High Art and Sin Senses

Since this book I'm reading ("Shadow of the Almighty"...still. Reading slowly) draws heavily from Jim Elliot's journals and letters, and since he died in 1956, the world views and fears of the mid-20th century that are prevalent within the text take on a very present tense. In today's reading he references an editorial from Life magazine, arguing that America's failure to produce great works of art is due to its lack of a sense of sin. I read no farther; I don't want what he says next to taint the zygote of a thought that was birthed from such a phrase.
What, exactly, is a sense of sin?
And how does the high concept of art jigsaw around and into such a sense?
If art at its very core is birthed from a womb of "wrongness"--an imbalance, an incongruity--then a strong sense of "sin" is indeed necessary. But being that the concept of sin is by no means an absolute, how necessary is the understanding thereof?
Or am I way off in my interpretation of such a statement!
See I simmer for a little bit on the lighter points of life and suddenly this stuff bubbles up...