience of his concert.
And his patronage was so excellent. He wasn’t doing this out of pity for these orphans. He actually taught them excellent music, so much so that the rich families sent their children to the orphanage to learn music alongside the orphans, in the seventeenth and eighteenth century.
So if we see patronage from that perspective, then absolutely patronage will lead to justice, correcting the wrong relationships and social structure to a more gospel-centered community.
David Bailey: I love it. I love it. I don’t know about y’all, but I’m excited about this vision of patronage. I would love to give some biblical text to try to help maybe just think through this.
So, like, Acts 2. You see, like, the move of the Spirit, right? When the Spirit came—we’re actually in Pentecost. And so, you know, you see the miracle of Pentecost just isn’t that people are speaking in tongues, but it’s actually people hearing folks differently. And then they redefine family. You’ve got about fifteen different languages, fifteen different regions around the country and around the world, I’m going to say, and these different countries. And they realize that they are part of the kingdom of God, and this redefines family.
And then you see—I mean, we get excited about the sermon that Peter preached and the 3,000 that were saved that day. But you see, many were saved, thousands were saved, by eating together, by meeting each other’s needs, by patronage that was happening, because they were doing that Vivaldi type of redefining a family.
And then reread the book of Philippians. Contextually, Philippi was like Arlington. It was like the kind of military city that kind of retired people would go to. So we’re in D.C.—and Philippi is like, you know, and I’m sorry, we’re in D.C., Arlington is kind of where a lot of retired military people go and stay. And so it’s just a little bit of a wealthy space, and it was a patronage culture that was going on.
And when you patron—like Haejin said, they own that, you owe, you owe me something, you owe me loyalty if I patronize you. But what Paul then kind of articulates in Philippi is like, “Hey, you don’t—” This is not a transactional thing. You’re doing this unto the Lord, and God wants a cheerful giver. And there’s a joy that actually comes, a deeper joy, when you actually do generosity with no strings attached, as we are living into this new humanity as a family. Like, go back and read Philippians with that lens, and you’ll kind of see the richness that’s coming out of there.
Roberta Ahmanson: There’s a church in Philippi that was—well, it was early fourth century. You can only see the ruin of it now. It’s built right into the fabric of the town. And there’s a mosaic floor, most of which is still there. And so is the inscription. And the floor was given by a bishop from there who was at the Council of Nicaea. It’s kind of an amazing thing. And the floor is still there. And it still gives glory to God. And it also gave labor to the people who made it.
David Bailey: That’s beautiful. All right. So I love to switch. I mean, we did some kind of historical, some theological, some imaginative work. I would love to—maybe there’s some artists here and there’s some patrons here. I know the room pretty decently, so I won’t say who’s who.
But what I’d like to do is, you know, the relationship can get kind of awkward. And so I’m one who has friends who are wealthy friends and poor friends. And so a mantra that my wife and I try to live with is that we never want any of our poor friends to feel like a project, and we never want any of our wealthy friends feel like an ATM machine. So there is a dehumanization that can happen on the extremes of poverty and wealth. And so what I love to kind of, like—I just kind of put that elephant in the room.
And so, Mako, I’d like for you to maybe answer two questions. One is, if you’re an artist and you need a patron, how do you get a patron? And then how do you also work through the awkwardness of the relationship? And then, Roberta, I’m going to ask you, if somebody, you know, needs a patron, how would you—like, I’m not necessarily specifically you, but how do you approach, how do you keep the relationship in a way? And, like, let’s just kind of like kind of role-play a little bit of this out, talk it out.
Makoto Fujimura: Yeah. So I’ve given talks on patronage, and I have a chapter in the new second edition of Culture Care coming up. And I always tell artists in the room that I know you’re here looking for a patron for your work, but the most important thing is that you become a patron first.
You know, we do this work with Embers in the slums. And one of the things you find out very quickly is that we are kind of all wealthy, if you’re in this room. It’s very easy to find people who need your patronage. You can start with fellow artists, you know, to support them, even if it means sacrifice.
And then you find out very quickly what the privilege of helping an artist means as a patron. There’s a kind of responsibility, because now you own the work. What are you going to do with it, right? You think about everything from framing to exhibiting to storage to all these things that you perhaps didn’t think about when you’re just taking care of your art. And those are important questions.
Because it actually leads to—what Vivaldi did as a patron to these orphaned girls was not just to support them, to give them a job, to, you know, have music as their livelihood. He actually composed music because of them. Because this one girl, a violinist, an extraordinary—she was exceptional. So he composed The Four Seasons with her in mind. And then the background is all the other girls who may not have the talent, but they can keep the rhythm.
And by the way, his Four Seasons is very asthmatic, if you listen to it that way. He was expressing his own limitations and challenges in life. And because of these girls, he was able to express them. So his patronage not just meant he was able to help people. They helped him to articulate what he was feeding, the necessity to compose something into the world, right?
So that happens to us as we go into these areas. We find extraordinary gifts that these, especially children, give us that are just priceless. And I’m inspired by them. I have done art in response to that. But that’s one thing that I tell artists about patronage.
Haejin Shim Fujimura: And what happened in this relationship is that it wasn’t just Vivaldi and Anna Maria, of course, benefiting from this patronage relationship. Actually, what was created out of that redemptive relationship, we get to enjoy the future generation. So patronage must have this future imagination and hope in mind.
David Bailey: That’s wonderful. All right. So Roberta, speaking of who patrons are, what’s the practical things?
Roberta Ahmanson: Well, you know, I’ll be Calvinist again. It’s a matter of calling, in that, who did God make you and what did he give you? And my husband likes to say we’re all rich kids to God. He inherited financial—well, he inherited a few other things, too, some of them not so great. So he sees it from a very different angle. He’s never known what it is not to have his next meal.
When he was in his twenties—I won’t dwell on him too long—but he decided he’d live on $500 a month. But meanwhile, the money was stacking up, because it came in after his mother died especially. His income shot up, and somebody convicted him that he was tithing out of his $500. Meanwhile, there was all this other money, and he was looking for somebody to tell him—a Christian, because he became a Christian at twenty-three—how he was supposed to manage this.
And he had the model of his father’s foundation, of which he was a trustee, but in the wars of succession, his cousins basically stole his inheritance in the foundation and the business. Anyway, it’s a long and painful story, some of which you can read in a book called Called to Be Friends, about John Perkins and my husband.
So he went to the Full Gospel Businessmen and found out that they were not interested in telling you how to handle your money. So he kind of worked on his own and was influenced very much—and I’ll get to the point—by the Orange County Rescue Mission, where he played the piano. And the redevelopment—well, there was redevelopment in Santa Ana, and they declared the rescue mission blighted. But they wouldn’t give a conditional use permit for the rescue mission to move anywhere within the city limits.
And Howard realized that that was quite a power. It was one way to get the poor out of your city. Just make them illegal. There’s no place. And by definition, a lot of Christian service is service to people considered blight. And so it got him interested in politics, frankly, but it made him think about how he uses his money.
And so our philanthropy has ranged from—the rescue mission has been a part of our life, his life, since he was, what, twenty-eight years old, and understanding both being there and also giving to support its work, right down to the chapel that they have.
And also, you know, I don’t—you know, I give a lot of talks on patronage, too, and I’m looking at someone here who heard one I gave. I think that it’s a responsibility, but also when you give money, you give it to people that you trust going to know how to use it. And in the case of artists, I’ve heard horror stories of artists who were commissioned and then told what to do. You can’t do that. You choose an artist based on their work and then you let them go, because it’s to the glory of God.
But my husband and I are kind of bookish people. And one of the areas that we give money to is to intellectual pursuits. Because we’re both influenced deeply by James Davison Hunter, who’s a great friend, about the fact that it’s at the deepest places of intellectual ferment where things happen. And those things bubble up and affect the world. And evangelicals have not invested in their minds. And so we wonder why we’re not at the table.
I mean, why did DEI come out of Harvard? Because there wasn’t a Christian there to say, we’ve been doing this for 2,000 years. What are you talking about? You know, Pentecost. Everybody’s different race, language, everything. Paul’s pretty clear. The Old Testament’s clear. But we weren’t there. So a lot of our work has been to find minds and try to help them.
But you’ve got to do it—you’ve got to do it to let them go. You can’t tell them who to be or what to be. You give them money because you trust and you know. And there can’t be strings attached, as often there are, or your name on it, you know.
And so, I mean, the Ancient Christian Commentary is another example. I made the mistake. I asked Tom Oden what he wanted to do with the rest of his life in 1992, and he said he wanted to do an Ancient Christian Commentary and write a couple other books. And so two weeks later, we had a proposal, and the Ancient Christian Commentary happened, which is an end run on modernity. And if you haven’t read it, you should, because it’s the guys who were there at the beginning writing about what Christianity meant to the world. And so—but once you do that, you just trust Tom that he’s doing the right thing. And if you made a mistake, God’s going to make it very clear.
I don’t think that was very helpful, was it, David?
David Bailey: Well, no, I mean, I think—I mean, what people who study philanthropy call it trust-based philanthropy. And, you know, as friends of the Ahmansons, what I’ve observed has been their spiritual work that they do to be vessels, their own spiritual—to be vessels, to not be possessive. I’ve not seen them be possessive. And they really are in the space of sharing and bringing people along of whatever that is.
And it does come out of a—I mean, they’re free about their own story, but I think there’s a limp. There’s a limp that their humanity is very real in front of them, but then they also are depending on the cross in many ways, because when you’ve inherited wealth and you live at a certain level, it’s just—you don’t live in the same real world that everybody else lives with, but then you’re human, so you do live in the same real world. So I do think that there’s a level of spirituality that I would—it’s hard for you to say, but I could say that—that I would highly recommend.
And I would say all three of the people here, who, again, really dear friends, are generous people to whatever level. I mean, when we met, it was no reason the level of generosity that we experienced. But I’m literally here today because of the generosity when there was nobody knew who David Bailey was outside of my mom. And fortunately, my wife liked me, but outside of Richmond. Right?
But I think it was, it was like, “Hey, I see something in you. Stay at it.” Stay at it for almost twelve years before something actually became something of quote-unquote noticeability, you know. So I just would say just practice that in your life no matter what stage and phase of life you’re in.
Roberta Ahmanson: You know, friendship is a crucial word, because, you know, God leads us to people. I met David’s wife—for some reason wanting to have lunch with me. And I don’t know what her problem was. If you’re a psychologist, you can talk to her later. But she did, and it was like I’d known her forever. And I don’t know how she felt. Well, she must have liked me, because we’re still friends. And that’s how I met David and found out what he was doing.
And, you know, it is that piece of calling, where you’re in places where what you’re interested in, what you’re called to, then you meet the people, and then they teach. You meet some other people and pretty soon you find out about things. And then all along the way there are opportunities to give. Because sometimes giving a conversation at the right moment is the greatest gift a person could have. Just the fact that you paid attention and you got it. And that very thing is priceless. You can’t put money on that.
Then there are times when money is needed. It can help. But you’ve got to be real careful with money, because it can destroy. My husband learned early. He gave a big grant to a prison ministry. And they got a new office, and they got new furniture, and they got new—and in two years, he quit the grant, and it all closed down. That was a great learning experience for him, because they didn’t understand what to do with the money. Money alone isn’t the answer to anything. It can help things if the thing is good already.
David Bailey: All right. Go ahead.
Haejin Shim Fujimura: So speaking of friendship, there must be always a sense of listening to the voice of the Good Shepherd. Is this a person that you want me to be a patron of? And also, the flip side is, is this a person that you are bringing into my life to become a patron of my work, right?
Because when you have the creative capital as an artist, you have so much gift. Do not make that tie to anything—that just because there is an opportunity that seemingly is an opportunity, right? So, you know, it’s—and it’s so, I think, yes, patrons need to have a redemptive view of patronage, but also artists, you must have a redemptive view of patronage so that you can educate people who want to become a patron of you.
So when the gift comes, friendship comes, is this creating empowerment, so you can create more, and not codependency? Is this accompanying you, or is it managing you, right? Is it challenging the structural condition within which that you are struggling? And is this person journeying with you a long time as a friend?
So I ask, I beg my friends not to sell their art to anybody. Please interview the person who wants to acquire your art, because that person must steward it. This is your original work. Give it to the person who will steward it really well.
David Bailey: So the economy that we’re in is not a gift economy. It’s a capitalist economy, which I’m not an issue with. But within the context of the economy that we have, how do artists not work better in a gift economy? Is it not a better type of economy for artists, and even in the relationship between artists and patrons? Okay, when we don’t live in a gift economy, how does an artist still live within the gift economy?
Audience member: I had a question, and then Haejin just answered it for me. So the question was—relating to something, Roberta, that you said about finding, as an artist who has a big dream, big project that is looking for investors or patrons, in the Christian space, there are certain Christians that want to dictate a little bit or micromanage the theological details of your project and to make sure there’s enough—like, in Nashville world, Christian music, we call it Jesus per minute in your songs. It’s not Jesus-y enough, because it’s too abstract, and some more evangelical mindsets want you to make it explicitly Christian.
So how do you have a conversation with a patron or an investor who wants to kind of go that direction, and you’re like, wait, we need to have some creative control? But Haejin, you kind of answered it through friendship, relationship, and you’re interviewing them as well, figuring out if this is a right fit. So no question mark, and I’m so sorry, David.
David Bailey: Hey, this is Stephen Proctor, who did the projection light show, all that stuff last night. So yeah, yeah. If you didn’t give that great show, I would have let you—I would have got you over the question.
Oh, it’s the composer. Oh, it’s the composer. This is a musician. Yeah. All right. That was one more person.
All right. So what role now do we have? Now we have these alternative kind of contemporary patronage systems, like crowdfunding, subscription models, institutional granting, that require the artists to hustle, to go after. But do maybe fill that gap? Where does that fit in? Great. All right. You want to start answering?
Haejin Shim Fujimura: So quick about gift economy. Read a book by Lewis Hyde. It’s called The Gift. And in this book, he argues implicitly—you have to kind of read into it—but that it’s actually not gift economy versus capitalistic economy. It’s actually the capitalistic economy cannot survive without the gift economy. So it’s the idea capital, it’s the creative capital, it’s the relational capital. Without those things, the capitalistic system will collapse.
So artists are fundamental as essence of this economy, or capitalistic economy, but most of the time it’s bifurcated, right? So you don’t have a poet on the board of Fortune 500 company, but they should. They should, because they need that creative capital to use words in a way that is not transactional, right? So that would be the resource to go to about gift economy.
I think the contemporary, like the modern-day crowdfunding and institutional granting, all are also very creative way of approaching patronage. Yet, I think you always have to—and so do hustle, artists. It’s okay. Go after them, except always check your intention. Are you operating out of fear and scarcity? Or are you operating out of the God’s abundance? And only God knows, but you must check your intentions. Not only when you’re applying, but all the way through the process. And then also how you actually utilize that funds. Because again, to Roberta’s point, it might actually be toxic to you. Or it could be a greatest, most generative gift.
Roberta Ahmanson: There’s a book that was written called Toxic Charity, by Bob Lupton. You can hurt people more by helping them, or thinking you are, than by just not. That book’s about twenty years old, I think, but it’s a very good book to read.
David Bailey: To answer your question, just thinking about—there was various mechanisms that you talked about of raising money, where you do institutional, crowdfunding, traditional patronage.
You know, the thing I would say, particularly in a place of faith and soul—let me see, this is in 2010, my wife and I not coming from communities or families of wealth or even anybody that did anything of this nature. The people who just, like, they had jobs and they got paid the jobs and came back. My first year leaving from being a teacher, making $40,000 a year after five years, my biggest step of faith was getting a salary, insurance. And somebody asked my uncle, said, “Hey, how’s David doing?” He said, “Well, he had to call and ask me for money. I guess he’s doing okay.” And so, you know, that’s the kind of cultural context in which I came from.
The thing that I would encourage you to do is to really, like he just said, discern what is yours to do, and the vehicle in which to get that accomplished. Spend a lot of time praying, but then that kind of like—that the difference between what Walter Brueggemann calls orientation, disorientation, reorientation. This is what the Psalms is. This is what the artist’s life is. Understand that that is part of your spirituality.
In the last—just 2000, 2026—the last sixteen years, it has been a process of faith, of growing from, you know, having to try to figure out $40,000, to be responsible for two million as an organization that grew, that grew to organization. But then I got on the other side of that vehicle and realized, like, oh, growing something bigger and better wasn’t actually the thing that kind of helped cultivate the art. So it just—I’ve been on these other different sides of this thing.
And I would just say, pray about what’s yours to do. Pray about the vehicle in which to get to that, discern that, and understand the process of orientation, disorientation, reorientation is what the spiritual life is. And this is kind of how God wants to meet you in your journey of trying to be faithful to what God’s called you to do.
Roberta Ahmanson: The most important thing for any one of us in this room, whether you’re a patron or an artist or a consumer of the above, is your own spiritual life. Whether your heart’s right before God. There’s nothing more important in your whole life. And it will shape everything that you do. It shapes Mako’s art. It shapes what Haejin does. I pray to God it shapes what I do, what my husband does, what the poor people who have to work for us do. And that is the most important thing in any of our lives. And so you’ve got to put that first.
And then second, then within that context, you seek God to tell you what your calling is. And partly you tell that by what you love and by what you’re good at. And then God brings people into your life. It’s amazing how he brings into your life. And you’re surprised. It’s like C. S. Lewis says, when two people get to—you know, you meet someone and you start talking and the person says, “Oh, you’re interested in that too.” And a friendship is born.
And a lot of the people that we’ve worked with, I consider them our partners in what we do. We give money, but I hope we give more than that, but they certainly give more back to us. And our goal in both cases is to give to the world, to make the world a different place, to make a world more like the world that is described for us in God’s Word, and to help people on that journey. But the most important thing—it’s your heart before God.
David Bailey: So can we close in prayer? I would love, if you’re comfortable with this, to close your eyes and open up your hands to receive this prayer from Paul. It says:
For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives his name. I pray that out of his glorious riches, he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power together with all the Lord’s holy people to grasp how wide and long and how high and deep is the love of Christ. And to know this love that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever.
And all God’s people say, “Amen.”
