It is not only in the world of art that we observe the steady advance of kitsch. Far more important, given the influence on the popular psyche, has been the kitschification of religion. Images are of enormous importance in religion, helping us to understand the Creator through idealized visions of his world: concrete images of transcendental truths. In the blue robe of a Bellini virgin we encounter the ideal of motherhood, as an enfolding purity and a promise of peace. This is not kitsch but the deepest spiritual truth, and one that we are helped to understand through the power and eloquence of the image. However, as the puritans have always reminded us, such an image stands on the verge of idolatry, and with the slightest push can fall from its spiritual eminence into the sentimental abyss.

--- Roger Scruton
The Flight from Beauty

We pointed recently to some examples of well-intentioned blunders. I will repeat for those who may have misunderstood: I agree with Piper's prejudice against drama in the church. When most people think of me they think of someone who condemns drama everywhere: I object to drama in the Globe Theatre—that goes to show how monomaniacal I am about it. I stand with the Puritans and against fundamentalists, that separatist-when-it-suits-them bunch. I can't imagine Piper ever saying anything against drama that I could not agree with. What I take exception to is his observation that this desire for drama in the church can be both "a token of unbelief in the power in preaching" and also fall in the category of liberty in Christ.

This makes no sense at all. I think we all know that Piper is a better theologian than that, and I think most of us suspect he is just trying to answer a question in as politically unobjectionable a way as he can. The unthinking mob is not going to reconsider its indulgences on the strength of that characterization.

Peter Masters said many good things. I agree with his correction of Frame: I think it is idiotic to be delighted by simple, repetitive songs because there are very few thoughts in them. When someone prefers banal choruses to the Psalms we begin to wonder if this preference for "few thoughts" isn't especially suited to John Frame's own mind. Anyone who thinks Wesley and Watts are too sophisticated needs to get a library card on the very first occasion that presents itself.

"Sophisticated"?!

So I am on the same side of the barricades as Piper and Masters. On the general questions we are hunkered down in the same trenches.

What provokes my dismay is the solution.  If drama-as-liturgy stands or falls on the influence of John Piper, we are in a very bad way. If music cannot be used to express worship, we are reading different Bibles.

I've suggested in the past that we are beyond a human solution. Culture is not a hat we can throw away because next season the style will have changed anyway. It is more like a birthright: you get to discard it only once.

We now live in the Wild West, and we ain't seen no law in these here parts for neerly a hunnert-n-fiffy years, you young whippersnapper!

It's not just the rustlers and the train robbers who do what is right in their own eyes. We've enjoyed decades of this sort of vigilante worship and tribal piety.

Imagine telling Pascal that drama in church is a matter of Christian liberty. Conjure the image of J. S. Bach flying into a rage on hearing that he cannot use music to express worship. We are not only at the mercy of the bandits here, we are at the mercy of the lawmen. We're being offered these draconian remedies, ad hoc fixes and punitive solutions which will ensure that we never get it right.

This would be an ideal time to come to our senses. There is a Law. There has always been a Law. There is a law about what is good, there is a law about what is true and there is a law about what is beautiful, believe it or not. And since most people do not, you ought to become conversant with it.

Here is a place to start. I hesitate to mention it because we live among yahoos who, on the strength of reading one short book, are more likely than not to go out and shoot up the neighborhood again and confiscate everyone's pennywhistle. But if you want to be rational about it, you should read something about beauty.

Here are 197 pages about

• Judging Beauty
• Human Beauty
• Natural Beauty
• Everyday Beauty
• Artistic Beauty
• Taste and Order
• Art and Er­os
• The Flight from Beauty
• Concluding Thoughts

Please; read something thoughtful.

Please.

____________________
Beauty
Roger Scruton
Oxford University Press, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-19-955952-7