If you are serious about your photography or any other creative hobby – passionate about it – you are likely treating it as a way of expressing yourself, as an art form. As it turns out, interest in art is often closely related to interest in spirituality as is evident in the work of Robert Wuthnow, a Princeton sociologist.

Wuthnow has done extensive work on spirituality and art. His book “All in Sync.” describes the results of a large study in which he looked at how music and art enrich the spiritual lives of people who are interested in art but are not professional artists. The major conclusion is clear: there is a strong relationship between spirituality and art in the population at large; the more interested one is in art, the more likely one is to take spirituality seriously.

Wuthnow’s principal measure was the individual’s score on the Artistic Interest Scale. Respondents were rated by the interviewer on this scale which had been developed by Wuthnow. The more artistic activities in which the interviewee participated, the higher the score. Playing an instrument, writing poetry, singing etc. were among the activities contributing to the score. Here are some representative results: the higher the score, the more likely it is the individual will

• Pray
• Include music or art as part of prayer
• Seek the guidance of a spiritual director
• Participate in services to the community such as feeding the homeless, helping those leaving prison make the transition to the larger community, helping children who are behind in school, etc.

These are correlational results and we cannot tell whether an interest in spirituality causes people to be artistic or that an interest in art leads to growth in spirituality or that both are caused by some third factor. For our purposes it is enough to say that interests in art and spirituality are related. If you are passionate about photography or whatever your art may be,  you are likely to be interested in spirituality as well.

So this strong relationship between photography (art) and spirituality we have noticed in us as individuals,  is there for many others as well.  Maybe a blog like this one, which stresses this relationship, was a good idea after all.