Some of us (kind of?) get it, but don't have anywhere else to go to church. You're right though, most people never even get around to caring about what legitimate beauty is and would rather feed on the husks that rightly belong to the swine.

If only the energies of the excitable zealots could be harnessed...

Well, I take your point, but I think it’s way too early to expect to find “a church to go to”. That’s not to say there aren’t churches trying or churches that aren’t succeeding to some degree. There are even churches that are failing but still offer some mitigation of the problem. But I dare say if you talk to a serious, thoughtful pastor of a successful church, he will be the first to tell you that his reforms have been modest, limited and temporary. He knows in his heart that everything is en prise to the next family that seeks membership, or a gung-ho staff member.

I still think, though, that we haven’t grasped the scope of the problem. I chose Piper and Masters to introduce this idea because I am sympathetic to their intentions. And I think that’s where a lot of people are. Everyone, and I mean everyone, knows something is wrong. Even Emergence, which is not even Christian, professes an interest in getting arts into the church. But desperate activism has not helped. Everyone who knows something is wrong has a different idea for improvement.

What does improvement mean? To some it means to abandon “special music”, to some it means to dispense with everything but the Psalter, to some it means to disparage aesthetic considerations, to some it means moving into a theater or a bar, to some it means hammer dulcimers and pennywhistles.

When it comes to serious thought about the work of men like Eliot and Kaplan and Holloway and Scruton, has there been any measurable advance?

I fear the zealots are making people feel better about not changing.

Listening to KTUL on the way to work the other day and they introduced a Samuel Wesley (Charles' son) classical composition with this quote from him: "If the doctrine of the Catholic Church matched her music, there would be Heaven on earth." I haven't been able to get that statement out of my mind since.

Reading these latest meditations on beauty I'm struck by how much we've lost without even realizing it was gone, and thus, not knowing where it was lost we don't know where to go to find it. Growing up in a Baptist church where "formalism" was mocked and worship was ignored I didn't know how much I was missing regarding what you so perfectly termed our "terrible, wonderful, beautiful God." At least now I know the absence...but where and how to find the presence is another question all together.

Take your average fundagelical church where the pastor thinks that he appreciates "the hymns of the faith," but still countenances a steady diet of rape and pillage songs by Patch.

Then, introduce that congregation to "Jerusalem the Golden, and, huddle behind the pulpit or lectern to avoid the incoming.

Most are so used to fulfilling the desires of the flesh and then pronouncing it to be the work of the Spirit that they could not discern the difference between Wagner and Bach.

Everyone who knows something is wrong has a different idea for improvement.

Stepping back for a moment, what is the point of agreement upon which everyone would say that "something is wrong"? Is it simply that popular culture is base and degraded, and Church culture is even worse?

(I ordered the book, BTW, and it should arrive in the next day or two. I have read a couple of other books on this very topic in the last year [well, beauty in general -- nothing about beauty in the context of church], so I definitely have been mulling it over. And I just finished the William Law piece, which I'll review on my blog later).

I’m not sure I follow your question.

As a novice, it is my job to ask the questions you've heard a million times: it's in my contract.

If the scope of the problem is beyond our grasp, if worship is truly unrecoverable, if the best we can do to have glimpses of beauty is look to the past, has Christ failed to establish His Church? I obviously expect a "ME GENOITO!!!" here, but I'm starting to wonder if the Lord really will find faith on the earth when He returns. Do we await another Luther, who will prepare the way for another Bach?

I think Joshua is asking the question to which the answer begins with the book Ideas Have Consequences by Richard Weaver.

I was just trying to suss out whether or not all of the constituencies mentioned actually *do* agree about "something wrong". Charlatans throughout history have latched on to any vague sense of dis-ease as an excuse to propose cures that benefit the charlatan, and this would be the first place I'd look for some of the groups you mentioned.

Beauty doesn't do this; the judgment of beauty orders the emotions and desires. Think about that. A philistine could get lost in a museum and still stagger out onto the street with disordered emotions and desires.

To me, this is the key point. And the big mistake is in putting ourself in the judge's seat, as if we're looking over a stable of concubines to select the most suitable one. When we encounter Truth, it should be so beautiful and terrible that we fall flat on our faces in fear and total surrender. Throughout the Bible, this is the appropriate reaction to angels, let alone the risen Christ. Those who do not fall flat on their faces are generally those who "have not eyes to see".

When a man encounters the gospel, and does not alter his life as described in William Law's piece, it is questionable as to whether or not he really has eyes to see. It is questionable whether or not the beauty of the gospel has changed him. For such a man, talk about which sort of worship music is appropriate, seems very redundant.

I wonder how much time the recently-martyred Nigerian and Iraqi pastors spent arguing about which worship music was suitable?

Josh:

Yah, I take your point; not everyone saying we have problems has a valid contribution to make. Clearly. My point is that there is a near-universal dissatisfaction. For crying out loud, even CT makes noises occasionally about our unhealthy state.

Yet nothing changes. And it hasn’t changed in my lifetime and my father’s lifetime. If we look at one’s complaint and consider the remedy we see nothing but opportunism and self-congratulation. It seems to me that even the shallowest mind will wonder what gives.

With respect to your third paragraph, it seems to me we are not encountering the truth; we are being placated by truisms and very bad art criticism. The fact that we are not encountering the truth in our liturgy suggests something sinister.

I mentioned before you came here a German couple who was coming over to play through string trios and (when we could find a fourth) string quartets. We got to talking and I learned that both were gigging at First Baptist of Richardson. He looked at me sheepishly over his music stand and said “Tzchingdarassabum”, which was his German way of saying, “Yah, yah, I know, beer garden slop, what can I say?”

There is something severely wrong when people who play at Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Schubert feel embarrassed to be discovered playing swill for church.

dp:

Well, I’m wondering if we aren’t getting a little loose with our categories. It’s prolly my fault; let me see if I can sort some things.

Scruton is not talking about worship. In fact he’s talking about art only to the extent it overlaps the idea of beauty. He also talks about food preparation, table setting, gardens, architectural features, etc. (even giftwrapping); all pretty profound in what they have to say about beauty. He is saying something serious about one purpose beauty serves; one of the functions of beauty. In doing so he is devastating a modern presumption we must all contend with when we deal with philistines: the notion that “preferences” can define worship.

Beyond that, I think he helps us to consider a connection between beauty and worship we have abandoned. Read any fundagelical, he is not talking about what should be used in church because it is beautiful, he is arguing about what should be abandoned in favor of immediate appeal. Kitsch has appeal. Can worship be kitsch?

Scruton would be struck dumb to read Masters’ summary of the place of aesthetics.

But to answer your question: No, I don’t think it is, based on this understanding, impossible to worship. To worship we really don’t even need a place in the dirt to kneel. It gets tricky, though, when we begin to consider what is essential to liturgy. Do we presume that the liturgy–old or new—is completely useless because it has become “inaccessible”?

If beauty orders our pleasure and taste, then certainly it can be no less important than truth which orders our faith and life.

I think this point has been lost. Today’s reformers are eagerly renovating the theology of their hymns. Given how badly we’ve done our hymnody, this is nothing to be sneezed at. If Calvary’s Blood is a “good”, then we have somewhere misplaced a useful conception of good. But if Eliot and Scruton are right about how we feel, what gives us pleasure and what determines our taste, we certainly cannot continue being indifferent toward it.

I don’t think we dare to pray for a Bach, a Luther, or even a Hus, until we can appreciate the heritage we had and discarded and until we gain some sense of what good liturgy--what beauty--succeeded in doing for the worshiper.

Diss,

I found this article in the Wesleyan Methodist Magazine (1875). And I thought it had some relevance to the discussion at hand. What think ye?
_____________________


THE "RELIGIOUS SIDE" OF ART

Of late, society of all ranks and creeds and classes has been so grievously deluded by the heresy about "Religious Art," that the truth as to the relative positions, attributes, and powers of art and godliness should, for once, be systematically ascertained

Art, first of all, is work. Labour is its foundation, and the human hand its necessary instrument. Religion is an aspiration of the soul. The hands know nothing of it; they perform their work in strict obedience to the will, whatever be its motive, whether sacred, non religious, or profane; and so their art is totally indifferent. In it they know not God; their work is not religious. Thus a master workman planning a fine church may be a subject of religions feeling, or be entirely sceptical about a God: these views do not affect his plan. The object of the building is prescribed, and he has only to construct the walls and piers accordingly, developing such forms of elevation and interior construction as may best express his ideality and sense of beauty. This is aesthetic architectural design, and, like the handiwork, is merely intellectual and imaginative, having no religious side.

Proceeding one step further, we arrive at what is called the ornamental work, the carving, painting, metal-work, and furniture: these all are efforts of the imagination, and of the adapting mind, directing the experienced and facile hand, entirely without religions doctrine, sentiment, or aspiration. The art workman may be a religious man, the work may be devoted to religious service, but it is still entirely devoid of the religious sentiment.

Again, in what is called historic painting and in sculpture, there may be illustrations or fictitious records of prophetic, biblical, and sacred scenes; but these are efforts of imagination only, not of piety. Pietro Perugino was for many years a leading painter of religious subjects, and his pre-Raphaelite art would probably be called strictly "religious;" but the painter was by no means what the Church would call devout. His art was the expression of perception, not of sentiment. Many a scoundrel has depicted with consummate art the highest virtues in historic action. No one exceeded Raphael in representing the sweet innocence of childhood, or the virtuous gaze of modest womanhood; but this was no expression of the painter's moral purity. The modesty that he portrayed was human, not religious; cognisant of man, and not perhaps of God. Or if we turn to Fra Angélico, whose miniatures and larger frescoes are etherealised so that the human forms appear unfit for mundane use, and only suitable for heavenly spheres, we find no utterance of religion in his paintings. The religious Frate, while he worked with perfect purity of motive, only made his pictures eminent for delicate refinement, in conception, and in form and colour. All the holy scenes that ho go gracefully imagines and depicts, are phantoms of his mind, not utterances of bis heart. His heart was in his work, undoubtedly, but in a mundane, not in a religious sense. The graceful, very striking fresco of the Annunciation on the wall of the San Marco corridor, shows how fervid and direct and simple his imagination was; but he depicts an act or incident, and not an aspiration.

Subjectively then we find that art has no "religious side:" the artistic workman, whether pious or profane, is equally unable to develop true religious fooling in his work. His art discovers nothing of his holiness of life or even of desire. It is not personally "religious."

Negatively, however, a man's religious feeling will affect his work,—it keeps it pure and free from immorality. A painting may be coarse, but this is very much a question of conventional and social manners. Coarseness of expression may result from no indelicacy, but from a simple and ingenuous rendering of the customs of the tune. But many an artist's work has been of absolute intention vicious and profane. These qualities are basely human, and too often have been seen in works of art, which are a form of human utterance, quite capable of giving full expression to impiety and vice, though not attaining to a like facility in matters of religion.

Or if we put aside the artist, and consider the effect of art on the beholder, we shall find that its "religious side," again, is undiscoverable. Art has undoubted influence on the mind. It is a pleasurable impulse to imaginative action, and a healthful means of mental exaltation and development in the sympathetic, sensible admirer. It charms and glorifies the non-religious side of human nature; but its very highest works, produced by men of various developments of mental, moral, and religious character, though they may exhibit the phenomena of nature in their greatest charm, and include every distinguishable action and expression in the human face and form, leave the religious feelings quite untouched. The sentiment evoked is not divine but human hi its sympathy and aim.

Much has been said and written on "old faith," and of the wonders that it wrought in art. The theory is plausible and popular. There is a gratifying sense of mild religiousness in the idea that the excellence of our old buildings was an evidence of faith; and the beholder may with little effort make himself believe that his delight and admiration also are an "act of faith," and that, without need of any sacrifice or abnegation, all the merit of the beauty and the noble work that he so well appreciates is efficiently his own, and thus that he is gloriously "religious." The fact, however, is that faith has no creative power in art ; it works on very different lines. It does not deal, like art, with what is limited and tangible, but with the infinite and undiscovered. "Old faith" did nothing in the way of art; the old workmen did the work, and then the faithful used it. The old master-workmen built with dignity, simplicity, and ease, and they were able thus to express themselves in stone with infinite delight. Their alert imaginations, unencumbered by the fashionable follies of the world, became an overflowing source of art in beautiful variety. The artificer in each material discoursed in his own workman's language, in accordance with the constantly advancing rules of art. All this humanity, variety of thought, and beauty of idea, when it is grandly emphasized by the majestic height, and the contrasted light and shade in a cathedral church, appears impressive and mysterious. The untutored, unaccustomed mind becomes confused; and as the building is devoted to religion, and is consecrated and called holy, the impression given by the "holy" place is without thought or question held to be "religious." Thus the "religious side" of art is but a term of place. It only means that the "religious" work of art was seen in church. Precisely the same art might be employed in a casino or a gambling-house, and then with equal reason it would be esteemed profane.

A man not wanting in sagacity attends a Ritualist church. The building is correct in style and rubrical arrangements, and adorned with marbles tastefully arranged. The reredos is designed by somebody of eminence. The painted windows and the corresponding decoration on the walls are equally superior in their production, and the whole scene impresses our sagacious devotee. He is at once religious and admiring, and he imagines, or assumes, without a thought, that his admiring wonder helps, or is a side of his religion. Yet these two things have no relationship at all. The impression he receives is due to ignorance, and is directly kin to the delight of gaping rustics at a village fair. His scope of vision is entirely filled by things that he can apprehend, but is not by habitual discriminating knowledge capable of comprehending; and though these objects may in aspect be familiar, yet in meaning they appear mysterious, and thus and by association they become to him impressive and "religious." —British Quarterly Review.

Now that is genuinely sad.

Who wrote this, a prison camp commandant?