Seniors at Unity must complete a final project in which they present how they have made a biblical connection to a subject they have learned in school. Umberger says that her students often use art in this project. “I try to help prepare the high schoolers for that, so maybe the subject of creation or beauty is something they’ve learned within their time at Unity and they can connect that with biblical perspective and worldview,” she explains.
Umberger includes biblical perspective at each step of her students’ art education. For the younger classes, she takes a simple approach, building a foundation for appreciating art through faith. “When they get to the high-school level, they’re more looking at how do we as Christians, from a biblical perspective, analyze how the arts impacted the world and then how do we make sense of that as Christians, and how do we…glorify God through our art,” she says.
“If God is creative, and we are made in his image, we also have this creativeness in us, so how do we steward that as believers? We look at scripture to define what God calls good and true and then let that determine how we analyze and celebrate art.”