Protestant Aesthetics and the Arts

The Reformation was one of the defining cultural turning points in Western history,
even if there is a long-standing stereotype that Protestants did away with art and
material culture. Rather than reject art and aestheticism, Protestants developed
their own aesthetic values, which Protestant Aesthetics and the Arts addresses as it
identifies and explains the link between theological aesthetics and the arts within a
Protestant framework across five hundred years of history.
Featuring essays from an international gathering of leading experts working
across a diverse set of disciplines, Protestant Aesthetics and the Arts is the first study
of its kind, containing essays that address Protestantism and the fine arts (visual
art, music, literature, and architecture) and historical and contemporary Protestant
theological perspectives on the subject of beauty and imagination. Contributors
challenge accepted preconceptions relating to the boundaries of theological
aesthetics and religiously determined art, disrupt traditional understandings of
periodization and disciplinarity, and seek to open rich avenues for new fields of
research.
Building on renewed interest in Protestantism in the study of religion and
modernity and the return to aesthetics in Christian theological inquiry, this volume
will be of significant interest to scholars of theology, aesthetics, art and architectural
history, literary criticism, and religious history.

Sarah Covington is Professor of History at the Graduate Center and Queens College
of the City University of New York, USA. She is the author of Wounds, Flesh and
Metaphor in Seventeenth-Century England (2009) and The Trail of Martyrdom:
Persecution and Resistance in Sixteenth-Century England (2003). Her articles have
appeared in the Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte,
Albion, Book History, Reformation, the Journal of Scottish Historical Studies,
History, and Mortality, in addition to numerous book collections.

Kathryn Reklis is Associate Professor of Modern Protestant Theology at Fordham

University in New York City, USA. Her first monograph was Theology and the
Kinesthetic Imagination: Jonathan Edwards and the Making of Modernity (2014), and
she is currently at work on a history of the “Religion and Literature” movement in the
mid-twentieth century. She is the On Media columnist for The Christian Century and
holds affiliate positions in comparative literature and American studies at Fordham.
Routledge Studies in Theology, Imagination and the Arts
Series editors:
Jeremy Begbie
Duke University, USA and University of Cambridge, UK
Trevor Hart
University of St Andrews, UK

What have imagination and the arts to do with theology? For much of the
modern era, the answer has been ‘not much’. It is precisely this deficit that
this series seeks to redress. For, whatever role they have or have not been
granted in the theological disciplines, imagination and the arts are undenia-
bly bound up with how we as human beings think, learn and communicate,
engage with and respond to our physical and social environments and, in
particular, our awareness and experience of that which transcends our own
creatureliness. The arts are playing an increasingly significant role in the
way people come to terms with the world; at the same time, artists of many
disciplines are showing a willingness to engage with religious or theological
themes. A spate of publications and courses in many educational institu-
tions has already established this field as one of fast-growing concern.
This series taps into a burgeoning intellectual concern on both sides of
the Atlantic and beyond. The peculiar inter-disciplinarity of theology, and
the growing interest in imagination and the arts in many different fields of
human concern, afford the opportunity for a series that has its roots sunk in
varied and diverse intellectual soils, while focused around a coherent theo-
logical question: How are imagination and the arts involved in the shaping
and reshaping of our humanity as part of the creative and redemptive pur-
poses of God, and what roles do they perform in the theological enterprise?
Many projects within the series have particular links to the work of the
­Institute for Theology, Imagination and the Arts in the University of St Andrews,
and to the Duke Initiatives in Theology and the Arts at Duke University.

Memento Mori in Contemporary Art

Theologies of Lament and Hope
Taylor Worley

Protestant Aesthetics and the Arts

Edited by Sarah Covington and Kathryn Reklis

For more information and a full list of titles in the series, please visit: www.
routledge.com/religion/series/ATHEOART
Protestant Aesthetics
and the Arts

Edited by Sarah Covington

and Kathryn Reklis
First published 2020
by Routledge
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To my parents, who filled my early life with an
abundance of Protestant art and reflections on
beauty. —KR

To Margaret L. King, for her scholarship, mentorship

and inspiration. —SC
Contents

List of figuresix
List of contributorsxi
Acknowledgmentsxiii

1 Introduction 1
KATHRYN REKLIS

2 God, language, and the use of the senses: the emergence

of a Protestant aesthetic in the early modern period 19
WILLIAM DYRNESS

3 Protestant paintings: artworks by Lucas Cranach and his

workshop 41
CHRISTIANE ANDERSSON

4 Tradition and invention: German Lutheran Church architecture 57

EMILY FISHER GRAY

5 Forbidden fruit? Protestant aesthetics in seventeenth-

century Dutch still life 77
JULIE BERGER HOCHSTRASSER

6 Antipapal aesthetics and the Gunpowder Plot: staging

Barnabe Barnes’s The Devil’s Charter 99
ADRIAN STREETE

7 Unintended aesthetics? the artistic afterlives of Protestant

iconoclasm 113
SARAH COVINGTON
viii Contents
8 Isaac Watts and the theological aesthetics of Evangelical
Sacred Song 130
STEPHEN A. MARINI

9 Beauty and the Protestant body: aesthetic abstraction in

Jonathan Edwards 146
KATHRYN REKLIS

10 Theology and aesthetics in the early nineteenth century:

Kierkegaard’s alternative to Hegel and Romanticism 159
LEE C. BARRETT

11 Karl Barth’s Doctrine of the Word of God, Mozart, and

aesthetics in four movements 174
PAUL LOUIS METZGER

12 The Protestant encounter with modern architecture 187

GRETCHEN T. BUGGELN

13 Jazz religious and secular 204

JASON C. BIVINS

14 “Gorgeousness inheres in anything”: the Protestant origins

of John Updike and Marilynne Robinson’s aesthetics of the
ordinary 221
ALEX ENGEBRETSON

15 Black Protestantism and the aesthetics of autonomy:

a decolonial theological reflection 235
RUFUS BURNETT

16 The borderlands aesthetics of Mexican American Pentecostalism 252

LLOYD BARBA

17 Embodied aesthetics and Transnational Korean Protestant

Christianity 265
MINJUNG NOH

Conclusion 281
SARAH COVINGTON

Index288
Figures

2.1 Jacob von Ruisdael, Three Great Trees in a Mountainous

Landscape, 1667. Norton Simon Museum,
Pasadena, California 32
2.2 Tuileries gardens and palace 34
3.1 Lucas Cranach the Elder, Law versus Grace (1529) 43
3.2 Lucas Cranach the Elder, Christ with the Adulteress
(ca. 1520) 44
3.3 Lucas Cranach the Elder, Christ with the Adulteress
(after 1532) 44
3.4 Lucas Cranach the Younger, Christ Blessing
the Children (1537) 47
3.5 Lucas Cranach the Elder, Caritas (1534) 48
3.6 Lucas Cranach the Elder, Feeding of the 5000 (n.d.) 51
3.7 Lucas Cranach the Elder, The Crucifixion with the
Centurion (1536) 52
3.8 Lucas Cranach the Elder or Younger, Apostles’ Farewell53
4.1 Georg Pencz, Two Sermons59
4.2 Schloßkapelle Torgau 62
4.3 Relief, Schloßkapelle Stuttgart 66
4.4 Christianopolis67
4.5 Freudenstadt plan 69
4.6 Prinzipalstück70
4.7 Holy Cross, Augsburg 72
5.1 Pieter Claesz, Light meal with roemer, oysters, saltcellar,
roll, and pepper, 1642 79
5.2 Willem Claesz Heda, Still life with roemer,
avondmaalsbeker, glas a la façon de venis,
pocketwatch, nuts, olives, oyster, and pepper, 1657 81
5.3 Rembrandt van Rijn, The Raising of the Cross, ca. 1633 82
5.4 Peter Paul Rubens, Elevation of the Cross, center
panel, 1609–10 83
5.5 Frans Snyders (1579–1657), Still life with game suspended
on hooks, a lobster on a porcelain plate, a basket of
grapes, apples, plums, and other fruits on a partly draped
table with two monkeys, 1640s 85
x Figures
5.6 Pieter Jansz Saenredam (Dutch, 1597–1665), the interior
of Saint Bavo, Haarlem, 1628 88
5.7 Pieter Claesz, Vanitas, 1630 90
5.8 Willem Kalf, Still life with silver ewer, 1656 91
7.1 St. Martin’s Cathedral, Utrecht 114
7.2 Christ before Pilate art under attack close-up 120
7.3 Caspar David Friedrich, Klosterruine Eldena (ca. 1825) 121
7.4 Damaged street kiosk, New York City 125
12.1 Eliel Saarinen, Christ Lutheran Church, Minneapolis,
Minnesota, sanctuary from choir loft (ca. 1951) 192
12.2 Edward Anders Sovik, First Baptist Church, Bloomington,
Indiana (ca. 1957) 193
12.3 Edward Dart, St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church, Gary,
Indiana (1959) 194
12.4 Paul Schweikher, Methodist Church, Plainfield, Iowa (1951) 195
12.5 Edward Anders Sovik, Methodist Church, Northfield,
Minnesota (1967) 199
16.1 The platform and altar of the temple in Calexico 256
16.2 Doily for the Santa Cena257
16.3 The San Jose sanctuary 260
17.1 Fan dance performances in Philadelphia Yuong-Sang
Korean Presbyterian Church, 2011 273
Contributors

Christiane Andersson is Professor of Art History at Bucknell University of

Pennsylvania, USA.
Lloyd Barba is Assistant Professor of Religion in the Americas in the
Department of Religion and teaches in Latinx and Latin American
­
­Studies at Amherst College, USA.
Lee C. Barrett is the Mary B. and Henry P. Stager Professor of Theology at
Lancaster Theological Seminary, USA.
Jason C. Bivins is Professor of Religious Studies at North Carolina State
University, USA.
Gretchen T. Buggeln holds the Phyllis and Richard Duesenberg Chair in
Christianity and the Arts at Valparaiso University, USA.
Rufus Burnett is Assistant Professor in the Theology Department at Ford-
ham University, USA.
Sarah Covington is Professor of History at the Graduate Center and Queens
College of the City University of New York, USA.
William Dyrness is Senior Professor of Theology and Culture at Fuller Theo-
logical Seminary, USA.
Alex Engebretson is Lecturer in American Literature at Baylor University,
USA.
Emily Fisher Gray is Associate Professor of History at Norwich University,
USA.
Julie Berger Hochstrasser is Professor Emerita at the University of Iowa,
USA.
Stephen A. Marini is the Elisabeth Luce Moore Professor of Christian
­Studies and Professor of Religion at Wellesley College, USA.
Paul Louis Metzger, PhD, is Professor of Christian Theology & Theology
of Culture as well as the Founder and Director of the Institute for the
xii Contributors
Theology of Culture: New Wine, New Wineskins at Multnomah Univer-
sity, USA.
Minjung Noh is a PhD candidate in the Department of Religion at Temple
University, USA.
Kathryn Reklis is Associate Professor of Modern Protestant Theology at
Fordham University, USA.
Adrian Streete is Professor of Early Modern English Literature and Theol-
ogy at the University of Glasgow, Scotland.
Acknowledgments

Sarah Covington and Kathryn Reklis wish to thank the Center for Religion
at the CUNY Graduate Center, which hosted a symposium in 2015 on Prot-
estant aesthetics. The essays that follow were commissioned in the wake of
the ideas that emerged from that event, and we are grateful to the input of
others who contributed to it, including Bryan Turner, Helena Rosenblatt,
John Torpey, Angela Van Haelen, and Tommy Chung. In addition, we wish
to thank James Dechant for his very careful editing of the manuscript; with-
out his careful eye and insightful comments, we would have struggled to
bring the collection to a graceful conclusion. Thanks, also, to Fordham Uni-
versity’s Office of Research for a Manuscript Preparation Award. Finally,
we are indebted to Jeremy Begbie and Trevor Hart for commissioning the
volume for the Routledge Studies in Theology, Imagination, and the Arts
series and to our editor, Joshua Wells. We are very mindful of the many
scholars whose work across many disciplines paved the way for this volume.
We hope we honor and build on this work while suggesting new directions
for future work.
1 Introduction
Kathryn Reklis

It was once an assumption that Protestants were averse from the begin-
ning to artistic expressions and aesthetic reflections on beauty and art.
Although this assumption has been thoroughly challenged from many dis-
ciplines, it continues to exert surprising power, both in contemporary theo-
logical debates and in theoretical constructions of the history of modernity.
The lingering power of this stereotype may reflect more on how scholars of
many stripes have come to think about Protestantism than on some histori-
cal origin point. Or maybe the assumption reflects a kind of internal Protes-
tant principle that gives undue weight to the original Protestants, who did
center anxiety about art, beauty, materiality, and images in their theological
preoccupations. But when faced with the proliferation of Protestant aes-
thetic forms—from woodcuts and paintings to devotional poetry and Mora-
vian miniatures or from praise and worship music to Korean fan dances and
the ecstatic body dancing—it is hard to keep talking as though Protestants
do not have aesthetics or art.
The time seems ripe to reevaluate Protestant aesthetics and art both within
Christian theological circles and among scholars from any number of disci-
plines invested in charting Protestant forms of expression or thinking more
broadly about the role of religion as a continuation of earlier forms of belief
or as a feature in the development of modernity. On one hand, disciplines
such as history and literature have undergone a “religious turn” in the last
twenty years, while contemporary theologians are increasingly turning to
aesthetics as a site of reflection and experience to revivify Christian thought
and practice in a post-Christendom landscape. It seems worthwhile to think
about what Protestant Christianity adds to these conversations, particularly
when “aesthetics” is understood as a particular attitude toward material-
ity, agency, and objects, as well as a mode of creating sociality through
shared experiences or taste. It therefore seems worthwhile to ask if we know
what we are talking about when we talk about Protestant aesthetics, espe-
cially when conversations often slip too easily into overly broad generaliza-
tions about Protestant art and aesthetics or settle too easily for one form of
­Protestantism over the many diverse traditions grouped under its name. For
the remainder of this introduction, I briefly trace both the internal Christian
2 Kathryn Reklis
theological debate about Protestant aesthetics and the arts and the role of
Protestant aesthetics in shaping debates about agency and objecthood in
modernity before discussing the contributions of the essays themselves and
some preliminary conclusions we hope this volume offers to expand and
deepen our understanding of the topic.

Protestant art and aesthetics in theological debate

Since Hans Urs von Balthasar wrote his masterful trilogy in the mid-­twentieth
century, the field of theological aesthetics within Christian theology has
grown exponentially.1 Indeed, one cannot turn around a metaphorical
bookshelf without encountering volumes or essays urging the “return” of
aesthetics as a central locus of theological inquiry. “Aesthetics” in these
cases is often appealing to a form of human experience precluded by instru-
mental or abstract reasoning and usually involving affective dimensions of
the human person (sometimes discussed under the concept of “imagina-
tion”). As Balthasar discussed it, “aesthetics” is a dimension of human life
that was eclipsed by scientific or calculating rationality. While eighteenth-
and nineteenth-century European philosophers made space for the sphere
of aesthetics (the key category of which was “beauty”) by divorcing it from
rational knowledge (“truth”) and moral reasoning (“goodness”), Balthasar
found this division of the “transcendentals” limiting and even corrupting
of wholistic knowledge and experience of the world.2 Theological aesthet-
ics, then, in its twentieth- and twenty-first-century instantiations, is often
an investigation into theological accounts of “beauty” or “aesthetic experi-
ence.” What, theological aesthetics might ask, can the Christian learn about
God from an experience of beauty? From whence does beauty come? Is
beauty a universal feature of human experience, a category of judgment
available across time and space? What is the relationship between divine
creativity and human creativity or between the knowledge of God given
in revelation and the knowledge of God given in creation, including the
creation that comes from human hands?3 By turning from reflections on the
nature of beauty (as it relates to truth and goodness or as a special sphere
of human experience) to the question of human creativity and the specific
objects made by humans that might count as “beautiful,” we cross from
aesthetics to “the arts.” In contemporary Christian theology, theological
aesthetics—and the questions it tends to prioritize—is usually differentiated
from a companion field of inquiry, “Theology and the Arts,” which explores
specific branches of the “fine arts” (e.g., painting, music, and architec-
ture) in relationship to theology, including asking why and how “art” was
divorced from everyday practices and from religious ones. In these studies,
“the arts” are sometimes privileged as unique spheres of human life, exam-
ples of human creativity potentially reflective of divine creativity. But some-
times “the arts” are interrogated as a manufactured sphere of life, created
in the face of postindustrial class divisions and racial and gender hierarchies
 Introduction 3
indicative of the fracturing of human experience into isolated spheres.4 So,
for example, theologians might ask what theological content can be found
in the music of Mozart (as Karl Barth did, explored by Paul Metzger in this
volume), or they might question the modern bias that differentiates high art
from everyday aesthetic practices such as bodily comportment and daily
dress (as Rufus Burnett does in exploring early twentieth-century black
Protestant aesthetics).
As I discuss in what follows, this volume intentionally troubles the divide
between these two subdisciplines. Although many of the essays do distin-
guish between “aesthetics” and “the arts,” most of them move between
more abstract theological or philosophical reflections on beauty or the expe-
rience of beauty and concrete explorations of particular art forms (espe-
cially to expand what counts as “art” in theological analysis). It is fair to
say that in most of these essays, the central preoccupation is theology and
sensed beauty, especially (but not exclusively) as it is manifest in the mak-
ing and reception of art. But the division between theological aesthetics and
theology and the arts—as scholarly subdisciplines—is perhaps even more
fraught when dealing with Protestant subjects because of the long-standing
assumption that Protestants do not have any art.
Based on readings of early Reformation polemic, it was assumed that
Protestants had the word, and perhaps the hymn, but it was Catholics who
dominated “visual” or material expressions and incorporated aesthetic the-
ories into their liturgy, church buildings, and incarnational theology. In this
easy dichotomy, it is too often forgotten, however, that Luther himself was
a passionate admirer of music (“I would . . . like to praise music with all my
heart as the excellent gift of God which it is”) and accepting of visual images
in ecclesial space, urging that “all the arts, especially music, [be] used in the
service of Him who gave and made them.”5 Calvin was an appreciator of
images—“sculptures and paintings are gifts of God”—so long as they were
created and approached in a “legitimate” manner, were not displayed in
sacred spaces, or venerated in themselves as a means to “pant after visible
figures of God.”6 The Church of England also embraced ceremonialism,
especially under Archbishop William Laud (1573–1645), and continued to
do so after the seventeenth-century Puritan protests had waned.7 Among
more modern theologians, Protestants—Jonathan Edwards and Paul Tillich
most notably—had much to say on the concept of beauty, making aesthet-
ics not an appendage but a central point of their theology. Even Karl Barth,
who was wary about the place of aesthetics within theology, wrote that
Mozart “knew something more about creation in its total goodness than . . .
the real fathers of the Church [did].”8
For Balthasar, it was wonder and delight in the splendor of creation that
served as a fundamental motivating principle in the revelation of God’s
being. But for him, Protestants rejected this revelation of beauty in their nar-
row soteriological focus and utilitarianism, their non-sacramentalist tenden-
cies, and their separation of beauty from goodness or God from the created
4 Kathryn Reklis
order. As Lee Barrett (one of our contributors) has put it, for Balthasar, “the
quintessential aesthetic experience [was] to be enraptured by the splendor
of the form of Christ”—a splendor, or beauty, minimized by those Prot-
estants who emphasized instead the tensions of mercy, justice, and even a
subsuming “hidden” God, the beauty of whose kenosis, or self-emptying,
was overlooked.9 In other words, Protestants lacked aesthetics because
they lacked any thoroughgoing “natural theology” or ability to account
for God’s revelation outside the events of salvation history.10 But Balthasar,
and, by extension, many commentators on the subject of Protestantism
and the arts, could also be reductive when it came to defining beauty and
art and in understanding the role of aesthetic experience in Protestant life.
Many Protestant theologians have joined the field of theological aesthetics
to argue against Balthasar or to nuance and complicate his assumptions.11
And historians, literary scholars, and art historians have, for several dec-
ades, nuanced and complicated our understanding of the visual culture and
artistic practices of the original Protestants, as well as the range of material
and aesthetic cultures throughout global Protestant practice.12
As this collection demonstrates, Protestants did not “reject” the arts or
spurn theological ideas of beauty, as Balthasar asserted; rather, they reconfig-
ured the aesthetic on different terms and continued to engage with cultural
expressions of the sacred in rich and diverse ways. Indeed, Balthasar’s argu-
ment requires lumping all Protestants under the banner of a sparse “puritan-
ism” that partakes more of Catholic anti-Reformation polemic than nuanced
historical reality. This might be somewhat forgiven, however, because part
of what Balthasar is arguing with is the long shadow cast over the mod-
ern world—and religion in the modern world—by Protestant assumptions
about materiality, objecthood, and agency. By the mid-twentieth century, a
secular narrative had also coalesced around strong assumptions about the
particularly Protestant nature of modernity, whether or not these assump-
tions hold up to careful scrutiny. But if Balthasar saw a lack of aesthetics, we
would argue that a particular kind of aesthetics dominated instead, which
helped shaped debates about the modern world and religion’s role therein.

Protestant aesthetics, materiality, and modernity

Specifically, this concept of aesthetics takes us into debates about secu-
larism and religion in the modern world, which is where the concerns of
many essays in this volume could hold interest outside Christian theological
conversations. That is, in different debates about the time period and par-
ticular form of life that we call modernity, there are often two competing
and intersecting ways to talk about “aesthetics.” On one hand, there is the
“merely aesthetic,” meaning something like the frivolous, decorative, overly
materialistic, or even the superstitious and ritualistic expressions associ-
ated by the early reformers with Catholicism. On the other hand, “aesthet-
ics” becomes the domain of feeling or spirit, the sphere of life where the
 Introduction 5
modern subject can feel him- or herself to be whole in the face of fragment-
ing, instrumental reason and the demands of bureaucratic modernity. We
might refer to the latter attitude toward the aesthetic as the “more than” of
aesthetic ­experience—where art can convey more than information and help
the subject experience more than ordinary life allows. Art becomes a unique
and special sphere of life to create this “more than” experience. Both these
conceptual moves to refashion the aesthetic in the modern age—the “merely
aesthetic” and the “more than” of aesthetic experience—can be traced to
earlier Protestant theological debate and cultural influence. That is, whether
historically accurate or not, scholars of many stripes lay the blame (or
credit) for the denigration of the “merely aesthetic” and the elevation of
the “more than” of aesthetic experience at the feet of Protestant ideas about
sacramentality, ritual, materiality, and human agency. “Protestant aesthet-
ics,” then, emerges as far more central to debates about modernity, religion,
and secularity than might be suggested by previous worn-out assumptions
about Protestant art and aesthetics.
Just as Balthasar and others easily assumed that Protestants have no
room for art or true aesthetic judgment, many scholars have borrowed
this assumption in their claim that Protestants reject the “merely aesthetic”
in their worries about idolatry and the false agency of things and images.
Max Weber’s construal of this relationship has itself become a common
narrative: the Protestant iconoclastic impulse—which was determinedly not
shared by Luther and many other reformers—allegedly “disenchanted” the
world, stripping things and representations (in images or icons) of agency
and power in order to properly restore the divine–world relationship on the
side of divine sovereignty.13 This “world-denying” impulse, paradoxically,
for Weber, opened the world for human manipulation and instrumentaliza-
tion, ushering in new scientific and bureaucratic impulses that eventually
paved the way for full-blown secularism that dispensed with the distant,
sovereign God in the business of maximizing the enjoyment, profit, and use
of the world that God had left behind.14 In this account (which has subse-
quently been very much debated), the resulting modern, secular world is
the product of both explicitly theological Protestant debates (worked out
in distinction to Catholicism, through the early Reformation, the European
Wars of Religion, and European North American colonies, in particular)
and Enlightenment philosophy, which dispensed with the explicitly theolog-
ical but operated out of Protestant convictions (especially in its English and
German branches) that gave the modern self—rational, autonomous, and
buffered from supernatural interference—a distinctly Protestant flavor.15
Other scholars have argued that the Protestant roots of the modern sub-
ject (and subjectivity) set the terms for what would count as “good religion”
in the modern world: a religion of the heart, intention, and belief. In an
allegedly secularizing Europe and North Atlantic, this meant an increas-
ingly private religion, focused on individual belief and sentiment, and bear-
ing on public life only in so far as it anchored rational morality needed
6 Kathryn Reklis
for democratic governance.16 As many scholars have also argued, Europe
developed its self-identity on the colonial field in distinction to its colonized
other, such that what counted as “good religion” was worked out in distinc-
tion to “primitive, superstitious excess” on the frontier as much as it was in
the theologian’s or philosopher’s study. This, too, meant an importation of
Catholic and Protestant theological debates into the colonial frontier.17 That
frontier could exist internal to Europe as well, as, for example, Protestant
Britain could justify empire beginning with its recolonization of “savage”
and Catholic Ireland in the sixteenth century and Spain launched its over-
seas colonies on the heels of the Reconquista of the Iberian Peninsula.18
In the nineteenth century, Protestant assumptions about “good religion”
won the day in the emerging “science of religious studies” that birthed the
discipline of comparative religion and eventually religious studies.19 The
Protestant theological assumptions grounding the early discipline of reli-
gious studies and “world religions” have been the topic of much scholarly
debate in the past two decades. Less often explored is the degree to which
these theological assumptions were themselves aesthetic assumptions in so
far as “aesthetics” was reimagined in two distinct, interconnected ways: the
aesthetic was both a special form of judgment related to a particular group
of objects (“art”) that had no special, holy, or supernatural significance and
the aesthetic indexed the feelings generated by this form of judgment as the
sphere of life that provided access to a unitive or wholistic self otherwise
fragmented by modern reason.20 In other words, “art” emerges in the mod-
ern period as a distinct sphere of life—no longer tied to religion or econom-
ics or politics (at least putatively).21 But at the same time, art is elevated as
the sphere of life that does for a secular subject what religion used to do22
or perhaps what religion can still do if it is stripped of its materialistic and
idolatrous encumbrances.23 The modern subject, in this narrative, is both
the secular subject (meaning something like Kant’s casting off the shackles
of religious authority “to think for oneself”) and the modern subject is the
properly religious subject who has given up idols; that is, the modern subject
is the subject who can tell the difference between objects without agency
and subjects with it. Or, we might say, the modern subject is the one who
makes space for the “more than” of aesthetic experience in art by keeping
the “merely aesthetic” of superstition and idolatry at bay. We can only get
to “art” if we have “good religion” and vice versa. And that “good religion”
is Protestant Christianity either in actual practice or in an imagined form.
For historians, art historians, literary scholars, philosophers, social scien-
tists, and religious studies scholars, Protestantism thus came to be seen as
a special mode of thinking about objects and materiality and the self and
agency in relation to objects and materiality that made these two simultane-
ous paths possible: both the stripping of objects of their supernatural power
so that they might become art (the rejection of the “merely aesthetic”) and
the elevation of art as a special sphere of human experience that can replace
traditional religious forms (the elevation of the “more than” of aesthetic
 Introduction 7
experience). In this way references to Protestant aesthetics (even if not
named explicitly as such) do all kinds of work in discussing good versus bad
religion, the Protestant bias in religious studies, the relationship between
religion and modernity, the Protestant nature of secularism, or historical
arguments about intra-Christian disputes about sacramentality, materiality,
and art. These references circulated in debates far afield of older “Catholic
versus Protestant polemic,” or intra-Christian theological debate, even if
they rely on that polemic implicitly or explicitly. Likewise, it is worth not-
ing that intra-Christian theological debate often borrowed polemically from
scholarly debates about the Protestant nature of the modern subject, either
to castigate24 or celebrate it.25
But if the Catholic versus Protestant polemic often simplifies the histori-
cal reality of Protestant engagement with art and aesthetics, so, too, do
these debates about Protestantism and modernity. For in tracing the ways
Protestant theological debate and practice gets entangled with modern
assumptions about the “merely aesthetic” and the “more than” of aesthetic
experience, scholars may be privileging debates that matter to intellectuals
(including theologians) more than to practitioners and obscuring true diver-
sity of thought and practices among Protestants, who, it turns out, do not all
agree about the merely aesthetic or the more-than of aesthetic ­experience—
or, indeed, do not engage that debate at all.26 Another way to frame this
problem is to say that many of the intellectual assumptions and concrete
social practices that are often named as unique to modernity have been
traced back to certain Protestant innovations in theology and practice, from
capitalism to individualism, anti-materialism to environmental destruction.
So, too, do modern debates about art and aesthetics owe a special allegiance
to Protestant wariness toward superstition and idolatry, which paves the
way to think about the spiritual possibilities of aesthetic experience that
becomes the special purview of art as a distinct sphere of life. But if there
is any (or even a great deal) of truth in drawing lines of connection in this
way, these “Protestant innovations” are often quickly divorced from actual
practicing Protestants. Protestants “in general” might be wary of supersti-
tion and aesthetic adornment, but many of them continue to speak about
the interpenetration of life with supernatural power and adorn their homes,
churches, bodies, and collective worship in ways that are decidedly con-
cerned with presentation, sensory experience, and artistry:27 that is all the
more reason to turn, now, to the particular way the essays in this volume
intervene into the shorthand assumptions that circulate in many scholarly
debates about Protestant aesthetics and art today.

Overview of the essays

The essays in this volume were built around interrogating the idea of the
“Protestant imagination.” Building on Andrew Greeley’s now-famous
discussion of the “the Catholic imagination,” we were curious: Is there
8 Kathryn Reklis
something analogous for Protestants? As we have expanded our view of
Protestant history and practice both temporally, geographically, and in
terms of Protestant traditions, what it would mean to answer that question
has shifted.
It may be helpfully reductive to say that early conversations fluctuated
between more philosophical or theoretical debates about “aesthetics” (Do
Protestants have a special way of thinking about experiences of beauty or
of accounting for acts of human creativity?) and more historically grounded
explorations of engagements with specific artistic forms by particular Prot-
estants (What kind of architecture did early Lutherans employ? How do
musical forms change in Protestant worship?) Theological aesthetics and
philosophies of beauty are, of course, topics distinct from the concrete
applications of a Protestant “aesthetic” in the fine arts over time, but as
we invited more people to join our conversation, it became clear that this
distinction itself constrains how we approach the topic. Protestants of all
denominations across time and space have had something interesting and
important to say, and debate, not just about “aesthetics” or “the arts” but
about how we configure this relationship.
Through theological essays, as well as case studies by theologians, musi-
cologists, historians, art and architectural historians, and literary schol-
ars, the essays in this volume reveal that Protestantism, as it was (and is)
expressed in drama, art, architecture, music, and literature, as well as the-
ology, did not simply follow what Donald Davie once called an aesthetic
of “simplicity, sobriety and measure.”28 Instead, it proliferated in both aes-
thetic expressions in different media and aesthetic theories. By looking at
“artistic expressions” in what we might call the “fine arts,” these essays
also discover theologies of beauty that might challenge the modern equa-
tion of “beauty and the arts”—that is, the equation that beauty names the
“more than” of aesthetic experience that can be had once art emerges as its
own domain through the rejection of the “merely aesthetic.” And by look-
ing at Protestant theologies of beauty, we can notice unexpected “sites” of
aesthetic engagement that fall outside the “fine arts.” Many of the chapters
in this volume refuse to either separate “aesthetics” and “the arts” too
carefully or equate them too closely in a modern paradigm. They perform
this refusal by moving from “artistic practice” to theories of aesthetics
and back again. In so doing, they also press us to look to different sites
of Protestant “artistic” and “aesthetic” engagement in drama, literature,
visual art, music, architecture, ecstatic bodily experience, borderland Pen-
tecostal sanctuaries, Korean fan dance performed on the Haitian mission
field, ordinary bodily comportment, and even aesthetic theory and icono-
clasm itself. We have chosen to organize the essays in roughly chrono-
logical order based on the main historical period, text, author, or artist
under consideration. This choice itself reveals interesting tensions in how
we think about Protestant aesthetics, which I address in the final section of
this introduction.
 Introduction 9
William Dyrness’s essay on “The Formation of Protestant Aesthetics in the
Early Modern Period,” takes us directly into the debates that frame the vol-
ume as a whole. He begins with a critique of the assumption about Protestants
not having any art, examining instead the sites to which Protestant aesthetic
energy shifted in the wake of the Reformation: language, more generally, and
drama and realistic theater, specifically. He is careful to resist an easy para-
digm that equates language with the word (vs. the image) and is more inter-
ested in challenging the aesthetic theory that prioritizes the image or that sees
a focus on language as merely the harbinger of instrumental reason.
The next three chapters deal directly with first- and second-generation
Protestant engagement with visual art and material culture. Christiane
Andersson’s chapter, “Protestant Paintings: Artwork by Lucas Cranach and
His Workshop,” also begins by challenging the stereotype that Protestants
rejected the image in favor of the word. She discusses Luther’s own elevation
of images as a means of edification and theological pedagogy before discuss-
ing his personal relationship with the painter Lucas Cranach the Elder. Her
essay extends beyond a biographical exploration of the two men, however,
to explore Cranach’s workshop as a collective endeavor to refashion visual
art and visual taste in a decidedly Lutheran key.
Cranach’s art makes an appearance in Emily Fisher Gray’s chapter, “Tra-
dition and Innovation: Early German Lutheran Churches,” in her discussion
of the first extant church built according to explicitly Lutheran principles.
The intentionality of this architectural design, however, runs counter to her
overall argument: that Lutherans (like Calvinists and Catholics in the wake
of the Reformation) innovated and adapted architectural design much more
fluidly than might be imagined from a later historical vantage point. Her
discussion of the imperative to arrange (or rearrange) architectural space to
facilitate “hearing the word” and reorienting parishioners’ physical bodies
from lingerers and minglers to auditors reconnects us to themes first raised
by Dyrness.
Julie Hochstrasser returns us explicitly to the scene of Dutch visual art in
the seventeenth century but builds on Gray’s sense of ambiguity and inno-
vation. She starts with an evocative reading of a Dutch still-life painting
in relationship to Protestant debates about the Eucharist, asking what, if
any, connections can be drawn across different registers of discussing “the
laden table” in seventeenth-century Dutch culture. Reading a variety of
still-life paintings in relationship to the confessional practices of the artists
who painted them as well as contemporary art history that tries to place
them as “Catholic” or “Protestant,” she troubles any easy categorization
of the genre and, indeed, of “Protestant aesthetics” as a coherent lens by
which to read art in a shifting cultural landscape. Perhaps most fascinating
for conversation with later chapters, she foregrounds the Dutch West India
Company and the proliferation of new material goods in Dutch life, thereby
introducing colonialism as a central matrix for thinking about Protestant
aesthetics.
10 Kathryn Reklis
Adrian Streete’s chapter, “Antipapal Aesthetics in Early Modern English
Drama” also traces a dimension of Protestant aesthetics shaped in direct
polemical contestation with Catholicism through the evidence for a strong
anti-Catholic theatrical culture in seventeenth-century English drama.
Streete sees this evidence, primarily, in strategic biblical quotation and com-
monplace anti-Catholic popular and theological tropes, including those
coded foreign or feminine. In these dramatic representations, however, he
also sees an inescapable aesthetic tension in critiquing Catholic aesthetics
through aesthetic signs, symbols, and tropes. This tension was itself, he
argues, part of a Protestant theatrical aesthetic in this period.
Tension is too weak a word for the vigorous aesthetic innovation Sarah
Covington traces in her chapter, “Unintended Aesthetics? The Artistic After-
lives of Protestant Iconoclasm.” She is concerned with how “the material
legacy of early modern iconoclasm ultimately contributed to a new aes-
thetics” marked by an emerging philosophical embrace of fragmentation,
especially evident in modernist art. She explores the iconoclastic fragment
as a forerunner—intended or otherwise—to modern preoccupations with
destruction, abstraction, and the radically new. In bridging early mod-
ern iconoclastic history with modern art, her chapter contributes a more
nuanced history to the terms traced earlier: in their iconoclastic rejection of
the “merely aesthetic,” Protestant actors created a material legacy that was
taken up by those arguing for the “more than” of aesthetic experience in
modern art. Her essays grounds this theoretical debate in the material legacy
of “broken things” left behind by the iconoclast’s hammer.
The next two chapters move the volume firmly into the eighteenth century
and into one of many internal reformations within Protestant history: the
rise of Pietism and what will come to be called “evangelicalism.” In this
move, they also begin to trace transnational Protestantism beyond Europe,
especially in the British, Dutch, and French North Atlantic colonies. Ste-
phen Marini’s chapter, “Isaac Watts and the Theological Aesthetics of Evan-
gelical Sacred Song,” argues both that sacred song was the central aesthetic
medium for newly forming evangelical Protestantism and that early evan-
gelical music represents a radical shift from the Protestant preoccupation
with the translation of scripture (a textual, “word-focused” tradition) to
the inscription of the spirit on the soul of the believer through religious
affections. He explores this transition through the life and work of Isaac
Watts, the poet, pastor, and great hymnodist whose collection of hymns and
metrical psalms gave voice to the growing evangelical movement during the
early eighteenth-century transnational Protestant revivals. He argues that
Watt’s hymns are not just enacting other theologians’ ideas but also doing
innovative theological work even while they also become a form of popular
Protestant art.
My chapter, “Beauty and the Protestant Body: Aesthetic Abstraction in
Jonathan Edwards,” explores the role of bodily ecstasy in the same revivals
Watt’s music helped to shape. I do so through an engagement with Jonathan
 Introduction 11
Edwards, who also made religious affections central to his nascent evangeli-
cal theology. I explore the connection between Edwards’s idea of ontological
beauty as something abstracted from concrete aesthetic practices (such as
hymns or paintings or statues) and the ecstatic body, arguing that the body
convulsing in the power of the spirit is what it looked like to be “swallowed
up” in the beauty of God. Like Covington, I move from this concrete case
study in an eighteenth-century British colony to contemporary theological
aesthetic arguments to explore how the body can make concrete again Prot-
estant aesthetic abstraction.
Lee Barrett’s chapter, “Theology and Aesthetics in the Early Nineteenth
Century: Kierkegaard’s Alternative to Hegel and Romanticism,” takes us
directly into the intellectual history of how art was elevated as a parallel or
rival to religion in the modern period wherein “a true work of art should
be contemplated, with the expectation that it could have a transformative
impact upon an individual’s experience of life in the world.” He examines
ideas of aesthetics and religion in the work of Søren Kierkegaard, which he
interprets as a radical alternative to Kantian, Romantic, and Hegelian tradi-
tions. He also reads Kierkegaard’s own theology as a kind of “literary” crea-
tion, suggesting that in Kierkegaard’s work we have both a new Protestant
theory of the “usefulness” of art to awaken and transform the passions and
a new example of Protestant art itself. By emphasizing Kierkegaard’s forma-
tion in Lutheran Pietism, Barrett’s chapter enters into conversation with
Marini’s and Reklis’s chapters about the role of passions, affections, and
inner experience in Protestant aesthetics. If Kierkegaard is well known for
his writings on aesthetics, Karl Barth, in the early to mid-twentieth century,
has the opposite reputation as rejecting aesthetics and beauty as properly
theological topics in his desire to safeguard the sovereignty of God from
human attempts to master it. Paul Louis Metzger’s chapter, “Karl Barth’s
Doctrine of the Word of God, Mozart, and Aesthetics in Four Movements,”
attempts to complicate this reductive interpretation of Barth by exploring
the theological implications for Barth’s public appreciation of Mozart’s
music. He explores the themes of objectivity and freedom, both in Barth’s
theological system and his interpretation of Mozart’s music, as culminat-
ing in an idea of “serious play” that points toward a Barthian theological
aesthetic capable of withstanding the corruption of art through economic
motives or as religious and political propaganda.
The next three chapters return to examinations of particular art forms
embraced by Protestants in the twentieth century: modern architecture, jazz,
and the literary novel, respectively. In her chapter, “The Protestant Encoun-
ter with Modern Architecture,” Gretchen Buggeln argues that the aesthetic
imperatives of modernist architecture—openness, honesty, transparency,
and form following function—were interpreted by many architects as espe-
cially “Protestant” in nature and that in embracing this new style Protestant
congregations themselves were able to reclaim their Protestant heritage and
lay claim to a vibrant future. Buggeln traces the tensions within different
12 Kathryn Reklis
congregations to embrace what they thought of as a Protestant imperative
toward the radically new and their own desire to maintain a connection to
their past (“a church should still look like a church”).
Jason Bivins’s chapter, “Jazz Religious and Secular,” presses us to think
about what happens to Protestant aesthetic forms when they are taken up
by the colonized and (formerly) enslaved. He traces the history of jazz as it
relates to African American Protestantism in the life and work of Charles
Mingus, David Friesen, and Charles Gayle and explores the way that Afri-
can American religious leaders sought to distance black Protestant religi-
osity from the “secular” and sinful dimensions of jazz; at the same time,
jazz was often interpreted as an outgrowth of black Protestantism, which
was itself understood as excessive, primitive, and too-bodily. Here we can
see racialized tensions within Protestant aesthetics itself: an emerging sense
that what it meant to be “Protestant” was no more than a gloss on white,
middle-class respectability. In their engagements with jazz, black Protestants
fought to either conform to this respectable religiosity (by rejecting jazz)
or reject it in favor of “fluidity, contact, and blending” as another way to
imagine black religiosity.
The heritage of white middle-class Protestant respectability returns in
Alex Engebretson’s chapter, “ ‘Gorgeousness Inheres in Anything’: The
Protestant Origins of John Updike and Marilynne Robinson’s Aesthetics of
the Ordinary,” insofar as both Updike and Robinson take ordinary white
­middle-class life as the topic for their fiction. In the literary work of both
Updike and Robinson, Engebretson locates a shared “affirmation of everyday
life” (borrowing from Charles Taylor) that he links to their shared Protestant
formation. Engebretson directly challenges Greeley’s thesis in The Catholic
Imagination that Protestants imagine a world bereft of God’s presence and
Catholics imagine a world soaked in it. He argues, instead, that Protestant
cultural influence paved the way for literary modernists (e.g., James Joyce,
Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein, and Wallace Stevens) and Catholic writers
of the same period (e.g., Flannery O’Connor, Graham Greene, and Walker
Percy) to focus on the ordinary in their work. If there is a difference between
Catholic and Protestant authors of this period, Engebretson argues, it can be
found in their different attitudes toward the value of suffering.
The final three chapters in the volume explore experiments in Protestant
aesthetics in black Baptist community organizing, the Mexican borderlands,
and the Korean American mission field in Haiti, respectively. In so doing,
they make central themes that have been more marginal in other essays and
press us to consider the value and valence of an idea such as “Protestant
aesthetics” when considered in the wake of colonialism, slavery, and trans-
national migration.
In his chapter, “Black Protestantism and the Aesthetics of Autonomy:
A Decolonial Theological Reflection,” Rufus Burnett examines the ecclesial
leadership of Nannie Helen Burroughs in the Women’s Convention within
the National Baptist Convention in the early to mid-twentieth century to
 Introduction 13
excavate what he names as a black Protestant aesthetics of autonomy. The
aesthetics of autonomy allowed black Protestants to assert their humanity
in the face of dehumanizing structures of power, both epistemological and
material. At the same time, however, Burnett argues, the aesthetics of auton-
omy demanded allegiances to Eurocentric (“white”) ideals of respectability.
In tracing the imbrications of “Protestant aesthetics” with colonialism, Bur-
nett calls for a possible future decolonized black Protestant aesthetic.
Lloyd Barba’s chapter, “The Borderlands Aesthetics of Mexican American
Pentecostalism” analyzes the aesthetic choices Mexican Oneness Pentecos-
tals employed to transform ordinary space into sacred space in California
agricultural communities in the 1940s and 1950s. Apostólicos incubated
a “borderlands aesthetic,” Barba argues, that he names an “aesthetic of
lack.” This aesthetic self-consciously clashed with a mid-twentieth-century
U.S./Anglo/white Protestant aesthetic that “sought to define itself as austere,
awe-inspiring, and purged of all low or “kitsch” elements of mass culture,”
allowing Apostólicos to forge a sense of identity that connected them to
their fellow Catholic Mexicans and that resisted assimilation into Anglo
U.S. Protestantism, without abandoning the theological claims that defined
their Protestant religiosity.
Minjung Noh, too, in the final chapter of this book, explores hybrid
cultural and religious identities in her chapter, “Embodied Aesthetics and
Transnational Korean Protestant Christianity.” She analyzes the evangeliz-
ing tactics of a group of recent Korean American Protestant missionaries
to Haiti, particularly their use of the fan dance, a traditional Korean dance
form performed exclusively by women. In the choice to employ this dance in
the crowded mission field, she sees two interconnected aesthetic orientations:
an aesthetic of progress that equates American Protestantism with what it
means to be modern and successful—and capable of sending missionaries to
new fields—and an aesthetic of Koreanness that strives to embody a distinct
Korean habitus of dress, comportment, virtues, and ideals.

Is there a Protestant aesthetic?

At the end of a volume such as this, it is impossible to not to be aware of all
that is missing. The chronological arrangement of these essays, especially,
highlights how quickly we rushed through whole centuries and how sparsely
we covered diversity within the periods on which we were able to focus. The
chronological frame also brings into sharper relief several tensions inher-
ent in thinking about Protestant aesthetics that we did not anticipate when
we started this project. The first, and starkest, is the question of historical
priority. In assessing what makes a Protestant aesthetic, should one return
to the sources (as a good Protestant might urge) or look at the living tradi-
tion in all its global diversity now? It is hard enough to find coherence and
uniformity among the original Protestants, but if one looks to the present,
how would one weigh the relative authority of large, traditional “mainline”
14 Kathryn Reklis
denominations (e.g., Episcopal and Methodist) versus grassroots, Pentecos-
tal, or evangelical churches (not to mention the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-Day Saints, which understands itself to be Protestant, although not
all other Protestants agree)? Questions about historical priority are further
heightened by different scholarly and disciplinary formations. Historians
of many kinds have a vested interest in getting Protestant history “right”
in any period. Theologians may share that interest but may be far more
interested in a useable Protestant past, such that conforming to past Prot-
estants is far less important than innovating and building on their legacy or
interpreting that legacy for meaningful theological ends. In choosing not
to divide our chapters by method, discipline, or confessional identity, we
have let these tensions sit alongside each other, suggesting that the answer
to what makes a Protestant aesthetic must be answered in many ways, from
many locations.
It is also possible that the chronological frame works against privileging
the historical origins of Protestantism, especially when the spatial diversity
of Protestantism intersects with its changes over time. Reading the volume
“straight through,” one cannot help but notice a kind of geographical divid-
ing line that intersects the timeline: the moment when Protestantism ceases
to be a European affair, primarily concerned with defending its ground
(theological and political) against Catholic encroachment, and becomes a
truly global religion, taken up by those who were also subjugated under
its weight in colonial projects. We should assume that the colonized and
enslaved would not simply repeat the debates of their European predeces-
sors, even if they sometimes felt the need to engage those debates in projects
of translation and transformation. The same debates that are raging in con-
temporary Protestant denominations about where the center of authority
should lie—in Europe and the United States or in the areas of major church
growth in Africa and Asia, especially—inevitably are reflected in scholarly
debates about which subjects and which aesthetic practices are privileged
for analysis or theological engagement.
This volume cannot answer all of these vexing questions, but it does strive
to point to these fault lines as the places of creative tension for future work.
The conclusion to this volume discusses areas, movements, and practices
whose absence in this volume we feel acutely, and points to directions for
future study. I have also left to Sarah Covington the task of synthesizing
what, if anything, we can say about a coherent “Protestant aesthetic” or
“Protestant imagination.” But before sending our readers into the thickets
of a five-hundred-year-old global tradition, I conclude this introduction by
suggesting that at least one point of reference that appears through all the
essays in this volume is the Protestant proclivity for hybridity, adaptation,
and change. From the earliest churches (Gray) and artwork (Hochstrasser)
to syncretic adaptation in the borderlands (Barba) and the mission field
(Noh), from architectural upgrades (Buggeln) to new forms of praise music
(Marini), Protestants have made their tradition in what is given to them, in
 Introduction 15
rearrangement as much as sheer invention, in experimentation and innova-
tion as much as in commitment to tradition. The children of the Reforma-
tion, are, after all, always reforming.

Notes
1 See Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics
Volume 1: Seeing the Form, trans. Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis, ed. Joseph Fessio,
SJ and John Riches (London: T&T Clark, 1982).
2 Ibid., 18.
3 A limited bibliography drawn across many different theological traditions might
include Diane Apostolos-Cappadona, ed., Art, Creativity, and the Sacred: An
Anthology in Religion and Art (New York: Crossroad, 1988); Jeremy Begbie,
Redeeming Transcendence in the Arts: Bearing Witness to the Triune God
(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2018) and A Peculiar Orthodoxy: Reflections
on Theology and the Arts (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2018); Leon-
ardo Boff, Liberating Grace, trans. John Drury (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books,
1979), the ninth chapter of which centers on the experience of grace in artistic
creativity; Emil Brunner, The Divine Imperative: A Study in Christian Ethics,
trans. Olive Wyon (London: Lutterworth Press, 1937), the fifteenth chapter of
which has an extended discussion of artistic creativity as it relates to divine rev-
elation; Oleg V. Bychkov and James Fodor, eds., Theological Aesthetics After
von Balthasar (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2008); David Ford, Self and Salvation:
Being Transformed (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), especially
his discussion of the “aesthetics of feasting”; Garrett Green, Imagining God:
Theology and the Religious Imagination (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1989);
David Bentley Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian
Truth (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003); Hans Küng, Art and the Question
of Meaning (London: SCM Press, 1981); Patrick Sherry, Spirit and Beauty: An
Introduction to Theological Aesthetics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992); Mark
C. Taylor, Disfiguring: Art, Architecture, Religion (Chicago: University of Chi-
cago Press, 1992); Richard Viladesau, Theological Aesthetics: God in Imagi-
nation, Beauty, and Art (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); Nicholas
Wolterstorff, Art in Action: Toward a Christian Aesthetic (Grand Rapids, MI:
Eerdmans, 1980); and Rowan Williams, Grace and Necessity: Reflections on Art
and Love (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse, 2005).
4 See especially Wolterstorff, Art in Action, for a theological account of this divide.
For a historical examination of the same, see Sally Promey, “Taste Cultures: The
Visual Practice of Liberal Protestantism, 1940–1965,” in Practicing Protestants:
Histories of Christian Life in America 1630–1965, ed. Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp,
Leigh E. Schmidt, and Mark Valeri (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 2006) and David Morgan, Protestants and Pictures: Religion, Visual Cul-
ture, and the Age of American Mass Production (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1999).
5 Martin Luther, “Preface to Georg Rhau’s Symphoniae iucundae (1538),” in
Luther’s Works, ed. Ulrich S. Leupold, vol. 53 (Philadelphia: Fortress Press,
1965), 321. See also Robin A. Leaver, Luther’s Liturgical Music: Principles
and Implications (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2017), 70; Christopher Boyd
Brown, Singing the Gospel: Lutheran Hymns and the Success of the Reforma-
tion (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005); Hubert Guicharrousse,
Les musiques de Luther (Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1995). For Luther’s theology of
beauty, see Mark C. Mattes, Martin Luther’s Theology of Beauty: A Reappraisal
(Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2017).
16 Kathryn Reklis
6 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book I, ed. John T. McNeill
(Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1960), 112, 100. See also W.
David and O. Taylor, The Theater of God’s Glory: Calvin, Creation, and the
Liturgical Arts (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2017).
7 Graham Parry, Glory, Laud and Honour: The Arts of the Anglican Counter-
Reformation (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2008).
8 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. 3, Part 3 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2004),
297–99. See also Paul Metzger’s essay in this collection.
9 Lee Barrett, “Von Balthasar and Protestant Aesthetics: A Mutually Correc-
tive Conversation,” in Theological Aesthetics After von Balthasar, ed. Oleg V.
Bychkov and James Fodor (London: Routledge, 2016), 103.
10 For scholarly treatments of these themes in Balthasar’s work, especially in his
dialogue with Reformed theologian Karl Barth, see D. Stephen Long, Saving Karl
Barth: Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Preoccupation (Minneapolis: Fortress Press,
2014) and Stephen Wigley, Karl Barth and Hans Urs von Balthasar: A Critical
Engagement (New York: T&T Clark, 2007).
11 The works by Jeremy Begbie and Nicholas Wolterstorff already cited are exem-
plary contemporary efforts, as is William A. Dyrness, Reformed Theology and
Visual Culture: The Protestant Imagination from Calvin to Edwards (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). See also Dyrness, The Origins of
Protestant Aesthetics in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 2019).
12 See Frank Burch Brown, Good Taste, Bad Taste, and Christian Taste: Aesthetics
in Religious Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003); Jane Dillenberger,
Image and Spirit in Sacred and Secular Art (New York: Crossroad, 1990); Tracy
Fessenden, Culture and Redemption: Religion, the Secular, and American Litera-
ture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007). For early modern examples
of scholarship on the Protestant arts, see Joseph Leo Koerner, The Reforma-
tion of the Image (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004); Mia Mochizuki,
The Netherlandish Image After Iconoclasm, 1566–1672: Material Religion in
the Dutch Golden Age (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008). For a sample of English lit-
erature and drama, see for example Barbara Lewalski, Protestant Poetics and
the ­Seventeenth-Century Religious Lyric (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1979); Brian Cumming, “Without Reference to Religion, the Study of Early Mod-
ern Writing Is Incomprehensible,” in The Literary Culture of the Reformation:
Grammar and Grace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); Timothy Rosen-
dale, Liturgy and Literature in the Making of Protestant England (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2007); Adrian Streete, Protestantism and Drama in
Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
13 For a strong refutation by early modernists of the “disenchantment” thesis, see,
for example, Robert W. Scribner, “The Reformation, Popular Magic, and the
‘Disenchantment of the World’,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 23, no.
3 (Winter 1993): 475–94; Alexandra Walsham, “The Reformation and ‘The
Disenchantment of the World’ Reassessed,” The Historical Journal 51, no. 2
(June 2008): 497–528.
14 See, of course, Weber’s famous account in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit
of Capitalism but also his two later lectures published in Charisma and Disen-
chantment, trans. Damion Searls (New York: NYRB Classics, 2019), wherein he
more clearly discusses his idea of “disenchantment,” and also his essays “The
Relationship of Religion to Politics, Economics, Sexuality, and Art” and “Juda-
ism, Christianity, and Socio-Economic Order,” in The Sociology of Religion,
trans. Ephraim Fischoff (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993), 223–45 and 246–61,
respectively.
 Introduction 17
15 The Protestant roots of the secular subject has been part of increasingly scholarly
debate in a field now defined as secularity studies. It is difficult to capture all
that is meant by “secularism” and “secularity studies” in this interdisciplinary
conversation, but key works that engage the Protestant nature of modern secu-
larity would include Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam,
Modernity (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003) and Genealogies of
Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore,
MD: John Hopkins University Press, 1993); Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos:
Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (New York: Zone Books, 2017); Talal Asad,
Wendy Brown, Judith Butler, and Saba Mahmood, Is Critique Secular? Blas-
phemy, Injury, and Free Speech (New York: Fordham University Press, 2013);
Jose Casanova, “Secularization Revisited: A Reply to Talal Asad,” in Powers
of the Secular Modern: Talal Asad and His Interlocutors, ed. D. Scott and C.
Hirschkind (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006); William Connolly,
Why I Am Not a Secularist (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999);
Jürgen Habermas, “On the Relation Between the Secular Liberal State and Reli-
gion,” in Political Theologies: Public Religions in a Post-Secular World, ed. Hent
de Vries and Lawrence E. Sullivan (New York: Fordham University Press, 2006);
John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason (Cam-
bridge: Basil Blackwell, 1990); Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making
of the Modern Identity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992) and A
Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007).
16 See Talal Asad, Genealogies of the Secular; Timothy Fitzgerald, The Ideol-
ogy of Religious Studies (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); Russell
McCutcheon, The Discipline of Religion: Structure, Meaning, Rhetoric (Lon-
don: Routledge, 2003) and Manufacturing Religion: The Discourse on Sui Gen-
eris Religion and the Politics of Nostalgia (New York: Oxford University Press,
1997); and Taylor, A Secular Age for rather different accounts of this genealogy.
17 See David Chidester, Savage Systems: Colonialism and Comparative Religion in
Southern Africa (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia, 1996) and Webb
Keane, Christian Moderns: Freedom and Fetish in the Mission Encounter (Berke-
ley: University of California Press, 2007).
18 Helen Rand Parish argues that “The Spanish Monarchs Would see the New
World Through a Filter of War with the Moors: A Complex Mixture of Religion,
Heroic Discovery, Gold, and Self-adjusted Conquest of Infidels, a Sort of Jihad
or Holy War,” in Her Introduction to the Works of Las Casas in the Life and
Writings of Bartolomé de las Casas (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico
Press, 1967). See also the now-debated thesis in Linda Colley, Britons: Forging
the Nation, 1707–1837 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992).
19 Tomoko Masuzawa makes this argument most completely in her book The
Invention of World Religions: Or, How European Universalism Was Preserved
in the Language of Pluralism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), but
see also James Turner, Philology: The Forgotten Origins of the Modern Humani-
ties (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), especially the final chapter
which deals with the rise of Religious Studies in the nineteenth-century univer-
sity, and Robert Orsi’s introduction in his book Between Heaven and Earth: The
Religious Worlds People Make and the Scholars Who Study Them (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2006) for two very different intellectual histories of
the same process.
20 A concise but thorough overview of these competing claims, as well as their
connections to Protestant history and theology, can be found in Sally Promey,
“Religion, Sensation, and Materiality: An Introduction,” in Sensational Reli-
gion: Sensory Cultures in Material Practice, ed. Sally Promey (New Haven,
18 Kathryn Reklis
CT: Yale University Press, 2014). For a less religious studies–inflected analysis
of aesthetics in modernity, see Sianne Ngai, Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany,
Cute, Interesting (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015).
21 Again, Wolterstorff’s Art in Action is illuminative on this point. See also the
Introduction to Sally Promey’s Spiritual Spectacles: Vision and Image in
­Mid-Nineteenth-Century Shakerism (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press,
1993) for a discussion of the divide between art history and religious history in
a particular case study of evaluating Shaker material and visual culture.
22 Exhibit A, see Matthew Arnold, Literature and Dogma: An Essay Towards a
Better Apprehension of the Bible (Leopold: Leopold Classic Library, 2015).
23 Exhibit B, see Friedrich Schleiermacher, On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured
Despisers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
24 Balthasar falls into this camp, as does Brad Gregory in his more recent book
The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society
(Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2012).
25 Paul Tillich is probably the most famous example of a Protestant theologian in
the twentieth century who celebrated the Protestant principle inherent in modern
life. For representative essays, see Tillich, “Protestantism and Artistic Style,”
“Contemporary Visual Arts and the Revelatory Character of Style,” “Art and
Ultimate Reality,” and “Religious Dimensions of Contemporary Art,” in Paul
Tillich: On Art and Architecture, ed. John Dillenberger, in Collaboration with
Jane Dillenberger (New York: Crossroads, 1987), 119–38, 171–87. For a more
contemporary celebration of Protestantism inherent in modernity, see Harvey
Cox, The Secular City: Secularization and Urbanization in Theological Perspec-
tive (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013).
26 Here Promey’s work is essential reading: see both “Taste Cultures: The Visual
Practice of Liberal Protestantism, 1940–1965,” and Sensational Religion (espe-
cially the Introduction).
27 For cases from America, see, for example, David Morgan, Icons of American
Protestantism: The Art of Warner Sallman (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 1996) and The Embodied Eye: Religious Visual Culture and the Social
Life of Feeling (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012); Promey, ed., Sen-
sational Religion; Colleen McDanell, Material Christianity: Religion and Popu-
lar Culture in America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995).
28 Donald Davie, A Gathered Church (New York: Oxford University Press,
1978), 25.
2 God, language, and the use
of the senses
The emergence of a Protestant
aesthetic in the early modern
period1
William Dyrness

Introduction
This collection of essays offers ample evidence of the lively and growing
conversation about what can be called a Protestant impulse in aesthetics.
But the whole conversation might be said to face considerable headwinds:
Does the Reformation not represent a reduction of sacramentals, of places
where believers can encounter God—no more altarpieces, saints plays,
devotional images, or pilgrimages—and therefore a consonant reduction of
aesthetic sites?2
But this story may be told another way—an alternative that is reflected in
many of the essays in this book. Although the images and artifacts of medi-
eval worship were often abandoned, at least temporarily, they were soon
replaced by other liturgical practices and associated artifacts—preaching
and communal prayers and singing—reflecting an emerging Protestant view
of God’s relation to the world, one that carried heavy implications for aes-
thetics and the role of the senses. I want to argue in this chapter that changes
in liturgical practices and conceptions of the worship space nurtured habits
of perception that facilitated an emergent aesthetic—a Protestant way of
aesthetically being in the world, even as it expanded the aesthetic possibili-
ties of religious life.3
This is not to endorse the common assumption that the Reformation sim-
ply replaced images with the preached word. I have come to feel that the
simplistic opposition of word and image is unhelpful and misrepresents what
was actually happening. It is true that there was a deep-seated iconoclastic
impulse behind the work of the major reformers.4 Yet this did not focus
directly on images, or even on art more generally, but on the entire medieval
imaginative framework. In fact, both Calvin and Luther, though for differ-
ent reasons, were opposed to the destruction of images in churches.5 They
were after a larger prey: they opposed the entire medieval project with its
pilgrimages, novenas and devotional images because in their minds this had
become associated with pride and self-assertion. It was, as Luther believed,
the human attempt to build a ladder to heaven rather than finding God’s
20 William Dyrness
presence among us in the preached word. Calvin believed the abuses had
so muted the voice of God that there could be no compromise. For Calvin,
the link assumed in medieval sacramentals was severed both because of the
finitude of the created order (finitum non capax infiniti)6 and because of the
human moral inability to imagine God aright.
But even this iconoclastic impulse drew inescapable attention to the role
of sight and indeed of the senses more generally. It also underlined the fact
that image, meaning and word were deeply entangled with one another.7
This predicament led Protestants to pursue widely different, and often con-
flicting, goals in their pursuit of reform, conflicts that played their own
role in an emerging aesthetic. To pursue this quarry, I focus on the role of
language and the resultant visual (and dramatic) rhetoric and show briefly
three ways this influenced aesthetic practices.

Language
In 1500, Lee Palmer Wandel notes, “Christianity was not a statement; it
was a world.”8 When Calvin came to Geneva in 1536, that world no longer
existed. Scholars are increasingly calling attention to the social and cultural
dislocation the Reformation brought about. Eamon Duffy famously claims
that in a generation, the entire symbolic structure of the medieval era was
swept away. As he put it, the Reformation “dug a ditch, deep and dividing,
between people and their religious past.”9 The question that faced Calvin
when he arrived in Geneva was not how to dismantle that way of life but
what kind of world would replace it. The key to this, I argue, is to be found
in the way the Reformers reconfigured the space and practices of the liturgy.
For Calvin (and Luther), the focus of that space came to rest on preach-
ing: it was there Calvin believed that one could really see and hear God. Like
Luther, Calvin stressed the external character of the preached word as the
privileged vehicle of the divine presence. In the first chapter of Book Four of
The Institutes, “On the Holy Catholic Church,” he describes the external
help that God uses to bring people to faith, insisting that “God reserves to
himself the power of maintaining [faith] but it is by the preaching of the
Gospel . . . that he brings it forth and unfolds it” (IV, 1, 5).
But notice this preaching is animated—one might say it becomes
­attractive—by the Holy Spirit who is present and active when the word is
preached. Here is how Calvin framed this:

In the preaching of the word, the external minister holds forth the vocal
word and it is received by the ears. The internal minister the Holy Spirit
truly communicates the thing proclaimed through the word that is
Christ to the souls of all who will, so that it is not necessary that Christ
or for that matter his word be received through the organs of the body,
but the Holy Spirit effects this union by his secret virtue, by creating
faith in us by which he makes us living members of Christ.10
 God, language, and the use of the senses 21
Calvin does not intend to draw attention to the human reception of the
Holy Spirit, since it is not received through the organs of the body but to
the performance of preaching, as it is seen and heard, where this reception
is accomplished.
What is the significance of this? In the first place, language now has
become the privileged vehicle of spiritual mediation, supplanting the many
sacramentals allowed by the medieval church.11 Regina Schwartz has noted
that while the Reformers opposed the reenactment of Christ’s death in the
liturgy, they believed that language could “carry the mystical force of sac-
ramental re-enactment.”12 It was in the act of preaching that the “real”
presence of Christ, and the summons of this presence, was set forth. But
here is what I want to underline: this performance, with its dramatic impact
accompanied and enhanced by the corporate prayers and singing of the
Psalms, was also an aesthetic event—and it was an oral and visual and,
eventually, a dramatic event. The images of Christ and the saints were for-
bidden in this space, of course. But these images, which Calvin dismissed
as “dead images,” were to be replaced with “living images” represented in
the preaching of the scriptural promises, and embodied in baptism and the
Eucharist.13 In this way the space of the church could become a formational
space, or what one scholar has called a “sanctifying space”—a place that
was a plain space, not a sacred space, as usually argued, but rather a space
in which a particular saving grace shines forth in multiple ways.14 This is
reflected in the pulpit’s centrality in the visual structure of every Protestant
church.
The transformation this implies both of the liturgy and the space of the
church is so influential that I want to linger here. To fully understand this,
we first need to get over our modern distaste for “preaching” with its largely
negative connotation. As Robert Wuthnow has argued, during the Refor-
mation, preaching and teaching offered the most significant free spaces for
intellectual inquiry and innovation on offer at the time.15 And what this
made possible, in the Reformers’ minds, was nothing less than the commu-
nication of God’s very presence in the congregation. Because of this focus on
preaching, language came to take on a central role in the shaping of affec-
tions in multiple aesthetic forms. John Bossy claims that Calvin did more
than anyone to explore the use of the word art. “He wrote more eloquently
than was decent for a theologian,” says Bossy.16 In Calvin, the audible word
of Luther became the visible quotable text.
I focus on language then not in isolation from other elements but as
formative of a new way of imagining and relating to the world. There was
something happening in language, but I want to argue that there was also
something happening to language that was to issue new opportunities for
aesthetic production. Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin claim that in
the second decade of the sixteenth century, the role of printing underwent a
major transformation. They note that “religious issues swiftly became ques-
tions of the foremost importance and unleashed the strongest passions.”17
22 William Dyrness
Scripture in the vernacular, commentaries on the Bible, pamphlets of ser-
mons, and polemic posters proliferated—together, they became “a form of
summons.”18 With rising literacy rates ordinary people could become part
of the larger religious debates—they were not addressed as passive bystand-
ers but were called to be active participants. Brian Cummings has argued
that this change played a major role not only in promoting the Reformation
but more broadly in the development of literary culture as well. While seek-
ing to expound the literal (true) intent of scripture, he argues, Protestants
brought about a new process of interpretation resulting in a religion, not of
practices but of books and one that was to push language to the breaking
point.19
Consider one telling incident Cummings recounts between William Tyn-
dale and Thomas More. Between 1529 and 1532, the two carried on a
heated exchange that focused entirely on language, in general, and on the
vernacular of Tyndale’s translation of the New Testament, in particular. In
his new translation based on the Greek, Tyndale translated ekklesia as con-
gregation, and this set More’s teeth on edge. Now modern readers find this
an unproblematic rendering of the underlying idea into a vernacular lan-
guage. But for More, the Latin ecclesia already had a received meaning that
Tyndale’s translation failed to accommodate. In a lengthy exchange, More
inveighed against the dangers inherent in reducing the majesty of the church
into something as accessible as congregation. Cummings comments:

As a social meaning, the Gr. ekklesia has been occluded by the Latin
ecclesia and is not recoverable in English. More’s problem, on the other
hand, is that while he can easily support his doctrinal argument by ref-
erence to the [Latin] Vulgate, in English he is groundless.20

Grammar and language, Cummings argues, lie at the heart of the disputes of
the Reformation. Luther, he thinks, finds the gift of grace first in language;
the 95 Theses represents a new focus on textuality, one that was to put an
“unremitting strain on language.”21
I would argue, however, that this reflected not simply a new focus on lan-
guage but also a new way for the imagination to lay hold of the world. For
More, the Latin of the Vulgate reflected a premodern metaphysic in which
language was part of a larger view of a world made up of signs waiting to be
properly read. One’s life in the “church” was ordered by specific rituals that
created, sustained, and celebrated unchanging and timeless relationships—a
particular historia. Language for More (and for medieval believers more
generally) was embedded in this larger theory of signification: language was
subordinated to this received system of signs.22
Tyndale’s vernacular translation of scripture, and the flood of polemi-
cal pamphlets and posters spawned by the Reformation, embodied the
earliest stages of the development of a modern understanding of language,
introducing a semiology that subverted this medieval consensus.23 Charles
 God, language, and the use of the senses 23
Taylor has this development in mind in The Language Animal.24 He argues
that language, as something that straddles the boundary between mind and
body, is actually constitutive of human social and embodied life.25 This more
holistic view of language, which Taylor promotes, embraces three levels of
language use: verbal, enactive, and what he calls portrayals (after the Ger-
man Darstellen that presents rather than designates and includes forms of
art and ritual).26 But Taylor believes that our Western culture has come to
accept an opposing, and more widespread, view of language that is primar-
ily designative, that sees language use as a process of encoding. Interestingly,
he associates the rise of this view with Hobbes, Hume, and Condillac (in his
shorthand, HHC), not incidentally—at least with Hobbes and Hume—in
Calvinist-influenced seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Britain. Although
he makes no reference to the Reformation heritage as the ultimate source
of this view, one could easily argue that the view of language Taylor has in
mind is glimpsed in its earliest stage in Tyndale’s vernacular translation.27
In a point relevant to my argument, Taylor argues that the designative use
of language is responsible for certain “structuring metaphors” that emerged
in the modern period, which when taken alone blind us to destructive ele-
ments in our culture. One such metaphor is that “time is a resource to be
used and not wasted,” or “time is money.” Tellingly for our purposes, Tay-
lor sees Puritan preaching—the later representation of the Calvinist tradi-
tion I am tracing—as exemplifying this ontology of time. He acknowledges
that there is truth to this, which has become central to capitalist civiliza-
tion, “but what this frame can do is occlude other ways of relating to time,
devalue them and make them disappear for many people.”28
It would be easy to conclude that the Reformation period reflects the
origin of these deviations, that in this period embodied symbols have been
replaced with a quest for literal truth. The Latin that More was evoking was
constitutive of the ritual and drama of the liturgy; the language that Tyndale
was liberated from comprised a closed matrix of signs, as he sought a truer
designation of the world God had made and one in which language was ver-
bal and enactive yet resisted “portrayal.” (Taylor points out how resistant
Locke and Hume were to metaphor and symbol, as a confounding of clear
speech). But disregarding for the moment subsequent developments, what if
the Puritan notion of time reflected a developing imagination in which time
had taken on new significance—a new moral seriousness?
Something was changing surely, but is it fair to see here the emergence of
all that Taylor dislikes in modern language use?29 Clearly this set of assump-
tions issued in a new imaginary, a new way of comprehending the created
order, and it centrally involved a new way of seeing. Robert Scribner has
described this as a “cold gaze,” as though seeing through a lens that made
everything clear.30 This new alliance of text and image appears to comport
with the evolving understanding of language as primarily designative. So, it
is often argued, images are not meant to be contemplated as previously; they
must now be interpreted, memorized and enacted.
24 William Dyrness
Here then is a common charge leveled against the Reformation period
that parallels the charge of aesthetic poverty: engaged contemplation of
images has been replaced with a passive reception of the literal word—sight
has been reduced to Scribner’s “cold gaze”; a fully embodied constitutive
linguistic capacity has been reduced to a nominalist inspired designative
use of language. But is this all that was going on? Is aesthetics now being
reduced to the literary and the verbal? I have come to feel this is an oversim-
plified view of what happened in this period and misreads the intentions of
both Calvin and Luther.
First, consider Calvin’s expressed purposes in his teaching and preaching:
to move the heart to piety. Calvin, of course, was deeply schooled in the
humanist methods of Latin oratory, and the goal of its rhetoric to move in
order to persuade (his Institutes, Brian Cummings thinks, echoed Quintil-
ian’s Institutio Oratorio).31 Cummings notes his conviction that the Bible
constituted God’s communication (cf. Fr. accommodation) to humans, and
the purpose of the Institutes was to order the images of scripture into loci,
multiple words (even in multiple languages) directing the attention to a
common word (parole), with a single meaning (sensus).
But to what end was this work done? We have called attention already to
Calvin’s art of language and imagery, but it is important to understand his
larger formational goal. Matthew Boulton has argued that Calvin’s use of
language—indeed, the whole structure of his teaching—is ordered toward
a “rhetorical” purpose: to move the heart to pietus (reverence and love of
God). Boulton focuses in particular on the figurative language that Calvin
frequently used but applies his case more broadly.32 Calvin, for example,
liked to refer to “God as our enemy.” In order to see God’s mercy, he writes,
“we must see . . . how it can be said that God, who prevents us with his
mercy, was our enemy until he was reconciled to us by Christ” (Institutes,
II, 16, 2). Here Calvin meant to convey the boundless character of God’s
mercy, but this called for hyperbole. This mercy was so extraordinary that—
contra Locke and Hume—it not only allowed but also insisted on metaphor
and symbol. These images, Boulton argues, cannot be “translated”; they
must be experienced. So, Boulton argues, the figure—God is our enemy—is
meant not simply to describe our lostness but to do something more visceral,
more embodied: to move the believer toward pietas. The many images Cal-
vin employs are all external aids—accommodation—to our blindness and
intransigence, and to our limited capacities (ad sensum nostrum), and they
are often achieved by a shock of contradiction. As Calvin goes on to write
in the section we have quoted, “[t]herefore [God] had this love towards us
even when, exercising enmity towards him, we were the workers of iniquity.
Accordingly in a manner wondrous and divine, he loved us when he hated
us.” These formational purposes are woven throughout his teaching and
preaching; Boulton argues that the best translation of Institutes is “deeply
formative education.”33 One might say that Calvin’s purpose involved cre-
ating a charged field that was meant to form believers, or what Boulton
 God, language, and the use of the senses 25
describes as “[a] sphere in which by the Spirit’s rhetorical engagement, dis-
ciples are cultivated, dispositionally and spiritually, into human beings fully
alive and fittingly grateful.” Boulton notes, however, that one must have an
ear for this music, just as in Orthodoxy one needs an eye for the icon. To
see language as designative or to reduce human sight (or insight) to a cold
or intellectual gaze does not do justice to these larger purposes of Calvin’s
language.
Something similar can be argued for Martin Luther. Although Luther
was more favorably disposed toward religious images than Calvin was—an
openness that increased over his ministry—he is famously accused of moving
images away from their contemplative function toward a more didactic and
illustrative role. Joseph Koerner, for example, believes that Luther’s influence
led his good friend Lucas Cranach to make his images into “confessional
statements” rather than embodying the visceral sense of presence conveyed
by Hans Holbein, for example.34 Koerner thinks that Cranach’s altarpieces
are the “visual equivalent of confessional texts.” But this common assump-
tion has been challenged. Jérôme Cottin has argued that while Luther was
opposed to the abuse associated with the late medieval Andachtsbild, or
devotional image, he was not against their devotional use in the service of
the word.35 Cottin admits (following Hans Belting) that we see in Luther the
emergence of a modern understanding of images that privileged their didac-
tic function, but within this new semiological system defined by the word
(parole), they could play a richly symbolic and even devotional function.36
For Luther, Cottin argues, only the word and the sacrament have a direct
link to God, so the image can only be a sign of the gift of grace that is given
in the word. But in this context, it carries much of the resonance associated
with medieval contemplation: Luther’s own background as a monk was not
lost but reinterpreted. The key to understanding the continuing devotional
function of imagery, I would argue, lies in Luther’s reinterpretation of medi-
eval lectio divina, which he reinterprets in terms of oratio, meditation and
tentatio. In this devotional process, one seeks the comfort of God through
a life of prayer, followed by constant meditation on the promise of God
offered in the preached word and, finally, the achievement of understanding
when all this is challenged through suffering of various kinds.
Matthew Rosebrock has recently argued that this contemplative spiritu-
ality reflected Luther’s visual imagination and deeply influenced Cranach’s
images of “Law and Gospel,” which were meant to serve as a stimulus to
prayer and meditation.37 Cottin concludes that Luther accepted images at the
anthropological level (the role of the imagination in faith, visual thought)
and the practical level (use of the plastic image for catechesis, for medita-
tion, and for the prolongation of preaching).38 As with Calvin, although
there is clear movement toward modern designative language, there is still a
critical role for the symbolic and imaginative.39
For both Calvin and Luther, the point of language is its expressive power,
as this is enhanced by the working of the Holy Spirit in and through the
26 William Dyrness
word. Language now is constituted as a summons, and preaching takes on
a performative dimension. Language is meant to make something happen.
This allows for a new aesthetic situation to emerge that does not reside in
language or images alone but in the interaction of these and other factors.
Victor Turner has argued that every society has a primary aesthetic-dramatic
“mirror” by which it understands (and judges) itself, a movement in time
that is “dramatic.”40 In Calvin’s community, this drama was constituted by
the performances surrounding the liturgy of the word—including singing
the Psalms, reading and preaching scripture, praying, and reciting the creed
and the actions of the sacraments. Note that Turner stresses that this aes-
thetic mirror is reflected in a movement in time that is dramatic. I will return
to the role of time momentarily, but here I emphasize the dramatic charac-
ter of this aesthetic mirror. What was previously a sacred space, sanctified
both by priestly dedication and by the presence of sacred objects—relics and
altarpieces—was now a space animated by the call of God in the sermon.

Drama
To tease out the significance of these points for a developing aesthetic, one
must note the influence of Calvin’s rhetorical purposes on his views not only
of the space of the church but also of the Christian’s life in the world. For
it was here that the entanglement of images, meaning and summons were
to be played out in the believers’ lives. This is reflected in my second claim
that the Reformation initiated a fundamental shift in the understanding of
drama that deeply influenced the Protestant aesthetic. During the medieval
period, the understanding of drama centered on religious liturgy, in general,
and the movement of the Mass, in particular.41 The Mass was the sym-
bolic representation of an elaborate drama of the redemption of all things
through the life, death and resurrection of Christ. As the gaze of worshipers
is drawn toward the raised host at the moment of transfiguration, so is the
dramatic movement of life drawn upward toward what Bonaventure called
the “Soul’s Journey to God.”
But in the Reformation, a fundamental change took place in this view of
drama.42 Building on Matthew Boulton’s claim about the rhetorical struc-
ture not only of Calvin’s preaching but also of his Institutes, we might put
matters this way: Calvin intended in his preaching and theology to project
a world embodied in the narrative of creation and redemption as a world in
which worshipers were called to account.
Calvin embraced the drama of redemption embodied in the medieval mass,
but he reoriented it in fundamental ways. Now the drama was not restricted
to the Mass but was played out in the believer’s faithful response to that
narrative of creation and redemption and extended out into the streets of
Geneva—that is, where the spectacle was taking place. As Calvin famously
argued, we are to see creation itself as a marvelous theater for the glory of
God. The emotional and dramatic response that medieval worshipers found
 God, language, and the use of the senses 27
in the elevation of the host, Calvin finds, in the first instance, in human-
kind’s response to the wonders of the theater of creation. In his commentary
on Genesis 1:6, he specifically contrasts the role that the images of creation
play with those of manmade images and statues; in the commentary on Exo-
dus 20:4–6, he contrasts the “phantoms and delusive shows” of medieval
images and ceremonies with the clear display of God’s glory in creation. In
their blindness, humans focus on these “delusive shows,” “notwithstanding
that God’s glory shines on every side, and whatever is seen above or below,
invites us to the true God.”43 Human blindness keeps people from recogniz-
ing their true situation, but we cannot underestimate the significance of this
dramatic situation for Calvin. It is critical to his theological purpose, and he
often uses figurative and aesthetic language to describe it. In his comments
on Romans 1:19, he argues that

[b]y saying that God has made [His power and divine nature] manifest,
he means that man was created to be a spectator of this formed world,
and that eyes were given him, that he might by looking on so beautiful
a picture, be led up to the Author himself.44

So, creation itself calls humans to account but it is through particular

events of Scripture that this drama becomes clear and effective, from the
calling of Israel in the Old Testament to the life and work of Christ, climax-
ing in the cross. In this event, Calvin says in his commentary on John 13:31:

there has been an astonishing change of things; the condemnation of all

men has been manifested, sin has been blotted out, a salvation has been
restored to men; and, in short, the whole world has been renewed, and
everything restored to good order.45

The drama for Calvin is not to be seen in the spectacle of the Mass and its
ceremonies and images but in the theater of creation that has now been
made right and in Christ’s followers who are enlisted into this drama.
But notice the implication of the reorientation that Calvin proposes.
Whereas the dramatic movement in the medieval Mass was centripetal—the
attention and emotional impact were drawn in toward the raised host where
the miracle of transubstantiation was taking place—the orientation of Cal-
vin’s drama is exactly reversed. The dramatic movement is not toward the
raising of the host as a symbol of the cross but from the substance of that
“astonishing change of things” outward, into the believers’ lives—who, in
Calvin’s dramatic language, are called to play their own role in the theater
of the world. Rather than being absorbed into the space and time of the
ritual, for Calvin, the drama extends itself out into the city and its particular
time, the call of the sermon propelling the worshiper out into the world. The
images and performance of the liturgy have a rhetorical purpose to move
worshipers to the love and service of God in the world.
28 William Dyrness
But this dramatic mirror also involves, as Turner argues, a movement in
time. For Calvin, the dramatic structure of creation and redemption meant
that time took on new moral and aesthetic resonances, as I have argued
above. The medieval saints plays and the Mass called observers to partici-
pate in the recurring drama of redemption enacted in the Mass. The dra-
matic structure of the Mass and the saints plays, we recall, reflected a view
of history as a timeless pattern of generation and return. As St. Bonaventure
wrote, the aim of both art and scripture was to show “the eternal generation
and Incarnation of the Word, the pattern of human life and the union of the
soul with God.”46 Worshipers were called to participate in this one historia;
the mystical movement promoted in the liturgy was upward, toward a time-
less union with God.47
When one reviews Calvin’s teaching on devotional and liturgical practice,
there is much apparent overlap with medieval practices: there is baptism,
Eucharist, prayers (even kneeling and lifting of hands), special occasions for
repentance, and so on.48 But when examined carefully there is one central
difference between these practices in his mind, and this has to do centrally
with the changing view of time. These practices are no longer intended to
integrate us into the timeless and eternally recurring historia, as the medi-
eval practices are meant to do. Rather, they are firmly connected to Chris-
tians’ ongoing life in the world. Prayer services, confession, and penance
reflect and enable the Christian’s warfare in the world.

Projecting a charged world

Precisely because these practices are primarily devotional and theological,
they open up new possibilities for aesthetic practices and a range of new
aesthetic objects. Note that with Bonaventure, art was meant to show the
pattern of human life in its journey upward toward God. Calvin, by con-
trast, in his preaching and writing, was seeking to project a world in which
congregants were called to responsibility.49 And his use of scripture reflects
a deep sense of the summons embedded in the biblical narrative. Here, the
corporate singing of Psalms became for Calvin a crucial element in his dra-
matic purposes. It is well known that Calvin, while wary of the way music
moved the emotions, knew it was an element that the Spirit used to move
the soul. Reading and singing the Psalms was not, Calvin believed “une
chose morte” (a dead thing); it was “un movement” in the hands of the
Spirit to form believers.50
The significance of this for aesthetics may be glimpsed by referring to the
influential “Defense of Poesy” written by Philip Sidney in 1595 and which
was deeply informed by the Calvinism prominent in England. The philoso-
pher and the historian can only use precept and example, Sidney pointed
out, but the poet can create “another nature.”51 The philosopher (or we
might add the theologian) can only describe verbally what is to be done or
what is true, while poetry shows an image to the mind: “Poetry ever sets
 God, language, and the use of the senses 29
virtue so out in her best colors . . . that one must needs be enamoured of
her,” just as it intends to see virtue embodied and project a charged world.
Brian Cummings argues that for Sidney, the creations of poetry—“another
nature”—allows the emergence of new moral beings not subject to the con-
sequences of the fall. The “wit” of the poet is uncorrupted by the “infected
will.”52 Sidney’s defense, Cummings thinks, is borrowed from secular
sources, and this tension would bedevil Protestant literature throughout the
seventeenth century. But I would argue that Cummings’s complaint over-
looks the precedent proposed by Calvin. Calvin’s rhetorical purpose in his
preaching and writing was to project another nature, a new creation that,
while not immune from the effects of the “infected will,” proposes a story
in which that will may be made whole. This possibility and the tensions
that it featured had clear influences on the Protestant art of the seventeenth
century. While we cannot develop these in any detail, we can point to four
areas where this aesthetic became evident: English poetry, realistic theater,
naturalism in Dutch landscape and French Huguenot architects.
In English poetry, it is easy to argue that the development of English Puri-
tan literature infallibly represents the theological vision of a charged world.
Ernest Gilman goes so far as to argue that the iconoclastic temperament of
the Reformation created the splendor of seventeenth-century poetry. For
since the imagining power of the mind was tainted by pride and sensuality,
these writers realized that “the word was the bulwark of the spirit against
the carnal enticements of the image.”53 Consider this Holy Sonnet of John
Donne:

When senses, which thy souldiers are,

Wee arme against thee and they fight for sinne . . .
When plenty, Gods image and seale
Makes us Idolatrous,
And love it, not him, whom it should reveale,
When we are mov’d to seeme religious
Only to vent wit, Lord deliver us.54

Despite this mistrust, Donne can draw from the biblical narrative power-
ful images that feed the imagination. Because it distrusted vain display and
sensuality, this poetry was not intended to be artless; rather, and following
the seventeenth-century Divine William Perkins, they sought an “art whose
precepts may be derived, and whose stylistic features may be imitated, from
the Scriptures.”55
But what is most characteristic of this body of poetry, with all its variety,
is the tendency of poets to rewrite the narrative their own lives in terms
of the biblical narrative of sin and salvation: to write themselves into the
poetry. In other words, their poetry sought to project a world in which they
were called to account. William Ames in his Conscience identified our pro-
cess of sanctification with the nailing of Christ on the cross. He wrote: “The
30 William Dyrness
nailes whereby in this application sinne is fastened to the cross, are the very
same with those whereby Christ was fastened to the cross.”56 John Donne
can take this exchange to the biblical extreme:

Spit in my face . . . and pierce my side,

Buffet, and scoffe, scourge and crucifie mee . . .
They kill’d once an inglorious man, but I
Crucifie him daily, being now glorified.57

Here one might say the rhetorical purposes of Calvin’s preaching have been
embedded in a uniquely dramatic (and theological) structure.
A growing body of scholarship has also called attention to the way this
notion of drama (and liturgy) influenced the rise of realistic theater. A gen-
eration ago, O. B. Hardison argued that in Shakespeare, we have a secu-
lar equivalent to religious ritual.58 Recently, Hardison’s thesis has received
renewed attention. Regina Schwartz has argued that a craving for justice
and redemption lies at the heart of most of Shakespeare’s plays. Although
her thesis almost amounts to the assertion that God’s presence has left the
liturgy and its elements and has been dissipated into the drama of the world,
she believes Reformation theology played a critical role in Shakespeare’s
plays.59
Huston Diehl discussed this influence in the context of what she called the
deep distrust of the theatrical and imaginary of the reformers. This distrust
led them to produce “their own dramatic forms to replace the ‘idolatrous’
spectacle and pomp of the Roman Church.”60 For them, the furniture of
liturgy—font, pulpit—consisted only of “representational signs,” not sac-
ramental images. But this, I argue, does not represent a loss of imagination;
rather, one imagination was replaced by another, one form of devotional
gaze replacing another—and in the process, a new notion of drama emerged.
The problem with medieval drama was not that it incited a devotional gaze,
or encouraged believers to meditation; these things were not wrong. Rather,
these did not move worshipers to action. John Foxe in his Acts and Monu-
ments had no time for the theatricality of the Roman Church, but, Diehl
notes, “he champion[ed] another kind of theater, substituting the theatrics
of martyrdom for traditional pomp and pageantry.”61 John Foxe in this
way encourages readers to rewrite their past, and, Diehl thinks, replaces the
devotional gaze with demystifying ceremonies. Diehl wants to contrast this
new theatricality with “liturgy,” which she associates with the space of the
church. But I believe this is an overly narrow reading of liturgy. What Calvin
sought was rather an expansion of the rhetoric of the liturgy, a reorientation
of the drama to embrace the believer’s life in the world—what Calvin called
the Christian’s warfare.
The purpose of Calvin’s drama was to hold up a mirror to the spectator,
and in this respect, it clearly resonated with developing Renaissance drama.
As Regina Schwartz notes, “the most common Renaissance theory of drama
 God, language, and the use of the senses 31
was that it offered an image of actual life: ‘the purpose of playing . . . was
and is to hold as ‘twere a mirror up to nature.’ ”62 But it did more: in hold-
ing up a mirror, its very realism called spectators to attention. This is most
famously seen in Hamlet’s plan to stage a play within a play to “catch the
conscience of the king” (III, I, 582), or to trick the king into showing his
guilt.
Clearly seeing redemptive truth and, in the case of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs,
the drama of martyrdom, actually played out in the world resonates with
Calvin’s liturgical goals. Public worship is not theater; it is not spectacle. For
that, we must lift our eyes to what God is doing in remaking creation. And
this dramatic situation opened up new possibilities for realistic theater. As
Schwartz notes, even if “the theater cannot do anything to other humans,
[or] offer anything to God,” it can awaken our longing for redemption and
forgiveness.63 Earlier descriptions of Calvinist influence, by C. L. Barber and
Louie Montrose, believed that the efflorescence of drama resulted from the
suppression of Catholic ritual so that the theatrical “magic” was compensa-
tory for the lost ritual—or, in terms I have used, the old ritual was displaced
onto the stage.64 Diehl and Deborah Shuger, for their part, argue that the
Reformation created habits of thoughts that found a new institutional home
in the theater, with Shuger describing these habits as “a culture’s interpretive
categories and their internal relations, which underlie specific beliefs, ideas
and values.”65
Turning to the visual arts, scholarly attention on the naturalism of
­seventeenth-century Dutch painting has generated debate over the theologi-
cal influences on what has been called the “art of describing.”66 While many
factors were at work behind this influence, it is clearly a mistake to see the
turn toward landscape and portraits in purely secular terms.67 In this period,
there is little doubt that a general Calvinist framework was widely influen-
tial, even with artists who did not belong to Reformed churches.68
The art that resulted appears completely natural, but this naturalness
betrays an artifice that reflects a Calvinist imaginary. Calvin says that nature
not only holds up for us a mirror in which we can see God, but it also
reflects the responsibility to remake that world in the ways God intended.
Interestingly, the word landscape itself comes from the Dutch (landschap)
that was specifically used to describe land recovered from the North Sea.69
In the terminology of the day, landscape was not simply natural; it was land
made useful—literally creation recovered.
One could not find a better example of this recovered naturalism than the
landscapes of Jacob van Ruisdael, a contemporary of Rembrandt. Consider
the painting Three Great Trees in a Landscape from 1667 (Norton Simon
Museum Pasadena, Figure 2.1) What first appears as natural beauty, when
more closely examined is shown to reflect a “selected naturalness.” If we
look carefully, we can see a spiritual drama being played out: there is a
broken-down house by the river and three stricken beech trees in the fore-
ground. As John Walford argues in his study of this painter, the best reading
32 William Dyrness

Figure 2.1 Jacob von Ruisdael, Three Great Trees in a Mountainous Landscape,

1667. Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California
Source: Image courtesy of Norton Simon Foundation.

of the vanitas theme so common in this period is “brokenness.”70 The dra-

matic presence of sin and the fragility of life have given the beauty of Ruis-
dael a depth that is absent, for example, in the work of his contemporary,
Claude Lorraine. Creation is both a theater for the glory of God and the
dramatic site of sin and brokenness. Still there is hope, light breaks through
the clouds, and the men are going out to their labor until the evening, as in
Psalm 104:23, a familiar text of the time.71
Von Ruisdael, like many of his Dutch contemporaries, also offers an
image that has extended aesthetic attention to the detailed examination of
everyday life. For it is in the everyday life, Calvin claimed, that the drama
of God’s redemptive work is to be apprehended. But in order for the details
of the created order to be seen and properly appropriated, they must be
placed into a larger frame; they must be “textualized” by the Reformed
narrative of creation and redemption. The delights of rural life are therefore
typically mixed with signs of darkness and of struggle. The light in the sky
could signal hope, but the darkness reminds viewers of the fragility of life—a
 God, language, and the use of the senses 33
threat that Dutch people viscerally understood, living in a land threatened
by the sea. These images reflected the new dramatic situation that had been
defined by the Reformed narrative of creation and redemption.
The fresh attention being paid to the natural landscape in Holland reflects
not only a traditional northern Renaissance insistence on simplicity and nat-
uralness but also a new dramatic reading of the created order that suggests
the influence of Calvinism.72 Farther south in France, other Renaissance
streams reflect the recovery of classical sources, which Huguenot architects
were able to use in projecting the same Calvinist narrative.
In France, those architects often worked in a militantly Catholic environ-
ment that was frequently hostile to their Calvinist faith, but they found a
way to express their redemptive vision and their desire to restore a fallen
order to the beauty of God’s original creation.73 It has long been recog-
nized that Huguenot architects played an important role in the development
of neoclassic architecture in France. But it is only recently that scholars
have begun to explore the particular role that Calvinist theology played in
these developments.74 The Renaissance recovery of classical architecture,
although begun in the fifteenth century, was brought to wider attention
by the Italian Reformed architect Sebastiano Serlio (d. 1554), now widely
acknowledged for disseminating classical ideas.75 The recovery of classical
orders allowed these Reformed architects to go back, before the corruption
of medieval superstition, to what they regarded as the purity of classical
style. And their Calvinist focus on the goodness of creation resonated with
the classical elements: firmitas (steadfastness), utilitas (the structure’s useful-
ness), and venustas (loveliness). Frequently their architectural treatises go
even further back to the Old Testament and the fundamental proportions
that were displayed in the Temple.76
As I argued earlier, during the Reformation, preaching and singing consti-
tuted the default Protestant experience of what we today call media. Simi-
larly, one might argue that the architecture of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries constituted what passed then for mass media, having the ability to
convey a message to those outside the church walls.77 For Huguenot archi-
tects, this media needed to be structured and textualized by the drama of
redemption. And their recovery of classical forms gave them a vocabulary
through which they could express this drama: the restoration of the fallen
and disordered creation to its original splendor.78
This is seen for example in the work of Bernard Palissy (1510–89), best
known for his work on the fountains for the Tuileries palaces and gardens.
His work for the French court has been widely admired, but scholars have
only recently seen the connection of his work with Calvin’s theology of crea-
tion. In his La Recept veritable (1563), he lays out his views of architecture
and gardening—which, in his mind, were interconnected. Following Calvin,
he sought to work with nature to make his gardens and buildings “delecta-
ble”—that is, an image of salvation and a place of rest and refuge from the
persecution that Huguenots were experiencing.79 Catherine Randall argues
34 William Dyrness

Figure 2.2 Tuileries gardens and palace

Source: Grotto designed for Catherine de Médicis, by Bernard Palissy, 1567.

that Palissy explicitly follows the structure implied in Calvin’s Institutes.

The world, although fallen, can be restored. “Palissy’s garden render[s] lit-
eral Calvin’s conception of believers as a new ‘garden of Eden.’ ”80
Catherine de Médici was a patron and protector of Palissy,81 but she could
not save him from eventual martyrdom in 1590. Still, the impulse to restore
and renew the world he shared with other Huguenot architects lives on in the
modern world. It was this urge to useful “repristinization,” the call to reorder
a fallen creation, that the Puritan settlers brought with them to North ­America
and that has become such a persistent theme of American aesthetics as seen,
for example, in the Hudson River School and Olmstead’s public parks.

Conclusion
The triumph of designative use of language and the accompanying instru-
mental rationality that Charles Taylor narrates may, in fact, owe something
to the theological traditions of Protestantism. But one also must acknowl-
edge, at the same time, what was made possible with this new imagina-
tion. The way was open for the present and ongoing time to have new and
dramatic meaning. Worship and life in the world had an inseparable con-
nection. One was summoned by the liturgy—by the preaching and sacra-
ments to serve Christ in the world, but this service in the world also had
its reflexive influence on the liturgy, with special days of prayer or fasting
called for particular challenges, and the preacher enjoining the congregation
to respond in faith to the tribulations the world yielded up. These together
had and have the potential to enrich the narrative of our lives. The liturgy
 God, language, and the use of the senses 35
calls us into the world; our life in the world throws us back into the liturgy
and gives it fresh content. Rowan Williams, in his 2013 Gifford Lectures,
describes the Eucharist this way:

When Christians join in a celebration of Eucharist, they allow them-

selves to be interrogated by the story of Christ’s self-sacrifice, to be
questioned as to whether their present lives are recognizably linked with
Christ’s and to be reconnected with the story of Christ’s death and res-
urrection by the renewing gift of the Holy Spirit.82

Williams goes on in that chapter to underline the connection between this

experience and the broader pattern of our lives. This ritual not only “holds
us to account” to that larger narrative, but it also is now connected in large
and small ways to the narrative of my life in the world—where Calvin claims
my pietas is experienced and lived out. This redemptive drama is meant to
become part of the liturgy of our lives.
Clearly, this movement, first encouraged in the Reformation, issued in
new aesthetic sensitivities and possibilities. These did not center on language
alone, nor did they focus on visual images in any central way, but they all
expressed in one way or another a dramatic and aesthetic situation in which
we find ourselves “called to account.” Recently scholars have emphasized
that a focus on language, objects or practices by themselves invariably dis-
torts our attention. Rather, all these must be seen together in the way they
project a world. In a recent summary of these developments, Sally Promey
and Shira Brisman recognize the multiple factors making up our aesthetic
situation:

Objects, images, and a proliferation of materialities engage, shape inter-

act with human bodies, events and ideas just as profoundly subtly and
emphatically as the textual and literary “objects” with which scholars
generally exercise more comfortable familiarities. Pictures and things
surround us and people work with them—and they with people—in
constructing selves, communities and worlds.83

This might be taken as a summary of the dramatic interconnections made

possible by the Reformation understanding of creation and redemption.

Notes
1 This article is an earlier version of material recently published as The Origin
of Protestant Aesthetics in Early Modern Europe: Calvin’s Reformation Poet-
ics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019).
2 Privileging liturgical spaces and practices as aesthetic sites would have been
assumed in the medieval period, although these were not understood as “art” as
we moderns understand it. See Hans Belting, Likeness and Presence: A History
36 William Dyrness
of the Image Before the Era of Art, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1994).
3 Nicholas Wolterstorff argues that art is deeply embedded in social practices:
aesthetically, we live. See Art in Action: Toward a Christian Aesthetic (Grand
Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1980).
4 Issues here have become more complicated recently. Henri Naef, Les Origines de
la Réforme à Genève (Genève: Librairie Droz, 1968), 1, 276 has argued that art
was already in decline before the Reformation; Mia Mochizuki has pointed to
iconoclastic impulses long before the Reformation in The Netherlandish Image
After Iconoclasm, 1566–1672: Material Religion in the Dutch Golden Age
(Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2008), 1.
5 Calvin actually began his work in Geneva after the major iconoclastic episodes;
Luther’s response to the radical reformers is well known.
6 John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John McNeil (Philadel-
phia: Westminster Press, 1960), I, 5, i. Subsequent references to the Institutes are
to this edition.
7 A point elaborated by Stuart Clark in Vanities of the Eye: Vision in Early Mod-
ern European Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 161ff.
8 Lee Palmer Wandel, The Reformation: Towards a New History (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2011), 10.
9 Eamon Duffy, Saints, Sacrilege and Sedition: Religion and Conflict in the Tudor
Reformations (London: Bloomsbury, 2012), 33. A more recent description of
this disruption is Brad Gregory, The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious
Revolution Secularized Society (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 2012).
10 John Calvin, Theological Treatises, ed. J. K. S. Reid (London: SCM Press, 1954),
173. Emphasis added.
11 This is not to say the Eucharist did not mediate God’s presence in some way, but
for both Calvin and Luther, this had to be accompanied by the promise of the
word.
12 Regina Schwartz, Sacramental Poetics at the Dawn of Secularism: When God
Left the World (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008), 120.
13 On Calvin’s “living images,” see Randall Zachman, Image and Word in the Theol-
ogy of John Calvin (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), 7–9.
14 The notion of “sanctifying space” is argued in the recent dissertation of Edward
Yang, “Sanctifying Space: A Reformed Theology of Places for Corporate Wor-
ship” (PhD diss., Fuller Theological Seminary, 2016).
15 Robert Wuthnow, Communities of Discourse: Ideology and Social Structure in
the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and European Socialism (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1989): “Reformation discourse tended to favor the
homily, the tract, and verse by verse commentary, all of which were suited to dis-
crete observations about contemporary events, to a greater extent than the more
systematically elaborated theological tome” (552). This is not to say preaching
was an innovation of the Reformation; late medieval believers flocked to hear
the best preachers.
16 John Bossy, Christianity in the West 1400–1700 (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1985), 102.
17 Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin, The Coming of the Book: The Impact of
Printing 1450–1800, trans. David Gerard (London: NLB, 1976), 288.
18 Karl Schottenloher, Books and the Western World: A Cultural History, trans. W.
D. Boyd and I. H. Wolfe (London: McFarland, 1968), 287.
19 Brian Cummings, “Without Reference to Religion, the Study of Early Mod-
ern Writing Is Incomprehensible,” in The Literary Culture of the Reformation:
Grammar and Grace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002/7), 5, 6, 51.
 God, language, and the use of the senses 37
20 Ibid., 193. To More, Tyndale’s translation made the church appear strange!
21 Ibid., 15, 51.
22 Laid out most famously in Augustine’s On Christian Teaching.
23 Cf. Cummings, The Literary Culture of the Reformation, 6.
24 Charles Taylor, The Language Animal: The Full Shape of Human Linguistic
Capacity (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2016).
25 Cf. his conclusion where he makes this argument, 332ff.
26 He finds this view best exemplified in Hamann, Herder, and Humboldt in the
nineteenth century, thus his shorthand for this view HHH. Taylor admits that
the designative view has come to play a central role in the rise of modern science
and modernism more generally—including the ability to write coded languages
that are so important to the development of technology.
27 Although Taylor has given an important role to the Reformation in its focus on
everyday life in his earlier work, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern
Identity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989). In The Language
Animal, he has promised a follow-up book that will trace the rise of this consti-
tutive view to the Romantic’s recovery of the premodern view of language that
I am describing. We may expect him to reference the Reformation there.
28 Taylor, The Language Animal, 163, 164. Interestingly, for his reference to Puri-
tan preaching, he cites Max Weber.
29 One sees a similarly reductive reading of the Reformation in Brad Gregory, The
Unintended Reformation: “Because late medieval Christianity was an institu-
tionalized world view, the Reformation affected all domains of human life in
ways that have led over the long term and unintentionally to the situation [of
hyper-pluralism and moral relativism] in which European and North Americans
find themselves today” (319).
30 Robert Scribner, “Popular Piety and Modes of Visual Perception,” in Religion
and Culture in Germany 1400–1800, ed. Lyndal Roper, Studies in Medieval and
Reformation Thought, vol. 81 (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 120–25. Scribner describes
the role of developing understandings of optics in all of this.
31 Cummings, The Literary Culture of the Reformation, 246.
32 Matthew Myer Boulton, “ ‘Even More Deeply Moved’: Calvin on the Rhetorical,
Formational Function of Scripture and Doctrine,” in Calvin and the Book: The
Evolution of the Printed Word in Reformed Protestantism, ed. Karen Spierling
(Gottingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2015), 136–45. On Calvin’s figurative
language, see Zachman.
33 Boulton, “Even More Deeply Moved,” 143. The quote that follows is from 145.
34 Joseph Koerner, “Confessional Portraits,” in Hans Holbein: Paintings, Prints
and Reception, ed. Mark Roskill and John Oliver Hand (Washington, DC, and
New Haven, CT: National Gallery/Yale University Press, 2001), 126. The quote
that follows is from 130.
35 Jérôme Cottin, Le Regard et le Parole: Une Théologie protestante de l’image
(Génève: Labor et Fides, 1994), 263. And see Matthew Rosebrock, “The High-
est Art: Martin Luther’s Visual Theology in Oratio, Meditatio, Tentatio” (PhD
diss., Fuller Theological Seminary, 2017).
36 Cottin, Le Regard, 272. For what follows see 276–83. Cf. Belting, Likeness and
Presence.
37 Rosebrock, The Highest Art.
38 Cottin, Le Regard, 283. Rosebrock agrees that the image at the end of the day
functions at a phenomenological level.
39 This, of course, reflects the continuing presence of medieval influences in these
theologians, something increasingly recognized.
40 Victor Turner, “Are there Universals of Performance in Myth, Ritual, and
Drama?” in By Means of Performance: Intercultural Studies of Theatre and
38 William Dyrness
Ritual, ed. Richard Schechner and Willa Appel (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1990), 8.
41 O. B. Hardison, Christian Rite and Christian Drama: Essays in the Origin and
Early History of Modern Drama (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1965), viii. He notes, “religious ritual was the drama of the early Middle
Ages, and had been ever since the decline of the classical theatre.” Already in the
ninth century, he notes, the Mass “was consciously interpreted as drama.”
42 I have explored this transformation in more detail in “God’s Play: Calvin, Thea-
tre, and the Rise of the Book,” in Calvin and the Book: The Evolution of the
Printed Word in Reformed Protestantism, ed. Karen Spierling (Göttingen: Van-
denhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015), 123–36.
43 John Calvin, Commentaries on the Four Last Books of Moses, ed. and trans. C.
W. Bingham (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1853), 2, 107.
44 John Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans,
ed. and trans. John Owen (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1993), 70. Randall Zach-
man underlines the importance of this late (1556) insistence on the role of the
spectator and the potential of contemplation of so beautiful an image to lead one
to God. See his Image and Word in the Theology of John Calvin, 33.
45 John Calvin, Commentary on the Gospel According to John, trans. William
Pringle, vol. 2 (London: Calvin Translation Society, 1847), 73. Here may be an
indirect reference to Aristotle’s formulation in the phrase “change of things”
(“changement des choses”), which may refer to Aristotle’s change of the situa-
tion into its opposite in Poetics, 11.
46 St. Bonaventure’s De Reductione Artium ad Theologiam, ed. and trans. Sis-
ter Emma Thérèse Healy (Saint Bonaventure, NY: Saint Bonaventure College,
1940), quoted in David L. Jeffrey, “English Saints Plays,” in Medieval Drama,
ed. Neville Denny (London: Edward Arnold, 1973), 89.
47 David Jeffrey points out that refusal of real presence had as much to do with a
denial of this view of history as of a different metaphysic. “English Saints Plays,”
72, 73.
48 See the discussion in Zachman, Image and Word in the Theology of John Calvin,
355–67.
49 For aesthetics understood as “projecting a world,” see Nicholas Wolterstorff,
The Works and Worlds of Art (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980).
50 For Lutheran hymns, see Christopher Boyd Brown, Singing the Gospel: Lutheran
Hymns and the Success of the Reformation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer-
sity Press, 2006).
51 Philip Sidney, A Defence of Poetry, Miscellaneous Prose of Sir Philip Sydney, ed.
Katherine Duncan-Jones and Jan Van Dorsten (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973),
85. The subsequent quote is at 90.
52 Cummings, The Literary Culture of the Reformation, 265–72, at 272.
53 Ernest B. Gilman, Iconoclasm and Poetry in the English Reformation (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1986), 1 and see 5, 6. I have elaborated this in more
detail in William Dyrness, Reformed Theology and Visual Culture: The Protes-
tant Imagination from Calvin to Edwards (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2004), 192–96.
54 John Donne, “Holy Sonnet XXI,” in John Donne: The Divine Poems, ed. Helen
Gardner (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978). A Litanie xxi, 23.
55 Quoted in Barbara Lewalski, Protestant Poetics and the Seventeenth Century
Lyric (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 219. She discusses Perkins’s
instructions for preachers as an important source for this aesthetic disposition.
56 William Ames, Conscience with the Power and Cases Thereof [. . .] (London:
n.p., 1639), 26.
57 Donne, “Holy Sonnet XI,” in John Donne: The Divine Poems, 9.
 God, language, and the use of the senses 39
58 Hardison, Christian Rite and Christian Drama, 284.
59 Schwartz, Sacramental Poetics at the Dawn of Secularism. See chapter 3, where
she surveys the extensive literature on this question.
60 Huston Diehl, Staging Reform, Reforming the Stage: Protestantism and Popular
Theatre in Early Modern England (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997),
5. For what follows cf. 13, 24. My argument nuances her claim that the Reform-
ers wished to disrupt the medieval devotional gaze; rather, Calvin (and Luther)
sought to redirect this gaze.
61 Ibid.
62 Schwartz, Sacramental Poetics at the Dawn of Secularism, 43. The last phrase is
quoted from Hamlet, 3.2.21, though it ultimately derives from Cicero.
63 Schwartz, Sacramental Poetics at the Dawn of Secularism, 42. Her emphasis.
Her argument is that the very elimination of the transformative work of the
sacrament opened the way for later playwrights and poets to develop what she
terms a sacramental poetics. Interestingly these influences coincided with the
progressive narrowing of the space of performance into specific theatrical spaces.
Cf. Serene Jones, “Calvin’s Common Reader” (lecture, Calvin Studies Society,
Princeton Theological Seminary, April 6, 2013).
64 Anthony B. Dawson and Paul Yachnin, The Culture of Playgoing in Shake-
speare’s England: A Collaborative Debate (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2001), 27–28. They describe the various ways Calvinist influence on
theater has been approached.
65 Deborah K. Shuger, Habits of Thought in the English Renaissance: Religion,
Politics and the Dominant Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1990), 9. These values and beliefs she thinks were “by and large religious”. For
what follows, see 37.
66 Svetlana Alpers, The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983). On this see Dyrness, Reformed
Theology and Visual Culture, 196–212.
67 A brief survey is found in Reindert L. Falkenburg, “Calvinism and the Emer-
gence of Dutch Seventeenth Century Landscape Art—A Critical Evaluation,” in
Seeing Beyond the Word: Visual Arts and the Calvinist Tradition, ed. Paul Corby
Finney (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1999), 343–68.
68 Mia Mochizuki makes clear that despite the growing religious pluralism in the
Netherlands, the Reformed Churches still occupied that central place, both liter-
ally and figuratively, in Dutch cities. For example, she notes although Catholics
worshipped freely throughout the United Provinces, when they died, they often
sought burial within Reformed churches. Netherlandish Image, 276–77.
69 Gina Crandell, Nature Pictorialized: “The View” in Landscape History (Balti-
more, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 101, 103. And see Dyrness,
Reformed Theology and Visual Culture, 198–200.
70 On vanitas theme, see E. John Walford, Jacob von Ruisdael and the Perception
of Landscape (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991), 33–38.
71 Light breaking in often conveyed divine providence and redemption in von Ruis-
dael. Walford, Jacob von Ruisdael, 99.
72 Mochizuki argues the changes were more a bending than a breaking from the
past. Netherlandish Image, 5.
73 On this see William Dyrness, “Hiding in Plain Sight: Theology and Visual Cul-
ture in Early Modern Calvinism,” in The Oxford Handbook of Calvinism, ed.
Carl Trueman and Bruce Gordon (New York: Oxford University Press, forth-
coming), from which the following is adapted.
74 Catherine Randall (Coats), Building Codes: The Aesthetics of Calvinism in Early
Modern Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999); Randal
C. Working, Visual Theology: The Architectural Iconology of Early Modern
40 William Dyrness
French Protestantism (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2016); Leonard N. Amico, Ber-
nard Palissy: In Search of an Earthly Paradise (Paris: Flammarion, 1996).
75 Randal Working says it was Serlio’s publication of Vitruvius in 1537 that
brought those ideas to the attention of Henry I. He notes that in the 1550s, all
royal architects were Protestants. See Randal C. Working, “Re-presenting the
Tradition: Towards an Architectural Iconology of Early Modern French Protes-
tantism, 1535 to 1623” (PhD diss., Fuller Theological Seminary, 2013), 187–88.
Cf. 164–66 for what follows. Serlio was especially influential on Philiberte de
l’Orme, Salomon de Bray and Bernard Palissy.
76 Philibert de L’Orme, Le Premier tome de l’Architecture (Paris: Federic Morel,
1567); Salomon de Bray, Architectura Moderna (Amsterdam: Danckerts,1631).
They sought a “construction based upon a mathematical regularity which in
turn could ultimately be traced back to divine origins.” Mochizuki, Nether-
landish Image, 222.
77 Randall, Building Codes, 225n4.
78 In their work for the French royalty they sought to counter the emerging Baroque
sensitivity by the modest and strong classical style. Randall notes the irony of
these Calvinists dialectically playing a major role in “In the Construction of an
Official Idiom for the French Absolutist Nation-State,” Building Codes, 7.
79 Bernard Palissy, Les Oeuvres de Maistre Bernard Palissy, ed. P. Fillon, vol. 1
(Niort: Clouzot Librairie, 1888).
80 Randall, Building Codes, 55.
81 The exact nature of his commissions remains unclear. See Amico’s discussion of
the Grotto for the Tuileries and his relationship with Catherine, in Bernard Pal-
issy, 69f. See Laura Corey et al., The Art of the Louvre’s Tuileries (New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 2013). Palissy is also considered to have played a role
along with Bacon in the rise of a scientific method. See Thomas Clifford, Bacon,
Palissy and the Revival of Natural Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1914).
82 Rowan Williams, The Edge of Words: God and the Habits of Language (Lon-
don: Bloomsbury Continuum, 2014), 85.
83 Sally M. Promey and Shira Brisman, “Sensory Cultures: Material and Visual
Religion,” in The Blackwell Companion to Religion in America, ed. Philip Goff
(Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 177–205, at 179.
3 Protestant paintings
Artworks by Lucas Cranach
and his workshop
Christiane Andersson

The Protestant Reformation was the single most influential factor in the
development of German art during the sixteenth century. Lutheran doctrine
altogether eliminated some types of artwork from large parts of northern
Europe. Traditional images were newly interpreted in light of changing
beliefs. And the Lutheran Reformation led to new types of images, primar-
ily in the medium of painting.
Luther’s views on the value of religious images diverged greatly from those
of the other reformers, especially Zwingli and Calvin. Luther was the only
Protestant theologian who not only tolerated them but, in fact, accorded
the visual arts an important role in religious education.1 His beliefs about
the value of images evolved over time. His writings on this question are
somewhat scattered, as they were often elicited by current events, such as
the iconoclast riots in Wittenberg. The violent removal of religious art from
churches was of such concern to him that it became a factor in his decision
to abandon his safe haven at Wartburg Castle in 1522 and return to Witten-
berg to deal with the iconoclasm instigated there by Andreas Bodenstein von
Karlstadt. In eight sermons against Karlstadt in 1522, Luther designated
images as adiaphora,2 stating that “we are free to have them or not to have
them.” Already in 1518, he had expressed opposition to images displayed
in churches only if they encouraged idolatry.3 He firmly condemned the
improper use of images customary in Catholic practice, such as their ven-
eration in hope of gaining specific favors from God. Luther’s theology also
eliminated private donations of paintings or entire altarpieces to churches.
In 1529, he clearly distinguished artworks used in superstitious practices,
which he condemned, from didactically useful pictures of biblical narra-
tives, which he called Merkbilder.4 Luther welcomed such narrative images
as effective reminders of Christ’s actions as recorded in the Bible, including
pictures of Christ on the cross and of the Virgin Mary.5 On the other hand,
Luther was opposed to certain themes in art, such as Christ Pantocrator,
the Virgin of Mercy, the Madonna lactans, and certain kinds of images of
saints.6 Luther had a visual imagination when he recounted biblical stories.
He said that “when I hear of Christ, an image of a man hanging on a cross
42 Christiane Andersson
takes form in my heart.”7 He felt that images rather than words were more
helpful to common people in understanding biblical stories.
Luther realized early in his career the potential value and persuasiveness
of artwork in the dissemination of his theology. In Lucas Cranach the Elder
he found the ideal collaborator to create Lutheran art. Cranach’s artistic
eloquence perfectly matched Luther’s theological persuasiveness. Cranach’s
Reformation-inspired work included designing woodcuts to illustrate anti-
papal polemical pamphlets8 and Luther’s translation of the German Bible,
whose illustrations Luther personally oversaw, choosing both the themes and
the page upon which they were to appear.9 But most important, Cranach’s
great achievement lies in his many paintings of biblical stories expressing
Lutheran beliefs.
Few of these themes are new in the history of German painting. In most
of the Lutheran-inspired pictorial works created in the Cranach workshop,
an existing theme was newly interpreted to convey a Protestant message,
developed in close consultation with Luther himself. These paintings that
issued in large numbers from the Cranach workshop in Wittenberg open
an entirely new chapter in German art, one in which panel painting directly
reflects theological doctrine. The importance of Cranach’s work for our
knowledge about the German Reformation can hardly be overestimated.
Although much larger in numbers and involving the production of an entire
workshop over several generations, Cranach’s work offers a parallel case
to the way in which our image of Henry VIII and his court is largely based
on the work of Hans Holbein the Younger, who served as the king’s court
painter until his death in London in 1543.
Cranach and Luther were close friends and neighbors in Wittenberg. The
painter had served as best man when Luther married Katharina von Bora
in 1525. The two men were godparents of each other’s children. Their close
personal ties are also evident in the fact that Cranach was one of very few
whom the theologian informed of his whereabouts during his secret stay at
Wartburg Castle, where he was kept for his own protection following his
momentous appearance at the Diet of Worms in 1521.
Luther’s basic doctrine of justification by faith alone was given visual form
by Cranach the Elder in 1529. The distinction between the fate of mankind
under the law of Moses versus humankind under Christ’s saving grace is the
theme of the paintings known as the Law versus Grace. The two slightly dif-
ferent types of this theologically complex image are usually distinguished by
the locations of Cranach’s earliest paintings of them dated 1529 at Schloss
Friedenstein in Gotha (Figure 3.1) and the National Museum in Prague.10
These compositions juxtaposing antithetical images are each divided down
the center by the tree of life, which shows dead branches on its left side and
healthy foliage on the right. On the left side, man, under the law of Moses,
is condemned to die for his sins and is prodded toward hell by figures of
death and the devil. By contrast, on the right, having been granted faith,
man is absolved of his sins by Christ’s death on the cross. Such complex
 Protestant paintings 43

Figure 3.1 Lucas Cranach the Elder, Law versus Grace (1529)
Source: Permission courtesy Schloss Friedenstein, Gotha.

symbolic images with many meaningful details could only be fully under-
stood by laypeople—those who could read—with the help of the biblical
quotations written below the image. Comprehension was surely also aided
by oral explanations during sermons. Whether or not Cranach the Elder is
credited with the invention of this complex picture, a question on which
scholars disagree,11 he was certainly responsible for disseminating its sum-
marizing of Luther’s theology throughout Germany and beyond.12 So many
of these paintings were made in the Cranach workshop that a labor-saving
method was used to add the biblical quotations: they were printed on paper
and then glued onto the painted panels.
Unlike such visual statements of complex theological ideas, Cranach’s
other paintings with Lutheran messages portrayed biblical stories. The
earliest example, Cranach’s Christ with the Adulteress, dating to about
152013 (Figure 3.2), first appeared quite early in the development of
Luther’s theology. Cranach and his workshop painted this theme numer-
ous times thereafter (Figure 3.3). The theme was not uncommon in late
Gothic German prints, for example in the work of Veit Stoss.14 Already in
1509, Lucas Cranach had made a pen-and-wash drawing15 of the subject,
and in 1525, an artist from Cranach’s orbit had created a painting16 of this
theme for the Collegiate Church in Halle, commissioned by the staunchly
Figure 3.2 Lucas Cranach the Elder, Christ with the Adulteress (ca. 1520)
Source: Permission courtesy Fränkische Galerie, Kronach.

Figure 3.3 Lucas Cranach the Elder, Christ with the Adulteress (after 1532)
Source: Permission courtesy Dom Museum, Fulda, Hesse.
 Protestant paintings 45
Catholic archbishop Albrecht of Brandenburg. Cranach’s achievement
was to recognize, surely with Luther’s guidance, how this biblical theme
illustrated the Lutheran doctrine of forgiveness through divine grace,
which stood in opposition to the Catholic tradition of forgiveness based
on good works.
The story from John 8:2–11 recounts an episode from Christ’s ministry
when the Pharisees and scribes brought a young woman accused of adultery
to Christ. They asked him how she should be punished, expecting that he
may contradict Mosaic law and thereby incriminate himself. The law stipu-
lated death by stoning. Christ bent down and wrote with his finger on the
ground. Then he stood up and said the words that are inscribed in German
on most of the Cranach paintings of this theme: “Let him who is without
sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” Recognizing their own
sinfulness, the Pharisees departed.
Christ’s message of forgiveness of sins rather than punishment accord-
ing to the law of Moses was a central tenet of Luther’s theology, clearly
portrayed in the paintings of Law versus Grace. The earliest dated paint-
ing of the adulteress from the Cranach workshop, today in Budapest,17
shows a date of 1532. One year earlier in his sermon about Christ and
the ­adulteress,18 Luther explained the meaning of the story as revealing the
distinction between the Old Law and the New, the theme that Cranach had
expressed in this simpler, narrative form.
In all the surviving paintings of this theme from the Cranach workshop,
Christ is centrally placed and holding the hand or the wrist of the adulteress
(Figure 3.2). In many of these works, her bodice is undone, revealing one
breast as an allusion to the adultery just committed. Grouped around these
two central figures are the Pharisees and an occasional apostle, sometimes
recognizable as the white-haired, bearded Saint Peter. One Pharisee is some-
times shown holding the adulteress tightly by the arm, suggesting the force
these men wielded to bring her before Christ, while another holds rocks,
ready to strike her. In Cranach’s earliest painting of Christ with the Adul-
teress, created about 1520 (Figure 3.2), Christ is shown looking directly at
the viewer and raising his right hand in blessing. A later version of the same
composition, attributed to Cranach the Elder, today in the Dom Museum
in Fulda (Figure 3.3), shows Christ still directing his gaze at the viewer, but
his right hand now points to the adulteress instead of in blessing. In most
versions of this theme, her eyes are cast down in shame, but in this unusual
work, she hardly looks very penitent. Her lavish outfit, a white silk blouse
and a dress in gold brocade and dark green velvet, in addition to a stylish
hairdo, recall Cranach’s portraits of elegant ladies of the Saxon court who
wore similar fashions.19 The adulteress’s costly dress, the elaborate embroi-
dered garment of the Pharisee holding a bag of stones, and the Bible verse
from John 8 cited in Latin all seem to reflect the taste of an educated, cul-
tivated individual accustomed to luxury, perhaps a member of the Saxon
court, as a likely patron for this painting.
46 Christiane Andersson
In his earliest version of this theme, created about 1520 (Figure 3.2), Cra-
nach established a compositional type that vividly focused on the central
message of forgiveness. His choice of three-quarter-length figures brings the
viewer very close, allowing for direct involvement in the drama. The com-
positional scheme with close-up, three-quarter-length figures before a dark
background was new in German art at this time but was common in early
sixteenth-century Venetian painting, for example in works by Titian, Gio-
vanni Bellini, or Marco Marziale.20 Unlike Dürer, Cranach did not travel
to Italy, and therefore, it has been suggested that Cranach may have seen
this compositional type in a North Italian painting brought to Saxony21
or in drawings after Venetian works brought to Wittenberg by Cranach’s
predecessor as Saxon court painter, the Venetian artist Jacopo de’ Barbari.22
In German art, half-length figures were traditionally used only in cramped
spaces in the long and narrow predella panels or sculptures at the bottom of
late Gothic altarpieces.23 It should be noted, however, that Cranach himself
had already used three-quarter figures before a dark background in about
1507 in his Fourteen Auxiliary Saints, painted for the Church of St. Mary
in Torgau in Saxony.24
Following the creation of the early Christ and the Adulteress in about 1520
(Figure 3.2), Cranach seems to have abandoned this theme until 1537, when
he and his busy workshop began to produce numerous versions until about
1570. At least twenty-four such paintings by Cranach the Elder, Cranach
the Younger, and members of their workshop have survived.25 The zoomed-
in composition with its emphasis on the religious drama illustrating Christ’s
mercy remained the norm; only one exception, dated 1537, is known, show-
ing full-length figures.26 The neutral black background on these pictures
offered space along the upper edge to inscribe the Bible passage from which
the story was taken, reflecting Luther’s emphasis on scripture as the only
reliable source of Christian belief. Most of the Cranach paintings show a
biblical text, consistently from John 8, inscribed in uppercase Roman letters
along the upper edge: WER VNDER EVCH AN SVND IST, DER WERFFE
DEN ERSTEN STEIN AVFF SIE.27
An altogether new theme in German art that expresses Luther’s theology
is Christ Blessing the Children (Figure 3.4). Since no earlier paintings of
this subject in European art are known,28 it may be considered an authentic
artistic invention by Lucas Cranach the Elder. His earliest paintings bear-
ing a date were created in 1538 and 1539. The biblical story recounts the
arrival of a throng of young mothers who bring their children to Christ to
be blessed. The disciples tried to send the women away, but Christ rebuked
them, saying, “suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them
not, for of such is the kingdom of God” (Mark 10:14). Although the story is
recounted in three of the Gospels—in Matthew 19:13–15, Mark 10:13–16,
and Luke 18:15–17—Cranach and his workshop consistently illustrated the
version from Mark, whose text is inscribed along the top of most of these
paintings.
 Protestant paintings 47

Figure 3.4 Lucas Cranach the Younger, Christ Blessing the Children (1537)
Source: Permission courtesy Angermuseum, Erfurt.

This theme evidently enjoyed great popularity, since twenty-five paint-

ings by Cranach the Elder, Cranach the Younger, and their workshop are
known.29 Elector Johann Friedrich the Magnanimous ordered at least
three in 1539, 1543, and 1550.30 Similar to Cranach’s pictures of Christ
with the Adulteress, the majority display a horizontal format, half-length
or three-quarter-length figures, and a black background bearing the bib-
lical citation written in uppercase Roman letters along the upper edge.
Christ is again placed in the center, surrounded by the young mothers with
their many children. Christ’s gestures of hugging one infant while placing
his hand on another illustrate the passage in Mark 10:16, in which Christ
“took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed them.”
Christ’s laying on of hands is consistently shown, but the blessing gesture
of Christ’s raised right hand is rare in these works.31 The various paint-
ings also show variations in the arrangement of figures and in the choice
of a black background32 or, more rarely, a landscape behind the figures
(Figure 3.4). The apostles whom Christ rebuked play a subsidiary role and
are often relegated to a cramped corner behind the lively throng of women
and children.
Lucas Cranach the Younger’s painting of about 1540 at the Angermu-
seum in Erfurt (Figure 3.4) is one of the rare examples that includes a land-
scape background and full-length figures.33 Christ’s words citing Mark 10
hover incongruously above the figures, in front of clouds and a blue sky,
showing that in the Cranach workshop, realistic portrayal can be ignored
Figure 3.5 Lucas Cranach the Elder, Caritas (1534)
Source: Permission courtesy Museum zu Allerheiligen, Schaffhausen, Switzerland.
 Protestant paintings 49
if it clashes with the importance of including a text from scripture. The
work in Erfurt includes a charming detail not seen in other versions: a small
girl in the center foreground stands between Christ’s feet and wraps herself
in Christ’s protective cloak as she looks up to him with an expression of
utter contentment. In the foreground, a young mother with an infant holds
her daughter’s hand, coaxing her toward Christ, while the girl’s brother
pulls mischievously at her dress. The apostles are crowded into the left cor-
ner, with the bearded Saint Peter’s gesture expressing dismay at the unruly
throng. An unusual detail in the left foreground is the portrait of a very
finely dressed boy holding his red cap as he gazes at Christ. His lavish dress
and self-confident bearing may allude to an aristocratic background and
point to a patron of high birth who commissioned this painting.
This work suggests how the Cranach workshop assembled the figural
compositions in the many versions of these paintings by using a repertoire of
stock figures. Some of those seen in the Erfurt picture are Christ hugging one
infant while placing his hand on a second one, a young woman with hands
raised in prayer toward Christ, a nursing mother, and a mother holding an
infant while pulling along two older children. In other versions, a mother
grabs Christ’s sleeve to attract his attention and an infant is perched on
Christ’s right shoulder, adding a playful, almost humorous note.34 The rep-
etition and variation of such stock motifs reveal that newly commissioned
paintings must have been composed using sketches or other visual records
of previous works that were kept in the workshop.
The enormous popularity of this theme that the Cranach workshop was
commissioned to paint so many times was due not only to its theological
message conveyed in admirably lively pictures but also to its social message.
In the pertinent passage of Mark’s Gospel, Christ declares: “Truly, I say unto
you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter
it.” Luther’s belief in faith as a gift of divine grace is illustrated in the child-
like trust in God so vividly expressed by the many children, which stands in
opposition to the Catholic belief in salvation achieved through good works.
Very likely these pictures also show Luther’s social concerns, such as his
opposition to celibacy and his support of marriage and family life.
These paintings also reflect Luther’s ongoing conflict with the Anabaptists
who condemned infant baptism.35 By 1538, the date of the earliest paintings
of this theme, the theological debate had died down, but Luther again laid
out his beliefs about baptism in his sermons of 1537 and 1538 on the first
two chapters of John’s Gospel.36 The Anabaptists based their opposition to
infant baptism on their belief that children required instruction in the basic
tenets of their religion prior to being baptized and they cited Mark 16:16
and Matthew 28:19 in support of this view. By contrast, Luther believed
that faith and rational thinking are diametrically opposed and that rational
considerations, in effect, act as hindrances to faith. Luther based his con-
viction on the Gospel of Mark, citing as evidence the same source as the
inscriptions that appear on the Cranach paintings.37
50 Christiane Andersson
Another new pictorial formula created by Lucas Cranach the Elder to
reflect Lutheran doctrine takes the Christian virtue of Charity as its theme
(Figure 3.5). First painted in 1529, the same year as the Law versus Grace
pictures in Gotha (Figure 3.1) and Prague, this popular theme, like the pre-
vious pictures, also exists in many different versions. At least thirteen from
the Cranach workshop are known.38
In northern European medieval art, Charity was traditionally represented
as one of a group of seven Christian virtues, usually contrasted with the
seven vices. Cranach liberated the figure of Charity from its former group
context. No longer an allegorical figure embodying an abstract idea, Cra-
nach’s Charity has been transformed into a flesh-and-blood young mother
caring lovingly for her four small children. She is shown in heroic nudity,
with legs crossed, seated on a stone outdoors. She wears a thin, transparent
veil over her hair and left shoulder to reveal her marital status as a married
woman. While nursing the smallest child, she turns affectionately toward
another one who is embracing her from behind with both arms around her
neck. The gesture of embracing is repeated in the figure of the girl standing
quite still at the left, who hugs her wooden doll. Exuding contentment, she
models the role she too will play as an adult woman.
Luther believed that love of one’s neighbor is a natural consequence of
faith. In believers the desire to help others arises from an altruistic impulse,
not from the Catholic habit of doing good works as a selfish means to attain
eternal life. In 1522 in his preface to the Epistle of Paul to the Romans, a
critical text in the development of his theology, Luther wrote: “Without
compulsion man becomes willing and eager to do everyone good, to serve
everyone, to suffer a great deal, to be full of love and praise of God, who has
granted him such grace that it is impossible to separate works from faith, as
impossible as separating burning and glowing from fire.”39
Cranach equated Luther’s concept of love of one’s neighbor that arises
from faith with a mother’s unequivocal love for her offspring. The image
of a young mother with four children recalls Cranach’s paintings of Christ
Blessing the Children (Figure 3.4). In addition to their theological message,
both express Luther’s opposition to monastic celibacy and his personal com-
mitment to and support of family life.
Luther’s view of the innocent faith of a child as the ideal path to salva-
tion is reflected again in the role a child plays in another painting of about
1540 from Cranach’s workshop, the Feeding of the 5,000 (Figure 3.6). Also
known as the miracle of the loaves and fishes, the biblical story describes
how a boy brought a few loaves of bread and some fish that Christ mirac-
ulously transformed into sufficient food to feed a multitude of five thou-
sand people. Although all four Gospels tell the story, Cranach follows John
6:1–15 as his source, because only here is the boy identified as the source
of the food. Having given thanks, Christ blesses the food to multiply it; the
boy gazes at him in amazement. Equally astonished, the crowd gapes at
the miracle taking place. In Cranach’s rendering, the multitude represents
people of all ages and social classes wearing contemporary dress. Young
 Protestant paintings 51

Figure 3.6 Lucas Cranach the Elder, Feeding of the 5000 (n.d.)
Source: National Museum Stockholm. Image in the public domain.

mothers with nursing or playing infants again occupy an important place in

this work. Most unusual is the circumstance that only a single painting of
this theme is known.40
Over a long career, Cranach painted many Crucifixion scenes that
included throngs of people under the cross. But during the years when he
was devising many of his Lutheran-inspired images in the late 1530s, he
began to paint a new, much simpler Crucifixion scene limited to the three
crosses in a barren landscape with the centurion on horseback in the fore-
ground (Figure 3.7). These images41 focusing on the centurion’s moment of
conversion in the face of Christ’s suffering on the cross illustrate the central
tenet of Luther’s doctrine, sola fides, or salvation through faith alone. The
centurion, wearing armor and an ostrich-plumed hat, raises his right hand
in wonder and states, “[T]ruly this man was the son of God!” (Mark 15:39).
His words are written in uppercase letters in the German vernacular, reflect-
ing Luther’s demand that the word of God should be accessible to everyone,
even the less educated who were not schooled in Latin. Similarly, Christ’s
words above the cross are also recorded in German: “Father, into thy hands
I commit my spirit” (Luke 23:46). Cranach cast the moment of conversion
in dramatic terms to express the uniqueness and the universality of this
event: the crosses are lit up, silhouetted against an inky, turbulent sky, with
unusual colors that suggest eerie phenomena like the aurora borealis.
52 Christiane Andersson

Figure 3.7 Lucas Cranach the Elder, The Crucifixion with the Centurion (1536)
Source: Permission courtesy of National Gallery of Art, Washington.

A farewell scene of the twelve apostles (Figure 3.8) sent out into the
world to preach the Gospel (Mark 16:15) was painted about 1540 and has
been attributed with some uncertainty to Lucas Cranach the Younger.42 It
belongs among Cranach’s Lutheran-inspired works due to the reformer’s
 Protestant paintings 53

Figure 3.8 Lucas Cranach the Elder or Younger, Apostles’ Farewell

Source: National Museum Stockholm. Image in the public domain.

great emphasis on preaching God’s word. Also, one of the apostles at the
right edge of the picture has been given the easily recognizable features of
Philipp Melanchthon, who is thus shown taking part in the very beginning
stages of spreading the Gospel. His presence legitimizes Luther’s theol-
ogy by showing that it harks back to Christ’s own apostles; the analogy
to Catholic doctrine harking back to Saint Peter may have played a role
here. The painting vividly displays the varied physiognomies of the twelve
men and their individual reactions to the moment of leave-taking: at the
left, two are seen shaking hands and drying their tears. Melanchthon,
however, shows the dry-eyed dignity of a great man at a crucial moment
in Christian history.
As the Apostles’ Farewell (Figure 3.8) and other paintings analyzed
here demonstrate, Cranach’s works elicit a very direct, emotional connec-
tion with the viewer. Perhaps at some level there was a desire to replace
the emotional and sensual experience of the former Catholic mass, such
as church music, stained glass windows, and incense. Ultimately, it was
the extraordinary productivity and efficiency of the Cranach workshop in
creating so many Lutheran pictures in so short a time that made p ­ ossible
the rapid and wide dissemination of Luther’s theology in Germany
and beyond.
54 Christiane Andersson
Notes
1 Margarethe Stirm, Die Bilderfrage in der Reformation (Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn,
1977); Sergiusz Michalski, The Reformation and the Visual Arts: The Protestant
Image Question in Western and Eastern Europe (London: Routledge, 1993); and
Christoph Weimer, Luther, Cranach und die Bilder (Stuttgart: Calwer, 1999).
2 “Die ding, welche unnötig sind, und frey gelassen von Gott, die man halten mag
oder nicht halten,” in D. Martin Luthers Werke, Kritische Gesamtausgabe, vol.
10/III (Weimar, 1883ff), 21. Hereafter cited as Luther, Weimar Edition.
3 “Das innerlich Heilthumb, das sollten wir suchen und nicht das auswendig ist,”
in Ibid., vol. 10/III, 21.
4 “Aber die . . . Bilder, da man allein sich drinnen ersihet vergangener Geschichten
und Sachen halben als in einen Spiegel, das sind Spiegel Bilder, die verwerfen
wir nicht, denn es sind nicht Bilder des Aberglaubens . . . sondern es sind Merk-
bilder,” in Luther, Weimar Edition, vol. 28, 677.
5 Luther, Weimar Edition, vol. 2, 689, lines 28–29.
6 Luther, Weimar Edition, vol. 33, 83, lines 28ff; vol. 47, 310, lines 15ff; vol.
34/II, 226, lines 21ff; vol. 10, 1, 2, 434, lines16ff; and Dieter Koepplin and
Tilman Falk, Lukas Cranach: Gemälde, Zeichnungen, Druckgraphik; Katalog
zur Ausstellung im Kunstmuseum Basel, 2 vols. (Basel, Stuttgart: Birkhäuser,
1974–1976), II, 507–9.
7 Luther, Weimar Edition, vol. 18, 73.
8 Christiane Andersson, “Polemical Prints and the Censorship of Images in Refor-
mation Germany,” in Martin Luther and the Reformation, exhibition catalogue
State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology Saxony-Anhalt, Min-
neapolis Institute of Art, Pierpont Morgan Library (Halle a.d. Saale: Sandstein
Verlag, 2016), 359–69.
9 Ruth Slenczka, “Cranach als Reformator neben Luther,” in Der Reformator
Martin Luther 2017: Eine wissenschaftliche und gedenkpolitische Bestands-
aufnahme, ed. Heinz Schilling (Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2014), 147.
10 Gunnar Heydenreich, Daniel Görres, and Beat Wismer, eds., Lucas Cranach
der Ältere: Meister, Marke, Moderne, exhibition catalogue (Düsseldorf: Hirmer,
2017), cat. no. 110, plate 110.
11 Matthias Weniger, “Durch und durch lutherisch? Neues zum Ursprung der
Bilder von Gesetz und Gnade,” Münchner Jahrbuch der bildenden Kunst 55
(2004): 115–34; Heimo Reinitzer, Gesetz und Evangelium: über ein reforma-
torisches Bildthema, seine Tradition, Funktion und Wirkungsgeschichte, 2 vols.
(Hamburg: Christians Verlag, 2006); Dieter Koepplin, “Zu Holbeins paulinis-
chem Glaubensbild von Gesetz und Gnade,” in Hans Holbein d. J.: Die Jahre in
Basel 1515–1532, ed. Christian Müller (München: Kunstmuseum Basel, 2006);
Miriam Verena Fleck, Ein tröstlich Gemelde: Die Glaubensallegorie “Gesetz
und Gnade,” in Europa zwischen Spätmittelalter und früher Neuzeit (Korb:
Didymos-Verlag, 2010); Johannes Erichsen, “ ‘Gesetz und Gnade’—Versuch
einer Bilanz,” in Luther und die Fürsten—Selbstdarstellung und Selbstverständ-
nis des Herrschers im Zeitalter der Reformation, Aufsatzband, ed. Dirk Syndram
(Dresden: Sandstein, 2015), 97–113.
12 The woodcut version of this image (ca. 1530) must have played an important
role in disseminating it far and wide; Koepplin and Falk, Lukas Cranach, II, 505,
cat. no. 353, figure 275a.
13 Max J. Friedländer and Jakob Rosenberg, The Paintings of Lucas Cranach
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978), cat. no. 129.
14 Lottlisa Behling, Zur Morphologie und Sinndeutung kunstgeschichtlicher
Phänomene, Beiträge zur Kunstwissenschaft (Cologne and Vienna: Böhlau,
1975), 72, plate 89.
 Protestant paintings 55
15 Koepplin and Falk, Lukas Cranach, II, 515, cat. no. 363, plate 277. The draw-
ing in the Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig, emphasizes the fleeing
Pharisees.
16 Master of the Mass of St. Gregory, in Ernst Brochhagen, ed., Galerie Aschaf-
fenburg: Katalog, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen (Munich: Bayerische
Staatsgemäldesammlungen, 1964), 48, plate 5.
17 Heydenreich et al., eds., Lucas Cranach der Ältere, cat. no. 111, plate 111.
18 “Diese Historia ist nu darumb beschrieben, auff das man sehe einen klaren
Unterschied zwichen dem Gesetz und Evangelis oder unter dem Reich Christi
und der Welt reich. Die Phariseer hatten gehoert, das der Herr viel hatte gep-
rediget vom reich Gottes, das es were ein Reich der gnaden, darinnen gienge
vergebung der suende. Dawider die Juden Moses Gesetz hatten, das da drewete
(drohte) den Uebertretern der Gebot Gottes eitel zorn, das sie sunde straffen und
nicht vergeben soll,” in Luther, Weimar Edition, vol. 23:495.
19 Friedländer and Rosenberg, Paintings of Lucas Cranach, cat. no. 420.
20 See Marco Marziale’s painting of this theme, dated c. 1505 in the Bonnefanten-
museum, Maastricht, illustrated in Heydenreich et al., eds., Lucas Cranach der
Ältere, 48, figure 3.
21 Dieter Koepplin’s view in Koepplin and Falk, Lukas Cranach, II, 516, cat. no. 364.
22 Die Welt des Lucas Cranach: Ein Künstler im Zeitalter von Dürer, Tizian und
Metsys, ed. Guido Messling (Tielt: Lannoo, 2010), 228, cat. no. 145.
23 Cf. the predella sculpture of ca. 1505 of the Isenheim altarpiece in the Unter-
linden Museum in Colmar. Georg Scheja, Der Isenheimer Altar des Matthias
Grünewald (Cologne: DuMont Schauberg, 1969), 63, plate 19.
24 Friedländer and Rosenberg, Paintings of Lucas Cranach, cat. no. 16.
25 Susanne Wegmann, Der sichtbare Glaube: das Bild in den lutherischen Kirchen
des 16. Jahrhunderts (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), 372, cat. no. 3/40.
26 Mirela Proske, Lucas Cranach the Elder (Munich and Berlin: Prestel, 2015),
figure 21.
27 Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, in Heydenreich et al., eds., Lucas Cranach der
Äeltere, 205, cat. no. 111, plate 111.
28 Examples in manuscript illumination from the eleventh through the fourteenth
centuries are cited by Christine Ozarowska Kibish, “Lucas Cranach’s ‘Christ
Blessing the Children’: A Problem of Lutheran Iconography,” Art Bulletin 37.3
(1955): 196–97.
29 Karin Kolb in Cranach: Eine Ausstellung in Kooperation mit der Gemäldegalerie
Alte Meister der Staatlichen Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Mit einem Bestands-
katalog der Gemälde in den Staatlichen Kunstsammlungen Dresden, ed. Harald
Marx and Ingrid Mössinger, exhibition catalogue, Chemnitz (Cologne: Wien-
and, 2005), 308.
30 Friedländer and Rosenberg, Paintings of Lucas Cranach, 112, cat. no. 217.
31 Seen, for example, in the painting in Dresden. Karin Kolb in Cranach, ed. Marx
and Mössinger, cat. no. 17, color plates on 302–3.
32 Two different inscriptions from Mark’s Gospel on the background are used:
VND SIE BRACHTEN KINDLIN ZV IM DAS ER SIE ANRVRITE MARCVS
AM X, and LASSET DIE KINDLIN ZV MIR KOMEN VND WERET INEN
NICHT DEN SOLCHER IST DAS REICH GOTTES MARC X.
33 Full-length figures also appear in one Cranach painting of this theme in Dresden
and in a pen-and-ink design for a tapestry in Leipzig that includes the Saxon
castle of Torgau in the background. Koepplin and Falk, Lukas Cranach, II, 517,
plate 277a.
34 These details seen in the painting in Dresden, dated 1538, illustrated in Cranach,
ed. Marx and Mössinger, cat. no. 17.
56 Christiane Andersson
35 See Kibish, “Christ Blessing the Children,” 199–200; Martin Luther und die
­Reformation in Deutschland, Ausstellung zum 500. Geburtstag Martin Luthers
im Germanischen Nationalmuseum Nürnberg, ed. Gerhard Bott (Frankfurt:
Insel, 1983), 270, cat. no. 349; and Peter-Klaus Schuster, “Abstraktion, Agita-
tion und Einfühlung,” in Luther und die Folgen für die Kunst, Katalog der Aus-
stellung in der Hamburger Kunsthalle, ed. Werner Hofmann (Munich: Prestel,
1983), 241, cat. no. 114. See also John S. Oyer, Lutheran Reformers Against
Anabaptists: Luther, Melanchton, and Menius, and the Anabaptists of Central
Germany (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1964).
36 Luther, Weimar Edition, vol. 46, 538–792.
37 “Deß haben wir starke und feste Sprüche: Matth.19, Marc.10, Lucä 18, da etli-
che dem Herrn Jhesu Kindlin zubrachten, daß er sie anrührete. Und so will (er)
uns in keinem Weg anders gebühren zu thun und zu gläuben, so lange das Wort
stehet: Laßt die Kindlin zu mir kommen und wehret ihnen nicht . . . Nu ist
(Christus) in der Taufe ja so gegenwärtig, als er dazumal war, das wissen wir
Christen gewiß: darumb wir nicht thüren wehren den Kindern die Taufe.” From
Luther’s Kirchenpostille, 3rd Sunday after Epiphany, Matthew 8, in Luther, Wei-
mar Edition, I, 66, 67.
38 Elke Anna Werner, “Martin Luther and Visual Culture,” in Oxford Research
Encyclopedia: Religion. Publication Date: March 2017. doi:10.1093/acre-
fore/9780199340378.013.296. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 14.
Seven versions are illustrated in Bodo Brinkmann, ed., Cranach (London: Städel
Museum and Royal Academy, 2008), 63ff. See also Friedländer and Rosenberg,
Paintings of Lucas Cranach, cat. no. 223.
39 Luther, http://www.reformatorischeschriften.de/Vorrede/roemer.html.
40 Daniel Görres, “Der Mönch und der Maler—Luther und Cranach als Vermittler
eines neuen Glaubens,” in Heydenreich et al., eds., Lucas Cranach der Ältere,
49.
41 Four versions are known at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; the
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut; the Staatsgalerie, Aschaf-
fenburg; and the Museo de Bellas Artes in Seville. A related example showing six
additional figures under the cross, attributed to Cranach the Younger, is at the
Anhaltsche Gemäldegalerie, Dessau. Friedländer and Rosenberg, Paintings of
Lucas Cranach, cat. no. 378, 378a, b, and c.
42 See Görres in Heydenreich et al., eds., Lucas Cranach der Ältere, cat. no. 115.
4 Tradition and invention
German Lutheran Church
architecture
Emily Fisher Gray

The Reformation introduced significant changes to patterns of Christian

worship in many parts of early modern Europe. Martin Luther and other
reformers wrote and preached extensively on the correct performance of
the sacraments, the singular importance of communal Bible reading and
sermons, and congregational participation in music and prayer. However,
Luther paid almost no attention to the physical space or furnishings of the
church buildings in which his reformed liturgy should take place. In a ser-
mon preached for the dedication of a new Lutheran chapel in Torgau on
October 5, 1544, Luther observed that assemblies of the faithful for prayer,
preaching, and communion could simply take place “out of doors, or wher-
ever there is room.” Luther himself “could just as well preach outside by
the fountain,” the way Saint Paul preached by riversides and Old Testament
patriarchs erected altars under trees or in tents. To the extent that a church
building was sacred, it was the “prayers of the faithful” that made it so.1
Regarding images and other objects in the churches, Luther strongly con-
demned idolatry. But he also denounced violent iconoclasm and recognized
that images had some didactic and propaganda value.2
Martin Luther’s indifference to church architecture and ambivalence
toward images left individual Lutheran congregations on their own to crea-
tively reimagine the physical spaces needed to accommodate Lutheran wor-
ship. Lutheran reform did away with pre-Reformation traditions requiring
the eastern orientation of the altar, reserved areas for the clergy, and the
placement of the baptismal font at the western doors. It simplified the sac-
raments, obviating the need for confessional booths, chantry altars, and
private chapels. But Lutheran practices also introduced new requirements:
acoustical arrangements for the preaching of the word, the installation of
orderly pews and galleries to accommodate a congregation, a communion
altar around which the people could gather. The Reformation left Protestant
communities with the challenge of modifying existing church buildings to
meet new liturgical requirements and modes of worship.3 Gradually, princes,
towns, and territories built new chapels and churches with specific confes-
sional needs in mind, but no consensus emerged among any of the Protes-
tant confessions as to the ideal arrangement or decoration of churches.
58 Emily Fisher Gray
The extraordinary diversity of architectural and aesthetic responses to
the Reformation makes it difficult to adequately survey the field and threat-
ens to reduce Protestant architecture to a single narrative.4 What follows
is an introduction to the various ways Lutherans in German lands reimag-
ined and reordered their worship spaces. While no overarching “Lutheran
aesthetic” emerged from their experiments, there are common principles
guiding their choices that apply equally to Calvinist and Anglican church
design and decoration. The most important consideration was liturgical:
each church building had to accommodate the particular ritual and worship
needs prescribed for the confession. But sometimes, convenience and practi-
cality in the practice of the sacraments or the preaching of the word yielded
to other concerns: the need for order, the interests of political authorities,
and a myriad of local circumstances ranging from financial constraints to
community traditions to bi-confessional situations. Examining a sample of
early modern Lutheran churches in Germany reveals the diversity of crea-
tive possibilities afforded by the Reformation and the variety of aesthetic
responses it engendered.

Catholic to Lutheran: adapting existing churches

Regardless of confession or denomination, every congregation that accepted
some variety of reform found itself with a similar challenge: modifying
churches designed and built in the middle ages to house a very different set
of ritual practices. The pre-Reformation church was a longitudinal, hier-
archical space, with a long nave separating the profane world at the west-
ern doors from the sacred altar on the east and high ceilings emphasizing
the vertical distance between the sinner and God. The transubstantiation of
the Eucharist took place on the high altar within a screened-off chancel in the
eastern end of the church, a space too holy to be entered by any who were
not ordained members of the clergy.5 Lay parishioners who wished to hear
a sermon could stand around a pulpit usually situated on the church’s long
southern wall or sit on folding chairs they brought themselves for that
purpose (Figure 4.1: Georg Pencz, Two Sermons). Meanwhile, individual
devotions could take place in private and public chapel spaces throughout
the church. Some priests heard confessions while others performed chantry
masses in honor of the dead in special chapels. Parishioners could wander
through the church, contemplating the delicate stained-glass windows and
monumental altars or praying before images and relics of saints. Medieval
churches facilitated a multiplicity of simultaneous religious practices in a
space divided by complex gradations of sacredness.
After the Reformation, the orderly gathering of lay parishioners for prayer,
music, and preaching became the central purpose of the churches. The word
was sacred, not so the building in which it was proclaimed. Unfortunately,
the vaulted ceilings and monumental architecture that characterized many
medieval churches made for less than ideal acoustics, and newly reformed
 Tradition and invention 59

Figure 4.1 Georg Pencz, Two Sermons

communities had to grapple with how the pastor could be seen and the ser-
mon heard by those assembled. Faced with this challenge, most Lutheran
congregations left the pulpit in place halfway along the southern wall of
the nave of the church rather than moving it into a more prominent—but
distant—location on the eastern end. In the middle of the church, elevated
above the audience on a raised pulpit, with a sounding board above the
pastor’s head to direct his voice away from the echoing ceiling, there was a
better chance that parishioners could hear the word of God.
The major controversies of the Reformation centered on the sacraments,
particularly the meaning and practice of the Eucharist.6 Medieval churches
frequently had multiple altars for the celebration of mass: the high altar
deep in the eastern apse of the church, a lay altar for communion services
involving the laity, and various other altars in private chapels or chantries.
Lutherans needed only one altar, and only on the occasions that a commun-
ion service was offered, either as a stand-alone event or in conjunction with
a gathering for the sermon.7 Many newly Lutheran congregations opted
to leave the traditional high altar in place in the eastern end of the church,
removing the screens and rails from the chancel so parishioners could gather
around it to observe and partake. In cases where the high altar proved too
massive or unwieldy for common use, the congregation erected a second,
smaller altar in front.8 Lutheran understandings of the Eucharist removed
the need for a separate, sacred space for the celebration of the Mass, but
for many Lutheran parishes, the chancel remained a good space to place
the altar: easily accessible but out of the way during regular congregational
gatherings.
Most Lutheran congregations significantly altered but did not move the
pulpit and altar. In contrast, the baptismal font remained the same but
60 Emily Fisher Gray
frequently moved from its traditional position at the western doors to a
different location within the church. As the meaning of the baptismal rit-
ual gradually shifted, parishioners worried less about an infant carrying its
original sin into the body of the church and instead valued the convenience
of observers and the safety of the infant baptisan. Some Lutheran parishes
placed the baptismal font on the main level of the church under or near
the pulpit, while others put it near the communion table, and still others
transformed an unused side chapel into an enclosed baptistery space.9 Bap-
tism is the liturgical practice that changed least in the Reformation, and the
survival of unaltered medieval fonts in Lutheran churches represents a piece
of continuity with the Christian past that Lutherans carefully emphasized.10
The most significant and noticeable change to the layout of churches con-
verted to Lutheran use was the installation of fixed pews for seating. The
Reformation changes to church worship and ritual experiences required an
orderly congregation. The pastor would never be heard if congregants were
shuffling around, nor could the entire congregation huddle around the altar
or font. Where medieval churches had been open spaces, Lutheran churches
now held orderly rows of seats. An individual’s position within the godly
community was signified by his or her assigned seat in the church. Reli-
gious and political leaders had prominent seats—often the ornate wooden
chairs within the eastern apse that were previously reserved for clergy or the
choir—where they could overlook the assembled congregation and be seen
by them. The assembled parishioners were assigned seats according to social
position and often divided by gender, with women sitting together.11 In some
cases, children were separated from their mothers and given their own seat-
ing area, although that seems as if it might have been less than conducive
for quiet orderliness.12
Even with the installation of pews, the entire community often did not
fit within a building that was never designed to accommodate everyone
at once. If there were galleries lining the second level of the church, these
became additional seating areas, usually for the men. Where galleries did not
already exist, their construction became the first major architectural altera-
tions to the existing churches and the first major outlay of funds required
of early Lutheran congregations.13 Use or installation of galleries along the
western or northern edges of church buildings expanded the seating capac-
ity of churches without having to increase the footprint of the building. The
seats within the galleries were no more distant from the pastor’s voice than
the seats on the main level of the church, so parishioners in the galleries had
at least as good a chance of being able to hear the sermon as those seated
below.
The introduction of fixed pews within churches that maintained the tra-
ditional medieval arrangement of pulpit and communion altar created an
additional problem, however. This arrangement meant that there were dual
focal points within the church, and not all the seats could be oriented toward
both. If the pews on the section of floor between pulpit and altar faced west,
 Tradition and invention 61
toward the pulpit, they would be turned away from the altar and could not
serve as seating for communion services. Churches with chancels in a deep
apse solved this problem by turning the apse into a separate communion
space with its own seating. But not all churches could accommodate a fully
separate area for communion. Several churches—notably St. Anna’s and
St. Ulrich’s in Augsburg—solved the problem of fixed seating around dual
focal points by installing Drehgestühl: benches with backrests that could
be flipped over from one side to the other. These seats could be oriented
toward the pulpit during sermons and toward the altar during communion
services.14
The installation of fixed pews in converted Lutheran churches also posed
a challenge around a third focal point: the organ. Performative music and
congregational hymn-singing were important elements of Lutheran services,
and the organ was among the most valuable and beautiful furnishings in the
church. The organ needed to be elevated to avoid dampness in the pipes,
so it could not be placed on the floor level. The traditional architecture and
configuration of the medieval church generally meant that the only place
where an organ could fit was on the western wall of the church, above the
entrance doors, which meant that most of the congregants, while seated
in the pews, had their backs to the organ. Churches that did not already
contain an organ generally acquired one when the space was turned to
Lutheran use.15
The clearing of side chapels, supplementary altars, and other spaces no
longer needed as private chapels or clerical spaces meant that many early
Lutheran churches contained odd appendage structures. Some congrega-
tions were creative with these spaces. For example, the west end of St. Anna’s
Church in Augsburg incorporated a beautiful Italian Renaissance-style
chapel commissioned by the Fugger family. When the Lutheran congregation
took secure possession of the Fugger Chapel after the Peace of Westphalia,
it reoriented the church from east to west and placed the communion altar
in the Fugger Chapel. The old eastern-oriented choir, set off from the main
body of the church, became a Traukapelle, or wedding chapel. The town
church in Emden made similar arrangements with a large side chapel.16 Side
chapels could become rooms set aside for baptisms, as was done in the City
Church in Shorndorf. These extra spaces were sometimes made into sacris-
ties or libraries. But often they were simply left empty: architectural rem-
nants of a building created for one purpose and then adapted for another.

Princely chapels: the first Lutheran churches

Scholars have noted the remarkable “preserving power” that characterized
early Lutheranism. Luther’s embrace of didactic imagery and rejection of
violent iconoclasm meant that many familiar images, objects, and arrange-
ments remained in place in the churches, even as practices of worship under-
went significant changes.17 By the middle of the sixteenth century, territorial
62 Emily Fisher Gray
princes in the Holy Roman Empire were beginning to construct new chapels
specifically to accommodate Protestant worship. The imperial princes’ right
to determine their own religious practice—and that of their subjects—was
enshrined in the 1555 Peace of Augsburg, and the new chapels were pow-
erful symbols of the princes’ spiritual position within their territories. As
with the Lutheran churches converted from pre-Reformation use, these new
princely chapels tended to maintain many traditional and familiar arrange-
ments while experimenting with new elements, orientations, and iconog-
raphy. Of course, the new princely chapels also emphasized the enhanced
position of the Lutheran territorial ruler who had assumed spiritual as well
as secular authority.
Saxon elector Johann Friedrich’s chapel at Torgau, dedicated by Luther
himself in 1544, was the earliest extant church building constructed specifi-
cally to house Lutheran worship services.18 The new chapel had to fit within
the existing structure of Hartenfels Castle, which could not accommodate a
traditional rectangular structure oriented toward the east. Instead, architect
Nicholas Grohmann designed a chapel within an odd space alongside the
northeast wall of the castle, itself an irregular triangle built around a cen-
tral courtyard.19 The placement of the altar was toward the northwest, not
the east. The wall behind the altar was not perfectly perpendicular to the
sidewalls, having a corner cut off by an existing tower, a fact that Grohm-
ann cleverly disguised by situating two bays of an arcade such that the arc
drew the eye toward a central column directly behind the altar (Figure 4.2:
Schloßkapelle Torgau). Today, the building contains a replica of the origi-
nal altar: a stone slab, or Mensa, likely scavenged from the City Church in

Figure 4.2 Schloßkapelle Torgau

 Tradition and invention 63
Torgau and placed atop four angels sculpted by Stephan Hermsdorf and
Simon Schröter.20 This architectural arrangement visually echoes the central
panel in Lucas Cranach’s Wittenberg Altarpiece, in which Jesus’s disciples
are seated at a circular table for the Last Supper, right in front of two half-
arches that meet at a pillar pointing toward the center of the table. The
dual arcade with central column drawing the eye to the action is not an
uncommon trope within Reformation imagery: Georg Pencz’s Two Sermons
(Figure 4.1) and Daniel Hopfer’s Pharisee and Publican also employ arcades
and columns to similar effect.
In Luther’s day, the altar supported a triptych by Lucas Cranach with
scenes of Gethsemane, the Washing of Feet, and the Last Supper. The Cra-
nach triptych is no longer extant, and nothing remains of the extensive
visual imagery that covered the walls, also the design of Lucas Cranach.
Luther’s dedicatory sermon specifically mentions two paintings alongside
the pulpit, and an engraving of the chapel from 1676 shows the walls and
gallery rail covered with imagery. But some sense of the original decorative
program remains in the building’s pulpit, designed by Cranach and built
by Simon Schröter. The pulpit depicts scenes from the life of Jesus: ejecting
money changers from the temple, the woman taken in adultery, and the
twelve-year-old Jesus in the temple. In all these examples, Jesus defies the
law of Moses and establishes a gospel of purity, emphasizing the importance
of inner faith and grace.21 The Saxon elector, whose religious practices were
in open defiance of the Holy Roman Emperor, surely saw in these themes
a justification for his own position. From this pulpit, Luther preached his
sermon inaugurating the sumptuous new building and listened to the music
composed for the occasion by Johann Walter, who played on an organ
repurposed from a secularized monastery.
The chapel had three levels of seating: floor-level seating for a general
audience, a first-level gallery for the elector himself and his immediate
household, and an upper level for other nobles and officials. The galler-
ies were set into a bilevel arcade below a rib-vaulted ceiling.22 The pulpit
was situated on the long east wall just below the first gallery, thus placing
the preacher in a position higher than the general congregation but lower
than the elector and his noble household, a position fitting with Luther’s
sense of the pastor as one elevated by the community but subject to secular
authority.23 The galleries in the chapel, like those of the converted Lutheran
churches, increased seating space while minimizing the distance from the
preacher to the hearer. Placing the pulpit on the long wall further minimized
the distance between the pastor’s voice and the ears of congregants on the
periphery of the gathering. But it also perpetuated the problem of dual focal
points in Lutheran churches, exacerbated by the placement of the exterior
entrance doors directly opposite the pulpit. The placement of the chapel
doors tends to orient the building toward the preacher, rather than tradi-
tionally toward the altar, further confusing the question of which ought to
be the center of attention.24
64 Emily Fisher Gray
In 1562, within a decade after the construction of the chapel at Torgau, the
Duke of Württemburg dedicated a new chapel in his castle (the altes Schloß)
at Stuttgart. The chapel in Stuttgart resolved the placement of altar and pulpit
in a different way than at Torgau. Architect Aberlin Tresch designed a small,
half-polygonal apse halfway along the south wall of an otherwise traditional,
rectangular church space. The altar tucked neatly inside the apse and the pul-
pit sat on the pillar that marked its western edge. The adjacent placement of
altar and pulpit resolved the problem of dual focal points in Torgau and most
German Lutheran churches; in the Stuttgart chapel, there would be no need
for rotating pew backs to accommodate separate communion and preaching
services, and all seats could be fixed in orientation toward the pulpit and altar
in the shared apse. Rather than trying to bring the pulpit to the traditional
“front” of the church where the altar traditionally stood, the princely chapel
at Stuttgart moved the altar and its apse halfway down the long southern
wall to the pulpit’s location. Doing so meant that the acoustical and sight-line
advantages of the mid-wall pulpit placement applied equally to communion
services. The innovative grouping of pulpit and altar led some architectural
historians to declare the chapel in Stuttgart the “mother church of Protes-
tantism.”25 The close relationship between altar and pulpit envisioned by the
designers of the chapel influenced Lutheran churches built thereafter, and the
semicircular arrangement of the rows of fixed seats facing toward the center
of the church was an example modeled by Calvinist churches.
Like the church at Torgau, the Stuttgart chapel contained galleries sup-
ported by arches. There was only one gallery level, but the galleries ran
around three sides of the church. On the west end, a deep gallery originally
held the organ and space for musicians and singers. (The organ was moved
to the eastern end of the chapel as part of the nineteenth-century renova-
tion.) The east gallery held the seats for the ducal household and members
of the nobility, and the narrow gallery that runs along the north wall oppo-
site the pulpit and altar was open for standing room, with no fixed seating.
Interestingly, the duke himself did not take his place in the eastern gallery
with the rest of his household. Instead, he occupied a Königsloge, or Royal
Box, built into the eastern end of the church below the gallery but raised
two steps above the floor. A low rail around the area demarcated the duke’s
private space but was not high enough to disrupt the sight lines: either those
of the duke, looking toward the pulpit and altar, or the congregation, look-
ing to the duke as an example of Christian leadership.
The placement of the Royal Box in a prominent and easily visible loca-
tion within the church echoes the common practice of placing the most
prominent royal, civic, or clerical leaders in a position from which they
could easily see and be seen by the congregation. The relative privacy of
the Duke of Saxony in his second-level gallery in Torgau is unusual among
Protestant churches. But the placement of the Royal Box—accidentally
or ­deliberately—plays on pre-Reformation architectural traditions and a
distinctly Protestant aesthetic in an interesting way. In pre-Reformation
churches, the high altar occupied a chancel at the eastern end. This holiest
 Tradition and invention 65
space was usually elevated a few steps above the floor and set off from the
body of the church by a rail or screen through which the activities beyond
could be viewed, but not accessed, by average parishioners. The Royal Box
in the church at Stuttgart appears and functions very much like a traditional
pre-Reformation chancel but with the body of the duke, rather than the
body of Christ, on display for the public. Moving the apse and altar to the
long wall near the pulpit was a creative way of creating a single liturgical
focal point, but the eastern-oriented and architecturally distinct Royal Box
maintained a traditional aspect of the pre-Reformation church in an eastern-
end construction that emphasized the important role secular authorities
played in early Lutheranism.
The chapel at Stuttgart was renovated in 1865 in a neo-Gothic style, but
original reliefs from the pulpit and altar by artist and sculptor Sem Schlör
provide a sense of the original aesthetic of the chapel and its iconographic
program. Most of the extant images feature scenes from the New Testament,
but one provides a sense of what services in the chapel might have looked
like in the sixteenth century (Figure 4.3: Relief, Schloßkapelle Stuttgart). In
the foreground of the relief, parishioners sit in fixed pews. The genders are
separate: women sit together with their backs to the viewer, and at a right
angle, men occupy a different set of pews or stand in orderly rows behind.
A preacher stands in a simple pulpit on the right edge of the middle ground
while, to his left, another pastor prepares the communion on an altar cov-
ered with a fringed cloth and simple dishes. Above the altar, across the rear
window of the apse, hangs a large crucifix styled to mark Lutherans’ confes-
sional distinction from Calvinism in the later sixteenth century.26 The close
association of pulpit and altar, the relative size of the polygonal apse, and
the arrangements of the seating suggest that this is a relief image of services
taking place in the Stuttgart chapel itself. The simplicity of the scene must
be deliberate; the sculptor was skilled enough to indicate the delicate folds
of the women’s headdresses and the tassels on the altar cloth, so the lack of
apparent decoration on the pulpit and altar likely indicates that the original
furnishings of the princely chapel in Stuttgart were relatively austere and
emphasis placed on the essential markers of Lutheran identity: the sermon,
Lutheran liturgy, and an emotionally affecting crucifix.

The ideal Lutheran church: seventeenth-century

theory and practice
In the early seventeenth century, a few treatises touching on the design of
Lutheran churches began to appear. The first of these was a small section
of a larger theoretical work on the ideal city, titled Christianopolis (See
Figure 4.4). Its author, Johann Valentin Andreae, was an eclectic utopian
thinker whose prescriptions for social improvement often involved occult
concepts and esoteric knowledge; he is best known as the author of The
Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreuz (1616) and a founder of the
Rosicrucian brotherhood.27 Andreae’s ideal Lutheran church stands in
66 Emily Fisher Gray

Figure 4.3 Relief, Schloßkapelle Stuttgart

the exact center of a precisely ordered and perfectly symmetrical city, sur-
rounded by a moat and protected by a wall, with streets and buildings that
meet one another at precise ninety-degree angles. The church occupies a
position in the precise center of a perfectly square inner courtyard. In con-
trast to the quadrilateral buildings, streets, and open spaces in Andreae’s
 Tradition and invention 67

Figure 4.4 Christianopolis

city, the church is cylindrical. Its round dome towers above the other struc-
tures in the city and symbolizes what he sees as the central place of religious
worship in a city named for God.
Despite the prominent location of the church and its unusual shape,
Andreae devoted only one short chapter in a 100-chapter treatise to the con-
struction and decoration of the utopian city’s “temple.”28 In it, he described
a building precisely 316 feet in circumference and seventy feet high. The
height of the church is somewhat illusory, however, as Andreae intended
the inside of the church to be dug down into the ground to allow for sloped
seating, making the building even larger on the inside than it appears on the
outside. Semicircular rows of seats begin at street level and gradually step
downward to end in a platform that occupies fully half of the interior space.
All necessary elements for Lutheran liturgy and musical performance are on
the platform and a pulpit stands on a sidewall, where “the ears of all may be
equally distant on all sides from the voice of the speaker.” In addition to reli-
gious services, Andreae envisioned the performance of “sacred comedies”
at least every third month within the church, “in order that the history of
divine things may cling the more firmly in the minds of the youth.”29
Andreae’s plan makes the visual, performative elements of the Lutheran
liturgy the central design principle of the church. Unlike the relatively plain
68 Emily Fisher Gray
chapel at Stuttgart, Andreae described his ideal Protestant temple as “a work
of royal magnificence,” full of light from windows and resplendent in pic-
torial art, including a crucifix so beautifully modeled as to “move even the
hardest of hearts.” He declined to further describe the nature of the art in
the church, aside from the requirement that it involve “sacred pictures or
representations from biblical history.” He did, however, describe in detail
his disdain for the iconoclasts—the Calvinists—and the “desolation” of their
churches, which he contrasted with the sinful luxury of their private homes,
wherein he insinuates the beautiful objects meant to adorn churches had been
secreted away.30 Andreae’s design clearly repudiates Calvinist theology by
criticizing Calvinist aesthetics.31 It also subtly undercuts the spiritual primacy
of secular authority. The church is “royal” in its magnificence, yet unlike the
princely chapels in Torgau and Stuttgart, Andreae’s church lacks a space for
the ruler to display himself and carry out his performance of official piety.
Christianopolis was never realized, and Andreae’s magnificent cylindrical
church never constructed. But a contemporaneous utopian city plan was
partially brought to fruition in the middle of the Black Forest as a refuge for
Lutherans fleeing religious persecution in Austria. The city of Freudenstadt,
built in the early seventeenth century after a plan proposed by Heinrich
Schickart, anticipates Andreae’s treatise in its orderly arrangement of right-
angled buildings and streets surrounding an enormous market square. But
where Christianopolis emphasizes the church through its central location,
the Freudenstadt church is shunted over to one corner of the square, bal-
anced by a city council building (Rathaus), market building, and hospital in
the other four corners. The original plan for Freudenstadt calls for a citadel,
not a church, in the center of its market square, highlighting the symbolic
power and protection of the secular ruler, the Duke of Württemburg.
The citadel and other civic buildings intended for Freudenstadt were never
built. But the Protestant church was completed in 1608.32 Two rectangular
spaces with a tower over each end come together to form a right angle, cre-
ating an L-shaped church in the southern corner of the Freudenstadt market
square. In the crossing stands an elevated pulpit next to an altar and bap-
tismal font, with an organ wrapped around the corner of the wall opposite.
A narrow gallery around the organ provides space for musicians as well
as two rows of pews for additional seating. Both wings of the church hold
fixed pews that face the altar and pulpit. The unique ground plan of the
Freudenstadt church succeeds in gathering these key elements in a unified,
central space that was within easy hearing and sight distance of even those
parishioners who occupy back rows and rear galleries. Perhaps most clearly,
the Freudenstadt church exemplifies the gender segregation seen in the early
Reformation as conducive to godly order: men and women enter the build-
ing through separate doorways and take their seats in separate wings of the
church, where both can see and hear the clergy preaching and preparing
communion, but they cannot see each other.33 (See Figure 4.5: Freudenstadt
plan) The unique architecture of the Freudenstadt church exists today in a
 Tradition and invention 69

Figure 4.5 Freudenstadt plan

1950 reconstruction that followed the 1945 bombing and fire that devas-
tated the seventeenth-century building. The original pews, furnishings, and
the reliefs that lined the gallery rail were all, unfortunately, destroyed.
The Thirty Years’ War, lasting from 1618 to 1648, touched off a spate
of Lutheran church construction in the Holy Roman Empire, as build-
ings damaged or destroyed by war were replaced. This presented another
opportunity to consider the nature of the ideal Protestant church. In 1649,
Ulm architect Joseph Furttenbach devised plans for a “middle-sized, well-­
proportioned, and well-constructed little church” that could meet the unique
needs of the congregation. Furttenbach’s sixteen-year-old son, Joseph Furt-
tenbach the Younger, published these plans in a small book dedicated to
Leonhard Weiss, a Lutheran official in Augsburg, and Johann Valentin
Andreae.34 Furttenbach’s church has none of Andreae’s magnificence, and
it forsakes his auditorium-style central plan. Instead, Furttenbach suggests
a simple, rectangular hall church twice as long as it was wide with a flat
70 Emily Fisher Gray
interior ceiling. Practical considerations guide his recommendations: the
church must be neither too high, which makes it cold in winter and bad for
acoustics, nor too low, which exacerbates summertime heat and humidity.
He orients his ideal church toward the east: not for theological reasons as in
pre-Reformation churches but to take advantage of morning sun in the sac-
risty and drying winds around the organ. The comfort of male and female
parishioners, the convenience of the organist, and the needs of the pastor
take precedence in a plan that appears very traditional but centers on the
requirements of a uniquely Lutheran experience of worship.35
Furttenbach’s church plan is most noteworthy for its arrangement of the
baptismal font, altar, pulpit, and organ in a unitary, ascending structure
he called the Prinzipalstück (Figure 4.6: Prinzipalstück). Like the church

Figure 4.6 Prinzipalstück

 Tradition and invention 71
in Freudenstadt and the chapel in Stuttgart, Furttenbach’s ideal church
plans create a single focal point that gathers all the essential elements for
Lutheran church services in one location. The Prinzipalstück arrangement
is practical but also theatrical. The pastor and musicians could ascend
hidden stairs and appear “in an eye blink” before the congregants, who
sit in an area divided from the performative space used by the clergy and
musicians. Although Furttenbach’s plan for the ideal church is much sim-
pler than Andreae’s, it shares with it a sense of church furnishings as a
stage and clergy as performers, with a very distinct separation between
clerical and lay space. In this way, it echoes the division of clerical and
lay zones in the pre-Reformation church. But the practical logic of the
arrangement for the requirements of a Lutheran church is clear, and many
new or renovated Lutheran churches followed Furttenbach in creating a
single performative space for all clerical functions. Most notably, the 1743
Frauenkirche in Dresden borrows Furttenbach’s performative liturgical
grouping even as it substitutes Baroque resplendence for Furttenbach’s
simplicity.
The logic and practicality of the Furttenbach design influenced post-
war church builders and led to the construction of several Furttenbach-
style Lutheran churches, such as the city church of Erlangen.36 But there
were also architects who rejected Furttenbach’s recommendations and
built very different looking churches. Furttenbach’s treatise had been
prompted by a need in Augsburg for a new church to replace two that
had been destroyed in the war, and Joseph Furttenbach consulted in the
construction of the building.37 But the Holy Cross church built in Augs-
burg could not look more different from Furttenbach’s original design.
The need for a large church on an irregular building plot led architect
Johan Jakob Krauß to design a pentagonal structure with a deeply acute
angle where the façade of the building met the south wall (Figure 4.7:
Holy Cross, Augsburg). Inside, the altar and organ inhabited an apse
on the forward, western end, but the pulpit was inexplicably separated
and placed in a pre-Reformation position along the northern wall. As
a result, the pews between altar and pulpit had to be drehgestühl with
movable backrests so the congregation could be oriented in multiple
directions depending on the day’s planned worship service. Furttenbach
abandoned his own idealized church designs when he renovated the city
church in Shorndorf, the only church building for which he is known
to have served as principal architect. Unlike his simple rectangular hall
church with a stacked altar, pulpit, and organ, the church in Shorndorf
maintained its deep eastern apse, pulpit on the south wall, and separate
baptistery chapel. Far from a Prinzipalstück, the church in Shorndorf
maintained three distinct spaces for preaching, baptism, and commun-
ion. Even the ideal Lutheran church plans had to give way to exigencies
of site constraints and local traditions.
72 Emily Fisher Gray

Figure 4.7 Holy Cross, Augsburg

Conclusion: a Lutheran aesthetic?

It is difficult to identify an overarching visual or architectural aesthetic
for the German Lutheran church. There is astonishing variety in the ways
Lutherans built or adapted churches to the requirements of Lutheran liturgy,
and just as much diversity in the images and furnishings they placed inside
them. Luther’s treatment of architecture and images as adiaphora meant
that his followers lacked the specific guidance on aesthetic issues that Cal-
vin provided. In the aftermath of the Reformation, each city, territory, or
parish in German Lutheran lands exercised its own judgment about how to
adapt existing churches, images, and furnishings to the demands of a new
kind of religious practice. The same theological and ritual priorities give us
church designs as distinct as those in Christianopolis and Freudenstadt, and
architectural-political statements as diverse as the chapel in Stuttgart and
 Tradition and invention 73
the Frauenkirche in Dresden. Seventeenth-century German Lutheran com-
munities built simple, practical buildings in the style of Furttenbach while
eighteenth-century Lutherans wholeheartedly embraced the Baroque.38
That said, it is possible to identify some principles and priorities that
guided many of the aesthetic choices made by German Lutherans. Foremost
among these are theological principles and liturgical considerations. Lutheran
churches needed to become auditoria, where all could gather to hear the
preaching of the word. This consideration drove the design and placement of
pulpits and the significant new capital expenditures for pews and galleries.
In many cases, particularly in churches converted from pre-Reformation use,
auditory considerations driving pulpit placement created dual focal points in
the church because the altar remained deep in the chancel or along a sepa-
rate wall. Some churches creatively adapted with drehgestühl; some, such
as the chapel at Torgau and the renovated church in Shorndorf, evidently
found little enough inconvenience in the arrangement and perpetuated it.
But other church builders sought to create a single performative space to
gather pulpit, altar, font, and organ where Lutheran parishioners could see,
hear, and participate in all the important functions of Lutheran gatherings.
Only Dresden’s Frauenkirche comes close to the auditorium stage proposed
for the church at Christianopolis, but other Lutheran churches came to
an arrangement much like that of the princely chapel in Stuttgart or Furt-
tenbach’s Prinzipalstück. With all the changes to the arrangements of the
churches, it is little wonder that Lutheran parishioners wished to hold on to
objects and images, such as baptismal fonts and altarpieces, that tied them
to a pre-Reformation past that they claimed as their own.
A second major consideration guiding aesthetic choices in German
Lutheran churches was the need to demonstrate secular and spiritual
authority and reinforce godly order. The princely chapels built by the Elec-
tor of Saxony and the Duke of Württemberg in the sixteenth century laid
claim to spiritual authority by Lutheran secular leadership. The placement
of the Royal Box and even the themes used in church decoration reinforced
the claims of these rulers to hold a special spiritual as well as secular posi-
tions. Aesthetic choices could also send the opposite message by undermin-
ing the claims of secular authorities: Christianopolis makes a subtle claim
about the primacy of spiritual power over secular, and the construction of
Dresden’s Lutheran Frauenkirche within sight of the palace of the Catholic
ruler makes a very direct political statement. Pew assignments in churches
throughout Lutheran Germany reflected secular order by making hierar-
chies of status visible in each meeting of the congregation and ensuring
that local magistrates and authorities had prominent seats. Assigned seats
reflected the status of each parishioner; even the pews reserved exclusively
for women mirrored the hierarchical order of family, status, and profession.
Although no other German Lutheran churches went as far as Freudenstadt
in enforcing gender segregation by architecture, they all practiced a careful
division of men from women in church seating.
74 Emily Fisher Gray
In addition to liturgical needs and a desire for order, local circumstances,
traditions, tastes, and economic and political constraints had a significant
impact on the aesthetic choices made by different Lutheran congrega-
tions. This may go furthest to explain the remarkable diversity of German
Lutheran churches, each the product of a unique environment. Bridget Heal
has shown that the exuberant Baroque of seventeenth- and eighteenth-­
century Lutheran churches in Brandenburg and Saxony reflected local
economic ties to Italy and challenges posed by a strong Calvinist surge.39
A similar situation motivated the construction and elaborate Baroque
renovation of Lutheran churches in Augsburg around the same time; in
Augsburg, however, confessional competition involved a growing Catholic
population with whom Lutherans shared political power, as required by
the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia.40 The desire to express confessional distinc-
tion through architecture and imagery influenced aesthetic choices in some
areas of Lutheran Germany, but others operated with different priorities
and constraints. The Thirty Years’ War devastated much of central Europe
in the seventeenth century, and many Lutheran congregations that rebuilt
or renovated damaged churches did so under extreme economic limitations
and ended up with buildings that looked more like Furttenbach’s simple and
practical plan. Lack of funding or attachment to tradition may have influ-
enced the decisions of other Lutheran congregations, such as Shorndorf, to
minimize the modifications to their existing churches that were built before
the Reformation.
In its diversity, post-Reformation church architecture, images, and fur-
nishings provide a fascinating glimpse into the lived experience of the Ref-
ormation and the formation of confessional identities. This is true of not
only Lutheranism but also Calvinism, Anglicanism, and Catholicism, all of
which built or renovated churches in response to the Reformation. Although
text-based sources have traditionally served as the foundation for histories
of the Reformation, architecture and visual design provide insights that text
alone cannot offer, particularly in cases where the voices of common people
have been lost. Examining the aesthetics of churches reveals theological and
liturgical priorities, political circumstances, and the myriad of local con-
straints that impacted the practices of the Reformation throughout early
modern Europe.

Notes
1 Martin Luther, “Sermon at the Dedication of the Castle Church, Torgau,” in
Luther’s Works, 5 October 1544, trans. John W. Doberstein, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan
and Helmut T. Lehmann, vol. 55 (St. Louis: Concordia, 1955), 336–38.
2 Bridget Heal, A Magnificent Faith: Art and Identity in Lutheran Germany
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017); Joseph Leo Koerner, The Reformation
of the Image (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008).
3 Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England,
c.1400-c.1580 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992).
 Tradition and invention 75
4 Nigel Yates, Liturgical Space: Christian Worship and Church Buildings in West-
ern Europe 1500–2000 (Aldershot, England, and Burlington, VT: Ashgate,
2008); Per Gustav Hamberg, Temples for Protestants (Goteborgs Universitet
Acta Univ, 2002).
5 John Bossy, “The Mass as a Social Institution 1200–1700,” Past & Present 100
(August 1, 1983): 29–61.
6 Lee Palmer Wandel, The Eucharist in the Reformation: Incarnation and Liturgy
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Lee Palmer Wandel, A Com-
panion to the Eucharist in the Reformation (Boston: Brill, 2014); Amy Nelson
Burnett, Karlstadt and the Origins of the Eucharistic Controversy: A Study in
the Circulation of Ideas (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).
7 Susan C. Karant-Nunn, The Reformation of Ritual: An Interpretation of Early
Modern Germany (Christianity and Society in the Modern World) (London and
New York: Routledge, 1997), 125.
8 Dual altars can be found even in newly-constructed churches, as in Joseph Furt-
tenbach der Junger, Kirchengebäw (Augsburg, 1649). See also Karant-Nunn,
The Reformation of Ritual, 120.
9 Margit Thofner, “Framing the Sacred: Lutheran Church Furnishings in the Holy
Roman Empire,” in Lutheran Churches in Early Modern Europe, ed. Andrew
Spicer (Farnham, England, and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012), 110–17.
10 Martin Wangsgaard Jurgensen, “Between New Ideals and Conservatism: The
Early Lutheran Church Interior in Sixteenth Century Denmark,” Church His-
tory 86, no. 4 (December 2017): 1079.
11 Amanda Flather and Royal Historical Society (Great Britain), Gender and
Space in Early Modern England (Woodbridge, UK and Rochester, NY: Royal
Historical Society/Boydell Press, 2007); Margaret Aston, “Segregation in
Church,” in Women in the Church, Studies in Church History 27 (Cambridge:
Blackwell, n.d.), 237–94; Tanya Kevorkian, Baroque Piety: Religion, Soci-
ety, and Music in Leipzig, 1650–1750 (London: Routledge Taylor & Francis
Group, 2016), 32.
12 For example, see the special “Kinderbänke” described in Furttenbach,
Kirchengebäw.
13 See, for example, the installation of the “porkirche” in St. Ottmar’s Chapel in
Augsburg. Stadtarchiv Augsburg, Katholisches Wesensarchiv, A 39 II (1/4/1550).
14 K. E. O. Fritsch and Vereinigung Berliner Architekten., Der Kirchenbau des
Protestantismus von der Reformation bis zur Gegenwart (Berlin: Kommissions
Verlag von Ernst Toeche, 1895), 23; Andrew Landale Drummond, The Church
Architecture of Protestantism (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1934), 20.
15 Kevorkian, Baroque Piety; Alexander J. Fisher, Music and Religious Identity in
Counter-Reformation Augsburg, 1580–1630 (Aldershot, Hants, England; Burl-
ington, VT: Ashgate, 2004).
16 Fritsch and Vereinigung Berliner Architekten., Der Kirchenbau des Protestantis-
mus von der Reformation bis zur Gegenwart, 26–27.
17 Johann Michael Fritz, Die bewahrende Kraft des Luthertums: Mittelalterliche
Kunstwerke in evangelischen Kirchen (Regensberg: Schnell & Steiner, 1997);
Heal, A Magnificent Faith; Koerner, Reformation of the Image.
18 The first Protestant church was a small, simple, rectangular chapel at Joachim-
stal in Bohemia, begun in 1534 and demolished 1873. See Henry-Russell Hitch-
cock, German Renaissance Architecture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1981), 89–90.
19 Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker, Allgemeines Lexicon Der Bildenden Kunstler
von Der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, Band XV (Leipzig: E.A. Seemann, 1922), 79.
20 Koerner, Reformation of the Image, 362.
21 Ibid., 410.
76 Emily Fisher Gray
22 Clemens Jockle, “Überlegungen Zu Einer Typologie Evangelischer Schlosskapel-
len Des 16. Jahrhunderts,” in Geschichte Des Protestantischen Kirchenbaus, ed.
Klaus Raschzok and Reiner Soerries (Erlangen: Junge & Sohn, 1994), 36–43;
Hans-Joachim Krause, “Die Emporenanlage der Torgauer Schloßkapelle in ihrer
ursprünglichen Gestalt und Funktion,” in Bau- und Bildkunst im Spiegel inter-
nationaler Forschung, ed. Marina. Flügge and Edgar Lehmann, 1. Aufl. (Berlin:
Verlag für Bauwesen, 1989), 233–45.
23 Koerner, Reformation of the Image, 414; Martin Luther, “To the Christian
Nobility of the German Nation,” trans. Charles M. Jacobs and James Atkinson,
in Luther’s Works, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T. Lehmann, vol. 44 (St.
Louis: Concordia, 1955).
24 See reconstruction drawings in Stephan Hoppe, “Die funktionale und räumliche
Struktur des frühen Schlossbaus in Mitteldeutschland: untersucht an Beispielen
landesherrlicher Bauten der Zeit zwischen 1470 und 1570” (PhD diss., Univer-
sität zu Köln, Architekturgeschichte, 1996).
25 Fritsch and Vereinigung Berliner Architekten., Der Kirchenbau des Protestantis-
mus von der Reformation bis zur Gegenwart, 38.
26 Heal, A Magnificent Faith, 79.
27 Frances Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (London and Boston: Routledge,
2015); Everett F. Bleiler, “Johann Valentin Andreae, Fantasist and Utopist,” Sci-
ence Fiction Studies 35, no. 1 (2008): 1–30; Donald R. Dickson, “Johann Valen-
tin Andreae’s Utopian Brotherhoods,” Renaissance Quarterly 49, no. 4 (1996):
760–802.
28 Johann Valentin Andreä and Felix Emil Held, Christianopolis: An Ideal State of
the Seventeenth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1916), 249–50.
29 Ibid.
30 Ibid.
31 Heal, A Magnificent Faith, 111–12.
32 Hamberg, Temples for Protestants, 52.
33 Ibid.
34 Furttenbach, Kirchengebäw.
35 Emily Fisher Gray, “The Body of the Faithful: Joseph Furttenbach’s 1649
Lutheran Church Plans,” in The Early Modern Parish Church, ed. Andrew
Spicer (Farnham, Surrey and England: Ashgate, 2015).
36 Fritsch and Vereinigung Berliner Architekten., Der Kirchenbau des Protestantis-
mus von der Reformation bis zur Gegenwart, 53.
37 StadtArchiv Augsburg, Reichstadt Akten, Evangelisches Wesensarchiv 883
tomus 1. See also Reinhold Wex, Ordnung Und Unfriede: Raumprobleme Des
Protestantischen Kirchenbaues Im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert in Deutschland
(Marburg: Jonas Verlag, 1984).
38 Heal, A Magnificent Faith, especially chaps. 8–9.
39 Ibid., 235.
40 Emily Fisher Gray, “Lutheran Churches and Confessional Competition in Augs-
burg,” in Lutheran Churches in Early Modern Europe, ed. Andrew Spicer (Farn-
ham: Ashgate, 2012), 39–62.
5 Forbidden fruit? Protestant
aesthetics in seventeenth-
century Dutch still life
Julie Berger Hochstrasser

Willem Teellinck was a popular and prolific Dutch Reformed minister.

In 1620, he published a small book aimed at convincing liefhebbers (devo-
tees affiliated with but not members of the Dutch Reformed Church) of their
Christian duties, above all to celebrate the avondmaal—the Lord’s Supper.
He portrayed these duties as keys to a better life, structuring his arguments
within a series of conversations between neighbors.1 When “N” (a liefheb-
ber) tells Timotheus (clearly Teellinck) that he fears he cannot uphold the
bond with God required for participation in the avondmaal, Timotheus (the
voice of the preacher) replies:

Holy Communion is like the tree of life through which Christians

become strengthened in order to better do God’s work. Our spiritual
enemy also knows this well and therefore he attempts to keep men away
from [the table] and instead eat of the forbidden fruit. And he succeeds
with many.2

In this Teellinck echoes Calvin himself, who, in his first significant contribu-
tion to the subject of the Lord’s Supper, in the 1536 edition of his Institutes—
by which time the battle lines had already been drawn—stated repeatedly
that his argument with the Roman Catholics and with Luther was not over
the fact of Christ’s presence but only over the mode of that presence:3

What we have so far said of the Sacrament [that it] abundantly shows . . .
it was ordained to be frequently used among all Christians in order that
they might frequently return in memory to Christ’s Passion, by such
remembrance to sustain and strengthen their faith, and urge themselves
to sing thanksgiving to God and to proclaim his goodness. . . .(T)he
Lord’s Table should have been spread at least once a week for the assem-
bly of Christians, and the promises declared in it should feed us spiritu-
ally. . . . All, like hungry men, should flock to such a bounteous repast.4

In the event, while Catholics partook of the Eucharist every time they wor-
shipped, the Dutch Reformed churches of Haarlem, as elsewhere in the
78 Julie Berger Hochstrasser
Dutch Republic, customarily only celebrated communion four times a year,
including Christmas and Easter.5 Nonetheless, Teellinck was outspoken
about its importance, publishing multiple books on the subject, the most
popular of which was reprinted nineteen times.6 His neighborly pep talk for
“N” continues:

There are everywhere many Christians in name only . . . just as Adam,

dare[s] to go eat of the forbidden fruit and not [that] of the Tree of
Life. . . . Thus these people always stand against the Lord their God;
what he has forbidden they eat, is the precise thing they desire, namely,
from the forbidden tree of carnal lust. And of what God the Lord has
bid they eat, namely the spiritual tree of holy actions and of the heav-
enly Bread of the Lord, will they precisely not eat; from that they keep
their distance. This must decidedly devastate the life of the soul on all
sides. [emphases original]7

For any aficionado of seventeenth-century Dutch painting, all this talk of

laid tables, of bounteous repasts, of the Bread of the Lord, and of what
to eat—or what not to—inevitably conjures up the laid tables painted so
copiously over these same years in the Dutch Republic, even perhaps of
the very phenomenon of the rise of the genre of still life during the Dutch
Golden Age. Indeed, particularly in the lively artistic center of Haarlem,
the laid tables of still-life painting featured bread and wine with striking
frequency. Pieter Claesz was the most prolific of these artists, along with
Willem Claesz Heda, his protégé and later colleague; many of their works
seem like they could serve as tangible illustrations for the dramatic strug-
gle Teellinck describes.8 Do they (as has been variously claimed) embody
a Protestant aesthetic in seventeenth-century Dutch art? If so, or if not,
what is its nature—if there is one? In what follows, our exploration of
these questions yields answers both provocative and confounding. To
choose but a modest exemplar, one could read this small panel by Claesz
(Figure 5.1) as a visual summa of Teellinck’s warning: the large roemer
of wine and the golden roll of wheat bread stake out the composition
as the vital elements of the host—but between them the tray of oysters,
known at the time for their aphrodisiac qualities, proffers a temptation
that could be taken as sinful on several levels. The crumpled cone of
paper spills forth a luxury that was wildly costly at the time (unbeliev-
able as this might seem now): pepper was the chief cargo of the Dutch
East India Company, driving the global trade that fueled the fortunes of
the Dutch Golden Age. The silver soutvat anchors the bread with salt
(“of the earth”?), being a key cargo of the Dutch West India Company.
In the medieval imagery, out of which the independent genre of still life
had newly evolved, the walnut was a symbol for the crucifixion (the hard
shell representing the wood of the cross, the nutmeat Christ’s flesh), while
the knife whose handle extends over the table’s edge toward the viewer
 Forbidden fruit? 79

Figure 5.1 Pieter Claesz, Light meal with roemer, oysters, saltcellar, roll, and pepper,
1642. Oil on panel, 33 × 47.3 cm. (12.9 × 18.6 in.). Private collection
Source: Artwork in the public domain.

(as does the tempting plate of oysters) was known to signal choice.9 By
this reading, a choice is indeed proffered: spiritual sustenance, or forbid-
den fruit?
While the theologians’ rhetoric about what to “eat” or not was, of course,
symbolic, still the metaphors retained a remarkably material quality, as was
indeed the full intention of the sacrament itself: consuming “the heavenly
Bread of the Lord” in real time brought the abstractions down to earth.10
Calvin had followed Augustine in defining a sacrament as “a visible sign of
a sacred thing” or as a “visible word” of God:

The sum is, that the flesh and blood of Christ feed our souls just as bread
and wine maintain and support our corporeal life. For there would be
no aptitude in the sign, did not our souls find their nourishment in
Christ. . . . I hold . . . that the sacred mystery of the Supper consists of
two things—the corporeal signs, which, presented to the eye, represent
invisible things in a manner adapted to our weak capacity, and the spir-
itual truth, which is at once figured and exhibited by the signs.11

Although Calvin rejected the worship of the Eucharistic bread and wine,
he did endorse these visible signs offered to the eye to represent “invisible
80 Julie Berger Hochstrasser
things.” In fact, contrary to popular opinion, neither did he condemn the
visual “signs” of figural artwork outright: while he maintained that “all
human attempts to give a visible shape to God are vanity and lies,” and thus
that it was “not expedient that churches should contain representations of
any kind, whether of events or human forms,” he also stated, “I am not,
however, so superstitious as to think that all visible representations of every
kind are unlawful.”12
Pieter Claesz’s still life and the many others like it produced during the
early decades of the seventeenth century came to rest not in places of worship
but in private homes. This was the major schism iconoclasm had wrought in
the art world of the Dutch Republic: without ecclesiastical patronage, paint-
ers sold their wares generally at town fairs, giving rise to the overtly secular
subjects of still life, landscape, and genre scenes of daily life, on the first art
market in the Western world.13 Meanwhile, too, James Tanis remarks that
the didactic element of Protestant prints became increasingly more literal,
“both to the detriment of art and theology,” so that “it is little wonder
that many Dutch artists turned to landscapes and still-life paintings in the
seventeenth century.”14 But the intriguing question that has hovered around
Dutch still-life painting ever since is, How secular were they?
Dated 1642, Claesz’s little panel was completed during the high point of
Calvinist ownership of still life in Haarlem, which peaked between 1635 and
1644, although inventories from the period show ownership of the genre to
be relatively balanced between Catholics and Protestants overall.15 Is this,
then, a model illustration of the Protestant aesthetic in Dutch art? The exam-
ple is anything but unique. Heda also painted countless still lifes in which
wine and bread figure prominently. In fact, both artists sometimes included
a silver avondmaalsbeker (Last Supper cup) in their compositions, as in this
canvas by Heda now in the Prado (Figure 5.2). This was the cup used in
Protestant churches for the wine of the Lord’s Supper, specifically chosen
after the Reformation as a more sober counterpart to the richly decorated
chalices found in Catholic churches.16 With the wine prominently displayed
behind it, and the pocket watch open as memento mori, Heda’s avondmaal-
sbeker could be seen as a yet more obvious invocation of Reformed religion.
Even the sober palette, which somewhat restrains this opulence, may be
understood as an outcome of iconoclasm: the pressures of the open-­market
model of production obliged artists to minimize their overhead costs,
prompting them to prefer cheap umber and ochre pigments over costlier
ones, such as ultramarine (fashioned from lapis lazuli imported from across
the sea—hence, literally, “ultra-marine”). These inexpensive earth tones
predominated notably throughout the 1630s and 1640s in what is known
as the “monochrome” or “tonal” style in Haarlem, in landscape and still life
alike.17 One might thus classify this as another economic impact of Protes-
tantism on the development of Dutch painting.
So do these still lifes and the many others like them produced in Haar-
lem during these years exemplify a distinctly Protestant aesthetic? Indeed,
 Forbidden fruit? 81

Figure 5.2 Willem Claesz Heda, Still life with roemer, avondmaalsbeker, glas a la
façon de venis, pocketwatch, nuts, olives, oyster, and pepper, 1657. Oil
on canvas, 52 × 74 cm (20.4 × 29.1 in.). Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain
Source: Artwork in the public domain.

conventional wisdom has long held that Dutch art virtually by definition
epitomizes the Protestant aesthetic—perhaps, given the prominence of
Dutch painting in its golden age, even the definitive Protestant aesthetic for
its time, as Xander van Eck recounts:

Dutch painting in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries has long

been defined as a Protestant art. The French art critic Théophile Thoré
(1807–69), whose ideas have remained influential to the present day,
identified realist landscapes, still lives, portraits and genre pieces as a
democratic art made for freedom-loving Protestant citizens, in contrast
to the large figure paintings Rubens produced in the Spanish Nether-
lands through commissions from the Catholic oppressors.18

Even within religious imagery the compare-and-contrast is textbook: pit

Rubens’s heroic Elevation of the Cross, altarpiece for the Cathedral of Our
Lady in Antwerp (Figure 5.4), against Rembrandt’s version of the same
biblical event, on a tiny panel for the private devotion of the Stadthouder
Frederik Hendrik (Figure 5.3). Larger than life size, with its flanking wings
Figure 5.3 Rembrandt van Rijn, The Raising of the Cross, ca. 1633. Oil on canvas,
95.7 × 72.2 cm (37.6 × 28.4 in.). Alte Pinakothek, Munich, Germany
Source: Artwork in the public domain.
Figure 5.4 Peter Paul Rubens, Elevation of the Cross, center panel, 1609–10. Oil on
canvas, 462 × 351 cm. (181.89 × 138.2 in.). Cathedral of Notre Dame,
Antwerp, Belgium
Source: Artwork in the public domain.
84 Julie Berger Hochstrasser
expanding its reach still further, the massive canvas of Rubens’s central panel
alone is nearly seven times larger than Rembrandt’s diminutive scene—and
that is only the beginning. Rubens’s Christ is a thickly muscled Superman,
like the mighty antique god of the marble Belvedere torso Rubens had stud-
ied to portray that bulging musculature.19 Rembrandt instead emphasizes
Christ’s humanity: thin, frail, stretched backward onto the cross in a vulner-
able attitude. The stark simplicity of his pale figure against the dark void of
the background contrasts with the writhing throng of equally musclebound
figures that strain against their burden in Rubens’s hyperactive scene; while
Rubens’s Italianate instinct for narrative activates this straining moment,
Rembrandt strips the scene to its barest essentials, highlighting only the
pathetic figure of Christ and the face of the artist himself, inserted as present
witness.20 Baptized in the Reformed Church where his parents had been
married, raised in a devout Reformed home and then married to Saskia van
Uylenburch, who had also been raised in a strict Reformed family, Rem-
brandt, with his lifelong involvement with biblical histories, forges a pro-
foundly Protestant aesthetic in its simplicity and humility.21
And what of still life? An equivalent contrast within this genre could be
the large, copiously filled canvases of Catholic Flanders, animated with
growling dogs, draped with dripping carcasses—the Frans Snyders, the Jan
Fyts—as different from Claesz’s and Heda’s modest little panels as Rubens’s
Christ is from Rembrandt’s. Like Rubens’s enormous triptych, Snyders’ tow-
ering game piece engages us in a visceral way (Figure 5.5). Painted the same
decade as Claesz’s tiny still life, Snyders’s could hardly be more ­different—
or, for that matter, less still. He is unflinchingly insistent about the slaugh-
ter entailed for the evidently ensuing feast: boiled lobster, beheaded boar,
strung-up birds, even a tiny spotted fawn, but of course most centrally, the
eviscerated doe and the flayed carcass beside her. Yet, just as Claesz and
Heda do with tipped cups, stacked plates, and mussed table linens (what
Bryson has, debatably, dubbed the “still life of disorder”), Snyders has taken
his disordered components and assembled them into an artful array. He
obliges us to somehow reconcile the violence of their deaths with the ele-
gance of their rendition into paint; this seems a celebration of the bounty
this feast will provide.22
Or is it at once also, or rather, an elegy? A mourning for the brutally
contorted doe, her legs splayed wide to frame the slash that reveals her
bloody innards, strung up beside her pathetically skewered offspring, with
the gore of the flayed carcass between them figuring forth their own raw
fate? Or even, with Snyders working in Antwerp, which had fallen to the
Spanish, could his slaughtered creatures have provoked thoughts of the
human butchery that had plagued the Netherlands from the Duke of Alva’s
Council of Blood in the late sixteenth century through the long years of
the Dutch Revolt and civil war? By the 1640s, when this was painted, that
carnage had dragged on for nearly its full and deadly eighty years, so who is
to say?23 In a more direct sense, the intrusion of the two monkeys snatching
Figure 5.5 Frans Snyders (1579–1657), Still life with game suspended on hooks, a
lobster on a porcelain plate, a basket of grapes, apples, plums, and other
fruits on a partly draped table with two monkeys, 1640s. Oil on canvas,
oil on canvas, 177.8 × 137.5 cm (70 × 54 in.). Hornstein Collection,
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Source: Artwork in the public domain.
86 Julie Berger Hochstrasser
grapes from the copious fruit basket return us explicitly to the subject of
consumption. Traditionally symbolic of lust and sin, the thieving primates
could underscore the immoral aspect of thoughtless or excessive consump-
tion, but their animation defies the “still” in still life here and distinguishes
the decidedly flamboyant Flemish variety of the genre. So it seems as if we
have our answer here, in a (proverbial, if not symbolic) nutshell: the dra-
matic contrast clearly marks Claesz’s and Heda’s works as characteristically
Dutch, against Snyders’s Flemishness.
But wait! Does that make them characteristically Protestant? Turns out, it
does not—or certainly not necessarily, because both Claesz and Heda were
Catholic. In fact, both Heda and their elder Haarlem still-life colleague Flo-
ris van Dijck were active members of the Christmas guild, indicating a meas-
ure of responsibility and esteem within Haarlem’s Catholic community; one
of Heda’s sons was even a priest.24 So the plot thickens. In fact, Van Eck
goes on to rebut the previously mentioned Thoré thesis that Dutch art was
reflexively Protestant, precisely on the basis of this religious diversity in the
Dutch population:25

More or less watered-down versions of this view persist to this day,

although more recent historical research has demonstrated that, while
Johannes Vermeer and Jan Steen were Catholics, Rembrandt did not
belong to any church and the religious landscape of the Republic as a
whole was very varied indeed.26

Apart from the state-supported Dutch Reformed (Calvinist) Church, citizens

were also Catholic, Mennonite, Lutheran, or adherents of other small sects;
no community of faith commanded a majority.27 Only about half of the
Haarlem population showed any strict confessional allegiance; of those, the
breakdown has been estimated at twenty percent Reformed, fourteen per-
cent Mennonite, twelve-and-a-half percent Catholic, one percent Lutheran,
and one percent Walloon Reformed, while the other half either attended
church without becoming members (like our friend N) or perhaps professed
a more spiritualist piety.28
Consequently, to classify all Dutch art as automatically or characteristi-
cally Protestant is logically untenable. Moreover, there were extensive and
bitter internecine conflicts among the various sects even just within the
Reformed Church.29 Yet this variety of faiths among the Dutch popula-
tion had interesting implications for painters attempting to appeal to such
a widely differentiated audience. On one hand, Ilja Veldman reports that
in the award of commissions, “the religious convictions of patrons or art-
ists seem to have played little part”; she gives examples of Protestant art-
ists of various stripes working for Catholics and vice versa.30 Yet, in the
open-market scenario of the kermis, or annual fair, where so many paintings
were marketed, in order to garner as wide a clientele as possible, it would
have been expedient to keep doctrinally specific religious references to a
 Forbidden fruit? 87
minimum—or to disguise them in such a way that they remained ambigu-
ous. Quint Gregory has argued just that: “artists in Haarlem, in particular
Pieter Claesz, may have intentionally pitched their still lifes in terms ambig-
uous enough that they would have had broad appeal, perhaps because they
were painted for the open market.”31
Landscape painting offers an analogous case. Assessing potential Prot-
estant content in Dutch landscape painting, Reindert Falkenburg describes
“a ‘field’ of semantic potential which is ‘triggered’ by the image as well as
by the expectations and experiences of the audience.”32 Falkenburg pres-
ages Gregory’s proposition about the strategic ambiguity of Pieter Claesz in
still life when he concludes of Claes Jansz Visscher’s landscape print series
that “the semantic openness of the prints is programmatic,” finding also
more generally in Dutch landscape a growing tendency toward this sort of
“semantic openness” over the course of the century.33
Gregory proposes that certain Catholic painters might occasionally have
deliberately concealed clandestine messages within this kind of object-­
symbolism.34 However, although Catholics took Eucharistic transubstantia-
tion more literally than Protestants, still the symbolism of bread and wine
was hardly confined to Catholicism alone, as we have clearly seen in both
Calvin’s and Teellinck’s testimonials to the importance of the Protestant sac-
rament of communion. To whatever extent a Protestant viewer might be
inclined to find that reference in a painting containing those elements, the
genre of still life could enact a religious reference without violating Calvin’s
objection to the idolatrous worship of holy figures through images—albeit
(cleverly) precisely in the same ambiguous way Gregory has suggested.
This mode of interpretation could draw from a significant way of seeing
that Mia Mochizuki has hypothesized was precisely born of iconoclasm.35
Her work stands at the forefront of recent research that has yielded a far
more nuanced understanding of post-iconoclastic Protestant imagery.36 She
begins by disabusing us of another textbook example that has been long and
widely regarded as a quintessential illustration of the Protestant aesthetic:
one of Saenredam’s famous views of the interior of St. Bavo’s Church in
Haarlem (Figure 5.6)—in Roland Barthes’s famous description, as “unc-
tuous” as butterscotch ice cream, having whitewashed away the excesses
of Catholic idolatry (or so it has long been assumed).37 But again, wait!
Mochizuki discovered that the officials of St. Bavo’s had already been
whitewashing the interior for at least 140 years before iconoclasm erupted:
“Whitewashing with a lime solution was part of the regular maintenance
of the church fabric, perhaps originally a hygienic precaution against the
bodies of the deceased interred beneath the floor, quite unlike the frenzied
splashing we imagine in the heat of religious reform.”38
Focusing on St. Bavo’s, she investigates the various innovations in the
adornment of Reformed churches—text paintings, guild panels, ship models,
even the patronage of church chandeliers—as examples of post-iconoclastic
Reformed “material religion,” which demonstrate her contention that
88 Julie Berger Hochstrasser

Figure 5.6 Pieter Jansz Saenredam (Dutch, 1597–1665), the interior of Saint Bavo,
Haarlem, 1628. Oil on panel, 38.7 × 47.6 cm (15 1/4 × 18 3/4 in.). J. Paul
Getty Museum, Los Angeles, California, USA
Source: Artwork in the public domain.

“[i]conoclasm was not the divorce of art from religion as is so often believed,
but a deep-rooted revitalization and redefinition of the intersection of these
two realms.”39 In these various alternatives to traditionally representational
sacred art, she identifies a new sort of Protestant aesthetic: one of “genera-
tive absence,” through which Reformed viewers learned to appreciate the
full force of the word through these forms of “material religion” that devel-
oped in post-iconoclastic church architecture and decoration:

The displacement of the human body in the pictorial economy of the

Word heralded the rise of a new religious material culture. And by pos-
iting absence as a viable methodology for understanding presence, these
objects in the new church interior provide a very real and thriving alter-
native to the vaunted realism of the Dutch Golden Age.40

Mochizuki makes a compelling case for “generative absence” as a s­ubtle

means of conveying meaning through these various types of “material
 Forbidden fruit? 89
religion.” But she stops short of applying this same mode of seeing to natu-
ralistic representations as well, instead setting “realism” quite apart:

By taking Gombrich at his word in Art and Illusion and trying to under-
stand art history as a history of perception, we are rewarded with a
much more knotty, nuanced vision of at least one era, a Dutch Golden
Age where daily exposure to the rejection of naturalistic representation
in churches nevertheless seemed to contentedly coexist with one of the
great flowerings of the descriptive image outside church walls—the lov-
ingly handled roemers, the crumbling bricks, the criss-crossing lines of
ship rigging.41

Invoking still life by means of its “lovingly handled roemers” (along with
landscape, through its “crumbling bricks,” and marine painting, in “the
criss-crossing lines of ship rigging”), she decidedly separates these gen-
res from the non-figural phenomena of “material religion” which she
explores so deftly and creatively. Yet this notion of “generative absence”
has momentous implications for naturalistic representation as well, par-
ticularly for the genre that, by definition, likewise displaces the human
body—namely, especially, for still life: the genre that is quite specifically
all about absence. Like the newly devised church decoration of St. Bavo’s,
still life, too, is haunted by the absence of human (let alone sacred) fig-
ures. Here, as with Mochizuki’s items of “material religion,” the nar-
rative figures of Rembrandt’s humane and copious biblical histories are
absent, but still, symbolic allusions have the power to invoke the teach-
ings and practices of Reformed religion, in more indirect (yet now, still
figural) ways.
In short, “generative absence” may be construed as a true “period eye”
skill on the order of Baxandall’s formulation: as a way of seeing the world
that could transfer also to one’s perception not just of the “material reli-
gion” of church decoration but of other art as well.42 Avondmaal symbolism
in the laid tables of Claesz and Heda would function by that same mecha-
nism. But the type of still life known as vanitas deploys this “generative
absence” perhaps most insistently of all (Figure 5.7). Packed with ominous
biblical references—the skull’s incontrovertible memento mori (“remember
your death”), the guttering candle or smoking oil lamp (“For my days are
consumed like smoke”; Ps. 102:3), or, elsewhere throughout still life, the
flower that fades (“The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of
our God stands forever” ’; Isa. 40:8)—this imagery does deliberately conjure
thoughts of the divine, through the same indirect mechanism of perception
and comprehension that Mochizuki describes: the presence (of the divine)
through (generative) absence.
Norman Bryson assumes this same apperception of “absence” at work in
the vanitas, yet exactly there he identifies its fatal flaw.43 Among their assem-
blages of earthly pleasures and pursuits, many such compositions explicitly
quote that somber warning from the preacher Ecclesiastes: vanitas vanitatis
90 Julie Berger Hochstrasser

Figure 5.7 Pieter Claesz, Vanitas, 1630. Oil on panel, 39.5 × 56 cm. (15.5 × 22 in.).
Mauritshuis, Royal Picture Gallery, The Hague, The Netherlands
Source: Artwork in the public domain.

et omnia vanitas (“vanity of vanities, all is vanity”; Eccles. 1:2)—yet in

asserting this, they discredit also their own materiality:

The transcendental can be sensed only in the inability to reach it, and in
that conflicted, agonistic relation between the constative (sacred truth)
and the performative (the inertia of things, ensnarement by things) the
representation embodies its own failure and vanitas.44

Bryson recognizes that the very worldly pleasures that vanitas means to
caution us against are inevitably embodied in its own essence, as a work of
astonishing craftsmanship and beauty. (Again, the plot thickens.) He goes
on to address the banquet pieces of still life, placing vanitas at one end
of a moralizing spectrum that situates at its opposite pole the most opu-
lent and splendid pronkstilleven, such as Willem Kalf’s precious depictions
(Figure 5.8), with the “still life of disorder” (e.g., Claesz and Heda) in
between.45 He connects them all to the tension inherent in a prosperous
yet purportedly Calvinist society—what Simon Schama has dubbed “the
embarrassment of riches,” imposed precisely by Calvinism.46 By Bryson’s
lights, Pieter Claesz exhibits “anxious self-restraint,” from which Kalf’s
 Forbidden fruit? 91

Figure 5.8 Willem Kalf, Still life with silver ewer, 1656. Oil on canvas, 73.8 ×
65.2 cm. (29 × 25.6 in.). Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Source: Artwork in the public domain.

sumptuous scenes are the farthest thing.47 “Still life forms a range of
options; in all its regions, affluence is ethically keyed.”48 It would seem
Claesz becomes the ultimate (restrained) Protestant, and Kalf, the poster
child for (Catholic) excess.
But again, wait! Kalf was “in all likelihood” a Protestant: he married
the daughter of a vicar and baptized his daughter in a Protestant church.49
Actually, instead, with Kalf’s eloquent celebration of affluence—costly
­
comestibles, imported Ming porcelain, and other pricey tablewares—­Bryson
hones in on one more quite different way Calvinism may be considered to
92 Julie Berger Hochstrasser
inflect the aesthetic of Dutch still life. Pondering the nature of a viewer’s
gaze regarding Kalf’s display of prosperity, Bryson supposes:

If the primary viewer is taken to be the picture’s owner, it is in part the

gaze of satisfaction: the man of wealth contemplates the fruits of his
industry, and given the Calvinist tradition of thinking of prosperity as
the reward of virtue, it is one of contentment.50

In distinct opposition to readings condemning luxury, we might name this

the Weberian mode, after Weber’s thesis on the Protestant ethic and the
spirit of capitalism.51 The Calvinists’ belief in predestination held that God
has already determined who is saved and who is damned, but as Calvin-
ism developed, Weber argued, a psychological need arose for clues about
whether one was actually saved; Calvinists looked to their success in worldly
activity for those clues. Thus, they came to value profit and material success
as signs of God’s favor.52 In this line of reasoning, the many ways in which
the “worlding” of global trade, and all the prosperity that came with it,
invaded the still life (just as it did the Dutch Republic) constitute a very dif-
ferent flavor of Protestant aesthetic.53
This one sheds instead a favorable light on the many rich imports dis-
played upon the laid tables of still life. What Teellinck and other Reformed
preachers cast as the stuff of sinful luxury, here become products of success-
ful trade. Even the elements of communion transform: wine yielded sub-
stantial profits for Amsterdam as central entrepot for further distribution of
varietals from France, Germany, and Spain, while the bread, which, in sac-
ramental terms, embodied Christ’s flesh, figures forth, in economic terms,
the import of grain from the Baltic, so essential to the Dutch economy that
it was known as the moedernegotie—the “mother trade.”54 For the many
citizens of the Dutch Republic industriously engaged in this flourishing com-
merce during the golden age, such commodities, or the sheer affluence still
life portrayed, could be viewed with pride in one’s own “good works.”55
And in this spirit, it would instead be Kalf, who offers the ultimate Protes-
tant message: enjoy your hard-earned wealth, sign of Providence, although
(there’s the pocket watch, after all) remain ever mindful of its ephemerality.
These then are quite contradictory versions of a Protestant reading of
still life: either celebrating the worldly success that rewards good works or
indicting these earthly pleasures—or even, perhaps, offering up the sacra-
mental remedy. There is no doubt that humility and mindfulness of mortal-
ity have their place in a Protestant aesthetic, but so, too, does the pride in
good works that have garnered material success. Zirka Filipczak put this
most concisely regarding what she calls (more neutrally than Bryson’s name
for them) the “aftermath-of-a-meal” still lifes of Claesz and Heda:

Even from a specifically Calvinist perspective, they invited diverse

responses. If prosperity is a sign of God’s grace and a promise of
 Forbidden fruit? 93
salvation, what do signs of prosperity mean amidst evidence of transi-
ence? By celebrating and moralizing, the scenes remained exceptionally
open to being interpreted differently by individual viewers, or by the
same viewers at different times.56

She, too, is identifying what Falkenburg was to describe as “semantic open-

ness.” Indeed, consistent with this approach, there is yet another sort of
Protestant aesthetic that permeates the exquisite descriptions of nature
found throughout still-life painting, for Calvin also advocated finding
divine presence in the “second book of God” (besides the Bible): the book
of nature.57 So Dutch still life could also prompt this kind of devout appre-
ciation, sheerly through its virtuoso rendering of the natural world. Thus, in
the end, the enigma of Dutch still life overall does, in turn, profoundly and
intriguingly complicate the question of a Protestant aesthetic in this corner
of Dutch painting and, by extension, perhaps in Dutch painting overall.
One thing for certain: in all these ways, the masterful depictions of still
life prompted contemplation; it was up to the viewer to decide what to
make of them. Is Heda’s choice of a Protestant avondmaalbeker meant as
a message? The cup is tipped over: Does this reference death, a kind of
memento mori, as the pocketwatch, too, intimates? Or does the upsetting of
the sacred cup register instead a subtly veiled anti-Protestant statement from
this actively Catholic painter? Is the Catholic painter Pieter Claesz’s humble
vanitas more Protestant than the Protestant painter Willem Kalf’s sumptu-
ous pronkstilleven? So goes the hermeneutic tangle, circling ever back on
itself, which cannot be resolved: Opulence or restraint? Celebration or cen-
sure of the riches on offer? Protestant or Catholic (or otherwise) in perspec-
tive? These wordless images leave it to the viewer to choose.
If it is indeed the still-life painters’ choice to wax obscure in order to
remain available to all comers, what is indisputable, inescapable, and poign-
ant in all these images is the ubiquitous reference to the passage of time in
human life. That was both personal and universal to all viewers, Reformed
or Mennonite, Catholic or Lutheran or Jew, Remonstrant or Contra-
Remonstrant or any other confessional variant, even to those who claimed
no religion—to all the heterogeneous population of the United Provinces of
the Netherlands, indeed, to all human experience: an aesthetic to unify, to
speak to all factions, to inspire meditation, to encourage anyone to make
the most of one’s days and aspire to his or her highest and best self—at its
best, to speak to a human condition that transcends doctrinal differences
and live in peace.

Notes
1 Willem Teellinck, Bueren-Cout. Ofte Samen-Spreuck (Leiden: David Jansz van
Ilpendam, 1620). Reprinted in 1633, and translated into modern Dutch by C.
Bregman as Buren-Kout, of Samenspraak: omvattend tien stichtelijke gesprek-
ken over godsdienstige zaken (Vlaardigen: Boekhandel/Uitgeverij, 1988).
94 Julie Berger Hochstrasser
2 Ibid., 75: “Het is dus zo dat het Heilig Avondmaal is als de boom des levens
waardoor de christenen gesterkt worden om het werk Gods des te beter te doen.
Dat weet onze geestelijke vijand ook wel en daarom tracht hij de mens daar
vanaf te houden en in plaats daarvan te doen eten van de verboden vrucht. En
dat lukt hem ook bij heel velen.”
3 On the subtleties of the various forms of presence in the sacrament (spiritual
presence, illocal presence, repletive presence, etc.), see Keith Mathison, “Cal-
vin’s Doctrine of the Lord’s Supper,” Tabletalk Magazine, November 1, 2006.
Also online at Ligonier Ministries, Inc. (US): The Teaching Fellowship of R. C.
Sproul, www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/calvins-doctrine-lords-supper/.
4 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans.
Ford Lewis Battles, Library of Christian Classics (Philadelphia: Westminster,
1960 [1559]), book 4, chap. 17, points 44, 46.
5 This involved rigorous preparation through self-examination, abstinence of
many worldly pleasures, and, most significantly, submission to an inquiry before
a body of the church elders to determine one’s suitability for participation. See
W. J. op’t Hof, Voorbereiding en bestrijding. De oudstepietistische voorberei-
dingspreken tot het Avondmaal en de eerste bestrijding van de Nadere Reforma-
tie in druk (Kampen: De Groot Goudriaan,1991), 19–29, 41.
6 Many of Teellinck’s books focused on the importance of the avondmaal to Chris-
tians, and the proper conduct required to participate. Het Geestelijck Cierat van
Christi Bruylofts-kinderen, also from 1620, was the most popular, enjoying its
nineteenth reprint in the twentieth century.
7 Teellinck, Bueren-Cout, 75: “Er zijn immers veel naam-christenen die het nog
steeds aandurven om evenals Adam te gaan eten van de verboden vrucht en niet
van de Boom des Levens. . . . Daardoor staan deze mensen steeds tegenover de
Heere hun God: waarvan Hij hen verbiedt te eten, daarvan willen zij juist eten,
namelijk van de verboden boom der vleselijke wellusten. En waarvan God de
Heere hen gebiedt te eten, namelijk van de geestelijk boom der heilige verrichtin-
gen en van het hemelse Brood des Heeren, daarvan willen zij juist niet eten; dan
houden ze zich op een afstand. Dit moet beslist van alle kanten het zieleleven
verwoesten.”
8 Henry Duval V. Gregory, “Tabletop Still Lifes in Haarlem, c. 1610–1660:
A Study of the Relationships Between Form and Meaning” (PhD diss., Univer-
sity of Maryland College Park, 2003), 70–71. Gregory makes the case that a
still life by Willem Claesz. Heda in the National Gallery in Washington, D.C.,
is intentionally and even more specifically symbolic in striking correspondence
with Teellinck’s remarks, but concludes most seventeenth-century Dutch still
lifes were not deliberately messaging in this way.
9 On the evolution of Dutch still life, the first and still seminal study was Ingvar
Bergström, Dutch Still-Life Painting in the Seventeenth Century, trans. Christina
Hedstrõm and Gerald Taylor (London: Faber and Faber, 1956). Bergström put
forward the long-standing interpretation of Dutch still life as moralizing against
excess. For more on specific symbolism surviving out of medieval imagery see
Sam Segal’s numerous exhibition catalogues on the various types of still life;
for example, A Prosperous Past: The Sumptuous Still Life in the Netherlands,
1600–1700, ed. William B. Jordan (The Hague: SDU Publishers, 1988).
10 Symbolically, that is, for the Protestants; meanwhile, Protestant pamphleteers
continued their lively attack against the transubstantiation of the Eucharist as a
papist superstition. Gregory’s survey of pamphlet titles in the first decade of the
seventeenth century indexed in the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in The Hague noted
“a remarkably steady pamphletting war between Calvinists and Catholics” over
issues of transubstantiation. Gregory, “Tabletop Still Lifes in Haarlem,” 74n118.
 Forbidden fruit? 95
11 Calvin, Institutes, book 4, chap. 17, points 10–11.
12 Ibid., book 1, chap. 11, point 5; book I, chap. 11, point 13; book 11, chap. 12.
13 For extensive documentation on the proliferation of still life (also relative to other
genres) over the course of the century, see Julie Berger Hochstrasser, “Life and
Still Life: A Cultural Inquiry into Seventeenth-Century Dutch Still-Life Painting”
(PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1995), Part II, on “Inventory Evi-
dence.” Also Alan Chong, Wouter Kloek et al. (eds.), Still-Life Painting from the
Netherlands, 1550–1720, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, and Cleveland Museum
of Art (Zwolle: Waanders Publishers, 1999). Exhibition catalogue. For focus
specifically on Haarlem, see also Gregory, “Tabletop Still Lifes in Haarlem.”
14 James R. Tanis, “Netherlandish Reformed Traditions in the Graphic Arts, 1550–
1630,” in Seeing Beyond the Word: Visual Arts and the Calvinist Tradition, ed.
Paul Corby Finney (Grand Rapids, MI, and Cambridge, UK: William B. Eerd-
mans Publishing Company, 1999), 369–96, at 373.
15 Marion Elisabeth Wilhelmina Goosens, “Schilders en de markt Haarlem 1605–
1635” (PhD diss., University of Leiden, 2001), 378, table 10.8: “Comparison
of the percentages of paintings for which genres are known in Catholic and
Reformed collections with the total percentages for all collections,” with discus-
sion, 370–78.
16 On the avondmaalsbeker, see Harry R. Tupan, Neemt, drinckt alle daer uyt: zil-
veren avondmaalsbekers in Drenthe uit Nederlands-hervormd bezit 1600–1900
(Drents Museum: Zwolle, 1997). Exhibition catalogue.
17 On the nature and relative value of the various pigments, see Anita Albus, Kunst
der Künste [The Art of Arts: Rediscovering Painting], trans. Michael Robertson
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000).
18 Xander van Eck, “Paintings for Clandestine Catholic Churches in the Republic:
Typically Dutch?” in Catholic Communities in Protestant States: Britain and the
Netherlands c.1570–1720, ed. Benjamin Kaplan, Bob Moore, Henk van Nierop
and Judith Pollmann (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press,
2009), 216–29. Here citing Peter Hecht, “Rembrandt and Raphael Back to Back:
The Contribution of Thoré,” Simiolus 26, no. 3 (1998): 162–78, at 164–73.
19 For Rubens’s drawn studies of the Torso del Belvedere, see Kristin Lohse Belkin,
Rubens (London: Phaidon, 1998).
20 Although however redundantly Rembrandt’s art may epitomize a Protestant
aesthetic, it must be countered that he did work for patrons of many different
religious persuasions. For extensive analysis of Rembrandt’s religious imagery
with particular attention to the relationship between Jewish and Christian reve-
lation in biblical history, see Shelley Perlove and Larry Silver, Rembrandt’s Faith:
Church and Temple in the Dutch Golden Age (University Park, Pennsylvania:
The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009). The authors cite Rembrandt’s
etching of the Death of the Virgin as another instance where he rendered a tra-
ditionally Catholic image more Protestant: avoiding glorification of Mary by
making her “tired and humble” (ibid., 50).
21 Both families “appear to have sided with the Calvinist wing of the church during
the Remonstrant controversy with the followers of Jacobus Arminius.” Tanis,
“Netherlandish Reformed Traditions,” 387, citing Gary Schwartz, Rembrandt,
His Life, His Paintings (London: Guild, 1985), 161–62, 185.
22 Norman Bryson, Looking at the Overlooked: Four Essays on Still Life Painting
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), 121.
23 The recent Rijksmuseum exhibition “80 Jaar Oorlog / 80 Years War” provided
heart-rending insights into the torments of families separated by the division
of the Netherlands into north and south and the tragic hopes of those who
could not bring themselves to fathom this could happen. It ran October 12,
96 Julie Berger Hochstrasser
2018–January 20, 2019, but there is also a catalogue. See Gijs van der Ham, 80
Jaar Oorlog / 80 Years War (Amsterdam: Rijksmuseum, NTR, and Atlas Con-
tact, 2018), Exhibition catalogue.
24 Besides Claesz, their further Haarlem still-life fellows Floris van Schooten and
Roelof Koets were Catholic too, although less is known of the degree of their
involvement in the church. Gregory, “Tabletop Still Lifes in Haarlem,” 73.
25 As for his own investigation, van Eck concludes that “clandestine churches were
able to profit by the blossoming of painting in the Republic, but their patronage
lacked the critical mass to generate distinctive developments in painting” (van
Eck, “Paintings for Clandestine Catholic Churches,” 228).
26 Van Eck, “Paintings for Clandestine Catholic Churches,” 216. For more Catho-
lic artists working in the Dutch Republic, see Ilja M. Veldman, “Protestantism
and the Arts: Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Netherlands,” in Finney, See-
ing Beyond the Word, 397–429, at 409.
27 Johanna Willemina (Joke) Spaans, “Levensbeschouwelijke groeperingen,” in
Deugd boven geweld. Een gescheidenis van Haarlem, 1245–1995, ed. G. F. van
de Ree-Scholtens (Hilversum: Verloren, 1995), 198–220, cited in Gregory, “Tab-
letop Still Lifes in Haarlem,” 67.
28 Johanna Willemina Spaans, “Haarlem na de Reformatie: Stedelijke cultuur en
kerkelijke leven, 1577–1620” (PhD diss., University of Leiden, 1989), 84, 93,
104–5, 299. Mia Mochizuki reports that in 1620, the city government was aware
of at least twenty active Catholic priests versus only six Reformed preachers.
Mia M. Mochizuki, The Netherlandish Image After Iconoclasm, 1655–1672:
Material Religion in the Dutch Golden Age (Aldershot, Hampshire, UK and
Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2008), 194.
29 Veldman provides several examples of drastically differing views on imagery just
among several Calvinists. Veldman, “Protestantism and the Arts: Sixteenth- and
Seventeenth-Century Netherlands,” 415–17.
30 Veldman, “Protestantism and the Arts: Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century
Netherlands,” 409. She provides a brief but helpful overview of the religious
diversity of the population and its artists alike; of decoration of churches (espe-
cially with text panels); of public buildings (sometimes with work removed from
cathedrals), paintings for private individuals, and attitudes toward images; and
of Claes Jansz. Visscher as a decidedly Calvinist print publisher.
31 Gregory, “Tabletop Still Lifes in Haarlem,” 247.
32 Falkenburg has come around to appreciating the “association method” of
Haverkamp-Begemann and Chong: that one should investigate the whole range
of semantic relations the public may have attached to images, rather than a
single meaning an artist may have wished to communicate. Reindert L. Falken-
burg, “Calvinism and the Emergence of Dutch Seventeenth-Century Landscape
Art—A Critical Evaluation,” in Finney, Seeing Beyond the Word, 343–68, at
352–53, quoting Haverkamp-Begemann and Chong, “Dutch Landscape Paint-
ing and Its Associations,” in The Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis, ed. H. R.
Hoetink (Amsterdam: Meulenhoff/Landshoff, 1985), 56–67.
33 Falkenburg, “Calvinism,” 356. He prefers this terminology over describing this
as the “wearing out” of meaning in seventeenth-century realistic painting; cf.
Lyckle de Vries, “Jan Steen, ‘de kluchtschilder’ ” (PhD diss., University of Gron-
ingen, 1977).
34 Gregory’s key example is the large, lavish Heda banquet piece in the National
Gallery in Washington, hinging his argument on Heda’s having forwarded a
bread roll on a small plate that overhangs the front of the table to reach into the
viewer’s space. He reads this as the Bread of Life, proffered for the viewer as the
spiritual alternative to the earthly pleasures arrayed behind, but this feature is
 Forbidden fruit? 97
a tenuous foundation for his interpretation, since the forward-reaching plate is
such a common motif in the work of all the Haarlem still-life painters, furnished
with any number of other, less syntactically charged comestibles: Heda himself
frequently forwards a lemon with its cascading coil of peel and, at other times,
slices of ham or even, in one case, a single olive. Claesz does the same, as did
their Haarlem colleague Floris van Dijck, who offered one scene in which a
bread roll took pride of place (another, perhaps equally tantalizing case—and
its significance is not lost upon seekers of symbolism—is a half apple)—but in
yet another of his banquets, the forwarded plate presents a slice of melon, which
again somewhat defuses the notion of attaching too much intentional symbol-
ism to this particular artistic choice. More general readings along these lines, not
hinging exclusively on the use of this motif, strike me as more plausible.
35 Mochizuki, Netherlandish Image.
36 Bridget Heal’s overview also observes that “a rich and diverse Protestant visual
and material culture” evolved out of the “Reformations”: iconoclasm unleashed
“generative power and creativity” in prints and book illustrations, church struc-
tures and furnishings, and domestic imagery, although she stresses that a quite
different situation prevailed in Germany as opposed to England and the Neth-
erlands because Lutherans did explicitly encourage visual imagery of various
kinds, even within a liturgical context. Bridget Heal, “Visual and Material Cul-
ture,” chap. 29 in The Oxford Handbook of The Protestant Reformations, ed.
Ulinka Rublack (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 601–20, at 616.
37 Roland Barthes, “The World as Object,” in Essais Critiques (Critical Essays),
trans. Richard Howard (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1972), 3.
38 Mochizuki, Netherlandish Image, 1, citing church accounts, or Kerkrekeningen:
1426, 1438, 1458, 1467, 1535 (3 times), 1536, 1537, and 1542, Oud-archief
ban de Kerkvoogden der Nederlands Hervormde Gemeente te Haarlem, Haar-
lem: AvK Collection, NHA.
39 Mochizuki, Netherlandish Image, 134–36. She acknowledges that Van Swigchem
was one of the first to cite the positive aspects of the Protestant appropriation of
churches and draw attention to the changes wrought by iconoclasm as more of
a bending than a sharp break with the Catholic past. See C. A. van Swigchem,
“Kerkborden en kolomschilderingen in de St Bavo te Haarlem, 1580–1585,”
Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 35 (1987): 211–23.
40 Mochizuki, Netherlandish Image, 321.
41 Ibid., 325–27.
42 See Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy:
A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1972).
43 Bryson, Looking at the Overlooked. His chap. 3, “Abundance,” 96–135, focuses
on Dutch still life.
44 Bryson, Looking at the Overlooked, 120.
45 Ibid., 121ff.
46 Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Cul-
ture in the Golden Age (London: Collins; New York: Knopf, first edition 1987).
47 Bryson, Looking at the Overlooked, 123. Schama poses the same comparison,
generalizing (a bit too broadly) that the monochrome banketjes are “studies in
ruminative plainness” (even though not all of them are all that plain), “as spare
and precise as the later pronkstilleven of Willem Kalf and Abraham van Beyeren
in the 1650’s and 1660’s were flamboyant and luxuriant” (even though Kalf,
even in his preciosity, is both spare and precise). Schama, Embarrassment of
Riches, 161. For further refutation on this point, see Hochstrasser, “Life and Still
Life,” 10.
98 Julie Berger Hochstrasser
48 Bryson, Looking at the Overlooked, 132.
49 Fred Meijer (in correspondence) further observes that there is no evidence Kalf
was not a Protestant. My thanks for Meijer’s confirmation on this point.
50 Bryson, Looking at the Overlooked, 130.
51 Max Weber, Protestantische Ethik und der Geist der Kapitalismus [The Prot-
estant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism], trans. Talcott Parsons (Chicago and
London: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2001 [1904–1905]).
52 Other religious groups, such as the Pietists, Methodists, and the Baptist sects
had similar attitudes to a lesser degree. It must be noted that Weber emphasizes
throughout his book that Protestantism is not the cause of the capitalistic spirit
but, rather, just one contributing factor. For evaluation and critique see Stan-
ley Engerman, “Capitalism, Protestantism, and Economic Development: Max
Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism After Almost One
Century,” Economic History Association, accessed April 1, 2019, https://eh.net/
book_reviews/the-protestant-ethic-and-the-spirit-of-capitalism/.
53 On the trade histories of various commodities in seventeenth-century Dutch still-
life painting, and their inflections on meaning in these images, see Julie Berger
Hochstrasser, Still Life and Trade in the Dutch Golden Age (London and New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007).
54 See Hochstrasser, Still Life and Trade; for more on the Dutch grain trade with
the Baltic, see also Remmelt Daalder, Els van Eyck van Heslinga, and J. Thomas
Lindblad, Goud uit Graan: Nederland en het Oostzeegebied, 1600–1850. Fonds
Directie Oostersche Handel en Reederijen; Provinciaal Museum van Dren-
the; Nederlands Scheepvaart Museum (Zwolle: Waanders, 1998). Exhibition
catalogue.
55 Moreover, Mochizuki has demonstrated that “The Dutch East India Company’s
Continued Existence Depended Upon the Maintenance of a Reformed Iden-
tity, Whether or not it Was Actively Advertised or Even Understood by Those
Encountered,” Mia M. Mochizuki, “The Dutch at Deshima and the Visual
Vocabulary of Exploration,” in Boundaries and Their Meanings in the History
of the Netherlands, ed. Marybeth Carlson, Laura Cruz, and Benjamin J. Kaplan,
Studies in Central European Histories 48 (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 86–89.
56 Zirka Filipczak, “A New Studio Practice of Claesz and Heda: Composing with
Real Objects,” in Shop Talk: Studies in Honor of Seymour Slive, ed. Cynthia
Schneider, William W. Robinson, and Alice I. Davies (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Art Museums, 1995), 71–73; 306–7.
57 Compare with landscape, as in Falkenburg, “Calvinism,” 359.
6 Antipapal aesthetics and the
Gunpowder Plot
Staging Barnabe Barnes’s
The Devil’s Charter
Adrian Streete

Divinity and the stage, 1538–1642

Early modern English Protestantism is, according to one influential reading,
wary of the aesthetic. During the first half of the sixteenth century, the idea
that God might be shown adequately in art produced by fallen humans is
embraced generally by dramatists. Yet as Protestantism takes stronger root
in England, moralists and antitheatrical writers start to attack the represen-
tation of divinity onstage. Older forms of drama where God is depicted,
such as Mystery Cycles and Morality plays, so the story goes, gradually stop
being performed as legislation driven by the concerns of Reformed theology
inhibits the direct representation of God onstage. Even the act of speaking
the name of God onstage is eradicated eventually.1 In recent years, how-
ever, scholars from a range of disciplines have done much to reframe this
understanding of stage and religion in Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Caroline
England. Work by Margaret Aston, Huston Diehl, and Michael O’Connell
has shown that early modern Protestant aesthetics is not a contradiction
in terms.2 Paul Whitfield White and Beatrice Groves have demonstrated
that religious drama continued to be performed despite periodic legislation
against it.3 Janet Clare and Hugh Gazzard have outlined how the prohibi-
tion against speaking God’s name could be circumvented by allusions to
classical deities or in contracted oaths.4 And the work of Alison Shell, Han-
nibal Hamlin, and myself has examined how theological ideas and biblical
rhetoric continued to inform dramatic representation on the stage well into
the seventeenth century.5 The picture that emerges from this scholarship is
of the court, the church, and the city authorities in London wrangling over
jurisdiction of the public theaters; of sporadic legislation that is not always
adhered to; of mechanisms of censorship that enable, and occasionally col-
lude in, coded religious and political comment; and of a diverse range of
theatrical attitudes toward divinity and its representation.
Cardinals, bishops, priests, ministers, monks, friars, and nuns are fairly
ubiquitous in early modern interludes and drama. Sometimes they are fig-
ures of mockery or satire; in other plays, they are treated as serious dramatic
personae. Popes appear much less frequently in extant plays. The pope’s
100 Adrian Streete
first post-Reformation appearances onstage come in John Bale’s King Johan
(1538), written in support of Henry VIII’s break with Rome, and as the
titular Pammachius (ca. 1538), a Latin academic drama written by Thomas
Kirchmayer or Naogeorgus. Another Latin academic drama, Christus Tri-
umphans (1556) by John Foxe, features the pope as Pseudamnus (“false
lamb”), a name that emphasizes the allegorical presentation of the papacy
in this play.6 Following the death of Henry VIII in 1547, England oscillated
between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism under Edward VI (1547–
1553) and Mary I (1553–58). Most of the drama written during these years
is lost. Indeed, the texts of early modern plays that survive represent only
a small percentage of what was likely performed.7 The glimpses in records
that we have of these lost interludes, entertainments, and puppet plays
suggest a demotic anti-Catholic theatrical culture, one dependent on the
approval and vicissitudes of political authority to be sure but one that nev-
ertheless informs the practices of later sixteenth- and seventeenth-century
dramatists.8
The proselytizing impulse that drove playwrights in the aftermath of the
Henrician Reformation did not go away during the second half of the six-
teenth century but was redirected into other areas of theatrical representa-
tion. The late 1560s and 1570s witnessed the emergence of public theaters
in London. From the 1580s, the effects of various mechanisms of censor-
ship, including the office of Master of the Revels, were felt. Matters of divin-
ity and state had to be treated by dramatists with caution. Living political
figures could not be represented onstage. In the case of the pope, he was
both a religious and a political figure. While the pope was often subjected to
ridicule and contempt in Protestant polemics, he remained a figure of con-
siderable political authority. Elizabeth I, James VI and I, and Charles I all
maintained diplomatic relations with various popes. For mere players to put
the pope on the public stage could thus be seen as both a breach of rank
and an affront to royal authority. It is notable that the most politically scan-
dalous play of the period, Thomas Middleton’s A Game at Chess (1624),
does not stage the pope himself, only his agents. According to An Index
of Characters in Early Modern English Drama Printed Plays, 1500–1660,
popes appear in a mere nine extant plays from this period.9 In most of these
cases, the pope only appears in one or two scenes, such as in Christopher
Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus (ca. 1588–92), Day, Rowley, and Wilkins’ The
Travels of the Three English Brothers (1607), and John Webster’s The White
Devil (1612).10 Extant plays where the pope appears as the central character
are rare indeed.11 While this low number of papal appearances is in part
an effect of non-survival, legislation, and censorship, later sixteenth- and
­seventeenth-century dramatists also knew how to discuss the Roman Catho-
lic Church without staging the pope directly. Through strategic biblical quo-
tation, the use of commonplace anti-Catholic images and tropes, and other
coded allusions, playwrights could quickly signal their intent to audiences.
 Antipapal aesthetics and the Gunpowder Plot 101
Although not universally popular, Elizabeth I’s establishment of the
Protestant English Church influenced theatrical practice in a number of
ways. The establishment of the public theaters in London occurred during
a period that also saw the Roman Catholic–led Northern Rebellion (1569)
and the papal bull “Regnans in Excelsis” (1570), which excommunicated
Elizabeth as a heretic. Both events, as well as England’s growing involve-
ment in the Low Countries’ conflict, helped to solidify political opinion
behind Protestantism as an affirmation of national identity. Although
sometimes expressed in triumphalist, even militant terms, the yoking
together of Protestantism and national identity also revealed national and
international fault lines in the construction of English statehood.12 We can
see this tension in the first wave of antitheatrical writings written against
the stage in the 1570s and 1580s.13 Politically, these writers were a diverse
group.14 Some were inclined to Puritanism while others displayed a more
flexible attitude towards Protestantism. In the case of one antitheatricalist,
Anthony Munday, it has been argued that despite publishing various anti-
Catholic texts, he never fully renounced an early conversion to Roman
Catholicism.15 Munday and Stephen Gosson also wrote plays at different
times in their careers.
Despite their often contradictory attitudes to Protestantism, then, the
antitheatricalists were concerned with what was aesthetically permissible in
a reformed state. In Playes Confuted in fiue Actions (1582), Stephen Gosson
wrote this of plays:

Being consecrated to idolatrie, they are not of God, if they proceede not
from God, they are the doctrine and inuentions of the deuill. This will
be counted newe learninge amonge a greate number of my gay country-
men, which beare a sharper smacke of Italian deuices in their heades,
then of English religion in their heartes.16

Reformed English Protestantism was under attack from idolatrous, Ital-

ianate, overly aestheticized theatrical practices. Not all antitheatricalists
were anti-aesthetic: it was the improper use of the aesthetic, not the aes-
thetic per se, that was of concern. The claim that Roman Catholicism was
a form of theater was, of course, a commonplace metaphor for Protestant
polemicists. Indeed, this may be another reason why there were relatively
few theatrical popes found on the early modern stage: Why expose audi-
ences to the danger of false papal representation in both senses of the
word? The clergyman and antipapal polemicist Andrew Willet wrote of
the Roman Church that “all their seruice is nothing else but a mere stage-
play, from one end of the yeare to another,” and John Rainoldes notes
that “in stead of preaching the Word, they caused it to be played,” while
the pamphleteer Philip Stubbes likened the Mass to “a Satyricall stage
playe of fooles consecrated to the Diuell.”17 In a tract called The Stage of
102 Adrian Streete
Popish toyes (1581), Henry Estienne offered his take on this polemical
theme:

[O]ure Romish Catholikes (whose conuersions to Christ in heart

I craue) that so much desire by wilful ignoraunce to suppresse God
and his glorye, and to aduance the Pope and the Prelacie, and would
haue these Tragicall partes (beautified with gluttonie, adorned with
lecherie, & decked with all sinne and iniquitie) to triumphe vppon our
English Stage, before the play begin, consider the infamous falsehood,
& the traitorous trumperie, that those of the Churche of Rome doe
holde you in.18

It is not so much that Roman Catholicism was like theater; it is that this
religion used theater to seduce and convert Protestants. Aesthetics were used
improperly: the Roman Catholic Mass was dismissed regularly by polemi-
cists as a kind of false theater, where the priest seduced the congregation
through false, idolatrous signs. The problem was one of hypocrisy: pretend-
ing to be one thing while in fact being another. Could aesthetic representa-
tion ever be morally “true”? As Alison Shell notes, “Catholics, like players,
often served as the occasion for a wider debate on the status and validity of
representation.”19 Consider this quotation from Gosson:

The perfectest Image is that, which maketh the thing to seeme, neither
greater nor lesse, then in deed it is. But in Playes, either those thinges
are fained, that neuer were [. . .] or if a true Historie be taken in hand, it
is made like our shadows, longest at the rising and falling of the Sunne,
shortest of all at the noone.20

Like the Roman Catholic mass, either the theater presents us with lies or
else it distorts the truth beyond all recognition to the peril of the spectators.
Dramatists responded to this provocation in a variety of ways. For play-
wrights such as Thomas Dekker, John Webster, and Thomas Middleton, the
Protestant critique of idolatry was incorporated into an aesthetic practice
that often had a defined anti-Catholic edge.21 William Shakespeare, whose
religious affiliations were less clear, could still adopt anti-Catholic rheto-
ric when the dramatic situation demanded it, and the history plays were
very interested in kingship as a kind of idolatry. Ben Jonson, who moved
between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism, had a complex relationship
to the aesthetic and to theatricality: his attacks on Puritan hypocrisy also
went hand in hand with a frequently expressed disdain for the institution of
theater itself.
Like Jonson, the antitheatricalists encountered the perennial problem
faced by all moralists: how to criticize without amplifying the appeal of
the thing being criticized. On this front, writers such as Gosson were only
 Antipapal aesthetics and the Gunpowder Plot 103
partially successful. In order to attack hypocrisy, one first needed to under-
stand its workings:

Thus when any matter of loue is enterlarded though the thinge it selfe
bee able to allure vs, yet it is so sette out with sweetness of wordes,
fitnes of Epithetes, with Metaphors, Alegories, Hyperboles, Amphi-
bologies, Similitudes, with Phrases, so pickt, so pure, so proper; with
action so smoothe, so liuely, so wanton; that the poison creeping on
secretly without griefe choakes vs at last, and hurleth vs downe in a
dead sleepe.22

This analysis of theatrical movere takes aim at the five steps of oratory:
inventio, dispositio, elocutio, memoria, and actio. Yet the rhetorical tech-
niques that Gosson criticized in the playhouse were the very same techniques
that he used to persuade his own readers. The metaphors deployed in his
last clause would not escape the charge of hyperbole. A plain message was
one thing: a plain style, it seemed, would only get you so far. The aim of the
antitheatricalist was to turn his readers away from the theater and toward a
more godly activity, such as sermon going. In doing so, he could not avoid
energia and a more elevated rhetorical style that targeted the emotions of
his readers. Gosson returned again and again to the claim that theater was
fleshly. It aimed to “rauish the beholders with varietie of pleasure . . . to
spende our time so is to be carnally minded, but to be carnally minded is
death.”23 Playwrights “studie to make our affections ouerflow,” something
that is “manifest treason to our soules, and deliuereth them captiue to the
deuill.”24 Gosson’s enterprise was haunted by the fact that, no less than
the theater, he was reliant similarly on the aesthetic and affective appeal of
rhetoric. For Gosson, the only difference between the playwright and the
antitheatricalist, it seems, was godliness. Although they did so for different
reasons, the playwright and the antitheatricalist alike both targeted carnal
pleasure.
So when staging the pope, playwrights had to tread a thin line between
aesthetically effective rhetoric and moral condemnation. While there was
pleasure to be had in short theatrical depictions of the pope, political con-
demnation of Rome and the papacy was a useful dramatic expedient for
curtailing the potential appeal of mimetic representation. Could a balance
be struck between aesthetic entertainment that upheld reformed precepts
and political condemnation of Roman Catholicism as an aesthetically dan-
gerous religion? Perhaps this was another reason why the pope appeared
relatively infrequently on the public stage. In those rare plays when a pope
did take center stage, politics, signs, and affect intertwined in rich if prob-
lematic ways. One such drama was Barnabe Barnes’s The Devil’s Charter
(1607). Written and performed at court in the aftermath of the Gunpowder
Plot, its central character is the notorious Borgia Pope, Alexander VI. It is
104 Adrian Streete
a fascinating text, the only surviving pre–Civil War play that I am aware
of featuring the pope as the central character. Critics have not had much
to say about Barnes’s play, and when they do, it is usually in relation to the
most well-known play written after the plot, William Shakespeare’s Mac-
beth (1606).25 In what follows, then, I set the scene by considering how
the Gunpowder Plot affected the dramatic aesthetics of anti-Catholicism,
particularly in relation to signification.26 I then go on to consider Barnes’s
play and how it walks a not entirely consistent line between polemical con-
demnation and theatrical entertainment.

Antipapal aesthetics onstage and the Gunpowder Plot

For many English Protestants, the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605
proved that Roman Catholicism was an anti-Christian, maleficent religion,
one whose adherents would stop at nothing to reestablish the authority
of the pope in England.27 Playwrights were no less exercised by the events
surrounding the Gunpowder Plot.28 Almost immediately, the discovery of
the plot was viewed in dramatic terms. As the preface to William Barlow’s
famous Pauls Cross sermon notes, it was a “Tragi-comical treason (Tragi-
cal, in the dreadeful intention: Comicall in the happye and timely Detection
thereof).”29 In the case of Thomas Dekker’s play The Whore of Babylon
(1606), not only did it contain a number of references to the Plot, but its
“nostalgia for chivalry, its anti-Spanish propaganda, and its Spenserian imi-
tation” also aligned it firmly within the militant Protestant camp.30 Rome
represented sedition and political rebellion, and it must be opposed. The
Whore of Babylon was a notable flop onstage. Despite its political serious-
ness, much of the play is dramatically inert. But it is interesting mimeti-
cally. At the start the Empress of Babylon complains that her power “is
now counterfeit” and her “Image” is “blanch’d” (I.i.30–38) because of her
rival Titania.31 In this inversion of apocalyptic thinking, the empress claims
that it is, in fact, Titania who has “stolne faire Truths attire,” “counterfets
her voice,” has used “prestigious tricks in sorcerie,” and is a “subtile Cur-
tizan’ ”(I.i.59–63). By tarnishing Titania with the tropes commonly applied
to the Whore of Babylon, the empress does more than sling rhetorical mud
at her rival. In John Parker’s words,

(anti)christian figurations consequently augur, as did Christ’s first com-

ing, the deferred arrival of yet another, more effective messiah. This
one may or may not come in glory, but till he does, the mimetic limita-
tions of every precursor will have to anticipate on his behalf the final
revelation.32

The empress is not so much inverting apocalyptic thinking as pointing out

its central animating tension: all Protestant figuration is a secondary sub-
stitute for the thing itself, the second coming of the Messiah. Apocalyptic
 Antipapal aesthetics and the Gunpowder Plot 105
rhetoric thus stresses the falseness of present signs, their veiled, imperfect
relation to truth, and the future revelation as explained in 2 Corinthians
3:16: “when their heart shall be turned to the Lord, the vaile shall be taken
away.” Or as William Middleton put it in 1606, “the religion of Antichrist,
being a compound heresie of many simples, grew on soft and faire, and
plodded still forward by little and by little without any resistance, till the
time came it should bee disclosed.”33 The empress lives “in god-like splen-
dour, / With adoration of all dazeled eies” (I.i.1–2) but, she claims, Titania
is also a “counterfeit.” Whether we designate these typological figurations
as good or evil, it is the resemblance of both to the good that creates the
tension in the first scene of The Whore of Babylon. The concluding verses
of 2 Corinthians 3:17–18 promise that when God comes in the Spirit, not
only will there be liberty but that “we all behold as in a mirrour the glorie
of the Lord with open face, and are changed into the same image.” By
contrast, apocalyptic aesthetics operate in the time before the mirror is
revealed. The empress and Titania are alluring not because of their dif-
ference but because of their similarity. Dekker’s allegorical drama is well
suited to exploring this ambiguity. Of course, the empress is eventually
defeated and Titania triumphs. Yet the drama consistently trades off this
play of signs, drawing on the tension between resemblance and the thing
itself. This complicates the allegorical challenge posed by The Whore of
Babylon. If Roman Catholicism is a form of “false” theater as the play
suggests, then is “true” Protestant theatricality the best weapon for dis-
crediting its practices?
A similar political agenda informs Barnabe Barnes’s The Devil’s Char-
ter.34 Both his and Dekker’s plays are concerned with witchcraft and dev-
ilry, prophecy, and the difficulty of establishing religious truth in relation to
unstable signs.35 There is an aesthetic commonality here. The Devil’s Charter
examines the notorious Borgia family and their political machinations. In
the prologue, Francis Guicchiardine says that the drama will “present unto
your eyes” Roderigo Borgia, later Pope Alexander VI and his son Caesar.
In particular, the spectators are invited to view their “faithlesse, fearelesse,
and ambitious lives: / And first by what ungodly meanes and Art, / Hee
[Alexander] did attaine the Triple-Diadem, / This vision offered to your eyes
declares” (Prol. 23–25).36 Sight, art, and the dangers of signs are stressed here in
a very Protestant fashion. The salvific mimesis of 2 Corinthians 3 is both alluded
to and undermined. Immediately following this line, Guicchiardine conjures
a dumb show with a “silver rod” (Prol. 27), which shows Roderigo bribing
the conclave, conjuring devils, making a pact with them to become pope, and
receiving a magic book. The spectators are subject to a show that is malefi-
cent and seductive. The lure of theatricality, associated as we have seen with
popery by antitheatricalists and polemicists, is both the source of Alexan-
der’s power and his downfall. As the German reformer Thomas Kirchmeyer
warned of Roman Catholic ritual: “They ought not of the Church to make a
Stage or Theater, / Nor for to pricke or prancke themselues, in such disguised
106 Adrian Streete
geare.’37 Like a theatrical show, Satan’s promise to Alexander is conditional,
temporary, and it comes at a price: “by divelish art” the Devil “makes offer
of the triple Crowne / For certain years agreed betwixt them two” (Prol.
69–72). So although Alexander and Caesar are shown as politically cunning
and militarily victorious, the spectators are assured that this particular papal
“Antichrist” (1028) is living on borrowed time.
Alexander’s representation draws on the full panoply of anti-Catholic
tropes. He is politically devious, sexually incontinent, and practices magic.
Yet it would be wrong to suggest that his various conjurings, crimes, and
sexual transgressions are little more than antipapal knockabouts. Frances E.
Dolan has suggested that such “vilifications of Catholicism may have ena-
bled dramatists to dissociate themselves from the rituals and spectacles of
Catholicism, to prove that the theater could be a resource for rather than an
obstacle to Protestant proselytizing.”38 Dolan also points out how texts such
as this often associate the female gender itself with the practices of Roman
Catholicism, most obviously in the figure of the Whore of Babylon. The
pope’s daughter Lucretia is a politically assertive figure who likens herself to
Medea, Clytemnestra, and Progne as she rids herself of her ineffectual hus-
band in a daring scene that combines seduction and murder. Similarly, Alex-
ander’s sexuality is transgressive. In a scene that may have been designed to
appeal to the king, the pope seduces the attractive youth Astor Manfredi.
Here is part of one of his speeches to Manfredi:

Delicious fruites diuine Confections,

Of hearbes, roots, flowers of sundrie fashions.
Preseruatives drawne from the rich Elixar,
Of finest gould pure pearl and precious stones,
Prouided for thy divine apetite,
Wines of more price (made by th’ industrious art,
Insacred distillations) then that Nectar,
Which Hebe bare, when Ioue did most affect her.
(1269–1276)

This scene and speech, full of enticing objects/idols, is strikingly similar to

Volpone’s seduction of Celia in act three, scene seven of Ben Jonson’s play.
Both scenes feature a seducer surprising their victim: Alexander leaps out
from a closet and Volpone from his supposed sickbed. There are also a num-
ber of thematic and verbal parallels. Facing the force of Volpone’s attempted
seduction, Celia asks that “Some serene blast me” (III.vii.184). Likewise,
Manfredi says that Alexander will “blast the blossome of my youth” (III.
ii.1366). Volpone promises Celia fantastical food, drink, and gems:

See, here, a rope of pearl; and each more orient

Than that the brave Egyptian queen caroused:
 Antipapal aesthetics and the Gunpowder Plot 107
Dissolve, and drink ’em. See, a carbuncle,
May put you both the eyes of our St Mark;
A diamond would have bought Lollia Paulina,
When she came in like star-light, hid with jewels
That were the spoils of provinces; take these,
And wear, and lose ’em: yet remains an earring
To purchase them again, and this whole state.
A gem but worth a private patrimony
Is nothing—we will eat such at a meal.
The heads of parrots, tongues of nightingales,
The brains of peacocks, and of ostriches
Shall be our food: and could we get the phoenix
Though nature lost her kind, she were our dish.
(III.vii.191–205)39

Barnes reworks the excessive material imagery employed by Volpone, show-

ing that such excess is second nature to Roman Catholicism.40 Alexander’s
references to Hebe and Jove are also suggestive. Hebe is a cupbearer for the
gods and a figure associated with adolescence and puberty.41 Although Hebe
is a female god, she is also sometimes associated with Ganymede, whose
relationship with Jove/Zeus/Jupiter was a byword for homoerotic explora-
tion in the period.42 Such sexual fluidity is also a central component of Vol-
pone’s seduction of Celia. He says that they will “in changed shapes, act
Ovid’s tales,” including Volpone in the part of Jove, until “we have quite
run through / And wearied all the fables of the gods” (III.vii.221–225). This
erotic adoption of “many shapes” (III.vii.233) is taken up with condemna-
tory glee by Barnes. Whereas what Mario Di Gangi calls the “homoerotic
theatricality” of Volpone’s seduction is classicized by Jonson, Barnes rests on
a conception of homoeroticism as effeminate, popish, but also aesthetically
pleasing. Manfredi is positioned by Alexander, figuratively and literally,
as a feminized catamite: “see thy Chamber. . . . Be not asham’d to mount
and venture it, / Here Cupid’s Alter, and faire Venus hill is” (1246–1249).
As in the Celia/Volpone scene, the erotic charge comes from the fluidity of
sexual positions that might be adopted by characters and spectators alike.
As Astor’s brother Phillippo asks, “Is it possible that the Diuell can be so
sweet a dissembler?” (1258) If this scene was designed to titillate the king
and other spectators, then it also had to seduce them too. Perhaps James’s
godly divinity prevented him from affective contamination by this represen-
tation. Still, it is hard not to conclude that in this scene, polemics gave way
to titillation.
Later on, Manfredi and his brother are shown half undressed after a
game of tennis and are poisoned by Alexander for political gain. In order
to ensure their deaths, he exposes their breasts to “Cleopatraes birds”
(2546)—aspics—in a startling parody of the Egyptian queen’s suicide in
108 Adrian Streete
Shakespeare’s play.43 When Alexander conjures the devil to find out who
has murdered his son Candy, the devil complains that he has been called

from strong busines of high state

From sure subuersions and mutations
Of mighty Monarches, Emperors, and Kings,
From plotting bloody feilds and massacres,
Triumphant treasons and assassinates.
(1773–77)

The implication is that Alexander would be better off devoting his time to
such political activities rather than chasing Manfredi and farming the serious
business of warfare and conquest out to his Cain-like son, Caesar. In any
case, when the devil appears again to Alexander in the closing scene, a strik-
ing coup de théâtre makes it clear who the real power belongs to: “hee dis-
covereth the divill sitting in his pontificals” (3069). Subversive papal political
authority is mimetic, being derived from satanic power. Alexander’s exor-
cisms and crossings are dismissed by the Devil as “mere hypocrisie” (3073).
Alexander’s Faustus-like damnation is preceded by a discussion over the
precise wording of the contract that he has signed with the devil.44 Whereas
the former thinks he has seven more years to live, the devil points out that he
has misread the Latin of the “counterparte” (3101) and that his time is up.
The devil is simply better at interpreting ambiguous linguistic signs than the
pope. Although Alexander calls this “Sophistrie” (3118), the attention now
turns to his soul that the devil likens to a “Menstrous cloath / Poluted with
unpardonable sinnes” (3120–21).45 There then follows a theological debate
between the Pope and the Devil where the precise status of man’s creation in
the image of God is subjected to scrutiny. Alexander states that

My soule is a diuine light first created

In likenesse liuely formed to the word,
Which word was God, that God the cause of living causes,
My soule is substance of the liuing God.
(3123–26)

The devil has little time for such aestheticized Neoplatonism. He retorts that
Alexander “hast no part” of God’s likeness because although “thy soule was
first ordayn’d / To good: but by free-will to sinne, thou slave / Hast sold that
soul from happinesse to hell” (3129–32). Ironically, the devil applies Roman
Catholic theology in order to damn the pope: Alexander was saved, has cho-
sen to sin, and so damns himself by his own actions. No self-respecting Prot-
estant would make such arguments about free will and predestination, and
it is easy to imagine James enjoying this scene of theological debate. Again,
Alexander makes the observation that his soul is “figured / ­According to
that Image” of God (3172–73). The devil simply laughs and points out that
 Antipapal aesthetics and the Gunpowder Plot 109
Alexander “didst neuer see, nor canst enjoy” (3186) the goodness that lives
in the soul and that connects the soul to God. Whether or not the devil shifts
theological argument here to a more Calvinistically informed reading of pre-
destination is moot. Alexander is an image with no divine referent: perhaps
he has always been predestined to damnation.
As I have argued elsewhere, the “idea that man is made in God’s image is
a problematic one in early modern England,” and this scene underscores the
point.46 Alexander’s power is based on the aesthetic lure and seduction of the
papal image. Despite his Protestant agenda, Barnes trades off this power too,
sometimes dangerously so. Alexander is destroyed by the fact that the image
is for him a temporary fiction, a mimetic copy whose eventual erasure reveals
the “blacke damnation” (3202) of his soul. This may have struck some in the
audience as an aptly Calvinist sentiment. As the reformer Heinrich Bullinger
put it, “the Empire set vp by the Romishe Antichriste, is onely an Image,
representation, shadow, and as it were a dreame, hauing neuerthelesse some
lykenes of the same.”47 Yet the last, uneasy clause of this sentence is reveal-
ing. Alexander’s soul may have perished and the antichristian images of his
papacy held up to scrutiny. But the political institution of the papacy con-
tinues unabated. As the play acknowledges, its churches still contain “mul-
titudes” (3291). The “tragike myrrour” (3306) presented by The Devil’s
Charter reflects the ongoing political battle with the image of the false church
back to its predominantly Protestant spectators. Antipapal exposure and con-
demnation in the theater are useful polemical fictions, but they are fictions
nonetheless, which stand in lieu of the “mirror” promised by 2 Corinthians
3:18. Aesthetically, there is no such thing as the perfect Protestant image.
During the seventeenth century, the aesthetic (and eschatological) divi-
sion between the fallen image and the true image that would eventually
be revealed was not of equal significance to all dramatists. Nevertheless,
it did inform the development of theatrical aesthetics during the century.
Dramatists living under Protestantism traded in signs as part of their the-
atrical practice. They pursued an aesthetically driven profession in a reli-
gious culture that taught its subjects to approach the aesthetic object with
caution. Whether playwrights used those signs to point out the dangers of
Roman Catholicism, to question maleficent practices, to explore the nature
of miracles, or to consider humanity’s relationship to the natural world,
few theatrical explorations of the aesthetic were free entirely from the ten-
sions considered in this chapter. Later under Charles I and Archbishop Wil-
liam Laud, the church experimented with the “beauty of holiness” and the
aesthetics of many dramatists often reflected those innovations. Yet there
were many who found this a step too far, and we can also discern politi-
cal criticism of Laudian aesthetics from the 1630s until the closing of the
theaters in 1642. It is worth noting that in the period between 1639 to
1642, the pastoral tragic-comic mode popular with many Caroline drama-
tists was challenged by a wave of Italianate tragedies where the aesthetic
concerns of earlier playwrights like Webster and Middleton were rejoined.48
110 Adrian Streete
The dualistic nature of Protestant aesthetics remained a dramatic and politi-
cal provocation.

Notes
1 See Patrick Collinson, From Iconoclasm to Iconophobia: The Cultural Impact
of the Second English Reformation, The Stenton Lecture (Reading: University of
Reading Press, 1986).
2 Margaret Aston, England’s Iconoclasts, vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988)
and Broken Idols of the English Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2016); Huston Diehl, Staging Reform, Reforming the Stage: Protestant-
ism and Popular Theater in Early Modern England (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1997); Michael O’Connell, The Idolatrous Eye: Iconoclasm and Theater
in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
3 Paul Whitfield White, Theatre and Reformation: Protestantism, Patronage and
Playing in Tudor England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), and
Drama and Religion in English Provincial Society (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 2008); Beatrice Groves, Texts and Traditions: Religion in Shake-
speare, 1592–1604 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007).
4 Janet Clare, Art Made Tongue Tied by Authority: Elizabethan and Jacobean
Dramatic Censorship (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990); Hugh
Gazzard, “An Act to Restrain Abuses of Players (1606),” The Review of English
Studies 61, no. 251 (2010): 495–528.
5 Alison Shell, Shakespeare and Religion (London: Arden Shakespeare/Blooms-
bury, 2015); Hannibal Hamlin, The Bible in Shakespeare (Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 2013); Adrian Streete, Protestantism and Drama in Early Modern
England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), Early Modern Drama
and the Bible: Contexts and Readings, 1570–1625 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Mac-
millan, 2012), and Apocalypse and Anti-Catholicism in Seventeenth-Century
England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017).
6 See Russ Leo, “Scripture and Tragedy in the Reformation,” in The Oxford
Handbook of the Bible in Early Modern England, c.1530–1700, ed. Kevin Kil-
leen, Helen Smith, and Rachel Willie (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015),
498–517. Pope Joan does appear in a 1680 play by Elkanah Settle called The
Female Prelate and her legend was well known in early modern England—see
Craig Rustici, The Afterlife of Pope Joan: Deploying the Popess Legend in Early
Modern England (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006).
7 See E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, 4 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1951); Annals of English Drama, 975–1700, ed. Alfred Harbage, rev. Samuel
Schoenbaum (London: Methuen, 1964); Martin Wiggins with Catherine Rich-
ardson, British Drama, 1533–1642: A Catalogue, 6 vols. (Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 2011–2015); Records of Early English Drama (Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 1979-Present).
8 See Lost Plays in Shakespeare’s England, ed. David McInnis and Matthew
Steggle (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); Streete, Apocalypse, 41–46.
9 Extant plays from 1500–1660 number a little over one thousand texts—An
Index of Characters in Early Modern English Drama Printed Plays, 1500–1660,
ed. Thomas L. Berger, William C. Bradford, and Sidney L. Sondergard (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
10 Existing in two versions, the A and the B text, the last of which has more extended
antipapal scenes, Doctor Faustus is one of the most frequently performed of
early modern plays and so is responsible for keeping the pope “onstage” during
the period with which this chapter is concerned.
 Antipapal aesthetics and the Gunpowder Plot 111
11 The pope appears frequently onstage during the Popish Plot of the late 1670s
and early 1680s. Highly theatrical pope burning precessions in London featured
effigies of popes and sometimes dramatic scenes.
12 See Jonathan Scott, England’s Troubles: Seventeenth-Century English Politi-
cal Instability in European Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2000).
13 See Jonas Barish, The Anti-Theatrical Prejudice (Berkeley: University of Califor-
nia Press, 1981) and Laura Levine, Men in Women’s Clothing: Anti-­Theatricality,
1579–1642 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
14 See Shell, Shakespeare and Religion, 32–38. She also notes that many post-­
Tridentine Roman Catholics would have shared the concerns of the antitheatri-
calists, 40–41.
15 Donna B. Hamilton, Anthony Munday and the Catholics, 1560–1633 (Alder-
shot: Ashgate, 2005).
16 Stephen Gosson, Playes Confuted in fiue Actions [. . .] (London: Thomas Gos-
son, 1582), sigs. B4v-B5r.
17 Andrew Willet, Hexapia In Danielem [. . .] (Cambridge, MA: Cantrell Legge,
1610), 458; John Rainoldes, Th’overthrow of Stage Playes [. . .] (Middelburg:
Richard Schilders, 1599), 161; Philip Stubbes, The Theater of The Popes Mon-
archie [. . .] (London: Thomas Dawson, 1585), sig. E1r.
18 Henry Estienne, The Stage of Popish Toyes: Conteining Both Tragicall and Com-
icall Partes [. . .] (London: Henry Binneman, 1581), 84. See also Gosson, Playes
Confuted, sig. B7v.
19 Shell, Shakespeare and Religion, 40. Shell also notes how the antitheatricalists
draw on patristic criticisms of theatre (38).
20 Gosson, Playes Confuted, sig. D4v. Gosson dedicated an earlier tract to Sir
Philip Sidney; Sidney took umbrage at the dedication and Gosson’s argument,
which he refuted in his Defence of Poetry. This passage shows Gosson standing
his ground against Sidney’s attack—Sidney regularly calls poetry an “image”
in the Defence. See Sir Philip Sidney, “A Defence of Poetry,” in English Renais-
sance Literary Criticism, ed. Brian Vickers (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003),
337–91.
21 See Alison Shell, Catholicism, Controversy and the English Literary Imagina-
tion, 1558–1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 23–55.
22 Gosson, Playes Confuted, sig. D8v-E1r.
23 Ibid., sig. E1r.
24 Ibid., sig. F1v.
25 See, for example, Gary Wills, Witches and Jesuits: Shakespeare’s Macbeth
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 24–25, 36–79, 137–38, and 152–54;
and John D. Cox, The Devil and the Sacred in English Drama, 1350–1642
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 182, 189.
26 While it would be difficult to argue that a positive Protestant aesthetic emerges
from these plays, they are part of a broader narrative about how anti-­Catholicism
is used politically onstage during the seventeenth century. See Streete,
Apocalypse.
27 On the Gunpowder Plot, see Philip Caraman, Henry Garnet 1555–1606, and
the Gunpowder Plot (London: Longman, 1964); Wills, Witches and Jesuits; and
Antonia Fraser, The Gunpowder Plot: Terror and Faith in 1605 (London: Wei-
denfeld, 1996).
28 Julia Gasper, The Dragon and the Dove: The Plays of Thomas Dekker (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1990); Wills, Witches and Jesuits; Susan Krantz, “Thomas
Dekker’s Political Commentary,” The Whore of BabylonStudies in English Liter-
ature, 1500–1900 35, no. 2 (1995): 271–91; Frances E. Dolan, Whores of Bab-
ylon: Catholicism, Gender, and Seventeenth-Century Culture (Ithaca: Cornell
112 Adrian Streete
University Press, 1999); Richard Dutton, Ben Jonson, Volpone and the Gun-
powder Plot (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
29 Barlow, The Sermon Preached at Paules Cross, the Tenth Day of Novem-
ber . . . (London: Mathew Law, 1606), sig. A3r. The sermon is twice referred to
in the preface as a “performance.”
30 Krantz, “Thomas Dekker’s Political Commentary,” 284.
31 Thomas Dekker, The Whore of Babylon, in The Dramatic Works of Thomas
Dekker, vol. 2, ed. Fredson Bowers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1955).
32 John Parker, The Aesthetics of the Antichrist: From Christian Drama to Christo-
pher Marlowe (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2007), x.
33 William Middleton, Papisto-Mastix, Or The Protestants Religion Defended
[. . .] (London: T.P., 1606), 194.
34 Barnes served in the 1590s with that hero of militant Protestantism, the Earl of
Essex.
35 On portents and apocalypse, see Alexandra Walsham, Providence in Early Mod-
ern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 170.
36 Barnabe Barnes, The Devil’s Charter, ed. R. B. McKerrow, Materialien zur
Kunde des älteren Englischen Dramas (Louvain: A. Uystpruyst, 1904).
37 Thomas Kirchmeyer [Naogeorgus], The Popish Kingdome, or Reigne of Anti-
christ, Written in Latine Verse [. . .], trans. Barnabe Googe (London: Henrie
Denham for Richard Watkins, 1570), 11.
38 Dolan, Whores of Babylon, 54.
39 Ben Jonson, Volpone, in The Alchemist and Other Plays, ed. Gordon Campbell
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).
40 Jonson was a convert to Roman Catholicism, and so there may be an added
political dimension to these allusions. See Dutton, Ben Jonson.
41 See the entry for Hebe in The Oxford Dictionary of Classical Religion and Myth,
ed. Simon Price and Emily Kearns (Oxford and New York: Oxford University
Press, 2004), 241.
42 For the erotic overtones of such references see Mario DiGangi, The Homoerotics
of Early Modern Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 51–53
and 75–78.
43 The scene also draws on the polemical commonplace that links corrupt popish
religion with effeminacy and sodomy, but presumably, titillation here also out-
weighed any offense that may have been taken by the king.
44 In Marlowe’s play, Faustus makes a similar pact with the devil and is dragged
down to hell in the final act. Marlowe’s discussion of hell, salvation, and other
theological matters has often been discussed by critics in relation to Protestant-
ism generally and to Calvinism specifically.
45 The reference to the “menstruous cloth” is biblical (Isaiah 30:22) and as the
marginal note in the Geneva Bible notes, it was understood in the context of a
general condemnation of idolatry.
46 Streete, Protestantism and Drama, 2.
47 Heinrich Bullinger, A Hvndred Sermons Vpon the Apocalypse [. . .] (London:
Iohn Daye, 1573), 184.
48 See Streete, Apocalypse, 182.
7 Unintended aesthetics?
The artistic afterlives of
Protestant iconoclasm
Sarah Covington

St. Martin’s Cathedral in Utrecht was founded in 630 and, over the nine
hundred years that followed, witnessed its share of destruction by storms
and fires, Viking and Norman attacks, and the cruel erosions of time. But
the church’s most enduring onslaughts would arrive in the sixteenth century,
when Calvinists proceeded to inflict punishment on the idols within. Today,
one of the most famous mementos of those turbulent years is an altarpiece
of men and women whose faces have been bludgeoned away to whiteness,
even though their bodies are left largely intact, leaving a spooky impression
of masked figures that are present and absent at the same time (Figure 7.1).
But why is this altarpiece still here at all, announcing its damage? If these
statues were perceived as idols, why were they not destroyed altogether? By
the same token, and for those whose iconoclastic beliefs had presumably
softened through the centuries, why were they not restored later on?
Many objects and images did, in fact, vanish during that time. But those
which remained, in however battered a form, carried a more powerful mes-
sage, attesting to their fallibility as well as their stubborn endurance. And
over the centuries, those fragments assumed new meanings in turn. On
one hand, they simply served to memorialize the Beeldenstorm, or “statue
storm” of those years; yet while the iconoclasts might have thrown the ham-
mer down on them, the statues also marked an instance of what Joseph
Leo Koerner, following Bruno Latour, has called “iconoclash,” a “mix of
having [an] image and having done with an image, thus leaving a damaged
thing which “also stubbornly stands ‘there.’ ”1 Images, for Koerner, in this
sense “never go away; instead they persist and function by being perpetually
destroyed”—and by being received in altogether different ways.2
In this chapter, I hope to touch on the manner in which the material
legacy of early modern iconoclasm ultimately contributed to a new aesthet-
ics, especially as it was located in scarred, defaced, or effaced images and
spaces.3 Many scholars have explored this topic, but I also seek to address
the question as to whether a distinctly “Protestant” aesthetics resulted in
turn, and specifically in modernity and modernist art. In other words, and
borrowing from the title of Brad Gregory’s book The Unintended Refor-
mation (the conclusions of which I am not endorsing), I hope to raise the
114 Sarah Covington

Figure 7.1 St. Martin’s Cathedral, Utrecht

question as to whether could one speak of an “unintended” aesthetics that

came to inspire later artistic practitioners and theoreticians and that grew
out of the desecrations of the early modern period.4 In the lives and after-
lives of smashed debris, can one, in other words, find rich traces of a new
and modern aesthetics? And is this aesthetics necessarily a Protestant one?
Modern art, it should be stated, is not necessarily or wholly traceable
to the iconoclastic impulse of the early Protestants, even though Paul
 Unintended aesthetics? 115
Tillich—as will be seen—very much thought that it was. Scholars have
argued on behalf of the connections, for example, between Judaism and
abstract art; Catholics themselves, including the art theoretician and teacher
Josef Albers and the priest and artist Marie-Alain Couturier, could also very
much embrace the modernist project.5 But many Protestant reformers, in
destroying the idols, questioned what a post-iconoclastic art was to be while
unintentionally opening up a channel to different aesthetic expressions and
creating something new in the process. Most, if not all, of the early modern
Protestants would have recoiled from the fetish for the innovative, or the
“iconoclastic” anti-traditionalism embraced by modernists. But traditional-
ism is exactly what they broke, not least in mutilated objects that would
escape the theological narrative in which they were contained. Even more,
those objects and images could be as powerful in their fragmentation as they
had been in their totality, compelling spectators to redefine their assump-
tions about the nature of beauty itself and to view those wreckages through
the philosophical prism of their own very different historical time and place.

Cleansing the temple

Protestant iconoclasts, of course, were preceded by Islamic and Byzantine
debates around images and idolatry; but even within western Christendom
prior to the Reformation, the destruction of religious images or objects was
not unknown. In the twelfth century, Bernard of Clairvaux had castigated
“luxurious cult images,” while pious iconoclasm was also common, as the
faithful took to gouging out the eyes of Judas in representations of the Last
Supper.6 Relics could also be destroyed, if proved ineffective or revealed
to be fraudulent replacements of dog or sheep bones standing in for the
real thing. The potency of the object was often questioned, with ineffec-
tive saints being radically demoted and “humiliated” by being placed on
the ground, in the dirt. And, of course, the late medieval worship of Jesus’s
wounded, shattered body could also be considered recognition (and in this
case celebration) of a kind of iconoclasm, an instance of God, quite literally,
destroyed, even if his power was paradoxically affirmed by his very own
bodily devastation.7
The Protestant confessional faiths that arose in the sixteenth century,
however, brought the debate around images to an altogether more height-
ened pitch, and it is worth revisiting some of this history before we return
to the broken image and object in particular.8 As Hans Belting has put it, in
their advocacy of “a church without images,” many reformers undertook
iconoclastic actions that also served as a kind of “applied criticism” of those
images.9 By the same token, contempt for the profligacy and excesses of
the Roman Catholic Church was evident as well, whenever image-breakers
sought to expose the superstitious and miraculous powers of objects by
reducing them to no more than wood, stone, or gold. The word was now to
prevail over the image as the key nodal point connecting the believer to the
116 Sarah Covington
scriptural message of Christ; by reducing statues, paintings, or other objects
to little more than damaged matter, iconoclasts could in this way extin-
guish their function as holy mediators. Max Weber’s “disenchantment of the
world” appears in great part to have begun in this way, even if Protestants,
it should be noted, continued to utilize images in the form of illustrations in
printed pamphlets, propagandistic woodcuts or paintings that carried their
own reformulated religious (and secular) messages. Not least, and as oth-
ers in this volume have argued, Protestants articulated powerful theological
visions of God’s engagement with the world that hardly amount to blanket
charges of “disenchanting” it.
Reformers were therefore not at all against images, but rather the use of
them as objects of veneration. As Christiane Andersson demonstrates in this
volume, Luther, who rejected iconoclasm, believed it was unthinkable to live
without images, just as “[i]t is impossible for me to hear or bear [the pas-
sion of Christ] in mind without forming mental images of it in my heart.”10
At the same time, he also wrote, “We must permit the images to remain [in
church], but preach vigorously against the wrong use of them.” Luther was
also, of course, a great composer of hymns—another artistic expression of
divine presence—which rendered psalms and his own verses into a vernacu-
lar that would strengthen the faith of men and women (and children) across
all strata of society, inside and outside the church.11 The result of his efforts,
as Christopher Boyd Brown puts it, led even Catholic critics to recognize
that Luther “had destroyed more souls with his hymns than with all his
writing and preaching.”12 Luther’s more radical Protestant contemporar-
ies, however, thought otherwise, their opposition to both music and images
being equally fervent. For Andreas Karlstadt, music sung in Latin, or the
chant or polyphonic style, was not only mystification, “draw[ing] the mind
away from God,” but also “noise and nothing more.” Perhaps monophony,
in accordance with “one God, one baptism, one faith, one song,” could
be acceptable, but anything more complex than that was to be relegated
to princely courts or theater.13 Meanwhile, Ulrich Zwingli also objected to
incorporating music into worship services, on the grounds that it was not
(allegedly) used in the early church or sanctioned by God.14
Calvin for his part recognized that the Levites might have practiced
instrumental music, but in the wake of Christ, it was “not now to be used
in public thanksgiving.”15 Singing the psalms without instrumentation was
permissible, but organs, for example, reeked of popery. When it came to
religious images, art for Calvin could exist and flourish in society at large
as long as it did not end up in a church or depict God, Christ, the apostles,
saints, or crucifixes.16 As Alain Besançon once put it, Calvin’s belief was
based on the conviction that “God does not teach through simulacra but
through his own word.”17 Calvin, however, did recognize, with Augustine,
that art could move the heart in a positive sense—that is, if its emotional
qualities did not lead to idolatry, or be “abused . . . [and] perverted to
our destruction.”18 The largely iconoclastic stance of the Calvinists (and
 Unintended aesthetics? 117
Puritans) would in this way contribute to art’s changing contextual and
historical development as it was pushed out of the churches (and, one might
add, into the marketplace), focusing instead on the creator’s great “book of
nature” as expressed, for example, in Dutch landscape art.19
The iconoclastic impulse was also manifested across drama and literature,
as Adrian Streete and others have demonstrated. John Milton’s poetry and
prose were famously and fiercely iconoclastic, with his “Eikonoklastes” serv-
ing as a hammer to smash Charles I’s Eikon Basilike. “Milton Iconoclastes,”
as David Loewenstein has referred to him, was not simply a destroyer of
idols and a man driven “by an obsession with idolatry,” however, but also
a writer who used such destruction toward creative and regenerative ends.20
He might have enjoined his readers to “throw down your Nebuchadnezzars
Image and crumble it like the chaffe of the Summer threshing floores” or
“rip up the wounds of Idolatry and Superstition with a laughing counte-
nance,”21 but as with the Utrecht statues, he also left his idols standing, if in
recalibrated forms.22
Catholics, in responding to the Protestants, reformed their own artistic
traditions by choosing the opposite track; that is, by saturating the world
with highly sensuous baroque images and sculptures, even though decades
earlier, Erasmus, for example, had protested against the cult of images and
relics.23 Jesuits were especially notable in applying their own meditative tra-
ditions, which engaged the senses, to promote a new kind of art that empha-
sized devotional images and their positive functions.24 But Catholic art could
serve an ideological and propagandistic function as well, expressed in exu-
berant sculptures such as Bernini’s soaring Ecstasy of St Teresa, which thrust
viewers heavenward to dizzying emotional and spiritual heights, persuading
them in the process against the message of the heretics.25
As for Protestants in such regions as the northern Netherlands, the post-
iconoclasm challenge, as Mia Mochizuki has pointed out, centered on the
question of how to paint, sculpt, or decorate “for an iconophobic public: in
other words, how to replace one image with that of a different and accepta-
ble nature.”26 Some visual images did reenter the church, “rehabilitated” to
serve new purposes, just as scriptural words were now emphasized on walls
and in the paintings or engravings of Lucas Cranach and Albrecht Dürer.27
Transformations in artistic thinking also directly resulted from the purges.
Iconoclastic spaces, for example, could remain bare and whitewashed; while
Mochizuki has pointed out that whitewashing had been undertaken long
before the Reformation, intended as it was for church maintenance and
sometimes artistic contrast, in the new context, the result evolved into an
aesthetic of its own: a “white revolution,” as Victoria George has put it.28
Traditionally thought to be the most utilitarian coat of paint, the term
whitewash was also, ironically, used negatively in the Bible, with Ezekiel
and Jesus metaphorically describing whitewashed walls (or in Jesus’s case,
tombs) as covering the falseness within. But the metaphor swung the other
way as well, with whitewash connoting the very opposite: the cleansing of
118 Sarah Covington
the falseness of idolatrous clutter, the opening up of light; it also served to
remind viewers of the church’s essential and only functions, preaching and
prayer. White, in other words, assumed a central role, obviating any visual
distraction, turning the church into a communicative linguistic space of spir-
itual self-examination while also emphasizing the congregation. Eventually,
white also came to be seen as the bearer of a later and different aesthet-
ics, with Goethe, born into a Lutheran family but heterodox in his beliefs,
declaring white to be a noncolor, an unadulterated pure form: a view held
by Hegel as well. Whitewashed churches in this way might have conveyed a
powerful Christian message, but they would also evolve to heavily influence
the modernists, as will be seen.

Objects broken and persisting

But what of the broken things? The more zealous Protestant confessions
might have sought to disenchant images and buildings, to expose them all
as “knavish and seductive blocks of wood” or, with saints’ images, “Devils
heads.”29 The very act of destruction, however, was charged with mean-
ing and emotion, as religious images were ritualistically “broken, burned,
toppled, beheaded, hanged,” thrown into “garbage dumps, rubble heaps,
pigsties,” or subject to the onslaught of spit, urination, and defecation.30
By inflicting such violence, particularly on communicative channels such
as eyes, ears, mouths, or, in the Utrecht example, entire heads, iconoclasts
sought to sever the current that flowed between religious objects and those
who venerated them. As Mochizuki has put it with regard to the hacked-
away face of Saint Veronica in St. Bavo’s Cathedral, through its destruc-
tion, the religious message was now “forever muted by a display of visceral
rage,” the relief’s “validity” as a devotional image now transformed “into a
sign of its attempted negation and destruction.”31
Much of this dismantling was often very systematic, accompanied by top-
down legal decrees and military personnel tasked with keeping any popu-
lar rioting in check.32 Eamon Duffy, for example, has described the case of
sixteenth-century England, where the attack on images, objects, and monas-
teries was sanctioned by the royal will, beginning with Henry VIII, working
through the agency of his reform-minded secretary Thomas Cromwell.33
Henry for the most part, however, allowed images to remain in churches,
even after his break with Rome; despite this permissibility, a contemporary
ballad captured the persistent spirit of iconoclasm when it described the
wayward state of those “beguiled with idols / with feigned miracles and
lies / by the devil and his doctors / the pope and his proctors.” But now, the
ballad continued, “to Christ let us all pray! / To plucke it up, by the hard
root / and utterly to banish it away.” Iconoclasm in this sense functioned
as a gesture made for and in the name of Christ, as it “plucked” away the
idols to reveal the truth which those Romish trinkets and baubles had so
long been obstructing.
 Unintended aesthetics? 119
The famous Rood of Grace in the English abbey of Boxley went in for
special abuse under Henry’s reign; a crucifix found in the entranceway to
the church at the Cistercian abbey, it displayed the figure of Jesus, whose
eyes, lips, and body were said to move, much to the public’s amazement.
The object, however, was exposed as a hoax, an example of the “juggling
act” of monks who were accused of manipulating the figure’s movements by
hidden mechanical means. In other words, what had once appeared to be
fully animate was actually made up of sticks, strings, levers, wood, and the
maneuverings of deceiving monks. But rather than be cast aside, the rood
was hauled away for public abuse and formal denunciation in Maidstone
on market day, after which it was burned in a fire. If such an idol consisted
of simple wood and monkish manipulations, then the ritualistic and “judi-
cial” action would not have been necessary, nor would the “execution” by
fire.34 Actions such as these might have taken place in earlier times, but in
the context of the Reformation, the exposure of the Rood of Grace served
an entirely different purpose, as a synecdoche that stood in for the larger
mendacity of the Catholic Church and one whose power had to be exposed
and thereby crushed.
Objects also had to undergo these savage rituals in order to convince
those still wavering that they were well and truly idols and ineffective ones
at that. A truly miraculous crucifix or statue, after all, would resist such an
assault, and especially so if it was divinely protected. The utilitarian after-
life of these objects was also significant and pointed, with wood panels, for
example, being recycled into tabletops or cupboard doors. But always—and
significantly—they had to go through the ritual of defacement before they
were put up for purchase. Not only did this prevent their reuse as objects
of veneration, but so, too, did it create distance and doubt in the viewer,
reminding him or her of their true nature as tarnished things and nothing
more. Even then, iconoclasts could sometimes appear to express uneasi-
ness as they damaged the ostensibly useless and unholy object. A fifteenth-
century wooden panel titled Christ before Pilate, for example, was ordered
for destruction by Edward VI, England’s self-styled Josiah, yet the damage
that ensued was concentrated around the less significant parts of the paint-
ing and avoided most (although not all) of Christ’s face: evidence, as one
scholar has suggested, of a conflict between individual conscience and belief
and of the injunctions of the state he or she ostensibly obeyed (Figure 7.2).
Images and objects in this way were alive after all, but even when they
were “murdered,” a flicker of life, a “face behind the defacement,” remained
behind.35 After the fires of the reformation had passed, some sought to bring
these objects fully back to life, to wholeness: the broken windows of Can-
terbury Cathedral, for example, underwent renovation in the eighteenth
century, although many viewed the “corrections” of a restored building or
object as simply another form of iconoclasm. John Ruskin, for example,
would later observe the restoration of churches after the French Revolution
and describe their “renewed” life as destruction in itself. “It is impossible, as
120 Sarah Covington

Figure 7.2 Christ before Pilate art under attack close-up. The Fitzwilliam Museum,
Cambridge

impossible as to raise the dead, to restore anything that has ever been great
or beautiful in architecture,” he wrote.36 Instead of returning an object to its
pristine idolatrous state, the perception now was that a kind of authenticity
was lost in a restoration’s “vandalism of completion,” with even a small
alteration viewed as reflecting an altogether illusory desire to bring back
what was irrevocably gone.

Ruination
We see in Ruskin’s appraisal evidence of new cultural movements, including
a late antiquarianism and Romanticism that placed these wrecked buildings
and objects within new interpretive frames which celebrated the melancholy
and sometimes sublime beauty of things made partial by damage or time.
There was nothing uniquely or overtly “Protestant” about these new aes-
thetic sensibilities, but the fragments that iconoclasts left behind allowed
latter-day observers to interpret them anew. This sensibility was most evi-
dent when it came to ruins, many of which had been monasteries or former
churches destroyed or left to neglect in the wake of the Reformation.37 The
 Unintended aesthetics? 121
beauty of ruins for their own sake was noted before the Reformation, by
Renaissance humanists whose interest in antiquity opened their eyes to that
age’s endurance in the broken stones scattered about in Rome. Renaissance
humanists also appreciated the organic beauty of the fragment, maintaining,
in the words of Rebecca Comay, that “the whole is discernible in each of
its members, as ruins survive their own mutilation, and the fragment is the
cipher of the absent or unattainable totality.”38
By the eighteenth century, ruins came to be viewed as rigorous rather than
inert, active in survival rather than passive in decay. As Robert Ginsberg has
put it, they were “indifferent to their former life” even as they “harvest[ed]
a new life” in the form of floors eroding into the earth, or weeds and vegeta-
tion pushing through the cracks.” “Reborn from the ground up,” Ginsberg
continues, they were now “free to be creative in [their] own terms,” remind-
ing us that life goes on amid the dereliction: an aesthetic and philosophical
state best captured by Caspar David Friedrich in his paintings of ruins39
(Figure 7.3). Aesthetic pleasure in this way emerged from the strangeness
and familiarity of ruins, their often eerie stillness rendering them outside of
time or at least the present day.
Yet ruins were very much a product of history and social conflict—and
iconoclasm—which many antiquarians and Romantics could neglect. For
those who traveled to Ireland in the eighteenth century, it could appear that
a broken and desolate monastery was another Romantic Wordsworthian

Figure 7.3 Caspar David Friedrich, Klosterruine Eldena (ca. 1825)

122 Sarah Covington
ruin, representing time’s sad and gradual passage; for those not given to aes-
thetic and philosophical ruminations, the same monastery evoked instead
the memory of puritan violence and colonial destruction, and a different
kind of pain than that experienced by the traveler.40 The folklore of ruins,
which prevailed in Ireland, captured these sentiments, as it described ghost
monks haunting the skeletal abbeys or church bells buried to prevent their
destruction, rendering the soundscape silent. On the other hand, it was
believed that those broken bells would emerge from the depths and ring
again at the end of time, restoring the true church once again. In this sense,
the iconoclastic impulse served not as a disenchantment but a reenchant-
ment of fractured objects, this time on other terms.
Whether ruins and other broken objects were interpreted through Irish
folklore or high Romanticism, they were placed within new narrative struc-
tures that departed from the motives underlying their original destruc-
tion. But the sense of the animated fragment that survives its assault still
remained. The French Revolution, which inspired the next great wave of
iconoclasm after the Reformation, witnessed officially sanctioned and popu-
lar outbursts of image and object destruction, even if many scholars have
argued that these acts constituted vandalism rather than iconoclasm per se
(and they were certainly not Protestant). Rousseau played a role in inspir-
ing these impulses, when he wrote of “the monument of vanity destroyed
for utility”: a rallying cry adapted for a new age, “vanity” referring not to
popish objects and images but to the fripperies of luxury (the “enemy of
equality”), and “utility” now replacing the early church as the ideal state to
be (re)achieved.41 With the Revolution, attacks on objects and images were
therefore spiritually “diluted” and more widespread, their annihilation now
intended to send a message to the king and the ancien régime society which
had held them in so much favor. But French revolutionaries, like the more
ardent Protestants, also left fragments standing as messages for posterity. As
Linda Nochlin has put it, “[t]he fragment, for the Revolution and its art-
ists, rather than symbolizing nostalgia for the past, enact[ed] the deliberate
destruction of that past, or, at least, a pulverization of what were perceived
to be its repressive traditions.” The “recycling of the vandalized fragments
of the past for allegorical purposes” in this way “functioned as [a] Revolu-
tionary strategy”42—just as the detritus left behind by iconoclastic Protes-
tants served its own strategic purpose, in reminding spectators of a tradition
that had to be destroyed.

Iconoclasm and modernism

The iconoclasm (or vandalism) of the French Revolution yielded to a new
kind of sacred visual language—particularly around Napoleon—just as
the Romanticism which persisted through the nineteenth century contin-
ued to nostalgically attach itself to the wreckages of a long-vanished world.
Even so, and as William Dyrness and Robert Crawford have written, the
 Unintended aesthetics? 123
iconoclastic wave that had begun with the reformation continued to ignite a
“modern creative process,” with its emphasis on “[distilling] truth free of all
imaginative decoration.”43 It is this line of connection from the Protestant
impulse toward purification to the modernist embrace of both the abstract
“new” and the “primitive” that I wish to briefly and finally trace.
The iconoclastic program of twentieth-century artists could encompass
heterodoxy, transgression, disruption, primitivism, an embrace of the mod-
ern, and a revolt against tradition and religion (including the Protestant reli-
gion). But modernism’s various movements also borrowed from the same
language of Protestant iconoclasm to justify the need to destroy the old and
false creations and to banish them for the sake of a greater purity. As early
as 1894, Marcel Schwob wrote that “[in order to] imagine a new art, one
must break the ancient art. And so the new art appears as a kind of icono-
clasticism” [sic].44 Meanwhile, Picasso described his own work as “a sum of
destructions,” while the Fluxus impresario (and neo-Dadaist) George Maci-
unas overtly cited iconoclasm as an influence on the movement, although
in his case, it was Byzantine, not Protestant.45 Even Protestant Old Masters
came in for attack, not for their faith but for their place in a tradition that
had to now be iconoclastically overhauled; Marcel Duchamp, in the Green
Box, in this way advised those who wished to work in readymades that they
should “[u]se a Rembrandt as an ironing board.”46
The great Protestant theologian Paul Tillich most famously drew a con-
nection between early modern iconoclasm and the spirit of modern art. His
own theological perspective embraced the prophetic and the iconoclastic,
especially as the latter pertained to the idols of biblicism, ritualism or a
misused sacramentalism, as well as to images and objects. Tillich also traced
direct connections between early modern Lutheran and Calvinist move-
ments and the modern program of existentialism, a “secular outworking
of the Protestant principle” and one that joined with its earlier predecessor
by “unmasking the gods of tradition.” Even more, existentialism—and art
inflected with existentialism—continued the reformers’ program by placing
“meaninglessness” rather than sin at the forefront, even if both held out an
ultimate hope.47
All art for Tillich was religious, but some art, he stated, might be worthy
of destruction—especially when it came to “church-sponsored art,” with
its “sentimental, beautifying naturalism” as well as its “feeble drawing,”
“poverty of vision,” and “petty historicity.” All of it, he concluded, “calls
for iconoclasm.”48 The most illuminating and “religious” kind of art, for
Tillich, should shatter one’s perceptions and assumptions, reminding spec-
tators of “the shock of transitoriness, the anxiety in which they are aware
of their own finitude, the threat of nonbeing” and, by extension and con-
trast, the notion of God as ultimate Being: the very Protestant condition, in
other words, of the sinner before justifying grace. For Tillich, it was Expres-
sionist art above all that “broke the surface” to open up the depths of the
sinful human condition, just as the fifteenth-century altarpiece of Matthias
124 Sarah Covington
Grünewald, depicting Christ’s shattered body, did the most to convey an
artistic expression of the “pure despairing truth of what happened on Gol-
gotha.”49 A kind of formal and thematic iconoclasm was necessary in order
to reach this effect, and in this regard, Tillich famously described Picasso’s
Guernica as “the most Protestant painting of our time.”50 It was the “radi-
cal” questions the painting asked that aligned it, for Tillich, to the “Protes-
tant principle” and its emphasis on “the infinite distance between God and
man,” its concerns with states of despair even as they pointed to “God’s
unconditional acceptance.”51 Iconoclasm in this way cracked open not only
the subject matter—and put paid to human pretensions and idolatries—but
also the very formal properties of the canvas itself.
Early modern Protestant iconoclasm also led to other modern aesthetic
forms, however unintentionally. Whitewashed churches, for example, reap-
peared as white walls and bare ceilings as the defining trait of modernist
spaces signifying a different kind of newness and purity. As Le Corbusier
was to write, white would clear away the cluttered decorative arts, remov-
ing the “dirty, dark corners” of the previous age; but so would white lead
to a new way of thinking, allowing one to be “precise, to be accurate to
think clearly.” With white paint, “you will throw away what has served
its purpose,” he continued, and in this respect, it was “an important act of
life” and indeed, a “productive morality.”52 Le Corbusier’s ideas of white
inspiring a “mastery of self” were not exactly Protestant, at least in the
early modern sense. But the associations that accrued around white, and
the idea of white as clearing away the “dirty, dark corners”—echoes of the
“dark corners” of popery—did hold connections to a deeper past and its
own iconoclastic acts. Not least, white also became the premiere color of
modern museums, with James Simpson comparing the Museum of Modern
Art to a “Puritan temple,” albeit one that “reactivates the image’s numi-
nous power” by promising to “intercede for us even as it ceaselessly disa-
vows the [abstract] image’s status as representation.”53 Connected to these
principles, of course, was the modern embrace of abstraction, which has
been described as deeply connected to the Protestant (and Judaic) traditions,
with artists such as Mondrian, the son of Calvinist parents whose faith he
rejected, pushing painting to its very limits when he composed his “white
painting” series.54
Fragmentation also persisted and in fact dominated modernity as a meta-
phor, aesthetic quest, and generalized concept. For modernists, and par-
ticularly so after World War I, fragmentation came to represent the state
of a world in pieces, with history now rendered discontinuous, shattered.
Fragmentation as a philosophical concept, articulated most famously by
Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and the postmodernists later on, also
came to embody a rejection of the kind of totality embraced by philosophers
from the ancient Greeks up through Hegel.55 The entirely different histori-
cal and philosophical contexts that produced such thinking were directly
or indirectly expressed through a multitude of artistic channels, from the
 Unintended aesthetics? 125
formal fragmentations of earlier Cubist paintings to collages and found
art to ­Sergei Eisenstein’s dialectical philosophy of film editing and Samuel
­Beckett’s obsession with fragmented speech and the fractured self.
In their quest to clear out the faith-corrupting idols of finite things and
urge trust in the justifying power of God alone, early modern reformers
succeeded in overturning entire religious, political, social, and economic

Figure 7.4 Damaged street kiosk, New York City

126 Sarah Covington
structures that deeply shaped the modern world. Their impact on the arts
and aesthetics—which emerged as a result of iconoclasm and the debate over
images—was no less influential. It was not the intention of Protestant icono-
clasts to create by their acts of destruction fragmentary things of beauty or
nostalgia, nor did they seek to generate aesthetic meaning out of objects
whose falsities they sought to terminate. Their whitewashed churches were
not intended to produce aesthetic pleasure but religious contemplation and
focus on the word of God expressed by the preacher. And while they left the
remains of many objects or images behind as memorializing testaments, the
“memory” that these objects produced was not exactly that which they had
envisioned either.
But those Protestants who did seek out a world without idols still left
behind skeletal monasteries, damaged statues, and broken windows that
provoked reflection about the meaning and symbolism that resided in
damaged materiality. In this way, the destructions of the sixteenth century
unwittingly propelled aesthetic thinking into new directions by refocusing
attention on visual and sensual representations, leaving now-fragmented
and -critiqued objects in a state of ambiguity amenable to new and rich
interpretations. This was not a “Protestant aesthetic,” and yet Protestant
iconoclasm led to transformations in aesthetic thinking and artistic practice,
thereby embedding itself in the latter’s DNA. Even today, an iconoclastic
anxiety exists around images and objects, and the way they obstruct higher
truths or states of transcendence and being. To cite one example, protesta-
tions over visual advertisements and their insidious and ubiquitous power,
as well as their service to the “church” of consumer capitalism, echo early
modern objections to the seductive and mediating fetishes of the Catholic
Church. Present-day iconoclasts, including “hacktivists” who deface web-
sites or vandals who smash the digital advertisement screens of New York
City’s kiosks, represent the latest iterations of these centuries-old protests
(Figure 7.4).56 As for these latter-day smashed or defaced objects, they,
too, live on in a state of iconoclash: their illusions unmasked, their power
stripped bare and debunked. The question remains, however, as to what will
be left in the wake of these damages. And what can take the place of these
dying-yet-still-living idols?

Notes
1 Joseph Leo Koerner, The Reformation of the Image (Chicago: University of Chi-
cago Press, 2004), 12; see also Bruno Latour, “What Is Iconoclash: Or Is There
a World Beyond the Image Wars?” in Iconoclash, ed. Bruno Latour and Peter
Weibel (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002), 14–37.
2 Koerner, 12.
3 Andrew T. Coates, What Is Protestant Art? (Leiden: Brill, 2018).
4 See Michael Kelly, Iconoclasm in Aesthetics (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2003).
5 Josef Albers et al., The Sacred Modernist: Joseph Albers as a Catholic Artist
(Cork: Lewis Glucksman Gallery, Cork, 2012); Joanna M. Weber, “The Sacred
 Unintended aesthetics? 127
in Art: Introducing Father Marie-Alain Couturier’s Aesthetic,” Worship 69
(1995): 243–62.
6 Hans Belting, Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of
Art (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 304.
7 Mitchell Merback, The Thief, the Cross and the Wheel: Pain and the Specta-
cle of Punishment in Medieval and Renaissance Europe (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1999); see also Allie Terry-Fritsch, “Execution by Image: Visual
Spectacularism and Iconoclasm in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe,” in
Death, Torture and the Broken Body in European Art, 1300–1650, ed. John R.
Decker and Mitzi Kirkland-Ives (Farnham, Surrey, England, and Burlington, VT:
Ashgate, 2015), 191–201.
8 See for example Margaret Aston, England’s Iconoclasts, Volume I: Laws Against
Images (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988); Lee Palmer Wandel, Voracious
Idols and Violent Hands: Iconoclasm in Reformation Zurich (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1994).
9 Belting, Likeness and Presence, 459.
10 Martin Luther, Receiving Both Kinds in the Sacrament, ed. and trans. Abdel Ross
Wentz, in Luther’s Works, ed. Helmut T. Lehmann (Philadelphia: Fortress Press,
1959), 36, 258; see also Tarald Rasmussen, “Iconoclasm and Religious Images
in the Early Lutheran Tradition,” in Iconoclasm from Antiquity to Modernity,
ed. Marina Prusac and Kristine Kolrud (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014), 111.
11 Christopher Boyd Brown, Singing the Gospel: Lutheran Hymns and the Success
of the Reformation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005).
12 Ibid., 1.
13 Ibid., 35–36.
14 Frank Burch Brown, Religious Aesthetics: A Theological Study of Making and
Meaning (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 2–3.
15 John Calvin, Commentary on Psalms (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1979), 3, 98.
16 David Freedberg, The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theories of
Response (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); Alain Besancon, The
Forbidden Image: An Intellectual History of Iconoclasm, trans. Jane Marie
Todd (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000); Carlos Eire, War Against
the Idols: The Reformation of Worship from Erasmus to Calvin (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1989), 279ff.; James Noyes, The Politics of Icono-
clasm: Religion, Violence and the Culture of Image Breaking in Christianity and
Islam (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2013), esp. 50–54ff.; Mia Mochizuki, The Neth-
erlandish Image After Iconoclasm, 1566–1672: Material Religion in the Dutch
Golden Age (Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2008).
17 Besançon, Forbidden Image, 187.
18 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeil (Philadel-
phia: The Westminster Press, and The S.C.M. Press Ltd., London, 1960), 112.
19 William A. Dyrness, Reformed Theology and Visual Culture: The Protestant
Imagination from Calvin to Edwards (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2004), 198–202.
20 David Loewenstein, Milton and the Drama of History: Historical Vision, Icono-
clasm, and the Literary Imagination (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1990), 2; Achsah Guibbory, Ceremony and Community from Herbert to Mil-
ton: Literature, Religion and Cultural Conflict in Seventeenth-Century England
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 147.
21 John Milton, “Animadversions,” in Complete Prose Works of John Milton, ed.
Don M. Wolfe (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1953), 1, 700, 903.
22 Daniel Shore, “Why Milton is Not an Iconoclast,” Proceedings of the Modern
Language Association 127 (2012): 22–37.
23 Marcia B. Hall and Tracy E. Cooper, eds., The Sensuous in the Counter-­
Reformation Church (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).
128 Sarah Covington
24 Jeffrey Chipps Smith, Sensuous Worship: Jesuits and the Art of the Early Catho-
lic Reformation in Germany (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), 53.
25 See Evonne Levy, Propaganda and the Jesuit Baroque (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2004).
26 Mochizuki, Netherlandish Image, 127.
27 Bonnie Noble, Lucas Cranach the Elder: Art and Devotion of the German Ref-
ormation (Lanham: University Press of America, 2009), 102.
28 Mochizuki, Netherlandish Image, 1, 41; Victoria George, Whitewash and the
New Aesthetic of the Protestant Reformation (London: Pindar, 2012).
29 Andreas Karlstadt, “On the Removal of Images,” in A Reformation Debate: Karl-
stadt, Emser and Eck on Sacred Images, ed. Bryan D. Mangrum and Giuseppe
Scavizzi (Toronto: Centre for Reformation & Renaissance Studies Publications,
1991), 39–40.
30 Koerner, Reformation of the Image, 105.
31 Mochizuki, Netherlandish Image, 109.
32 Ibid., 106–7.
33 Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England,
c.1400-c.1580 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), 380, 425.
34 Jacqueline Earles, “Iconoclasm, Iconography, and the Altar in the English Civil
War,” in The Church and the Arts, ed. Diana Wood, Studies in Church History
28 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), 313–27.
35 Koerner, Reformation of the Image, 111.
36 John Ruskin, The Seven Lamps of Architecture, vol. 1 (London: Smith, Elder &
Co., 1849), 179.
37 On ruins, see, for example, Walter Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic
Drama (London: NLB, 1977), esp. 177–78; Georg Simmel, “The Ruin,” in Essays
on Sociology, Philosophy and Aesthetics, ed. Kurt H. Wolff (New York: Harper
and Row, 1965); Florence Hetzler, “The Aesthetics of Ruins: A New Category of
Being,” Journal of Aesthetic Education 16, no. 2 (1982): 105–8.
38 Rebecca Comay, “Defaced Statues: Idealism and Iconoclasm in Hegel’s Aesthet-
ics,” October 149 (2014): 123–42, here 135.
39 Robert Ginsberg, The Aesthetics of Ruins (New York: Rodopi, 2004), 56.
40 Kevin Whelan, “Reading the Ruins: The Presence of Absence in the Irish Land-
scape,” in Surveying Ireland’s Past: Multidisciplinary Essays in Honour of Ann-
gret Simms, ed. Howard B. Clarke, Jacinta Prunty, and Mark Hennessy (Dublin:
Geography Publications, 2004), 297–300.
41 Dario Gamboni, The Destruction of Art: Iconoclasm and Vandalism Since the
French Revolution (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997), 264, 35.
42 Linda Nochlin, The Body in Pieces: The Fragment as a Metaphor of Modernity
(London: Thames and Hudson, 1994), 8.
43 William Dyrness, Visual Faith: Art, Theology, and Worship in Dialogue (Grand
Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2001), 59.
44 Quoted in Gamboni, Destruction of Art, 257.
45 Ibid., 319.
46 See Joseph Masheck, Marcel Duchamp in Perspective (Boston: De Capo Press,
2002), 14.
47 George Lindbeck, “An Assessment Reassessed: Paul Tillich on the Reforma-
tion,” The Journal of Religion 63, no. 4 (1983): 376–93, here 381.
48 Paul Tillich, Theology of Culture, ed. Robert C. Kimball (Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1959), 74.
49 Paul Tillich, “Honesty and Consecration in Art and Architecture,” in On Art and
Architecture, ed. John and Jane Dillenberger (New York: Crossroad, 1989), 222.
50 Tillich, On Art and Architecture, 119. See also Michael Palmer, Paul Tillich’s
Philosophy of Art (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1984), 68.
 Unintended aesthetics? 129
51 Paul Tillich, “Protestantism and the Contemporary Style in the Visual Arts,” The
Christian Scholar 40 (1957): 307.
52 Le Corbusier, The Decorative Art of Today (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987),
188.
53 James Simpson, Under the Hammer: Iconoclasm in the Anglo-American Tradi-
tion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 48.
54 Susanne Deicher, Piet Mondrian, 1872–1944: Structures in Space (Koln: Taschen,
1999), 7, 64, 75.
55 Ian Balfour, “ ‘The Whole Is Untrue’: On the Necessity of the Fragment (after
Adorno),” in The Fragment: An Incomplete History, ed. William Tronzo (Los
Angeles: Getty Publications, 2009), 83–91.
56 Rafael Schacter, “An Ethnography of Iconoclash: An Investigation into the Pro-
duction, Consumption and Destruction of Street-art in London,” Journal of
Material Culture 13 (2008): 35–61.
8 Isaac Watts and the
theological aesthetics of
Evangelical Sacred Song
Stephen A. Marini

In the eighteenth century, a new concept of spiritual regeneration, called the

New Birth, overturned traditional morphologies of conversion in English
Protestantism and declared that the direct infusion of the Holy Spirit in
the soul’s affections or emotions was the essential requisite for salvation
and sanctification. The preaching and institutionalization of this soteriologi-
cal imperative, grounded in Jesus’s command to Nicodemus in John 3:1–8,
propelled the Evangelical movement across most Protestant churches and
sects in Anglophone lands, including the American colonies. At roughly the
same time, the closely related Pietist movement coalesced on the European
Continent in both Lutheran and Reformed communions. Whether or not
Evangelicalism and Pietism can credibly be regarded as constituting a “new
Protestantism,” they unquestionably modernized the old in ways that have
had a permanent impact on historic Protestant traditions to the present day.
This chapter focuses on the role of aesthetics in the emergence of Evangeli-
calism through the medium of sacred song. It argues that metrical psalms and
hymns were the first expressive forms to articulate the characteristic beliefs and
devotional practices of Evangelicalism and that they did so through the deploy-
ment of a theological aesthetic that sought to transform the believer’s appro-
priation of scripture and doctrine from a rehearsal of received tradition to the
active articulation of regenerate experience centered on religious affections.
Evangelicalism’s characteristic doctrinal demand that the soul experience
saving grace through religious affections was from the very beginning fused
with theological aesthetics that explained how religious media—first, sacred
song and, by extension, preaching and devotional writing—could be fash-
ioned to convey those affections both from and to God. In this sense, the
theological aesthetics of sacred song were coterminous with salvation theol-
ogy in the origins of Evangelicalism, appropriately enough for a movement
whose name connoted both the Gospel scriptures (evangelium) and their
public proclamation (evangelism).

Isaac Watts: life and legacy

The revolutionary figure in this transformation was the English Independent
(Congregationalist) minister, poet, and theologian Isaac Watts (1674–1748),
 Isaac Watts and Evangelical Sacred Song 131
whose published collections of hymns and metrical psalms in 1707 and
1719 not only gave defining lyrical voice to the nascent Evangelical move-
ment but also elaborated the aesthetic criteria and techniques by which that
voice could be achieved. His stunningly powerful sacred lyrics—­including
“Alas, and did my Saviour bleed?,” “Broad is the Road that leads to
Death,” “Come Holy Spirit, heav’nly Dove,” “From All that dwell below
the Skies,” “He dies! The Friend of Sinners dies!,” “I’m not asham’d to
own my Lord,” “Joy to the World, the Lord is come!,” “There is a Land of
pure Delight,” and “When I survey the wondrous Cross”—moved count-
less believers before, during, and after the great Anglo-American revivals
of mid-century.
Watts was an unlikely religious revolutionary. He was born in South-
ampton, on the south coast of England, on July 17, 1674, into a solidly
middle-class Dissenting family. His father, Isaac Sr., was a teacher and
clothier descended from a long line of Puritans and was imprisoned for
nonconformity three times between 1674 and 1683. Watts’s mother, Sarah
Tanton (Taunton), was the daughter of a Southampton alderman of French
Huguenot background. The family attended the Above Bar Congregational
meeting in Southampton, where Watts senior was a deacon and clerk. After
studying with his father, young Watts learned classical languages and French
and was offered a scholarship to university. Rather than conform to the
Church of England, however, he chose to study at Thomas Rowe’s noted
dissenting academy in London.1 In 1698, he began ministerial service as
assistant to Israel Chauncy at the prosperous Mark Lane Independent meet-
ing in London. It was his good fortune to succeed the unpopular Chauncy
as settled minister there in 1702, a position he held for the rest of his life.2
Poetry was Watts’s earliest intellectual passion. He began writing poems
as a child. It is said that when he complained about the quality of hymns
sung at the Southampton congregation, his father told him to do something
about it, which he did. From 1691 to 1700, his output grew from Latin
verse to English elegies, odes, hymns, and metrical psalms. In a 1700 let-
ter, Watts’s brother Enoch urged him to publish these works in order to
improve the existing canon of praise.3 Many of them eventually appeared
in Watts’s three major poetry collections, Horae Lyricae: Poems, chiefly of
the lyric Kind (1706/1709), Hymns and Spiritual Songs, in Three Books
(1707/1709), and The Psalms of David, Imitated in the Language of the
New Testament (1719).4
Watts managed the publication of his verse carefully, beginning with the
art poems of Horae Lyricae that established his literary reputation. Those
lyrics later earned Watts a place in Samuel Johnson’s Lives of the English
Poets (1779). Johnson, the most demanding of critics, praised the Dissent-
ing poet in no uncertain terms. “His judgment was exact,” Johnson wrote,
“his imagination was vigorous and active, . . . his ear was well-tuned, and
his diction was elegant and copious.”5 Despite the auspicious literary debut
of Horae Lyricae, however, Watts was committed to what he regarded as the
far greater project of renovating Christian praise, which he demonstrated
132 Stephen A. Marini
in verse and theorized in the prefaces and essays appended to Hymns and
Spiritual Songs and The Psalms of David Imitated.
Watts went on to become a leading architect of Evangelical Calvinist the-
ology and patron of the mid-century religious revivals—he wrote the intro-
duction to the first edition of Jonathan Edwards’s Faithful Narrative of the
Surprizing Work of God (1737)6—but Hymns and Psalms constituted his
lasting legacy. They were publishing prodigies, even for the print-saturated
eighteenth century. At least thirty-nine numbered editions each of Hymns
and Spiritual Songs and The Psalms of David were published in Britain
during the eighteenth century, along with numerous reprints after his death
in 1748. Watts was unquestionably the most published writer in colonial
and Revolutionary America, with forty printings of Hymns and fifty-five of
Psalms appearing there before 1800, along with various adaptations and
selections.7
Watts’s influence was permanent. For a century after his passing, his
sacred poetics supplied the model for a host of Evangelical successors,
who created a massive canon of sacred lyrics sung by British and American
Evangelicals through the twentieth century. Even today’s gospel songs and
Contemporary Christian music continue to reflect his aesthetic norms. An
achievement of such scope and popularity can hardly have escaped modern
scholarly notice, and numerous studies of his life and work have appeared
over the last century.8 Two of the most important recent interpretations are
found in J. R. Watson’s The English Hymn: A Critical and Historical Study
(1997) and volume one of Isabel Rivers’s Reason, Grace, and Sentiment:
A Study of the Language of Religion and Ethics in England, 1660–1780
(1991).9 Watson’s literary-critical approach highlights the role of rhetori-
cal craftsmanship in Watts’s poetry, arguing that his “structural” interests
in linguistics, etymology, logical clarity, rhythm, and form account for the
distinctive quality of his verse.10 Rivers interprets Watts as an advocate of
the traditional Christian claim that reason and revelation confirmed each
other, a position that required him to persuade both theological rational-
ists and spiritual experientialists of the adequacy of Evangelical Calvinism’s
“affectional religion.”11
Watson’s Watts is an Enlightened Puritan writing in the Augustan Age;
Rivers’s Watts is a theological centrist trying to bridge the gap between
Evangelical experience and Enlightenment rationalism. There is much to
commend in both views, but neither of them situates Watts’s poetry in his
own theological aesthetics, nor did previous studies. He was certainly capa-
ble of engaging in the emerging philosophical inquiry into aesthetics initi-
ated by Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671–1713) in
his Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (1711).12 Watts’s
poetical works and chief aesthetic writings actually predated Shaftesbury’s
Characteristicks, and his Logick (1725) demonstrated sufficient mastery
of philosophical argument to be assigned as a textbook at Oxford and
­Cambridge.13 Dr. Johnson wrote that “few books have been perused by me
 Isaac Watts and Evangelical Sacred Song 133
with greater pleasure than The Improvement of the Mind (1741),” Watts’s
sequel to Logick, and he recommended it “to whomever has the care of
instructing others.”14
But Watts’s religious vocation was pastoral and scholarly, and his artis-
tic medium was sacred poetry. His critical thinking about praise referenced
emergent Evangelical theology and engaged “the imagination of devotion,”
as Susan Tara Brown has called it, rather than the pioneering “cognitiv-
ist” philosophical aesthetics of Shaftesbury and his German contemporaries
Christian Wolff (1679–1754) and Alexander Baumgarten (1714–62).15
The radicalism of Watts’s “improvement of psalmody” consisted of fun-
damentally recasting what English Protestants called “the matter of praise”
from the translation of biblical song texts to their reappropriation as, and
even replacement by, expressions of regenerate spirituality. This move over-
turned a century and a half of English Reformation practice and required
a new theological explanation of the relationship between sacred scripture,
especially the Psalms, and the Evangelical experience of the New Birth,
as well as a new set of stylistic norms to govern the composition of met-
rical praise. Between 1707 and 1719, Watts fused these requisites into a
synthesis of regenerate epistemology and aesthetic expression that became
foundational to the Evangelicalism of the eighteenth century and beyond.
Long before the New Birth found systematic theological justifications in the
writings of Jonathan Edwards, John Wesley, and Watts himself, the young
poet and theologian declared that the religious affections were the essential
locus of human interaction with the divine and that artful media could both
express salvific experience and mediate it.

Watts and the New Version

A New Version of the Psalms of David by Nahum Tate and Nicholas Brady
embodied the traditional norms of English Protestant praise against which
Watts positioned the new Evangelical hymn.16 Published in 1696, after more
than a century of religious conflict and civil war, the New Version sought
to reestablish the Church of England’s ritual authority, much of which had
been vested in its original sixteenth-century psalter, The Whole Booke of
Psalmes collected into English Meeter, compiled by Thomas Sternhold and
John Hopkins and authorized by Queen Elizabeth I in 1562.17 Calvin taught
that the church should sing only biblical songs because the Holy Spirit’s
inspiration of scripture texts categorically surpassed any praise that sinful
humans could create. Luther had taken the opposite view that Christians
should sing new songs of faith, but Sternhold and Hopkins followed Cal-
vin’s dictum, providing a complete metrical psalter with versions of songs
sung by the Virgin Mary, the angelic host, Zacharias, and Simeon in the
Gospel of Luke and a few medieval lyrics mandated in the Anglican The
Book of Common Prayer. Elizabeth’s imprimatur committed the Church of
England to Calvin’s liturgical theology of biblical praise.18
134 Stephen A. Marini
In a century and a half of service, The Whole Booke of Psalmes had suf-
fered scholarly criticism and literary ridicule. To revitalize Anglican psalmody
under William and Mary, Tate (ca. 1652–1715), the English poet laureate,
and Brady (1659–1726), Chaplain in Ordinary to the queen, collaborated on
the New Version and its musical Supplement (1700/1708).19 In concept and
content, the New Version followed Sternhold and Hopkins in aiming to sup-
ply a reliable metrical translation of the Psalms and “the usual hymns,” now
rendered in the Augustan rhetoric popular after the Glorious Revolution and
set to tunes in the contemporary “court and cathedral” style.20 Tate defended
the standard of biblical praise in An Essay for Promoting of Psalmody, his
combative 1710 defense of the New Version. “Metre and Music” are “but
the Wings of Devotion,” he wrote, while “the Sacred Text itself” was “the
Body and Substance” of psalmody.21 He also voiced the common criticism of
what was now called “the Old Version” for its outdated literary style, con-
demning the “Lameness of the Rhimes, Superfluous Words, Homely Phrases,
Meanness of the Verse, Barbarity and Botching” that Sternhold and Hopkins
had imposed on the beauties of the sacred original.22
The New Version sought to modernize the literary and musical expres-
sion of the Anglican psalter rather than provide a new theological concep-
tion of it. In this sense, it was unquestionably an aesthetic project, but Tate
and Brady followed a highly conventional artistic criterion for their work.
As Tate argued in the Essay, the new psalter sought to engage aristocratic
patrons by presenting the Psalms according to the poetic and literary stand-
ards familiar to those noble personages from the great masters of English
sacred verse and music. Their endorsement, in return, would trickle down to
promote the popular embrace of the new psalter.23 The New Version reiter-
ated the Anglican tradition of biblical praise in worship through styles that
articulated a new dynastic reign and national sensibility. It emphatically did
not undertake to create a new kind of English psalm or hymn. A decade
later, however, Watts’s Hymns and Spiritual Songs proposed to do just that.
A brief comparison of one of the New Version’s “usual hymns” and
Watts’s rendering of it in Hymns and Spiritual Songs suggests the theologi-
cal and aesthetic issues at stake between the two collections of ritual poetry.
Tate and Brady’s version of the Magnificat of Mary, in common meter dou-
bled (8.6.8.6.8.6.8.6.), displays both their principle of biblical explication
and their Augustan poetic diction:

1 My Soul and Spirit, fill’d with Joy,

My God and Saviour praise,
Whose Goodness did from poor Estate
His humble Handmaid raise;
Me bless’d of God, the God of Pow’r,
All Ages shall confess;
Whose Name is holy, and whose Love
His Saints shall ever bless.24
 Isaac Watts and Evangelical Sacred Song 135
The voice is Mary’s own, and the text follows the flow of the Lukan source,
although the opening of line five, “Me bless’d of God,” is consciously archaic,
designed to achieve the intensifying repetition of “God” that follows.
Watts’s version of the Magnificat in common meter (8.6.8.6.) moves far
from these poetic norms. The voice is not the Virgin’s but, rather, that of
a regenerate congregation who “repeat” her song in the same spirit that
inspired her:

1 Our Souls shall magnify the Lord,

In God the Savior we rejoice,
While we repeat the Virgin’s Song,
May the same Spirit tune our Voice.

This relocation brings Mary’s song into present devotion, even as it calls
forth a warning against giving her too much reverence, lest God be unduly
ignored:

3 Let every Nation call her Blest,

And endless Years prolong her Fame;
But God alone must be ador’d:
Holy and Reverend is his Name.25

The sentiment of Watts’s poem is deeply Reformed, suspicious of any rem-

nant of Catholic piety, and eager to press its Evangelical claim that the Holy
Spirit can “tune our Voice” as it did Mary’s.
Watts’s literary strategy in his adaptation of the Magnificat was not
simply to express its biblical text in contemporary poetic style, as Tate
and Brady had done, but, rather, to also appropriate Mary’s song as a
spiritual model for the faithful to experience and imitate. The difference
was profound both aesthetically and theologically. Following the liturgi-
cal mandate of the English Psalter to provide biblical texts for singing
in worship, Tate and Brady kept their versions in the literary context of
the scripture narrative itself. Watts, by contrast, altered the fundamental
relationship of the singer to the scripture text, claiming that believers
could and should sing as these ancient exemplars had done, reworking
their biblical songs to facilitate that goal. His Preface to Hymns and
Spiritual Songs explained why and how he proposed to accomplish these
radical new goals.

Hymns and Spiritual Songs

Watts’s Preface addressed a series of fundamental theological issues and aes-
thetic imperatives for new kinds of hymnody: the act of praise, the mandate
that hymnody express regenerated affections, the avoidance of controver-
sial theology in hymns, and the hymn’s function as a devotional medium
136 Stephen A. Marini
between scripture and spiritual experience. He explained that praise is “that
very Action which should elevate us to the most delightful and divine Sen-
sations,” even sharing those of the angels and the saints, as he claimed in
his hymn on the Magnificat.26 Watts’s carefully calibrated language of “the
most delightful and divine Sensations” articulated the Evangelical theologi-
cal view that believers may experience divine religious affections through
sacred song.
Watts thought that contemporary psalmody, as exemplified both in the
New Version and in Dissenting worship, fell far short of this exalted goal.27
Instead, the challenge was to create sacred songs in verse that adequately
conveyed the regenerate spiritual experiences and devotional affections that
early Evangelicals proclaimed. What compelled the composition of new
“hymns of human composure,” he said, was “the variety of our Passions”
while living as fallible, sinful human beings in whose souls the Spirit has
infused the divine witness of Christ’s redeeming grace and love.
Regenerate Christians would necessarily experience different “Tempers
and Changes” while in their earthly “state of probation” so that every
dimension of their spiritual journey—“fear and sorrow” as well as “love
and hope”—became subjects for sacred song. The biblical Psalms were still
“the most artful, most devotional, and Divine Collection of Poesy,” but the
gospel now called Christians to “sing a new song” (Rev. 15:3) and become
psalmists anew. With Watts, the personal experience of divine grace, though
still informed by biblical history, Gospel narratives, and apostolic practice,
became the hallmark of Evangelical ritual song.28
While believers experienced many different “impressions” of the Spirit
and human affects in response to them, Watts insisted, with Saint Paul, that
they should walk together, “endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit
in the bond of peace (Ephesians 4:3–4).” In accordance with this impera-
tive of spiritual equality, Watts and other early Evangelical leaders criticized
seventeenth-century rationalistic and confessional theologies because they
produced what Watts called “obscure and controverted Points of Christi-
anity.” He stood religious rationalism on its head, arguing that it invited
conflict among the faithful rather than consensus. Therefore, “the Conten-
tions and distinguishing Words of Sects and Parties are secluded, that whole
Assembles might assist at the Harmony, and different Churches join in the
same Worship without Offence.”29
Hymns should be irenic, Watts said, focused exclusively on articulating
the unifying content of scripture and “divine subjects” through the believ-
er’s diverse affective responses to them in faith. His moderate theological
temperament enabled him to give poetic voice to many doctrinal inflections
of Evangelical tenets without falling into vitiating conflicts. This success in
developing a broad yet substantive hymnodic theology counted greatly for
the ongoing success of his lyrics, which were relished by both the Calvinists
Whitefield and Edwards and the Arminian Wesley brothers.
 Isaac Watts and Evangelical Sacred Song 137
Finally, Watts disciplined the hymn as an expression of regenerate devo-
tion by the commerce between biblical text and believer’s spiritual experi-
ence with as little doctrinal distortion as possible in order for it to serve as a
conduit through which the Spirit’s operations could flow. Watts’s Reformed
tradition regarded psalm singing as an ordinance of public worship, along
with baptism and communion. He did not make explicit the inference that
in this sense hymns, in addition to the sung Psalms, could be a means of
grace; but the conclusion followed, and generations of Evangelicals would
affirm that it was so for his own sacred verse.
From these principles of affectional devotion and doctrinal effacement,
Watts drew a series of explicit stylistic standards around metrical simplic-
ity and the intellectual coherence of each line. This restraint, however, was
not simply a pragmatic concession to the dominant forms of English psalm
tunes and the performance practice of antiphonal “lining-out.” It was
rather part of Watts’s far more controversial stylistic principle that hym-
nody should strive to achieve maximal comprehension. To that end, Watts
made an extraordinary concession of poetic art to popular understanding.
“The Metaphors [of Hymns and Spiritual Songs] are generally sunk to the
Level of vulgar Capacities,” he wrote. “I have aimed at ease of Numbers
[meters] and Smoothness of Sound, and endeavour’d to make the Sense
plain and obvious.”30 This approach, he conceded, was costly to his art. In
Hymns and Spiritual Songs, “some of the Beauties of Poesy are neglected
and some wilfully defaced,” he wrote. “I have thrown out the Lines that
were too sonorous, and giv’n an Allay to the Verse, lest a more exalted Turn
of Thought or Language should darken or disturb the Devotion of the plain-
est Souls.”31
Watts’s language of “sinking” the metaphors of his hymns has led his
interpreters, rightly, to consider “bathos” as a central element in his poet-
ics. Along with Dr. Johnson, they have regarded this practice more as an
artistic liability than an asset. That Watts himself seems to have regretted
this literary cost only seems to strengthen the objection. But the other side
of the argument has been obscured by this judgment. Watts reckoned that
“a more exalted Turn of Thought or Language,” of the sort Tate and Brady
presented in the New Version, was a literary goal of secondary value when
compared with the hymn’s spiritual purpose of enlightening and arousing
“the Devotion of the plainest Souls.”32
Watts combined these stylistic norms of consolidated line, simple meter,
and popular bathetic diction into a fundamental aesthetic standard for Evan-
gelical poetics: no matter how exalted its scripture reference, doctrinal sub-
ject, or spiritual affect, a hymn must be contrived to convey that exaltation
to all singers who have experienced saving grace. Call it democratization,
laicization, egalitarianism, or popularization, this principle of comprehen-
sive outreach shaped all the sacred media of the Evangelical movement,
beginning with Watts’s hymns, and accounted for much of its success.
138 Stephen A. Marini
“When I can read my Title clear,” for example, is a perseverance hymn
that in four short stanzas takes the believer from assurance of salvation
through perseverance against Satan’s wrath, social opposition, and the
“cares and sorrows” of this life to the safe haven of heaven at last. All this
is cast in subtly conditional language fitting for a Calvinist poet, even an
Evangelical one, who knew that the believer’s salvation was entirely in the
hands of the divine Sovereign. And yet Evangelical assurance prevails in the
last verse, where in heaven “I shall bathe my weary soul / In seas of heavenly
rest, / And not a wave of trouble roll / Across my peaceful breast.” These
stanzas present a complex sequence of doctrinal assertions about the soul’s
salvation, perseverance, and ultimate sanctification. Watts, exemplifying his
theological aesthetics, renders them ritually evocative through first-person
voice, affectional intensity, homely imagery, and easily comprehended lan-
guage whose bathos somehow elevates the soul’s devotion.
The 385 lyrics in Hymns and Spiritual Songs made it one of the largest
single collections of hymns published in English to that time, and its Preface
outlined a revolutionary approach to the art of sacred verse. Yet Watts was
prepared to take the implications of his new aesthetics of Christian praise
still further by attacking the adequacy of scripture itself to express the spir-
itual experience and devotion of Evangelicals. His target was the Psalms; his
systematic case for reappropriating them for Christian worship appeared
in his Short Essay toward the Improvement of Psalmody appended to the
1707 first edition of Hymns and Spiritual Songs.

A short essay toward the improvement of psalmody

The fundamental question Watts posed in the Short Essay was, “How must
the Psalms of David and other songs from Scripture, be translated in order
to be sung in Christian Worship?” His basic answer—and the core of his
aesthetic program to improve psalm-singing—was to “imitate” the Psalms
“in the language of the New Testament,” as he put it in the title of his 1719
metrical psalter. In the Short Essay he laid out in detail the aesthetic criteria
for the kind of language that could carry the transformation of ancient Isra-
elite temple psalms into contemporary Christian lyrics.
First, the Psalms “must necessarily be turn’d into such a sort of Verse
and Metre as will best fit them for the whole Church to join in worship.”
This initial standard of comprehensibility, which he had also applied to his
hymns, meant that the improvement of the Psalms “will be very different
from a Translation of the Original Language word for word.” Moreover,
given that English psalm tunes were “short,” “the Lines must be confin’d to
a certain Number of Syllables, and the stanza or verse to a certain Number
of Lines,” so that “the People may be acquainted with it, and be ready to
sing without much Difficulty.”33
Watts, here again, reflected the dependence of English psalmody on the
received corpus of tunes that parish congregations knew, because replacing
 Isaac Watts and Evangelical Sacred Song 139
them would be far more difficult than exchanging alternative textual ver-
sions of the Psalms. The alternative would be to require “every Syllable” to
“have a particular musical Note belonging to itself, as in Anthems that are
sung in Cathedrals.” Traditional parish music therefore provided the initial
template for comprehensibility in Watts’s renovation of psalmody.34
But if rendering the Psalms into English required altering the Hebrew
poetic meters into English common, long, and short meters, then it amounted
to a translational slippery slope. “Here and there a Word of the Original
must be omitted,” he wrote, “now and then a Word or two superadded,
and frequently a Sentence or an Expression a little alter’d and chang’d into
another that is something a-kin to it.” A literal translation makes “but very
poor Music for a Christian Church” because “the most affectionate and
most spiritual Words” of the psalm “will not submit to its due Place in the
Metre, or does not end with a proper Sound.”35
Watts added a second and more broadly aesthetic reason “why the Psalms
ought not to be translated for Singing just in the same manner as they are
for Reading,” which was

that the Design of these two Duties is very different. By Reading we

learn what God speaks to us in his Word; but when we sing, especially
unto God, our chief Design is, or should be, to speak our own Hearts
and our words to God.

In reading, God’s word comes to us; in singing, our words go to God. “Songs
are generally Expressions of our own experiences, or of [God’s] Glories,” he
wrote. “We acquaint him what Sense we have of his Greatness and Good-
ness, and that chiefly in those Instances which have some Relation to us: We
breathe out our souls towards him, and make our addresses of Praise and
Acknowledgement to him.”36
This affective criterion for authentic spiritual singing was essentially
the same as “the most frequent Tempers and Changes of our Spirit, and
Conditions of our Life” that Watts had invoked as the subject of his
“hymns of human composure.” In this correspondence lies the key to his
understanding of the relationship of Evangelical spiritual experience to
scripture. Saving grace in the New Birth, for Watts, not only required the
regenerate to rehearse their experience in hymns of human composure,
but it also transformed the meaning and sense of scripture itself. The New
Birth propelled believers into the text of the New Testament as a living
narrative in which they were cast as disciples of the Son of God. As Jesus
proclaimed a new messianic understanding of the Hebrew Bible with him-
self as the fulfillment of ancient Israelite prophecy, so Evangelicals, as
his latter-day disciples, should reinterpret the Psalms in light of the new
revelation in Christ.
Following from these considerations of meter and melody, translation of
affective terms, and regenerate apprehension of scripture, Watts declared
140 Stephen A. Marini
“the true Method of translating ancient Songs into Christian Worship.”
First, he eliminated a number of Psalms outright

which cannot properly be accommodated to our Use, and much less be

assum’d as our own without very great Alterations. . . . These should be
left out in our Psalmody, or at least made very plain by a Paraphrase.
Where there are Sentences, or whole Psalms, that can very difficultly be
accommodated to our Times, they may be utterly omitted.37

For the remainder, Watts gave “two plain rules” for how to “prepare
David’s Psalms to be sung by Christian Lips.” First, “they ought to be
translated in such Manner as we have reason to believe David would have
compos’d ’em if he had lived in our Day.” The Psalms therefore were a “pat-
tern to be imitated” by Christian poets, rather than “the precise and invari-
able Matter of our Psalmody.” This “pattern” gave Watts justification for
concluding that were David to return, “he would not sing the Words of his
own Psalms without considerable Alteration; and were he now to transcribe
them, he would make them speak the present Circumstances of the Church,
and that in the Language of the New Testament” rather than the rhetoric of
the Israelite temple.38
Watts’s second rule was to follow examples of translation from the
New Testament, such as the verse from Psalm 118 in Luke 19:38 and the
beginning of Psalm 2 in Acts 4:23ff., in which the Apostles sang those
texts “with Alterations and Additions to the Words of David.” This rule
applied the Evangelical principle of apostolic imitation that followed
from the doctrine of the New Birth. Watts voiced his own enraptured
expectation that apostolic praise should once again ring out in his day.
“O may I live to see Psalmody perform’d in these evangelick Beauties of
Holiness!” he exclaimed.39 With a Christianized Davidic model and imi-
tation of apostolic practice as guides, Watts then proceeded to ask “how
lawful and necessary ’tis to compose Spiritual Songs of a more evangelic
Frame for the Use of Divine Worship under the Gospel.” His first answer
was shocking: in light of such necessary alterations, “the Form and the
Composure of the Psalm can hardly be called Inspired or Divine.” Because
of the changes required to Christianize a Hebrew psalm, the result was
no longer scriptural: “Only the Materials or the Sense contain’d therein
may in a large Sense be called the Word of God, as it is borrowed from
that Word.”40
The “several Ends and Designs of singing, . . . can never be sufficiently
attain’d by confining our selves to David’s Psalms or the Words of any Songs
in Scripture,” he insisted. The “first and chief intent” of sacred singing, he
repeated, is “to vent the inward Devotion of our Spirits in words of Melody,
to speak our own Experience of divine Things, especially our religious Joy.”
No scripture texts, not even the Psalms themselves, could fulfill this crite-
rion. But the New Testament command to “make Melody and give Thanks
to God the Father, in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ” remained “one of
 Isaac Watts and Evangelical Sacred Song 141
the Glories of Gospel-Worship (Ephesians 5:19–20; Colossians 3:16–17)”
that saints in the present day should fulfill.41
Not satisfied to have disqualified the Psalms on grounds of anachronism,
content, and inappropriateness for Christian worship, Watts attacked the
ancient claim, made since the days of Athanasius of Alexandria (ca. 296–
373), that they provided an all-sufficient devotional and spiritual resource
for believers.42 To the contrary, “there is almost an infinite Number of differ-
ent Occasions for Praise and Thanksgivings, as well as for Prayer, in the Life
of a Christian,” he wrote, “and there is not a Set of Psalms already prepared
that can answer all the Varieties of the Providence and the Grace of God.”43
Watts’s concluding argument in the Short Essay, however, turned away
from this critique of the Psalms toward an explicitly pneumatic theologi-
cal ground for new songs of praise, petition, and devotion, assisted by
“the extraordinary Gift of the Spirit to compose or sing spiritual Songs”
as described in 1 Corinthians 14:15, 26. “Why should it be esteem’d sin-
ful, to acquire a Capacity of composing a spiritual Song?” he asked. “[O]r
why it is unlawful to put the Gift in Exercise, for the Use of Singing in the
Christian Church, since ’tis one of those three standing Parts of Worship
(prayer, preaching and singing) which were at first practis’d and confirm’d
by Inspiration and Miracle?”44 As clinching evidence for this case, Watts
invoked the ratifying authority of the worshipping community of the saints,
citing “the Divine Delight that many pious Souls have found in the Use of
spiritual Songs, suited to their own Circumstances, and to the Revelations of
the New Testament.” This “spiritual Joy and Consolation” confirmed both
the efficacy of new spiritual songs and their origin in the authentic opera-
tions of the Holy Spirit.45
Watts’s advocacy of extraordinary gifts in “composing a spiritual Song”
was hardly the cautious suggestion of a theological moderate. While his
Calvinism was indeed temperate, and late in life he harbored doubts about
the doctrine of the Trinity, Watts’s affectional soteriology in the Essay was
fiercely Evangelical. It made him vulnerable to charges of antinomianism
and enthusiasm that later faced George Whitefield, the Wesleys, Jonathan
Edwards, and other Evangelical leaders during the revivals. That he avoided
them was a tribute to the poetic art of his hymns and psalm imitations and
his skill in maintaining an irenic stance on doctrine that survived later Evan-
gelical controversies.

The Psalms of David imitated

It may have been the radicalism of the Short Essay’s arguments that led
Watts to withdraw it from later editions of Hymns and Spiritual Songs. In
the greatly revised and expanded second edition of 1709, he explained that
he had done so

chiefly because I intend a more compleat Treatise of Psalmody, in which

the Substance of that Essay will be interspersed, and I hope with fuller
142 Stephen A. Marini
Evidence of the Duty of singing new Songs to him that sits upon the
Throne since the Lamb has ascended thither.

The proposed treatise never appeared, although ten years later Watts again
referred to “my Discourse on Psalmody, which I hope shortly will be
publish’d.”46 Scholars have been unable to explain why Watts did not pub-
lish the Discourse, so apparently near completion and so eagerly awaited by
the Evangelical movement.
Watts did provide a preface to The Psalms of David Imitated, subtitled
An Enquiry into the right Way of fitting the Book of Psalms for Christian
Worship. It recapitulated the principal arguments of the Short Essay regard-
ing the Psalms along with some additional material. In addition to restating
his claims that sung Christian praise should be the expression of regenerate
spiritual experience and scriptural understanding,47 Watts added his appre-
ciation for the work of earlier Anglican metrical psalmodists Luke Milbourn
(1649–1720), Charles Darby (1635–1709), and John Patrick (1632–95).
Each had “given an Evangelic turn to the Hebrew Sense” of the Psalms, yet
Watts sharply, and rightly, distinguished his new theological aesthetics from
their efforts.48 He acknowledged “the Preference of Poesy” owed to Tate
and Brady’s style in the New Version but drove home the Evangelical princi-
ple of spiritual equality among the reborn in his complaint that “their Turns
of Thought and Language are too much raised above vulgar Audience, and
fit only for Persons of an higher Education.”49
Yet in the Enquiry Watts again expressed his own ambiguity about the
tensions between art poetry and popular sacred verse, this time in terms of
the emergent aesthetic category of the Sublime. And once again he opted for
“sinking” rather than “flying” through his psalm imitations. “In some of
the more elevated Psalms,” he wrote,

I have given a little Indulgence to my Genius; and if it should appear that

I have aimed at the Sublime, yet I have generally kept within the Reach
of an unlearned Reader: I never thought the Art of sublime W ­ riting
­consisted in flying out of Sight. . . . I have always avoided the Language
of Poets where it did not suit the Language of the Gospel.50

As in the Short Essay, Watts also gave technical explanations for his
poetic practice in the Enquiry. He broke psalm texts into shorter lengths
both for reasons of contrasting content and to accommodate the “excessive
long Tone of Voice that stretches our every Syllable in our publick Sing-
ing,” allowing “neither Time nor Voice to sing above six or eight Stanza’s
at once.”51 This practice of subdivision accounted for why Psalms con-
tained 340 poems rather than just the 150 canonical psalm texts. Watts also
defended the repetitiveness of his rhymes with the observation that he “cou-
pled all my Lines by Rhymes (ABAB) much more than either Mr. Tate or Dr.
Patrick have done (ABCB), which is certainly more musical and agreeable to
the Ear where Rhyme is used at all.”52
 Isaac Watts and Evangelical Sacred Song 143
But if the Enquiry was derivative, Watts’s psalm imitations were bril-
liantly original, as in his transformation of the New Version’s closely literal
Psalm 72, Part II into “Jesus shall reign where’er the Sun.” There was also
ample room for social justice in his theological aesthetics. He did not forget
that his coreligionists, including his own father, had suffered political perse-
cution for their religious beliefs and practices. His lyrical art in “Jesus shall
reign” enabled him to imply not only that “The Prisoner leaps to lose his
Chains, / The Weary find eternal Rest, / And all the Sons of Want are blest”
in the next world, but that they also possess the righteousness of Christ and
a demand for justice in this one as well.
“Jesus shall reign” was one of Watts’s greatest poems, a classic of the
Evangelical movement and a favorite of composers and compilers, who
published 141 musical settings of it by 1820 alone.53 As a praise psalm para-
phrase, it does not plumb the emotional depths or move the singer through
a complex doctrinal sequence like many of his other imitations. It is instead
a celebration of Christ’s reign in the souls of the regenerate, bonded to their
anticipation of the cosmic renewal he was about to bring forth in his return.
But this lyric is no less affectionally potent or doctrinally sophisticated than
those, and its art embodies Watts’s aesthetic norms of simplicity and com-
prehensibility as few of his other poems realize.
“Jesus shall reign” was indeed no longer a psalm translation. But, as
Watts insisted, it was still the word of God in redefined form. The Evangeli-
cal movement shifted the locus of the divine Word from the translation of
scripture to the inscription of the Holy Spirit on the regenerate soul. It was
Isaac Watts who first grasped the implications of that change for sacred
song, the most powerful ritual medium of popular Protestantism, and who
possessed the requisite gifts to create not only the most protean body of
Evangelical verse ever written but also the theological aesthetics by which
generations of successors would carry on its mandates.

Notes
1 Arthur Paul Davis, Isaac Watts: His Life and Works (London: Independent Press,
1948), 1–19; Dewey D. Wallace, Jr., “Rowe, Thomas (1656/7–1705), Independ-
ent Minister and Tutor,” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2004); online ed., 2008. https://doi-org.ezproxy.welles-
ley.edu/10.1093/ref:odnb/24208
2 Davis, Watts, 20–38.
3 Ibid., 197–98.
4 Isaac Watts, Horæ Lyricæ: Poems, chiefly of the lyric Kind [. . .] (London, 1706);
Hymns and Spiritual Songs, in Three Books [. . .], 2nd ed. (London, 1709), hereafter
HSS; The Psalms of David, Imitated in the Language of the New Testament [. . .]
(London, 1719), hereafter PDI.
5 Samuel Johnson, The Lives of the English Poets; and a Criticism on Their Works
(Dublin: Whitestone, Williams, Colles, et al., 1779), 3, 26.
6 Jonathan Edwards, A Faithful Narrative of the Surprizing Work of God in
the Conversion of Many Hundred Souls in Northampton [. . .] (London: John
Oswald, 1737), 2–15.
144 Stephen A. Marini
7 The most important early American edition of Psalms, by the Connecticut Wit
Joel Barlow, pioneered the popular practice of combining Watts’s metrical psalms
with select hymns in a single volume. See Joel Barlow, Doctor Watts’s Imitation
of the Psalms of David, Corrected and Enlarged [. . .] (Hartford, CT: Barlow
and Babcock, 1785). An almost exact parallel to the appearance of Watts’s Evan-
gelical psalmody occurred in Pietism with the publication of Johann Anastasius
Frelinghausen’s hugely popular Geistreiches Gesang-buch (Spiritual Songbook)
at Halle in 1704 and 1714.
8 Major twentieth-century studies of Watts include Louis F. Benson, The Eng-
lish Hymn: Its Development and Use in Worship (New York: George H. Doran
Company, 1915; repr. Richmond, VA: John Knox Press, 1962); Bernard Man-
ning, The Hymns of Watts and Wesley: Five Informal Papers (London: Epworth
Press, 1942); Arthur Paul Davis, Isaac Watts: His Life and Works; Harry Escott,
Isaac Watts: Hymnographer (London: Independent Press, 1962); and Donald
Davie, The Eighteenth-Century Hymn in England (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1993).
9 J. R. Watson, The English Hymn: A Critical and Historical Study (London:
Oxford University Press, 1997) and Isabel Rivers, Reason, Grace, and Senti-
ment: A Study of the Language of Religion and Ethics in England, 1660–1780,
vol. 1 (London: Oxford University Press, 1991).
10 Watson, English Hymn, 133–70.
11 Rivers, Reason, Grace, and Sentiment, 1, 199.
12 Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics of Men,
Manners, Opinions, Times (London: John Darby, 1711).
13 Davis, Watts, 87. Isaac Watts, Logick: or, the Right Use of Reason in the Enquiry
After Truth [. . .] (London, 1725).
14 Johnson, Lives, 3:24; Isaac Watts, The Improvement of the Mind: or, a Supple-
ment to the Art of Logick [. . .] (London: James Brackstone, 1741).
15 Susan Tara Brown, Singing and the Imagination of Devotion: Vocal Aesthetics
in Early English Protestant Culture (Colorado Springs: Paternoster, 2008), 1–4;
Paul Guyer, A History of Modern Aesthetics, Vol. 1: The Eighteenth Century
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 30–63, 318–40. Simon Grote
has located the development of Wolff and Baumgartner’s aesthetic thought in the
Pietist milieu of the University of Halle, where both served as faculty. See Simon
Grote, The Emergence of Modern Aesthetic Theory: Religion and Morality in
Enlightenment Germany and Scotland, Ideas in Context 117 (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2017).
16 Nahum Tate and Nicholas Brady, A New Version of the Psalms of David, Fitted
to the Tunes Used in Churches (London: M. Clark, 1696).
17 Thomas Sternhold and John Hopkins, The Whole Booke of Psalmes collected
into Englysh metre by T. Sternhold, I. Hopkins, & Others [. . .] (London: John
Day, 1562).
18 Martin Luther, preface to Geystliche Gesangbüchlin, Erstlich zu Wittenberg,
und volgend durch Peter schöffern getruckt, im jar m. d. xxv, by Johann Walter
(Wittenberg, 1525); John Calvin, “Letter to the Reader,” in La Forme des Prières
et Chantz ecclésiastiques (Geneva, 1542).
19 Nahum Tate and Nicholas Brady, A Supplement to the New Version of Psalms
by Dr. Brady and Mr. Tate (London: W. Pearson, 1700), hereafter NV.
20 See Donald Davie, ed., Augustan Lyric (London: Heinemann Educational,
1974) and Nicholas Temperley, “Anglican and Episcopalian Church Music,”
in Grove Music Online, 2013, https://doi-org.ezproxy.wellesley.edu/10.1093/
gmo/9781561592630.article.46765.
21 Nahum Tate, An Essay for Promoting of Psalmody (London: J. Holland,
1710), 1.
 Isaac Watts and Evangelical Sacred Song 145
22 Ibid., 14–18.
23 Ibid., 11–19.
24 Nahum Tate and Nicholas Brady, “Magnificat: Song of the B. Virgin, Luke I. v.
46,” in A Supplement to the New Version of Psalms by Dr. Brady and Mr. Tate,
6th ed. (London: W. Pearson, 1708), 52, hereafter Supplement.
25 Isaac Watts, “The Virgin Mary’s Song, or the Promised Messiah Born, Luke 1.
46 etc., I:LX,” in HSS, 44.
26 HSS, iii.
27 Ibid., iv.
28 Ibid., vi.
29 Ibid., viii.
30 Ibid.
31 Ibid., ix.
32 Ibid.
33 Isaac Watts, “An Essay toward the Improvement of Psalmody,” in The Works of
the Late Reverend and Learned Isaac Watts, vol. 4 (London: T. and T. Longman,
1753), 276.
34 PDI, 241–42. See also Stephen A. Marini, The Cashaway Psalmody: Transatlan-
tic Religion and Music in Colonial Carolina (Urbana: University of Illinois Press,
2019), chap. 13.
35 Isaac Watts, “A Short Essay toward the Improvement of Psalmody: Or, An
Enquiry How the Psalms of David Ought to be Translated into Christian Songs,
and How Lawful and Necessary It Is to Compose Other Hymns according to
the Clearer Revelations of the Gospel, for the Use of the Christian Church,” in
Hymns and Spiritual Songs in Three Books: I. Collected from the Scriptures.
II. Compos’d on Divine Subjects. III. Prepared for the Lord’s Supper. With an
Essay towards the Improvement of Christian Psalmody, by the Use of Evan-
gelical Hymns in Worship, as well as the Psalms of David, ed. Watts (London:
printed by J. Humfreys, for John Lawrence, at the Angel in the Poultrey, 1707),
233–76, 242.
36 Ibid., 243–44.
37 Ibid., 245.
38 Ibid., 252, 253.
39 Ibid., 255–56.
40 Ibid., 256.
41 Ibid., 256–57.
42 Athanasius of Alexandria, “Letter to Marcellinus on the Interpretation of the
Psalms,” in Athanasius: The Life of Antony and the Letter to Marcellinus, trans.
Robert C. Gregg (New York: Paulist Press, 1980), 101–29.
43 Watts, Short Essay, 261–62.
44 Ibid., 264–66.
45 Ibid., 265–66.
46 HSS, xiv; PDI, xxii.
47 PDI, viii, xvi.
48 Luke Milbourn, The Psalms of David in English Metre (London, 1698); Charles
Darby, The Book of Psalms in English Metre (London, 1704), and John Pat-
rick, A Century of Select Psalms and Portions of the Psalms of David (London,
1679).
49 PDI, xxv.
50 Ibid., xxv–xxvi.
51 Ibid., xxiv.
52 Ibid., xxviii.
53 Nicholas Temperley et al., “Jesus Shall Reign Where’er the Sun,” The Hymn
Tune Index, http://hymntune.library.uiuc.edu.
9 Beauty and the Protestant
body
Aesthetic abstraction in
Jonathan Edwards
Kathryn Reklis

From 2008 to 2014, the HBO television show True Blood delighted or
frustrated fans with its gothic-campy portrayal of a near future in which
vampires have come out of the coffin to live among humans.1 The open-
ing credits of the series depict a sequence of images relating to death, the
threat of violence, sexuality, decay, and rebirth in the visual iconography
of the Gothic South. Intermixed with images of redneck girls’ half-dressed,
undulating bodies, men in Ku Klux Klan costumes, moldering carcasses,
abandoned houses, and primitive water animals are images of bodies in
the throes of religious ecstasy. Other than one coy reference on a roadside
sign (“God hates fangs”), the credits do not allude to the fictional world of
the show. The design team that produced the credits said they were trying
to capture humanity as it might appear to the superrational vampire mind:
in the throes of forces that show humanity in its most irrational, primitive,
excessive state. From this hyperrational point of view, the credits suggest,
charismatic Christian worship is not so different from white supremacy, bar
fights, or drunk sex. On the other hand, the presence of these same religious
bodies in a vampire mythology suggests that just as the vampire might serve
as a surrogate for many other kinds of misunderstood and despised others
(“God hates fags”), so, too, might the vampire stand in for the misunder-
stood religious body, relegated to the world of superstition and excess with-
out understanding.
I offer this visual icon as a point of reference for a kind of Christian bodily
ecstasy that continues to be coded (in popular imagination and beyond) as
the expression of a primitive or hysterical self over and against something
understood as the “modern” or “rational” self. Even when the evaluative
register of this dichotomy is flip-flopped so that we long for the natural
or holistic “primitive” self, denied by the artificial and fragmented “mod-
ern” self, the religiously ecstatic body is a cipher for all that “modernity”
excises. While I have yet to advance the argument that would link Jonathan
Edwards to vampire mythologies (graduate students—the project is yours!),
it is not such a stretch to link him to contemporary debates about what this
kind of bodily ecstasy “means.” As a defender and architect of the 1740s’
revivals collectively known as the Great Awakening, Edwards is marshaled
 Beauty and the Protestant body 147
on both sides of the debate: a defender of bodily ecstasy as a natural, if not
necessary, part of true conversion; or a voice of caution against irrational-
ism and “false spirits.” Indeed, whether one thinks Edwards is defending or
castigating bodily ecstasy often positions one already in a debate about how
religious experience intersects with the creation of modernity, especially as
“the modern” is equated with the privatization of religion to make way for
“the secular.”2 Rather than tracing these particular debates or the genealogy
that would link the 1740s revivals to Pentecostalism and charismatic move-
ments in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries (the more direct point of
reference for the True Blood credits), I want to explore what these debates
about bodily ecstasy have to do with “Protestant aesthetics.”
Jonathan Edwards might seem a strange bedfellow for this project. He
is either, by popular reckoning, the exemplar of fire and brimstone we all
want to forget from our high school English unit on “Puritan sermons,”3
or the darling of neo-Calvinism (both progressive4 and conservative5), or
the bud of the bud and the root of the root of American evangelicalism.6
For my purposes, he was also the foremost defender during the eighteenth-
century revivals of bodily ecstasy as an experience of salvation, writing
explicitly about the role of the body in theological knowledge, the central-
ity of affect in spiritual experience, and anchoring all this in a theological
system grounded in beauty as his governing concept of divine reality. My
purpose in this chapter is to explore how the latter—his aesthetic under-
standing of reality—fits into his early defense of bodily ecstasy.7 Or rather,
perhaps it is the other way around—what can we learn about Edwards’s
own preoccupation with aesthetics from these bodily enactments? I argue
that bodily ecstasy was what it “looked like” to be swallowed up in the
aesthetic ontology Edwards hoped would counter the forces of self-interest
and disinterested rationality threatening early modern Christian communi-
ties.8 As such, the body becomes a place to see contestations about Protes-
tant aesthetics “in action” as it were, even over and beyond Edwards’s own
intentions.
Edwards has received a fair amount of attention because of this aes-
thetic theology.9 Rarely, however, is the role of beauty in his theological
system linked to the bodily ecstasy that actually marked the revivals of
1740s. Despite their pervasive presence in the revivals, as historian Leigh
Schmidt has noted, these bodily ecstasies have been “more often the object
of snickers than serious analysis.”10 Undoubtedly, this reluctance to take
early modern Protestant ecstasy seriously is encouraged by the fact that pro-
revivalists, Edwards chief among them, downplayed the role of the body
in their revival narratives and theological reflections while anti-revivalists
caricatured revival ecstasy as irrational hysteria. In other words, even in the
moment of their enactment, debates about Protestant bodily ecstasy were
debates about rationality, self-control, and social order. From our histori-
cal vantage point, we might say that these debates were about what would
come to constitute the modern subject.
148 Kathryn Reklis
While there are key disagreements on what constitutes modernity and
what its key integers are, and while there are still unresolved disputes about
the origins, history, and consequences of a modern identity, there is substan-
tial agreement that the Enlightenment and its aftermath were premised on
what Marcel Mauss and others have called “the category of the person”—
namely, the production and valorization of the subject as autonomous, self-­
reflective, and governed by reason.11 This modern subject was still devel-
oping in Edwards’s time, and its formation was heralded by challenges to
traditional notions of authority, authenticity, and epistemology that arose
in the context of the Atlantic world. These challenges can be summed up
as a growing desire for certainty of knowledge, known through authentic
personal experience but grounded increasingly on measurable, repeatable
truths—known to the senses and reliable across time and space—instead of
on traditional sources of authority. The insistence on empirical veracity did
not require a primer on Locke, nor was there a coherent or thoroughgo-
ing rationalism sweeping the farming classes of New England through the
organized reading of early Enlightenment philosophy. The skepticism that
demanded personal sensible experience might be seen as correlative to the
philosophical obsessions of the day, whether or not most people engaged
those obsessions directly. Burgeoning capitalism with its emphasis on abstract
value displacing more communal forms of economics; the age of expansion
and exploration leading to an increased reliance on maps, compasses, alma-
nacs, and other tools of scientific “certainty” about the physical and geo-
graphical world; the material conditions of scarcity leading to an increased
emphasis on private property and self-determination; new wealth previously
unimaginable, made possible by the triangle trade in sugar, rum, chocolate,
coffee, and human flesh, leveling traditional hierarchical distinctions while
creating new scales of power and oppression; the proliferation of print cul-
ture carrying news and gossip around a vastly expanding world—these forces
were the episteme of Edwards’s age. As combined, if often unacknowledged
or even unconscious, epistemological forces, they led to an emphasis on the
material, the measurable, and the experiential as the standard for truth.
There are many ways to flesh out how Edwards experienced these “forces
of modernity,” but in the interest of space, I want to focus briefly on early
modern market culture in the late Puritan colonies. The apparent provin-
cialism of Edwards’s context in semirural colonial Massachusetts can belie
the location of Puritan New England in the transoceanic interculture of
eighteenth-century European colonialism. Paying attention to practices of
consumption and exchange, and how those practices were understood by
the subjects who undertook them, can help us locate late Puritan culture
within the broader context of the Atlantic world. In his pastoral protest to
market forces one can see how Edwards understood the newly emerging
“modern self” and how he hoped to counter it with a call to surrender to
divine beauty, which begins to move us closer to exploring how beauty and
bodily ecstasy intersect for Edwards.
 Beauty and the Protestant body 149
Edwards did not live to see full-blown market capitalism and died before
he had to reckon with Adam Smith’s invisible hand as a useful fiction to
unleash unregulated systems of exchange and acquisition. Perhaps more
important than quibbling about the exact stage of capitalism’s growth by
Edwards’s death in 1758 is to recognize that Edwards lived in an age in
which capitalistic sensibilities were coalescing, creating the subjects that
would be necessary for the free market that was to come. He lived, in Mark
Valeri’s felicitous phrase, “in a society in which commerce was as irresistible
as grace and more powerful than providence.”12 And Edwards marshaled
his considerable rhetorical and theological skills to counter these sensibili-
ties with an alternative economy of desire, which he tied explicitly to an
aesthetic ontology.
The most pernicious aspects of the incipient market for Edwards were its
impersonality and its fictiveness. Value was unattached to reality as people
experienced it or as communities defined it. The crude logic of supply and
demand, which allows the inflation of prices and currency as much as the
market will bear (namely, so long as there are still buyers), was neither
rational nor inevitable in Edwards’s mind but the product of a devilish fic-
tion that pretended values were fixed by some abstract principle of worth,
when, in fact, they were set by the selfishness and greed of individual mer-
chants, egging each other on in a spiral of speculation and inflation. The
market economy encouraged people to interact with one another not on
the common basis of their standing before God or with a love that cov-
ers all manner of weakness. Rather, the nature of the business called for
fraud, deception, bluffing, unfair bargaining, and what Edwards called
“trickishness.”13
This trickishness is not just a personal vice, sinking the soul deeper into
perdition, but by its very nature leads to all kinds of social vices—idleness,
drunkenness, greed, and manipulation. The rich, far from leading society
as is their God-given prerogative, waste time and money on “indolent and
useless ways of living . . . in eating and drinking, and sleeping, and visit-
ing, and taking their ease, and pleasures. They by their idleness cease to
any way be beneficial members to human society.”14 At the height of his
denunciation, he lays the full weight of his charge on the table: these new
sensibilities are not just corruptions; they are also threatening the very fab-
ric of what it means to be human, opening “beastly lusts” that “will make
men of a beastly disposition.” Social relations conducted on the premises of
hypocrisy and greed would bring about the decay of “humanity, civility, and
common decency” and those who give themselves over to such sensibilities
“deserve to be cut off from the benefits of human society, and to be turned
out among wild beasts.”15
The subjectivity Edwards hoped to awaken to counter this devastating
bestiality was one that saw itself not only intimately connected to a larger
whole but also defined by participation in that whole. The identification
of self with the larger community started with the particular community
150 Kathryn Reklis
of church and town and extended to the farthest reaches of the cosmos.
Against selves that performed multiple social roles in response to artificially
constructed social relations and terms of value, Edwards longed for a uni-
fied self, swallowed up in a unified cosmos. Indeed, being swallowed in this
divine unity was salvation itself. The unity of the cosmos and the possibility
of our participation in it through salvation was not a matter of speculation
for Edwards. It was an expression of reality as it is truest.
The problem, then, was how to make the truth of spiritual reality seem as
real to his parishioners as the experience of the natural world through their
senses. The answer lay, for Edwards, in a new theological anthropology,
one that did not divide the person into separately functioning ­faculties—
reason, will, the passions—but saw a dynamic unity where reason, will, and
passions responded in concert to that which attracted or repulsed them.
For Edwards, we know best that which moves our affections most strongly
and our affections are moved most strongly by that which is most beau-
tiful, most attractive to us. Because divine reality is supremely beautiful,
our knowledge of it is both most strongly experienced and most true. In
other words, aesthetic experience—attraction to beauty—grounds both
his theological anthropology and describes the very fabric of the divinely
ordered cosmos. Surrendering to the cosmic unity of divine will and life
comes about when people recognize the attractiveness of this vision—when
they are lured into this unity through the aesthetic experience of its beauty.
To see clearly the cosmic reaches of the divine being is to be swallowed up
in God, which is to be saved, which is to be restored as a “true human”
capable of communal benevolence and resistance to market-based “trick-
ishness” and bestiality.
Edwards was a very astute observer about what tactics would work from
the pulpit if he were to pave the way for this salvific subjectivity that could
counter the self-interest and trickishness of market-based sensibilities. Long
discourses on his aesthetic ontology were not the sort of tactics likely to
prepare the self for spiritual ignition. I shall follow his lead and resist lead-
ing you into the thickets of his ontology.16 While Edwards believed that the
truth of the world was the interconnected web of relations understood as
the beauty of God’s being itself, he also believed that God chose to bless
those sermons that focused most strongly on absolute sovereignty and the
abasement of human agency with regard to salvation.
The revivals, he asserted, were a sign of God’s approbation on the increas-
ingly unfashionable doctrine of sovereignty. The morphology of conversion
for the awakened was a drama of abasement and exaltation. First con-
victed of their insurmountable guilt and justifiable damnation, the peni-
tent is brought low in grief and wailing. When from this abasement God
opened their eyes to the greatness of grace in Christ, their rapturous joy
causes spontaneous laughter, renewed weeping, and further exclamations of
wonder and delight. The combined effect of abasement and exaltation gave
 Beauty and the Protestant body 151
those who experienced it “such a sense of God’s exceeding greatness and
majesty, that they were as it were swallowed up.”17
This is Edwards’s favorite metaphor to describe the sensation of
­conversion—being “swallowed up” in God—and he uses this phrase more
than two hundred times in relation to the experience of God’s sovereignty.
Trembling in awe and delight at the all-encompassing sovereignty of God,
consumed by the glory of this sovereignty, and swallowed whole into the
pleasures and benefits of Christ, salvation was the complete absorption of
the whole person in the affective experience of God’s sovereignty. To be
swallowed up in God’s sovereignty was a more colloquial and pastoral way
to describe what in his more philosophical register might be called consum-
mation in the beauty of divine being. This was Edwards’s great hope for
the revivals—that through the remarkable outpouring of the spirit people
would experience themselves as swallowed up in God, subjects of God’s
sovereignty, and members of a spiritual communion grounded in divine real-
ity. As such, they would resist the artificial community being created by
market exchange and behave toward one another out of the pleasures and
delight inherent in participating in the beauty of their interconnectedness.
This interpretation of the revivals as a process of being remade as subjects
of God’s sovereignty might have remained one preacher’s private, if thor-
ough, theological explanation. Except that through the same channels of
exchange that made possible the very market system Edwards was resisting,
his theological treatises and revival narratives carried his interpretation of
the revivals around the Atlantic world. In particular, his description of the
Northampton revivals in the mid-1730s—A Faithful Narrative of a Surpris-
ing Work of God—became a kind of master script by which pro-revivalists
in the colonies, Europe, and even the Caribbean learned how to behave in
an awakened way and by which they assessed whether or not they were
partaking of the same work of God as those in other parts of the circum-
Atlantic world. As A Faithful Narrative began circulating in the Atlantic
world, congregations began to experience, evaluate, and narrate their own
revivals in Edwards’s terms. In Durham, New Hampshire, Nicholas Gilman
read A Faithful Narrative aloud to his parishioners, hoping to promote a
similar revival; his prayers were answered in December 1741 when “Many
Awakened” began “a great crying out, among people in Anguish of Spir-
its.”18 Earlier that same year and a bit farther north in York, Maine, an
anonymous diarist recounted the ecstasies of the revived: “Such a Sight as
I never beheld, Men, Women & Children, some in Raptures of Joy, saying
they had Seen Christ.” The raptures exceeded any sense of due order and
the visiting minister had to stop his sermon and urge the congregants to
compose themselves.19 In Lyme End, Connecticut, that same year, Jonathan
Parsons preached to a neighboring congregation and reported in a narrative
bearing the same form as Edwards’s prototype: the “Word fell with great
power on sundry. . . . Some had Fits, some fainted. . . . Cryings out at the
152 Kathryn Reklis
preaching of the Word were frequent.” A prominent lawyer in the congrega-
tion wrote to a friend of the remarkable effects:

two persons while preaching were so overcome with the Sence of the
wrath of God ready to fall on them (as they Express it) that they died
away with fear and sorrow and were with Difficulty bro’t to again, and
when the Sermon was Ended a great Number Cryed out in such anguish
as I never See it.20

Edwards himself incited intense awakenings in nearby Suffield and Enfield,

Connecticut. Stephen Williams recorded “considerable crying among ye
people . . . & a Screaching in ye streets” during one of the Edwards-led
prayer meetings. Another visitor was struck by the “Groans & Screaches
as of Women in the Pains of Childbirth,” and newly converted “so intirely
unbraced that you would have thought there [sic] bones all broken.”21 The
original narrative having gone forth from Northampton, the revival spirit
returned there in the 1740s, as Edwards’s own parishioners reenacted the
scenario they had helped create. As Edwards himself observed, in 1741 the
conversions were “wrought more sensibly and visibly,” and “it was a very
frequent thing to see an house full of outcries, faintings, and convulsions
and such like, both with distress, and also with admiration and joy.”22
In these gestures—weeping, leaping, crying, fainting, yelling—­parishioners
around the Atlantic had a way of knowing in their bodies what it meant to
be swallowed up in God, to convey that truth to others, and to recognize in
others the same consummation. It is nearly impossible to say if an ecstatic
bodily performance in one town looked at all like one in another town.
There are proliferating ways one can imagine how someone “leaping from
her seat” or “flailing” or “groaning” might look and sound. The partici-
pants in the revivals, however, believed they were enacting the same influ-
ence of the Holy Spirit to similar, if not identical, bodily effects. Through
their bodily ecstasies, they experienced themselves as participating in the
universal work of God that consumed them in God’s cosmic unity. Despite
significant theological and ecclesiological diversity in the congregations
attesting to awakenings, the revival narratives report a remarkable coher-
ence of experience. What these uniform narratives attest to is a powerful
kinesthetic imagination that allowed circum-Atlantic subjects to enact alter-
native ways of being (acting and thinking) in the early modern world. In
their ecstatic bodily gestures, they recognized one another as members of a
new, global community.
At least in the first blushes of revival, Edwards imagined this community
would have the potential to challenge the market forces he believed were
threatening to undo humanity and he had reason to believe it might be so.
The newly awoken lent to neighbors in need without thought of repayment,
and they sent money and goods to support congregations in other parts of
the world. They devoted themselves to godly society almost to the point of
 Beauty and the Protestant body 153
neglecting worldly affairs, a sign of irrationality as great as their ecstatic
flailings to most revival detractors. For a while, Edwards hoped a church-
centered community and economy would form a kind of alternative market
spreading from local contexts to cover the globe, eliminating the distinction
between worldly affairs and godly society.23
This alternative global market never came to fruition, nor did his own
account of subjectivity win the day against the valorization of an increas-
ingly autonomous, self-interested, rational subject. Indeed, the opposite
might be said to be the case: the Reformed tradition has been credited or
blamed for undergirding nearly every project of modernity, from capitalism
to democracy to modern science to imperial expansion. The bodily ecstasies
of the revivals became a sign of failure, the irrational hysteria of subjects not
ready for the modern world that was bearing down on them. In retrospect,
it might be easy to see Edwards’s project as the nostalgic longings for an ear-
lier, premodern self, situated in agrarian benevolence and out of touch with
the modern experiment.24 But his longing to grasp and portray a cosmic
universality was more of a piece with his imperial circum-Atlantic context
than a break from it, and his alternative subjectivity was as shaped by this
context as much as it offered an alternative to it.
The eighteenth century was nothing if not marked by a desire for epistemo-
logical comprehensiveness. It was a common project of eighteenth-­century
philosophy and emerging cultural criticism to weave from proliferating
particulars one imperial whole—a universality that could encompass a
world whose expansiveness exceeded their grasp and in relation to which
new forms of subjectivity and communal identity were required to survive.
Edwards was fully engaged in his early modern circum-Atlantic context in
debating what kind of subjectivity and forms of social order were most
needed to navigate the world as it was being reinvented. The uniqueness of
Edwards’s vision lay in his insistence that the subjectivity most needed to
meet these challenges was one marked by surrender, not self-determination.
Bodily ecstasy was an experience and expression of this surrender, a means
of inhabiting this alternative subjectivity, if only temporarily.
What then, if anything, can this story illuminate about what we are talk-
ing about when we talk about “Protestant aesthetics”? The uneasy history
of Protestant aesthetics is at least in part the history of abstraction—­
abstracting from the material to the spiritual, from the given world to God’s
intervention therein, from inherited practice to correct belief. As many
of the chapters in this book attest, protestations against specific aesthetic
objects or styles do not mean Protestantism is bereft of its own aesthetic
objects or style. I want to suggest that in addition to understanding specifi-
cally Protestant notions of beauty or ritual, “beauty” itself functions as a
central and contested category to make sense of the self and the self’s rela-
tion to the divine and to the world. As a category of theological meaning,
“beauty” itself undergoes its own abstraction—from the world of human-
made objects to an ontological or epistemological category that could never
154 Kathryn Reklis
be captured in a particular object. This is clear in how beauty functions in
Edwards’s own theological system. In this way he prefigures more modern
discussions of aesthetics as “disinterested” and even divorced from any par-
ticular object—except in the particularity of the body. In this bodily witness
to an abstract theological concept—surrender to sovereignty—this strand
of Protestant aesthetics becomes concrete again. But the concreteness of the
body and its unruly excesses make Edwards—and many of his successors—
deeply uncomfortable. Indeed, Edwards spent most of his later theological
treatises articulating the affective and spiritual dimension of the revivals
from their bodily manifestations, desperate to distance the true work of God
from its unruly excesses, including its threats of social disorder embodied
in assaults to class, gender, and racial norms. The fractures within revival
communities had many causes, theological and social, but the ecstatic body
was often a cipher of these divisions. Debates between moderate and radical
revivalists often focused on the ecstatic body and its implications for social
and ecclesiastical control and organization. As Edwards labored to defend
a theological anthropology that could accept bodily ecstasy as a manifesta-
tion of true spiritual awakening, radical revivalists such as Daniel Rogers
and James Davenport seemed to make ecstasy the beginning and end of real
conversion. Anyone who did not succumb to the ecstasies of the revivals
was quickly condemned as unconverted, including long-standing ministers,
some of whom were deposed by their newly awoken congregants. The New
England establishment, Edwards among them, closed ranks against these
more excessive forms of revivalism, and Edwards himself grew increasingly
disillusioned by the sectarianism that split the revivalist movement.
So, too, does the ecstatic body continue to trouble contemporary theolog-
ical attempts to resuscitate the aesthetic dimensions of religious experience.
The twentieth century saw a “return to aesthetics” across Christian theo-
logical projects. In these projects, beauty is offered as the forgotten locus for
theological reflection—the absent source, object, and end of Christian theol-
ogy. Lurking behind this “return” is a sense that theology has lost its way
in the thickets of modernity. In our “modern world,” the argument often
goes, Christian theology has followed the method of exact sciences, has
sought to imitate them and “envelop itself in their atmosphere,” resorting to
propositional logic and rationalist defense.25 Along the way, it inadvertently
bolstered the intellectual scaffolding that has led to its marginalization as a
legitimate mode of knowing. Beauty, in these projects, need not necessarily
be tied to actual objects of aesthetic value made and appreciated by humans.
That is, the “return of beauty” is sometimes aligned with actual moves to
vivify Christian worship, daily practice, or communal ritual. More often,
“the aesthetic” is abstracted from concrete objects of beauty and aligned
with other modes of “nonpropositional” knowing like affect and desire.26
This abstraction is one way to renegotiate the uneasy relationship between
Protestantism and modernity. On one hand, nonpropositional theologies—
religious truth worked out in terms of beauty or desire—distance theology
 Beauty and the Protestant body 155
from competition with other modes of knowing that challenge theological
supremacy (science, rationalism, etc.). On the other hand, nonpropositional
theologies make way for “pure experience” that extend Protestant reach
beyond the confines of doctrine to “universal experience”—as in the work
of Paul Tillich, for whom abstraction is central to his aesthetic theology.27
The concreteness of the ecstatic body, especially as it haunts our popular
imagination, unsettles these projects. Is the flailing body in the True Blood
credits discussed in the opening of this chapter the irrational remnants of an
incomplete modernity? Or an alluring alternative to the modern disciplining
of the self? The same ecstasy can either threaten a reasonably ordered self
and society or offer an escape from the strictures of rationality that debili-
tate that same self and oppress it in artificial social arrangements. If aesthet-
ics is a way around the problems of modernity, it is very hard to know what
to do with the ecstatic body as an aesthetic enactment.
Perhaps, then, this is what Edwards can offer to the conversation: beauty
enacted in bodily ecstasy was, once upon a time, proposed as a source and
end for theological reflection and Christian practice, not as an alternative
to modernity, but as an alternative within it, which is to say, “aesthetics”
in Protestant theology already come laden with the accumulated weight of
competing projects of modernity. To the degree that “aesthetics” is one of
the categories by which Protestant theology has navigated its own uneasy
allegiances with modernity, it is my hope that this exploration of one theolo-
gian’s efforts to do the same on the cusp of modernity will prove illuminat-
ing for the conversation this volume inaugurates.

Notes
1 Portions of this chapter were first published in Theology and the Kinesthetic
Imagination: Jonathan Edwards and the Making of Modernity (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2014).
2 There has been a proliferation of work on the mutual imbrication of the crea-
tion of “the secular” and “the religious.” Several scholars have argued, more
specifically, that the very idea of “the secular” can only be understood in terms
of Christian theological, especially Protestant, claims. Cf. Talal Asad, Genealo-
gies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam
(Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993); Courtney Bender and
Pamela Klassen, eds., After Pluralism: Reimagining Religious Engagement (New
York: Columbia University Press, 2010); Tomoko Masuzawa, The Invention of
World Religions, or, How European Universalism was Preserved in the Lan-
guage of Pluralism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).
3 If personal anecdotes count for anything in a footnote, I cannot count the num-
ber of people, when I am asked about this project in a casual setting, who share
their own remembrances of studying Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God in
their high school English class.
4 Cf. Marilynne Robinson, Absence of Mind: The Dispelling of Inwardness from
the Modern Myth of the Self (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010).
5 Cf. Mark Driscoll, “Jonathan Edwards,” accessed March 5, 2012, http://­
theresurgence.com/2009/03/20/jonathan-edwards (Driscoll has since taken
156 Kathryn Reklis
down all content from this website); John Piper, The Pleasures of God: Medita-
tions on God’s Delight in Being God (Sisters, OR: Multnomah Press, 2000); and
Sam Storms, Pleasures Evermore: The Life-Changing Power of Enjoying God
(Colorado Springs, CO: Nav Press, 2000).
6 Mark A. Noll, The Rise of Evangelicalism: The Age of Edwards, Whitefield, and
the Wesleys (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003).
7 I am purposefully resisting comparing these forms of bodily ecstasy with Catho-
lic versions seen in “mystical experiences” (e.g., in Teresa of Avila). Such com-
parative Christian mysticism could yield many important points of conversation,
but for Edwards, the Catholic comparison was not his reference point or his
preoccupation. It is more valuable, I argue, to frame his theological project in
conversations about the role of subjectivity in the emerging modern project. The
competing projects of modernity are intimately tied to debates about Protestant-
ism and about Protestant understandings of Catholicism but not along the axis
of “mystical” or “ecstatic” experience.
8 A second essay could be written placing Edwards’s own preoccupations with
aesthetics in the larger modern discussion about the “merely aesthetic” and the
“more than” of aesthetic experience I discuss in the Introduction to this volume.
9 Many others have dissected Edwards’s theological and philosophical aesthetics,
parsing his vocabulary and placing him in the context of eighteenth-century aes-
thetics more broadly. Essential studies in the matter include Stephen H. Daniel,
The Philosophy of Jonathan Edwards: A Study in Divine Semiotics (Blooming-
ton, IN: Indiana University Press, 1994); Roland Delattre, Beauty and Sensibility
in the Thought of Jonathan Edwards: An Essay in Aesthetics and Theological
Ethics (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1968); Norman Fiering, Jonathan
Edwards’s Moral Thought and Its British Context (Chapel Hill, NC: University
of North Carolina Press, 1982); Alan Heimert, Religion and the American Mind,
from the Great Awakening to the Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1966); Sang Hyun Lee, The Philosophical Theology of Jonathan Edwards
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000); and Amy Plantinga Pauw, The
Supreme Harmony of All: The Trinitarian Theology of Jonathan Edwards
(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002).
10 Leigh Eric Schmidt, Holy Fairs: Scotland and the Making of American Revival-
ism, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001), xvii.
11 Simon Gikandi, Slavery and the Culture of Taste (Princeton: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 2011), 4. See also Marcel Mauss, “The Category of the Human
Mind: The Notion of the Person; the Notion of the Self,” in The Category of
the Person: Anthropology, Philosophy, History, ed. Michael Carrithers, Ste-
ven Collins, and Steven Lukes (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985),
1–26; Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, trans. Robert M.
Wallace (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1983); Ernest Cassirer, The Philosophy of the
Enlightenment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951); Jürgen Habermas,
The Philosophical Discourses of Modernity: Twelve Lectures, trans. Frederick
G. Lawrence (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1987); and Charles Taylor, Sources of the
Self: The Making of Modern Identity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1989).
12 Mark Valeri, “The Economic Thought of Jonathan Edwards,” Church History
60, no. 1 (March 1991): 53.
13 For one of many instances, see The Day of Judgment, in Works of Jonathan
Edwards, Volume 14: Sermons and Discourses, 1723–1729, ed. Kenneth P.
Minkema (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999), 538. Hereafter cited
as WJE.
14 Sin and Wickedness Bring Calamity on a People, in WJE, 14:493.
 Beauty and the Protestant body 157
15 Ibid., 496.
16 A full discussion of Edwards’s aesthetic ontology can be found in Reklis, Theol-
ogy and the Kinesthetic Imagination, 69–83.
17 Edwards’s morphology of conversion, which became a kind of circum-Atlantic
script in the revivals can be found in A Faithful Narrative, WJE, 4, 106–79.
18 “The Diary of Nicholas Gilman,” ed. William Kidder (Master’s thesis, University
of New Hampshire, 1972), 226, 232.
19 Douglas L. Winiarski, “ ‘A Jornal of a Fue Days at York’: The Great Awaken-
ing on the Northern New England Frontier,” Maine History 42 (March 2004):
62–63.
20 John Lee to Eleazar Wheelock, April 20, 1741, no. 741270, Papers of Eleazar
Wheelock, Hanover, NH, 1971, quoted in Thomas S. Kidd, The Great Awaken-
ing: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America (New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 107.
21 Stephen Williams Diary, Storrs Library, Longmeadow, MA, typescript copy, 3,
quoted in Kidd, The Great Awakening, 104; “Extract from a Letter; Suffield,
July 6, 1741,” in the Samuel P. Savage papers, MHS, transcribed in Douglas
L. Winiarski, “Jonathan Edwards, Enthusiast? Radical Revivalism and the
Great Awakening in the Connecticut Valley,” Church History 74, no. 4 (Decem-
ber 2005): 738–39.
22 Boston Weekly News-Letter, July 1, 1742, quoted in The Great Awakening:
Documents on the Revival of Religion, 1740–1745, ed. Richard Bushman
(Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1989), 48. Edwards to
Thomas Prince, December 12, 1743, in WJE, 16, 117–20.
23 The Concert of Prayer was, perhaps, his most concrete vision for how the spir-
itual unity of the evangelical community would be connected in material ways.
For further discussion of Edwards’s hope for the economic and material ramifi-
cations of pan-evangelical spiritual unity, see Mark Valeri, “Forgiveness: From
the Puritans to Jonathan Edwards,” in Practicing Protestants: Histories of Chris-
tian Life in America, 1630–1965, ed. Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp, Leigh E. Schmidt,
and Mark Valeri (Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins University Press, 2006),
35–48.
24 Indeed, even in his own day this was largely how he was portrayed by his polem-
ical interlocutors. For a discussion of his public debates with Charles Chauncy,
in which Chauncy sought to cast him and the revivalists he was defending as
irrational holdouts unwilling to move into the modern world or as mentally ill,
see Reklis, Theology and the Kinesthetic Imagination, 93–107.
25 This is Hans Urs von Balthasar’s argument (picked up by many others) as dis-
cussed in The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, Volume 1: Seeing
the Form, trans. Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis, ed. Joseph Fessio, SJ and John Riches
(London: T&T Clark, 1982), 18.
26 A brief, and insufficient, bibliography of theologies that focus primarily on
bodily, erotic, and/or affective modes of knowing would include Chris Bossel
and Catherine Keller, eds., Apophatic Bodies: Negative Theology, Incarnation,
and Relationality (New York: Fordham University Press, 2010); David Brown,
God and Grace of Body: Sacrament in Ordinary (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2007); M. Shawn Copeland, Enfleshing Freedom: Body, Race, and Being
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010); Wendy Farley, The Wounding and Healing
of Desire: Weaving Heaven and Earth (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox
Press, 2005); Lisa Isherwood and Elizabeth Stuart, Introducing Body Theol-
ogy (Cleveland, OH: The Pilgrim Press, 1998); Grace Jantzen, “New Creations:
Eros, Beauty, and the Passion for Transformation,” in Toward a Theology of
Eros: Transfiguring Passion at the Limits of Discipline, ed. Virginia Burrus and
158 Kathryn Reklis
Catherine Keller (New York: Fordham University Press, 2006), and Becoming
Divine: Towards a Feminist Philosophy of Religion (Bloomington, IN: Indiana
University Press, 1999); Anthony B. Pinn and Dwight N. Hopkins, eds., Loving
the Body: Black Religious Studies and the Erotic (New York: Palgrave Mac-
millan, 2004); Karmen MacKendrick, Word Made Skin: Figuring Language at
the Surface of Flesh (New York: Fordham University Press, 2004); Melanie A.
May, A Body Knows: A Theopoetics of Death and Resurrection (New York:
Continuum, 1995); Elisabeth Moltmann-Wendell, I Am My Body: A Theology
of Embodiment (New York: Continuum, 1995); Anthony B. Pinn, Embodiment
and the New Shape of Black Theological Thought (New York: New York Uni-
versity Press, 2010); Marcia W. Mount Shoop, Let the Bones Dance: Embodi-
ment and the Body of Christ (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press,
2010); and Denys Turner, Eros and Allegory: Medieval Exegesis of the Song of
Songs (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1995).
27 See Paul Tillich, “Address on the Occasion of the Opening of the New Gal-
leries and Sculpture Garden of The Museum of Modern Art,” and “Art and
Ultimate Reality,” in On Art and Architecture, ed. John and Jane Dillenberger
(New York: Crossroads, 1987). In the mid-twentieth century, Tillich, and many
influenced by his thought, led a wholesale liturgical/aesthetic reform movement
aimed at improving the taste of liberal Protestants through exposure to “good”
art, by which they meant high modernist visual art and poetry. At stake in the
battle over “good” versus “bad” art in churches or church magazines was noth-
ing less than “the survival of meaningful Christianity in modern America.” Cf.
Sally Promey, “Taste Cultures: The Visual Practice of Liberal Protestantism,
1940–1965,” in Practicing Protestants: Histories of Christian Life in America,
1630–1965, ed. Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp, Leigh E. Schmidt, and Mark Valeri (Bal-
timore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006).
10 Theology and aesthetics in
the early nineteenth century
Kierkegaard’s alternative to
Hegel and Romanticism
Lee C. Barrett

The problematization of aesthetics and religion

In the early nineteenth century, the subdiscipline of theology, now com-
monly known as theological aesthetics, began to assume its contemporary
form. Its development was inspired and informed by the intensifying atten-
tion devoted to aesthetic matters in philosophy. Philosophy’s heightened
interest in aesthetic theory, as differentiated from logic, metaphysics, epis-
temology, and ethics, was a function of the identification of “the arts” as a
distinct and unique domain of cultural productivity. Art was seen as being
significantly different from the more utilitarian, ornamental, and formulaic
crafts. The “higher” forms of music, literature, the visual arts, architecture,
dance, and drama were categorized together as constituents of this aesthetic
sphere. According to this new sensibility, the purpose of an artwork tran-
scended the provision of didactic instruction, moral edification, or sensory
pleasure. A true work of art should be contemplated, with the expectation
that it could have a transformative impact upon an individual’s experience
of life in the world. Accordingly, new popular channels for art consump-
tion proliferated, including galleries, museums, theaters, and concert halls,
expanding the audience for the arts beyond the ranks of the aristocracy. Now
the church was no longer the unrivaled locus for spiritual edification. This
new situation, which raised the question of the relation of art and religion,
demanded a theological response. This chapter investigates the Romantic
and Hegelian trends in Protestant aesthetic theory in the early nineteenth
century, their interaction with theological concerns, and the novel responses
of Søren Kierkegaard to these issues.
In many ways, the critical exploration of the role of the arts in Christian-
ity was nothing new. For centuries Christians had reflected on the use of
visual images, music, and literary pieces in corporate worship and private
devotion. Ever since the iconoclast controversy, attention had been given to
the propriety of using visual images, what type of images could be used, and
how they should be used. Such issues had arisen in the early justifications
of Gothic innovation, in Jesuit apologia for Baroque art, and in Zwinglian
and Anabaptist iconophobia. The same type of reflection, aimed at liturgical
160 Lee C. Barrett
and devotional practices within the life of the church, developed in regard to
music, poetry, architecture, and drama.
But theological engagement with aesthetic phenomena took a new turn
in the nineteenth century. Now, many Protestant and mostly Lutheran the-
orists detected a religious dimension in even nonecclesial art, and art as
such was seen as having religious significance. To have potential theological
meaning, an artwork, whether it was a poem or a painting, did not have
to be an object intended for use in prayerful meditation or public worship.
Nor, in order to count as spiritually significant, did an artwork have to
portray a biblical scene, illustrate a doctrinal point, or encourage an eccle-
sially endorsed virtue. Rather, more and more scholars and literati began
to regard aesthetic and religious phenomena as being parallel, or at least
as having important intersections. After all, both art and religion resisted
the Enlightenment’s perceived reduction of human experience to scientific
rationality and technological pragmatism. Both art and religion promised to
redeem culture from the deadening effects of desacralizing objectivity and
subservience to calculations of profit and loss. Although most theoreticians
did not absolutely collapse religion and aesthetics into one another, aesthet-
ics began to serve a function akin to that of religion. In spite of some pro-
testations that this sensibility was idolatrous, the art gallery and the theater
began to acquire a quasi-religious aura.

Baumgarten and Kant’s differentiation of “the aesthetic”

Because aesthetic experience was recognized to be something different from
sensory perception, discursive reasoning, abstract thinking, or moral striv-
ing, critical reflection on art and beauty became a separate domain for phil-
osophic reflection. This differentiation is evident in the work of Alexander
Baumgarten (1714–62), who defined aesthetics as the discipline that deals
with the criteria for judging something to be beautiful in nature and art.1
The beautiful, according to Baumgarten, is a sensory cognition that pleases
the senses rather than the intellect. The “beautiful” requires a unique the-
matization, just as the “true” and the “good” do. Baumgarten’s analysis
opened the possibility that aesthetic phenomena could contribute something
significant to the apprehension of the divine.
Baumgarten used space and time as the main categories to be used in
the classification of aesthetic productions. The “plastic arts,” governed by
space, include architecture, sculpture, and painting, while the “musical”
arts include music, dance, poetry, and drama. This classification scheme ini-
tiated the tendency to associate the plastic arts with sensuousness and the
simultaneity of spatial relations and to associate the musical arts with tem-
porality and spiritual development. This consideration meshed nicely with
the Protestant conviction that Christianity is primarily a narrative, either
of the divine saga stretching from creation to eschaton or of the journey
of the individual from sin to salvation. Echoes of the Protestant conviction
 Theology and aesthetics 161
that the word written and proclaimed is the primary medium for revelation
reverberate here. Consequently, Protestant theologians would embrace the
notion that the dynamic and less material nature of literature is more suited
to convey the essence of the gospel than are the static plastic arts.
Immanuel Kant’s account of aesthetic judgment and his concept of “the
sublime” set the stage for subsequent developments in the aesthetic theories
of the Romantics and Hegel.2 According to Kant, in an experience of the
sublime, such as the sense of awe and vertigo during a raging storm, the cat-
egories of understanding are overwhelmed; the sublime gestures toward the
infinite and resists conceptualization. It is important to note that for Kant the
sublime is really the awareness of the absolute significance of human rational
powers, especially the power of practical reason, in the face of experiences
of uncontrollable excess. In spite of the hurricane’s mysterious grandeur, the
individual subject recognizes that she herself possesses an inestimable moral
worth. This delight in the superiority of the human spirit over even the most
spectacular earthly phenomena would become a staple of much Protestant
reflection on aesthetics, particularly in the school of Albrecht Ritschl.

The romantic spiritualization of art

Kant’s ruminations were a major impetus for the articulation of Romantic
aesthetic theory and practice, which influenced theological reflection might-
ily. All Romantics appealed to imagination, intuition, and passion to over-
come the perceived sterility of Enlightenment rationalism. Some Romantics
seized on the concept of the sublime, as that which cannot be domesticated,
controlled, or even conceptualized. For this group, experiences that can-
not be represented and that destabilize the individual are akin to religious
experiences and, in fact, may be the essence of religious experiences. The
emphasis on the disruption of ordinary ways of thinking was compatible
with the Reformed tradition’s focus on the overwhelming glory of God.
This sentiment would lead to Romanticism’s fascination with phenomena
that cannot be fully grasped or managed, such as storms, battles, ruins, and
mountains. Here the aesthetic object itself was seen as communicating a
sense of the sacred numinous.
Other Romantics would focus not on the sublime as a confrontation with
irreducible otherness but would rather construe the beautiful as an intuition
of a unified totality. For Friedrich Schelling, for example, aesthetic experi-
ence can intuit the unity of sensory phenomena and spirit in a way that logi-
cal argumentation cannot.3 For the followers of Schelling, the eternal can
be apprehended in and through the temporal; the unity of the two domains
can be grasped in an immediate experience. In fact, all dichotomies could
be reconciled in the intuitive apprehension of an underlying whole. Not sur-
prisingly, the language of redemption, among both Protestant and Catholic
Romantics, was unabashedly applied to art’s capacity to manifest this unify-
ing presence of the infinite in the finite.
162 Lee C. Barrett
Yet other Romantics, building on the constitutive role of imagination,
regarded aesthetic experience as an antidote to the spiritually deadening
power of ordinary life. Social routines, conformity to inherited customs,
and environmental constraints all stifled the spirit, robbing it of a sense
of wonder. Consequently, some Romantics saw aesthetic creativity as the
primary vehicle for transcending the constricting power of ordinary life.
The imagination became an escape from prosaic actuality, a pathway into
imagined worlds and novel modes of experience. In all instances, the artist
was regarded as the liberator of humanity from the constraints of modernity
and actuality in order to foster the individual’s free play with existential
possibilities.
The focus on unrestrained creativity eventually generated one of the most
distinctive characteristics of later Romanticism: the obsession with irony.4
Early nineteenth-century literary culture had been entranced by the liberat-
ing power of irony as a rhetorical strategy. The ability to use words to say
one thing while possibly suggesting another drew attention to the instability
and the polyvalent character of language and the possibility of a plurality
of interpretations. Freedom, in this case, the freedom to interpret creatively,
was thus encouraged through the power of the literary arts. Ironic works
of art aimed at sensitizing audiences to the incongruity of the constraints of
finite reality and the generative freedom of the human spirit.
Some Romantics appropriated this principle of creative subjectivity and
transformed it into a theory of aesthetic experience and artistic production
and even into an existential posture. Romanic irony celebrated the infinity
of the aesthetic creativity of the individual, without the individual’s being
bound to any particular finite content. The ego is not constrained by any
given actuality, whether it is her own social context, her embeddedness in a
nexus of relationships, or even her own immediate character traits. In this
way, the individual’s life itself is regarded as a work of art as the individual
perpetually reinvents herself. The artist’s crowning achievement, her mas-
terpiece, is her free creation of her own self. For many advocates of Roman-
tic irony, this glorification of self-creation necessarily involved the rejection
of all conventional norms. While the ordinary sort of human beings are
unselfconscious lemmings who blindly submit to societal expectations, the
ironist transcends this cultural servitude. Authors such as Johann Ludwig
Tieck delighted in polemicizing against the triviality of middle-class life and
implicitly urged their readers to resist making an absolute commitment to
its spirit-killing ethos.5
Some advocates of Romantic irony advanced beyond the relativization of
cultural norms. Friedrich Schlegel had encouraged an unrestricted irony, par-
ticularly in his novel Lucinde.6 Schlegel, it seemed to many critics, rejected
not only the constraints of bourgeois society but also the restrictions of
finitude. The creativity of the individual seemed to transcend the limitations
of all spatial and temporal phenomena. Consequently, the individual is free
to experiment with everything. Because the artistic imagination can negate
 Theology and aesthetics 163
phenomena and recombine them at will, the creativity of the artist grows to
godlike and idolatrous proportions.
To many, extreme Romantic irony seemed to suggest sheer negativity, a
distancing from all the concreteness of temporal life with no positive accept-
ance of the givenness of life. By relativizing all life views, it seemed to reject
any commitment to ethical or religious goals. Such a stance seemed fla-
grantly immoral, as other people became nothing more than material for the
individual’s artistic projects. As a result, the individual’s life could only be
governed by passing whims and arbitrary decisions, with no overall direc-
tionality or coherence. The self, it was feared by theologically minded crit-
ics, would evaporate in escapist fancies, with no sense of its foundation in a
world created by God with definite structures and norms.

Hegel’s critique and the sublation of art

Against the alleged solipsism and potential nihilism of radical Romantic
irony, idealism attempted to justify a much more positive and objective role
for art in human life, linking it to the functions of religion and philoso-
phy. For philosophers such as G. W. F. Hegel, who saw his philosophy as
the systematic expression in the conceptual form of the basic intuitions of
Protestantism, art mediates between the perception of particular sensory
phenomena and the comprehension of universal dynamics.7 According to
Hegel, art presents a concept to the faculty of sensibility so that it can be
sensuously represented. Of course, philosophical reflection should eventu-
ally purge the sensuous dimension of the representation in order to com-
prehend the concept in its purity. Art’s reliance on sensory material must be
superseded by philosophic reflection, because art is a preliminary stage in
the human spirit’s evolution toward its consciousness of itself as the actual-
ization of the Absolute.
Hegel followed Baumgarten in developing a typology of art according to
the categories of temporality and spatiality. The plastic arts of architecture,
painting, and sculpture are static and fixed; consequently, they are inad-
equate vehicles for communicating the dynamism of the spirit. Poetry and
music, however, are temporal and therefore are more suited to conveying
a sense of movement. Poetry is the most ideal artistic form for articulating
spirit, for by employing language it is not only temporal, like music, but also
conceptual. Within the category of the poetic, Hegel discerned a historic
progression of more and more adequate forms, evolving from the epic to the
lyric and finally to the dramatic, the form that most transparently concerns
itself with the development of selfhood.
Hegel’s concern that the sensuous aspects of art should be sublated
into conceptual understandings caused him to dislike not only Romantic
irony but also the Romantic appropriation of Kant’s concept of the sub-
lime. By suggesting an unrepresentable transcendence, the advocates of the
sublime suggested that the divine is absent from the world and posited an
164 Lee C. Barrett
unbridgeable gulf between God and finitude. Such a bifurcation of the infi-
nite and the finite had to be overcome through a recognition of their essen-
tial unity displayed in the dialectical evolution of Spirit. For many of his
theologically minded contemporaries, Hegel helped undermine traditional
Protestant convictions concerning divine transcendence, while reinforcing a
very Protestant sense of the inferiority of the materiality of art to the spiritu-
ality of conceptual systems.
To summarize, the early nineteenth century saw the fine arts identified as
a source of a unique, profound, and transformative type of experience. This
experience could be construed as an awareness of the superlative value of
the human spirit, of something ineffably sublime whose excess cannot be
confined in any conceptual system; it could be the underlying unity of all
things, the incongruity of the individual’s yearnings and the constraints of
the actual world or an intuitive truth than needed to be translated into con-
ceptual form. But however these understandings of aesthetic experience may
have differed from one another, they all posited an experience that seemed
suspiciously like mystical rapture or religious desire. In response to the simi-
larity of the aesthetic and the religious, theologians and ecclesial leaders
either tried to discredit the rival world of art, baptize it as an invaluable
preparation for Christian experience proper or identify it as true religiosity.

Kierkegaard’s radical alternative

Although Kierkegaard was immersed in these traditions of aesthetic reflec-
tion, his theory and practice of literary communication opened a new way
of thinking about the relations of Christianity and aesthetics. While he ener-
getically critiqued the aestheticization of human experience and resisted the
redemptive pretentions of art, aesthetic features were absolutely essential
to his theological project. He relied on images, parables, rhetorical disjunc-
tions, and other literary devices in ways that suggested a different way of
conceiving the relation between Christianity and art.8 While aesthetic expe-
rience and religious experience are intrinsically different for Kierkegaard, he
was convinced that the religious cannot be communicated without aesthetic
strategies. Conversely, art can only edify and be profound if it is put to
ethical and religious purposes. For Kierkegaard, Christianity provides the
goal of his authorship, while art, or at least the literary arts, provides the
indispensable form.
By using aesthetic strategies as a means to the end of promoting the indi-
vidual’s growth in introspection and the assumption of responsibility, rather
than as a source of religious-like experiences of the sublime or cosmic unity,
Kierkegaard was remaining true to his Protestant heritage in its Lutheran
Pietist form. Pietists stressed inner experience rather than doctrinal preci-
sion and resisted the tendency of the scholastic Protestant theologians to
assume that Christian convictions could be communicated directly in uni-
vocal propositional form. As an alternative to the production of discursive
 Theology and aesthetics 165
systems of theology, many Pietists, following the lead of August Hermann
Francke, had developed the genre of the conversion narrative, in which
literary devices embedded in stories of individual spiritual transformation
served to provoke the reader to reflect on the quality of her own life.9 For
the Pietists, the meaning of doctrinal concepts only became clear as these
rhetorical strategies activated the reader’s religious pathos. This use of the
believer’s spiritual journey as an overarching hermeneutic framework was
an outgrowth of the Protestant fascination with the faith development of
the individual.
In spite of his indebtedness to Pietist literary sensibilities, Kierkegaard
shared many of Hegel’s aesthetic presuppositions.10 Like Hegel, Kierkegaard
proposed that the arts which utilize the dynamic medium of time are more
adequate to the spirit than are those which rely primarily upon space. The
inwardness of an individual can have no external visible form of expression;
freedom is not directly representable. This was a common theme in most
Protestant theorists of aesthetic phenomena. Also like Hegel, he ranked the
literary arts above the immediacy of music. Here Kierkegaard was manifest-
ing the typical Protestant preference for the nonmaterial.
Kierkegaard also shared Hegel’s dissatisfaction with the Romantic intui-
tion of an underlying unity in the cosmos and in human life. For many
of the Romantics, the ephemeral and contingent aspects of experience are
synthesized by the artist with life’s eternal and infinite dimensions. Kierkeg-
aard objects that this immediately given integration of the mundane and the
absolute is posited only as an abstract ideal. An alleged perception of the
fundamental unity of all things cannot make that unity actual in the con-
crete particularity of human lives. Art by itself can only heal life’s fissures in
the imagination, not in reality.
Moreover, Kierkegaard was very sympathetic to Hegel’s criticism of
Romantic irony and echoed much of it.11 For both Hegel and Kierkegaard,
Romantic irony’s negation of actuality is absolutely universal and indis-
criminate. By distancing the individual from the givens of life, it cavalierly
destroys all interpersonal responsibility, denies truth, and undermines social
relations. Having no external norms and no necessary goals to give stabil-
ity and continuity, the ironist is at the mercy of passing whims and has no
enduring character. Kierkegaard suspected that a despairing nihilism lurked
below the surface of ironic aestheticism.
Following Hegel again, Kierkegaard argued that although irony by
itself cannot reconcile an individual with actuality, it should not be totally
rejected.12 The negative moment of distancing from social norms is invalu-
able, for it is a precondition for the individual’s assumption of responsibility
for her own life, something that Lutheran Pietists regarded as a precondition
for the Christian life. Irony sensitizes the individual to the rift between her
profound yearnings and her trivial daily routines and societal roles. But,
Kierkegaard warns, the negative movement cannot generate out of itself
anything positive; it cannot offer a compelling purpose to a life.
166 Lee C. Barrett
In his authorship, Kierkegaard had as a main concern the discovery of how
literary productions could encourage the positive movement that Roman-
tic irony could not provide but that Lutheranism required. He was helped
in this by developing the concept of a “life view,” which is an intentional
and comprehensive way of giving coherence and direction to an individual’s
existence, integrating its affective, volitional, and ideational dimensions.
A literary work has value, according to Kierkegaard, in so far as it com-
municates a coherent life view.13 Otherwise, the emotional responses that a
text elicits would be fleeting, disconnected, and fluctuating. In fact, ideally,
the entire literary production of an author should exhibit a particular life
view. Kierkegaard praised the novelist Madame Gyllembourg for having
been consistent throughout her career as an author.14 Each new work exhib-
ited continuity with her past productions, showing that she had been faith-
ful to her life view and to her project of communicating it to her readers.
Such communication can be successful because the imagination, stimulated
by literature, can present an ideal way of life to the self, and foster a partial
grasp of the passions and modes of action that constitute that way of life.
The aesthetic imagination can mediate between the ideal and the real by
helping individuals project themselves into alternative and seemingly actu-
alizable ways of living.
Because the communication of a life view became so important to Kierkeg-
aard, he ruminated intensively on the problems of communication in gen-
eral. Kierkegaard’s authorship signaled a revolution in the understanding
of the religious significance of literature and other forms of art, for in his
own texts, he was experimenting with the ways in which literature could
communicate life views and thereby open vistas beyond ironic negation. By
wrestling with the issue of communicating a Christian life view, Kierkeg-
aard problematized the boundary between theological literature and more
“aesthetic” writings. Kierkegaard’s unconventional way of writing about
religious matters, so often noted by commentators, was inspired by his con-
victions concerning the unique nature of authentic religious communica-
tion. It is this sensitivity to the requisites of Christian communication that
led him to forge a new Christian aesthetic different from the legacies of
Kant, Hegel, or Romanticism but in keeping with the Pietist concern for the
individual’s spiritual journey.
In 1847, Kierkegaard sketched the contours of his novel theory of liter-
ary aesthetics in a set of outlines for a series of lectures concerning the
unique challenges of communicating matters pertaining to ethical and reli-
gious ways of life.15 The issue of literary communication was so impor-
tant to him that he was never fully satisfied with his various lecture drafts
and never delivered them or made them public. In these drafts, he articu-
lated his fundamental conviction that the meaning of any religious text,
or even a single religious statement, is not an intrinsic, stable property of
the formal definitions of the written words themselves. The words only
acquire meaning when they are put to an appropriate use in such activities
 Theology and aesthetics 167
as repenting, praising, and rejoicing, and that use is understood by the
hearer/reader. More generally, the ability to grasp the discursive import
of any assertion requires the ability to understand its typical performative
function in a nexus of human concerns and purposes. For example, to say
“My mother is seriously ill” in most instances is to do much more than to
report a bit of medical data. It is typically an expression of deep concern
and anxiety, presupposing a context of filial attachment and obligation. To
not appreciate this expressive use is to have a deficient grasp of the concept
“mother,” for the word is employed to do much more than refer to a par-
ticular human being.
Even more so, concepts pertaining to “the meaning of life” cannot be
communicated as if they were neutral bits of data to be transmitted from
one mind to another. Part of the meaning of the assertion “God is good”
is the imperative to cultivate gratitude for whatever happens in life. To not
know that writings about God’s providence are trying to encourage a dis-
position of thankfulness is to not know the full meaning of providence. The
effort to discourse about life from a neutral standpoint ignores the ways
that existentially significant bits of language are intended to have an impact
on the reader’s/hearer’s self-understanding. In his lecture notes, Kierkegaard
excoriated the tendency of modernity to reduce religious communication
to the transfer of objective knowledge.16 The root problem is that informa-
tion by itself does not possess the power to show how the data should be
used to affect the reader’s life. Kierkegaard concludes that understanding
any religious communication requires a grasp of the intelligible network
of passions, purposes, and concerns in which it is embedded. By doing so,
Kierkegaard was shifting the focus in aesthetics from the properties of the
art object to its use.
Because Christian communication is intended to transform people’s pas-
sional lives, the proper understanding of Christianly significant literature
requires the ability to imagine the appropriate desires, hopes, and fears
(often referred to as “pathos,” “subjectivity,” or “inwardness”) that should
attend their use. These dimensions of pathos are a constitutive part of the
meaning of any Christian statement or text; they are not mere affective
addenda to meanings that could be grasped purely cognitively. For exam-
ple, the statement “Jesus is the atonement for sin” cannot be fully under-
stood apart from the capacity to imagine severe discontent with the state
of one’s moral and spiritual life, and to appreciate the joyful attractions of
forgiveness. Even if a person is not presently feeling profound contrition,
repentance, or self-contempt, she must at least be capable of imaging what
it would be like to experience the fear and trembling of moral despair as
well as the relief and joy of reconciliation. Without that, discussion of the
“atonement” makes no sense. Here Kierkegaard was extending the Pietist
insistence that cognitive assent to doctrinal propositions is not a sufficient
index of faith; the meaning of the propositions only becomes clear in the
inwardness of the individual believer.
168 Lee C. Barrett
Kierkegaard concluded that Christian communication should enable indi-
viduals to image a life-view defined by a particular type of pathos that the
individual had not previously been aware of or appreciated.17 It is this con-
sideration that made aesthetic phenomena so important to him. Genuine art,
particularly literature, capacitates the individual by expanding the range of
life-view options and helping her to feel their attractive and repellent power.
In doing so, Kierkegaard was implicitly endorsing the Romantic rejection of
the Kantian notion (or, more properly, the idea of some of Kant’s followers)
that aesthetic experience involves a disinterested enjoyment. For Kierkeg-
aard, aesthetic engagement should always be passionate and personal.
Kierkegaard feared that most Lutheran theological discourse erroneously
assumed that religious meanings can be communicated merely through
the precise definition of doctrinal concepts and the exhibition of the logi-
cal relations that obtain among them. Against this commonly held opinion
Kierkegaard argued that Christian convictions are not amenable to direct
communication through simple declarative sentences and certainly not
through the construction of a formal system of such propositions. Rather, the
communication of religious meaning involves the evocation of the passion-
laden dimensions of the given concepts and a clarification of the ways those
concepts could shape behavior, emotions, and dispositions. An existential
communication must somehow trigger fear and trembling over the direction
of a person’s life and encourage an intense and all-­encompassing sense of
responsibility for it. In Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Kierkegaard’s
pseudonym Johannes Climacus encapsulated this theme in his celebrated
dictum that in subjective communication the “how” is more important
than the “what.”18 Consequently, the “aesthetics” of religious communica-
tion are absolutely crucial to its meaning. For Kierkegaard, the traditional
distinctions among theological literature, devotional writing, and edifying
poetry were artificial and counterproductive.
These considerations concerning religious communication led Kierkeg-
aard to develop a much more “literary” approach to theological writing
than was typical of his Protestant contemporaries. For Kierkegaard, only
the use of a wide range of evocative rhetorical strategies could vivify the
passions that are the ingredients to the meanings of Christian concepts.
Kierkegaard became almost obsessed with finding the most apt literary
form for his particular texts so that they would be most suited for eliciting
the passions that are constitutive of particular Christian convictions. Con-
sequently, Kierkegaard, like the Romantic poets, experimented with novel
forms of writing, most obviously in his pseudonymous literature but also
in his signed texts. His basic operating principle was that theological writ-
ing must exhibit the experiential aspects of Christianity through its very
literary shape. For Kierkegaard, the theologian must necessarily write more
like a poet than like an academic philosopher. His dizzying combinations
of unexpected rhetorical devices, including shifts in voice, abrupt changes
of mood, elusive parables, and anomalous metaphors, are not mere literary
 Theology and aesthetics 169
embellishments of themes that could have been communicated more expedi-
tiously through a discursive essay. For Kierkegaard, extending the trajectory
of Lutheran Pietism, faith is most essentially a matter of heartfelt repent-
ance, reckless commitment, extravagant love, and resilient expectation; con-
sequently, any piece of theological writing must display those passions in its
literary form. Put simply, the theological medium must fit the theological
message. By developing this style of theological writing, Kierkegaard was
appropriating the theme of the congruence of form and content, of idea
and medium, which had been characteristic of nineteenth-century aesthetic
theory from the classicists through the Romantics to the Hegelians.
Given the fact that different theological concepts involve different pas-
sions, Kierkegaard concluded that their communication requires different
corresponding moods, different styles, different genres, and even different
authorial voices. Each concept needed to be matched with the literary form
uniquely appropriate to it. For example, “God’s love” requires a mood
of joy and delight, while “sin” requires a mood of candid and sober self-­
examination. Because of these differences in pathos, the communication of
different Christian concepts must be distributed to very different types of
texts, with different evocative potentialities.
According to Kierkegaard, the selection of literary genre is absolutely cru-
cial. For example, a work exposing the disjointed nature of the aesthetic life
should be a chaotic anthology of essays, novellas, and aphorisms, exhibit-
ing sudden oscillations and disorienting changes of topic in the way that
later modernist literature would do. On the other hand, an exploration of
the ethical life, which should embody what it is to be ethical, is more aptly
presented through an extended epistle, in which the author expresses and
enacts ethical solicitude for the recipient. Similarly, because an analysis of
Christian love should itself be an example of love for the neighbor, it should
assume the form of a discourse directly and tenderly addressing the reader
in order to help the reader to grow in love.
Kierkegaard’s penchant for inventing pseudonymous authors, many of
whom exhibited elaborate and complex personal characteristics, was rooted
in the fact that the authorial voice must instantiate the passions associated
with the concept to be communicated. In matters of religious seriousness,
there must be congruence between the author’s life and the author’s speech,
for without the testimony of the author’s life, the meaning of the author’s
words will not be clear. Kierkegaard contended that the meaning of a commu-
nication depends on the particularities of “who said it, on what occasion, in
what situation.”19 He remarked, “In one person’s mouth the same words can
be so full of substance, so trustworthy, and in another person’s mouth they
can be like the vague whispering of leaves.”20 Of course, the reader encoun-
ters the implied author primarily through the author’s self-­presentation in
the text; therefore, Kierkegaard carefully constructed his authorial personae
to exhibit the emotional dynamics of a particular way of life in an exagger-
ated fashion. For example, the pseudonymous author Johannes Climacus,
170 Lee C. Barrett
to whom Philosophical Fragments and Concluding Unscientific Postscript
were ascribed, self-identifies as a “humorist,” someone who has an empathic
but amused sense of the incongruities that characterize human life. Climacus
has distanced himself from the allures of both the hedonistic life and the
ethical life but has not made a decision to commit himself to any alternative
way of life. In spite of his ostensible disengagement, he confesses a desire
to acquire an “eternal happiness” and manifests an acute sensitivity to the
nuances of the Christian life.21 His persona manifests the ambivalence that
characterizes the moment prior to the embrace or rejection of an existential
option and the instability of trying to turn this stance into a life view.
This careful attention to the author’s voice was not restricted to the pseu-
donymous works. Kierkegaard was just as concerned about authorial voice
in his “upbuilding” and Christian literature as he was in his “aesthetic”
works. Even when writing his signed texts, Kierkegaard would modulate his
voice and style in order to suit the passional requirements of the particular
theological concept. For example, when writing about the daunting lofti-
ness of the ideal of following Christ, Kierkegaard would adopt the voice of
a repentant spiritual mediocrity, but when writing about the attractive sub-
limity of that ideal, he would adopt the voice of an enrapt and joyful zealot.
This is evident in his self-presentation in For Self-Examination.22 He hoped
that his slim volume would elicit an admission from the ostensibly devout
members of the Danish Lutheran Church, including Bishop Mynster, that
they were hardly approximating the standards of a Christlike life. To instan-
tiate this desired contrition, Kierkegaard included himself among the vast
array of those average people who fail to follow after the example of Christ’s
life in its full rigor and addressed the reader as one penitent to another.
For Kierkegaard, a crucial factor in communication is not just what
the reader reads, even when the text is saturated with appropriate literary
strategies, but also how the reader reads it. Like many Protestants, in For
Self-Examination, Kierkegaard highlighted the role of the reader in glean-
ing personal edification from the Bible.23 His observations about the read-
ing of Scripture can be more broadly construed as instructions concerning
how to read all existentially relevant texts, including his own. Through-
out the book, Kierkegaard draws a sharp distinction between reading from
a perspective of academic neutrality and reading from a stance of earnest
self-involvement. Here again, the influence of Pietism is evident. The Bible
(and, by extension, any significant religious text) should be engaged with
the intensity and urgency with which one would read a letter from one’s
beloved. To read from a perspective of interpretive neutrality is to fail to
comprehend it. Moreover, the reader should be prepared to do whatever the
text enjoins and not use the undecidability of interpretive questions as a jus-
tification for the evasion of responsibility. Kierkegaard feared that historical
puzzles and doubts could serve as a convenient way to avoid personally
responding to the Bible’s inconvenient demands. Rather than being treated
as an artifact to be deciphered, the Bible should function as a mirror in
 Theology and aesthetics 171
which we see ourselves.24 The reader should approach the text with trepida-
tion, saying, “It is about me that it is speaking.”25 The cultivation of this
earnest self-referentiality is ultimately the reader’s own responsibility.
But although the apt type of reading cannot be compelled by an author, it
can be encouraged by the aesthetic dynamics in a text. To try to ensure that the
reader would not read his texts facilely or complacently, Kierkegaard teases
the reader with multiple interpretive possibilities, interrupts the development
of his arguments, introduces tangents, points the reader in multiple direc-
tions, shatters standard genre expectations, and generally makes hermeneutic
closure impossible. This multivocity diverged from the traditional Protestant
desire to stabilize the allegedly clear and “plain meaning” of the Bible and
all edifying texts. Reading his texts is often strenuous and frustrating, for the
reader is frequently left wondering if a passage is making a serious point or
is simply jesting. Sometimes in his pages, the earnestness of a philosophical
argument is subverted by its juxtaposition with a ridiculous anecdote. The
evident tension between earnestness and playfulness in many of Kierkegaard’s
texts forces the reader to decide whether to be amused, offended, or inspired.
Kierkegaard did not design his texts to be so elusive because the con-
ceptual content was esoteric or because he took a sadistic delight in pro-
liferating cognitive puzzles. Rather, he sought to write in such a way that
the reader would have to take responsibility for her own interpretation of
his pages, which was a continuation of a Protestant trajectory stretching
back to early Luther. Forcing the reader to self-consciously make interpre-
tive decisions was part of his broader strategy of provoking the reader to
assume responsibility for the shape of her own life. For Kierkegaard, that
assumption of responsibility was essential for the development of any sort
of Christian pathos, because the commitment to the Christian life requires
risk and accountability, as his Pietist heritage insisted. The communication
itself must be a pedagogy in freedom; the author cannot blithely assume
that the reader is already free and responsible. The very act of choosing a
construal of the text is an exercise in self-responsibility; the act of reading
becomes a school for passionate inwardness.
To conclude, Kierkegaard’s “literary” way of writing theology required
that the rhetorical dimensions of each particular text must be taken into
account. The reader must always be attentive to the particularities of voice,
context, and purpose of any of Kierkegaard’s volumes in order to be ena-
bled to imagine what it would be like to live in an especially strenuous and
unique way. Kierkegaard was convinced that the living of the Christian life
is an intimidating prospect, for it involves acquiring very countercultural
and counterintuitive ways of desiring, hoping, and fearing. Because Chris-
tian pathos is so difficult to imagine, Christian communication must employ
dramatic literary strategies to make it vivid. Kierkegaard sought to show
through the form of his writing what Christianity is rather than simply say-
ing it. The poetry in his texts is not a mere ornament for something that
could have been said more prosaically.
172 Lee C. Barrett
Perhaps without intending to do so, in his authorship Kierkegaard related
aesthetics and theology in a new way, diverging from the proposals of his
north European Protestant contemporaries. Contrary to Kant, he suggested
that aesthetic phenomena should not be valued as catalysts for an appre-
ciation of the nobility of the human spirit. Contrary to the Romantics, he
proposed that the purpose of art is not to convey a quasi-religious sense of
the sublime. Contrary to Hegel, he contended that art does not communi-
cate truths in sensory guises that require translation into more conceptual
formulations. Contrary to the Romantic ironists, he argued that art does not
merely distance individuals from the confines of social mores and finitude
in general (although it can legitimately do that as a preliminary movement).
All these perspectives assumed that there is a unique type of aesthetic experi-
ence that is triggered by unique aesthetic objects. But Kierkegaard proposed,
often implicitly, that aesthetics need not be regarded as a separate experi-
ential sphere of life that needs to be correlated with the religious dimension
(although he did indeed suggest that a life devoted to aesthetic gratification
is a rival to the religious life). Instead, his writing showed that aesthetic
factors, such as the careful modulation of the author’s voice and the use of
imagistic language to establish a mood, have value when they are used to
nurture certain forms of pathos. The use of these aesthetic strategies in reli-
gious communication is not just optional for Kierkegaard; rather, they are
absolutely necessary for the nurturing of religious passions and dispositions.
Religion cannot function without aesthetics, and aesthetic phenomena need
religion in order to have significance.
Kierkegaard’s literary theory and practice had massive but largely unin-
tended implications for reflection about aesthetics in yet another way.
Rather than focusing on the intrinsic qualities of the aesthetic experience or
the properties of aesthetic objects, Kierkegaard shifted attention to the use
of aesthetic factors in the pursuit of religious purposes. That crucial issue of
“use” applies to both the author and the reader, both to the production of a
text and to its reception. In order for a text to have existential meaning, the
author must be attempting to use her literary productions to do something
to the reader, such as console her, convict her, destabilize her, challenge her,
or energize her. Conversely, the reader must be willing to use the texts for the
purposes of self-examination and edification. Kierkegaard’s new attention to
“use” prefigured the intense interest in the functions of aesthetic objects that
would finally blossom in the twentieth century. In Kierkegaard’s pages, the
expressivism of Romanticism and the cognitivism of Hegelianism were dis-
placed by a passionate functionalism that could be extended to all the arts.

Notes
1 Alexander Baumgarten, Aesthetica, ed. Dagmar Mirbach (Hamburg: Felix
Meiner Verlag, 2007).
2 Immanuel Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment, ed. and trans. Paul Guyer
and Eric Matthews (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
 Theology and aesthetics 173
3 Friedrich Schelling, The Philosophy of Art, ed. and trans. Douglas Stott (Min-
neapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989).
4 See K. Brian Soderquist, The Isolated Self (Copenhagen: C. A. Reutzel, 2007).
5 Johann Ludwig Tieck, Ludwig Tieck’s sämmtliche Werke, vols. 1–2 (Paris: Tétot
Frères, 1837).
6 Friedrich Schlegel, Friedrich Schlegel’s Lucinde and the Fragments, trans. Peter
Firchrow (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1971).
7 G. W. F. Hegel, Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, vol. 1, trans. T. M. Knox
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975).
8 For a similar account of Kierkegaard’s aesthetics, see Sylvia Walsh, Living Poeti-
cally: Kierkegaard’s Existential Aesthetics (University Park: Pennsylvania State
University Press, 1994).
9 See F. Corey Roberts, “German Pietism and the Genesis of Literary Aesthetics,”
Deutsche Vierteljahrsschaft für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 78,
no. 2 (February 2004): 202–28.
10 Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or, Part I, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), 45–136.
11 Søren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Irony, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H.
Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989).
12 Ibid., 324–32.
13 Søren Kierkegaard, Two Ages: A Literary Review, trans. Howard V. Hong and
Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), 18.
14 Ibid., 13–14.
15 Søren Kierkegaard, Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, ed. and trans.
Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Bloomington and London: Indiana Uni-
versity Press, 1967–1968), 1, 261–320.
16 Ibid., 1, 259, 633.
17 Kierkegaard, Two Ages, 12–23.
18 Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. Howard V. Hong
and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 1, 202.
19 Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, 1, 317–18, 678.
20 Søren Kierkegaard, Works of Love, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 11–12.
21 Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 1, 17.
22 Søren Kierkegaard, For Self-Examination and Judge for Yourself!, trans. How-
ard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990),
23, 24, 208.
23 Ibid., 15–51.
24 Ibid., 25–35.
25 Ibid., 35–44.
11 Karl Barth’s Doctrine of the
Word of God, Mozart, and
aesthetics in four movements
Paul Louis Metzger

Karl Barth’s theology has a beautiful aesthetic quality. It is not every day
a theologian receives the Sigmund Freud Prize for Scientific Prose (1968)
based on their “eloquence.” Still, casual assessments of Barth’s work fail to
account for his refined cultural tastes, as illustrated in his love for Mozart’s
music. John Updike’s foreword to Barth’s Mozart volume provides a more
fitting observation of Barth’s aesthetic sensibilities: “his tastes in art and
entertainment were heartily worldly, worldly not in the fashion of those
who accept this life as a way-station and testing-ground but of those who
embrace it as a piece of Creation.”1 The present chapter accounts for Bar-
th’s theological reflection on beauty, including his admiration for Mozart’s
music. It is argued in four movements that Barth’s novel Protestant doctrine
of the Word of God provides a unique theological lens through which to
approach beauty, including Mozart’s music.
Barth’s emphasis on theological objectivity involving God’s loving, free,
and beautiful Word finds a parallel in his interpretation of Mozart’s music.
Mozart’s beautiful music celebrates human freedom within creaturely lim-
its. As a result, Mozart’s music serves as a parable of God’s kingdom. Barth
did not develop a theological aesthetics or aesthetic theology. However, as
claimed in the conclusion, his paradigm involving theological objectivity
and his interpretation of Mozart’s music as serious play prove suggestive
for the development of a theological aesthetics. Such an aesthetic would
help safeguard artistic pursuits from the idolatrous threats of economic
exploitation, on one hand, and religious and political propaganda, on the
other hand.

First movement: the Word of God is beautiful

For Barth, humans know God’s beauty through the revelation of his glory
in the person of Jesus Christ—God’s enfleshed Word. The content of God’s
glory always takes this form. God’s glory revealed in Jesus radiates joy,
which is beautiful.
God is supremely beautiful. God’s beauty is not dependent or derived
from the human beholder, as in some versions of the Catholic notion of the
 Karl Barth’s Doctrine of the Word of God 175
analogy of being. Contrary to the claim that “beauty is in the eye of the
beholder,” in whom pleasure is aroused, God’s glorious being revealed in his
Word “awakens joy, and is itself joyful.” God’s joyful glory is beautiful and
arouses pleasure.2 Barth writes,

What is beautiful produces pleasure. . . . Yet it is not beautiful because

it produces pleasure. Because it is beautiful it arouses pleasure. . . . God
is not beautiful in the sense that He shares in an idea of beauty superior
to Him, so that to know it is to know Him as God. On the contrary,
it is as He is God that He is also beautiful, so that He is the basis and
standard of everything that is beautiful and of all ideas of the beautiful.3

God’s glory is the sum of God’s perfections and can in no way be brought
under the category of the beautiful.4 Even so, God’s glory and beauty are
closely connected. Barth sets forth the proper order and close relation of
glory, joy, and beauty in the following statement:

We shall not presume to try to interpret God’s glory from the point of
view of His beauty, as if it were the essence of His glory. But we cannot
overlook the fact that God is glorious in such a way that He radiates
joy, so that He is all He is with and not without beauty. Otherwise His
glory might well be joyless.5

The preceding discussion manifests a key Barthian emphasis—God’s

Word’s objectivity. T. F. Torrance writes of Barth’s theological objectivity:
“Theological thinking is not thinking from a center in ourselves, in our own
faith or piety, but a thinking from a center beyond ourselves, in God.”6
Barth was ever wary of Ludwig Feuerbach’s claim that theology is the
projection of human qualities onto the divine void ad infinitum. Barth was
convinced that neither Catholicism with its adherence to the analogia entis
(analogy of being) nor Protestant Liberalism and its preoccupation with reli-
gious experience and faith safeguarded sufficiently against Feuerbach’s thesis.
Neither accounted adequately for God’s Word’s objectivity.7 The connection
between God and humanity is always the result of God’s gracious initiative.
This connection never becomes a capacity of nature that we possess.
This emphasis on objectivity and divine initiative is present in Barth’s
distinctively Protestant account of beauty. This emphasis involved the rejec-
tion of analogia entis and distinguishes Barth from his Roman Catholic col-
league Hans Urs von Balthasar,8 whose theological account of aesthetics
“is very much in the spirit of Barth: a theology of revelation centered on
God’s ‘glory’ . . . revealed in Christ.”9 However, Balthasar took exception
to Protestant theology’s repudiation of theological aesthetics in construc-
tive dialogue with Barth. He also attempted to correct Barth’s paradigm at
points. For Balthasar, the problem stems from the Protestant rejection of the
analogy of being.10
176 Paul Louis Metzger
In spite of this fundamental difference, Balthasar praises Barth’s theology
as beautiful. He also accounts for Barth’s objectivity as critically important
to the discussion of beauty:

There is another reason why we want to begin a dialogue with Karl

Barth: his theology is [beautiful]. I do not mean merely that stylistically
Barth writes well, though he does. But the beauty of his prose emerges
more because he unites two things: passion and impartiality. He is pas-
sionately enthusiastic about the subject matter of theology, but he is
impartial in the way he approaches so volatile a subject. Impartiality
means being plunged into the object, the very definition of objectivity.
And Barth’s object is God, as he has revealed himself in Jesus Christ, to
which revelation Scripture bears witness.11

As Balthasar notes, Barth’s objectivity leads him to take very seriously (yet
joyfully) the form God’s revelation takes in Jesus Christ.
The discussion of beauty occurs in Barth’s treatment of God’s being and
perfections in Church Dogmatics II/1. Contrary to Feuerbach, God is not
the sum of human attributes extended to infinity. Rather, God reveals his
deity in a manner that confronts human wish fulfillment. Like power and
lordship, God’s beautiful glory is revealed in Jesus’s cruciform flesh. Jesus’s
incarnation is God’s ultimate exposition.
Barth’s theological framework resembles Matthias Grünewald’s depic-
tion of the crucifixion in “Isenheim Altar.” A copy hung over Barth’s desk.
Grünewald painted the altarpiece for the Order of St. Anthony’s monastery
at Isenheim. The monks tended to patients suffering from ergotism or “St.
Anthony’s Fire.” Jesus’s grotesque features resembled the patients’ condition.
It was believed the painting’s striking beauty and depiction of Jesus’s pas-
sion would provide comfort for them. Barth maintained the church should
image John the Baptist, who stands to one side in the painting pointing to
the crucified Lord. Like John the Baptist, the church “does not stand within
the mystery,” which is revealed indirectly in Jesus. The church (including
Barth) cannot do more than witness to this glorious mystery hidden in the
crucifixion, but it must bear witness.12
Barth’s admiration for Grünewald’s painting excludes any hint of mor-
bidity or gloom. After all, Barth favors a dialectical notion of revelation
according to which God’s glory is revealed in hiddenness. Moreover, God’s
“yes” or affirmation of the creation encloses and exceeds the divine “no” of
judgment. Barth’s dialectical way of thinking manifests a joyful exuberance,
which nonetheless accounts for suffering and evil, judgment and wrath.
God’s glory is certainly “solemn and good and true.” But such qualities
should not be construed as “gloomy or at least joyless.” They are “not
merely” good, true, and solemn.13 God’s glory is joyful and beautiful. God’s
radiance is the manifestation of his entire being. God’s glory is “his over-
flowing self-communicating joy.”14 God’s glory “awakens joy and is itself
 Karl Barth’s Doctrine of the Word of God 177
joyful,” as the sum of God’s perfections are truly and innately beautiful.15
God’s inalienable, beautiful glory leads Barth to judge theology as “the most
beautiful of all sciences.” God’s glorious beauty awakens joy in the theolo-
gian and excludes all morose thoughts.16
What is it about God’s glory revealed through the Word in cruciform
flesh that is joyful and beautiful? A brief overview of Barth’s corpus pro-
vides various examples. God’s glory is humble, loving and free, making
it possible for us to be truly and fully human, not enslaved extensions of
the divine being.17 Moreover, God’s yes to us (acceptance of us) in Jesus
encloses and exceeds God’s no (judgment on sin), as Jesus is the rejected
and elect of God who secures our election.18 Barth’s dialectical theological
orientation involves simultaneity in which God’s glory is revealed in hid-
denness, namely, the veil of Jesus’s cruciform flesh. This dialectical orienta-
tion also involves progression: God’s gracious yes encloses and exceeds the
divine no.
According to Barth, this joyful dialectic is also present in Mozart’s music.19
Barth asserts that Mozart’s music plays recurrently and most clearly the
objective truth that light penetrates the shadow and God’s yes envelops and
surpasses the divine no. In an essay on Mozart, Barth writes,

What occurs in Mozart is rather a glorious upsetting of the balance, a

turning in which the light rises and the shadows fall, though without
disappearing, in which joy overtakes sorrow without extinguishing it,
in which the Yea rings louder than the ever-present Nay. . . . We will
never hear in Mozart an equilibrium of forces and a consequent uncer-
tainty and doubt.”20

Elsewhere Barth writes of Mozart’s historical context: born one year after
the great Lisbon earthquake of 1755, when many contemporaries were
immersed in the modern project of theodicy in the face of doubts over divine
providence. And yet, against this backdrop, Mozart

heard the harmony of creation to which the shadow also belongs but in
which the shadow is not darkness, deficiency is not defeat, sadness can-
not become despair, trouble cannot degenerate into tragedy and infinite
melancholy is not ultimately forced to claim undisputed sway. Thus
the cheerfulness in this harmony is not without its limits. But the light
shines all the more brightly because it breaks forth from the shadow.
The sweetness is also bitter and cannot therefore cloy. Life does not fear
death but knows it well.21

For Barth, Mozart has a special place in theology in the doctrine of creation
and eschatology given how he heard superbly and without equal “the whole
context of providence,” though he was not a church father or a devoutly
religious person.22
178 Paul Louis Metzger
Is Barth’s affirmation of Mozart the result of Barth’s claim that God is
free to reveal himself wherever he chooses? “God may speak to us through
Russian communism, through a flute concerto, through a blossoming shrub
or through a dead dog. We shall do well to listen to him if he really does
so.”23 God is certainly free to reveal himself through Mozart’s music. But
there is more. Mozart is content to make music within the objective limits of
creaturely freedom. This is the subject of the second movement.

Second movement: the Word of God provides limits

to creaturely beauty
God is free to limit himself or to remain unconditioned in relation to the cre-
ation. The particular form God’s revelation takes in Jesus Christ manifests
this relational freedom.24 The creature finds its particular freedom within
the covenantal limits that God graciously provides.
Barth cautions against separating the content and form of God’s Word.25
Revelation’s particular form circumscribes talk about God and humanity.
In Barth’s theology, talk of God always moves from the particular to the
general in keeping with the objectivity and actuality involving concrete rela-
tions between God and humanity constituted by God’s sovereign designs
of love and freedom revealed in God’s Word.26 By extension, it also cir-
cumscribes or limits artistic expression, thereby guarding against aesthetic
excess. Mozart is a fitting example of a masterful musician who does not
exceed the aesthetic limits, which creation itself provides. Nor does Mozart
disregard the musical forms of his generation. Mozart transforms music, as
he expresses himself freely within the musical laws of his time.27 In what fol-
lows, both aspects of limitation or delimitation will come into play.
Barth reflects a distinctive Protestant trajectory. For Barth, like Calvin,
freedom occurs in the context of obedience. There are always limits to crea-
turely freedom, but those limits are life-giving for the sake of freely bearing
prophetic witness unconstrained by inappropriate dictates by the church
and the world.28 Barth reflects his Reformed heritage, albeit reconfigured by
his uniquely Christological hermeneutic, as he grounds creation in recon-
ciliation. The creation exists to be reconciled and redeemed in and through
Jesus Christ.29
God’s Word in creation is not separate from God’s Word in reconciliation
but serves it through the form it takes in Jesus Christ. Grace grounds nature,
not simply perfecting it. Creation does not give way to despair in view of
evil’s threat but, rather, moves forward, beckoned by the divine yes. Mozart
listens keenly to creation, simply playing what he hears, employing the crea-
turely means at his disposal. His freedom within limits is bound up with his
music serving as a prophetic, secular parable of the kingdom.
Mozart took full advantage of the freedom within the proper limits
awarded him to play and make music.30 For Barth, Mozart did not give him-
self over to subjectivism and self-expression. Rather, he remained objective,
 Karl Barth’s Doctrine of the Word of God 179
celebrating the creaturely music he heard.31 Mozart did not use music for
some alternative agenda, such as promoting a certain form of morality or
metaphysics.32 Rather, music employed Mozart for its aims of celebrating
life and providing comfort in view of the light penetrating the shadow.33 As
music’s instrument, Mozart performed creation’s song.34 “He simply offered
himself as the agent by which little bits of horn, metal and catgut could serve
as the voices of creation, sometimes leading, sometimes accompanying and
sometimes in harmony.”35 As one who was “no more than a musician, albeit
a complete one,” Mozart and his music bear witness to God’s kingdom as a
parable, divine in content and secular or earthly in form.
It is also worth noting that according to Barth, Mozart performed crea-
tively within the limits of his musical context. He transformed those limits
from within his musical context rather than discount or transcend them.
His creative genius operated within the limits provided by creation and the
musical forms of his day.36 Barth writes of Mozart’s creative freedom within
the musical limits of his time:

What was originally foreign to him, until he made it his own, became
in his ears, in his head and spirit, and under his hands something which
it had not been before: it became—Mozart. Even while he adapted, and
precisely then, the man was creative. He certainly never merely imitated.
From the beginning, he moved freely within the limits of the musical
laws of his time, and then later ever more freely. But he did not revolt
against these laws; he did not break them. He sought to be himself and
yet achieved his greatness precisely in being himself while observing the
conventions which he imposed upon himself.37

From Barth’s vantage point, Mozart was attentive to what he heard. He

responded rather than projected within the creaturely and temporal limits
of his musical context.
Barth applauds Mozart’s objectivity in composing music. Because he lis-
tened to “creation unresentfully and impartially, he did not produce merely
his own music but that of creation, its twofold and yet harmonious praise
of God.” Further to what was stated earlier, Mozart instructs his listeners
as to what will not be heard or perceived again “until the end of time—the
whole context of providence” in which there is light and shadow within
God’s creation (though not darkness) and in which the light “breaks forth
from the shadow.” According to Barth, no theologian has instructed others
on the creation’s “total goodness” like the apparently nominally religious
Mozart and thus argues, “Mozart has a place in theology, especially in the
doctrine of creation and also in eschatology.”38
The preceding discussion demonstrates that Barth’s discussion of limita-
tion does not negate the creaturely expression of beauty but directs it to its
proper end. The third movement highlights how God’s Word makes possible
beauty’s liberation.
180 Paul Louis Metzger
Third movement: the Word of God liberates beauty
The Protestant emphasis on the Word highlights God’s total freedom in rela-
tion to the creation, as well as creation’s freedom in relation to God. Harold
Nebelsick writes that the prominence given to God’s Word in Protestant-
ism (which Barth models) gave rise to celebrating the distinction between
God and the world: “God is God and the world as the world is secular.”39
Creation comes into existence not as an extension of God’s being but as a
declaration of God’s Word.
The Word of creation also sustains and preserves the creation. The God
who is free in his love in relation to the creation “does not begrudge . . .
or deprive” the creation its situated freedom. Rather, “there is a delight-
ing or sport in which first the Creator and then the creature has a part.”40
God grants space to the creation and preserves it so that it can fulfill its
beautiful calling.41
In view of the preceding statement, it should come as no surprise that
the musician is free simply to play the beautiful music of creation with no
ideological ax to grind. For Barth, there is no need to develop a Christian
metaphysics or a philosophy through music or art generally. Eberhard Busch
notes that Barth favored Mozart over Bach and Beethoven because in his
estimation, Mozart simply wished to play music, whereas Bach preached
a “message” and Beethoven offered a “personal confession.”42 Thus, it did
not matter if Mozart was “so Catholic, even a Freemason.”43 Such convic-
tions did not interrupt his musical objectivity.
Such objectivity finds a complement in Barth’s anti-sacramentalist ori-
entation. For Barth, Jesus is the only sacrament of God.44 In those situa-
tions where everything is deemed sacramental, as in late medieval thought,45
or where the universe is deemed eternal, or even as an extension of God’s
being, as in forms of Greek thought, the Protestant emphasis on the Word
that Barth champions frees the creation, including Mozart’s music, to honor
God simply by working, singing, and playing. As Torrance writes, “[i]t is the
sheer differentiation between God and nature which definitively overcomes
both the sacramentalism of Augustinianism and the aeternitas mundi (the
eternality of the universe) of Aristotelian philosophy. Thus, the concept of
deus sive natura is finally dispensed with.”46
One should not be surprised that Barth believes Mozart and his music
serve as a parable or sign of the kingdom.47 For Barth, Mozart was “no
more than a musician, albeit a complete one.”48 In composing and play-
ing music, Barth’s Mozart recounted the whole creation in all its tension,
never in excess toward any extreme49 or equilibrium between God, on
one side, and nothingness or chaos, on the other.50 Mozart’s music bears
witness to the song of creation in which the light and shadow exist before
God, where joy and sorrow are both present, but in such a way that
God’s glory and joy repulse and triumph over the darkness and despair
at every turn.
 Karl Barth’s Doctrine of the Word of God 181
Concluding movement
There is certainly an idiosyncratic aspect to Barth’s affection for Mozart.
Whether it be the dream he had in which he interrogated Mozart over a
statement he made about Protestants51 or a vision he had where Mozart
appeared by the piano as someone played a piano concerto52 or listening
to Mozart every morning before beginning work on his Church Dogmat-
ics,53 Barth was a devout admirer. Barth went so far as to claim that apart
from Mozart, he did not know what moved him in theology and politics.54
Nonetheless, apart from such idiosyncrasies, Barth’s theological-aesthetic
musings, as illustrated by his appreciation for Mozart, bear import for the
development of a theological aesthetic, including safeguards against cer-
tain abuses, namely, economic exploitation, on one hand, and religious and
political propaganda, on the other hand.55
As stated in the introduction, Barth did not develop a theological aesthet-
ics. Nor did he celebrate the visual arts.56 Still, his particular emphasis on
objectivity and freedom that in his imagination reverberates in Mozart’s
music proves suggestive for the development of a theological aesthetic. The
God who gives himself in revelation remains Lord in revelation. For all its
objectivity, God’s revelation never becomes objectified. So, too, the good
creation is free from objectification or commodification, including the art-
ist’s work.
In a culture that mass-produces art ad infinitum, the seeming omnipres-
ence and immanence of mass-produced work might lead some to assume the
machine and market have mastery over the artistic object. After all, the art
is at their fingertips or in their grasp at a relatively cheap price. However,
art remains mysterious, since there is a presence disclosed in the notes or on
the canvas. Just as God’s presence is not subject to control by graven images,
artistic reproduction can never capture the human spirit manifested through
the art. The art remains alive and is never subject to human control, even if
purchased.
The same is true for the artist. Just as the one who possesses art must
guard against objectifying it, so the artist must guard against objectifica-
tion. The same God who warned his people to be on guard against idola-
try exhorted them not to work on the Sabbath. People must not allow
their work to control them. They must allow room for rest and play. In
fact, they must see their work as a form of play in comparison to God’s
activity.
Cultural activity is ultimately play or “a serious game.” This

game might actually be played better and more successfully, the more
it was recognized as a game. Our earnestness could not be impaired by
making clear to ourselves that the game can never be ultimately serious,
and never is; that the right and the possibility of being wholly in earnest
is God’s alone.57
182 Paul Louis Metzger
The artist is free to develop his or her work as play, as with any human
enterprise. Here Barth’s Mozart serves as a fitting example. Mozart simply
played. In fact, he mastered the art of play. In reflecting on the rationale for
his devotion to Mozart’s music, Barth discusses the theme of play:

How am I to explain this? In a few words perhaps this way: our daily
bread must also include playing. I hear Mozart—both younger and
older—at play. But play is something so lofty and demanding that it
requires mastery. And in Mozart I hear an art of playing as I hear it in
no one else. Beautiful playing presupposes an intuitive, childlike aware-
ness of the essence or center—as also the beginning and the end—of all
things. It is from this center, from this beginning and end, that I hear
Mozart create his music. I can hear those boundaries which he imposed
upon himself because it was precisely this discipline that gave him joy.
And when I hear him, it gladdens, encourages, and comforts me as well.
Not that I want to utter even one critical word against anyone else. But
in this sense I can offer my testimonial to Mozart alone.58

For Barth, play in this context does not signify frivolous superficiality.
“Behind” Mozart’s play, “there is an iron zeal.”59 Moreover, the “ever-­
present lightness” one finds in Mozart’s music “is not effortlessly accessible”
but “possesses something very demanding, disturbing, almost provocative,
even in the most radiant, most childlike, most joyful movements.”60
Artists who are truly free do not allow market preferences or consumer
demands to enslave them. Those who cater to such preferences and demands
can easily become victims of their own success or their desire for success.
Similarly, art should not cater to politics and religion or science for that mat-
ter. How can art cater to these forces when it is a liberated response to the
effulgence of God’s creative glory, which is joyful and beautiful? The glory
of the Lord flows freely. God’s glory does not turn back on itself but flows
outward toward the creation. So, too, true artistic freedom does not allow
artists to turn back on themselves in self-referential, narcissistic terms. Such
overflowing glory frees the artist to respond playfully to life rather than
making it a stepping stone or means to an end of divine or self-adulation.
Moreover, art is free from having to serve some other discipline or domain.
If anything, science, religion, and politics serve beauty, which unites them
and which is inspired by the fullness of the glorious splendor of God’s sin-
gular being.61
While Barth was most passionate about theology and politics, music did
not serve a theological or political agenda. Music speaks of the creation’s
freedom to be itself. Music speaks prophetically, as does the Word of God,
not bound by religious and political or economic institutions. If it is the
case that beauty is in the eye of the divine beholder as conceived in view of
the full splendor of God’s glorious and joyful being, then creaturely beauty
results from God’s favor. As Martin Luther argued in view of his emphasis
 Karl Barth’s Doctrine of the Word of God 183
on God’s free Word, God’s love creates the attraction. Our attractiveness
does not create God’s love.62
So market demand and political opinion polls do not dictate to us our
value or how attractive we are. Rather, God’s glorious, free, and uncondi-
tional love grounds our worth, including our creaturely freedom. In a day
when value is construed in terms of machine-like utility and efficiency,63
financial viability,64 and marketing popularity,65 the divine address that pro-
vides the creature worth and freedom must be heard. Mozart’s music is a
fitting and timely complement to this free and prophetic Word.66 Whoever
has ears, let them hear this Mozartian and Barthian parable of the kingdom.

Notes
1 John Updike, foreword to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, by Karl Barth, with a
new foreword by Paul Louis Metzger (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers,
2005), 7.
2 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. II/1, The Doctrine of God, ed. G. W. Bro-
miley and T. F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1957), 655. See also 656,
658–59.
3 Ibid., 656.
4 Ibid., 652.
5 Ibid., 655.
6 Thomas F. Torrance, Karl Barth: An Introduction to his Early Theology, 1910–
1931 (London: SCM Press, 1962), 97.
7 On Feuerbach, see Karl Barth, “Ludwig Feuerbach,” in Theology and Church:
Shorter Writings, 1920–1928, with an introduction by T. F. Torrance, trans.
Louise Pettibone Smith (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1962), 227.
8 Hans Urs von Balthasar’s magisterial work on aesthetics is The Glory of the
Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, 7 vols. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1982–1991).
9 Richard Viladesau, Theological Aesthetics: God in Imagination, Beauty, and Art
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 30.
10 Ibid. For a discussion of Barth and Balthasar on dialectic in Barth’s mature the-
ology and its relevance for aesthetics, see William T. Barnett, “Actualism and
Beauty: Karl Barth’s Insistence on the Auch in his Account of Divine Beauty,”
Scottish Journal of Theology 66, no. 3 (August 2013): 299–318.
11 Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Theology of Karl Barth, trans. Edward T. Oakes,
SJ (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1992), 25. The translation follows Oakes’ wording
except for the use of “beautiful” (set forth in brackets) in place of lovely. Here
I follow D. Stephen Long’s translation for schön in Saving Karl Barth: Hans Urs
von Balthasar’s Preoccupation (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014), 89.
12 See Barth’s discussion of Grünewald’s altarpiece in Church Dogmatics, vol. I/2,
The Doctrine of the Word of God, ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (Edin-
burgh: T. & T. Clark, 1956), 125.
13 Barth, Church Dogmatics, II/1, 655.
14 Ibid., 653.
15 Ibid., 655.
16 Ibid., 656.
17 See, for example, Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. III/3, The Doctrine of
Creation, ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark,
1960), 87. Along these lines, Jesus demonstrates his divine lordship in his con-
descension in his incarnate state, and reveals our true humanity, as he ascends.
184 Paul Louis Metzger
See Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. IV/1, The Doctrine of Reconciliation,
ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1956); Karl
Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. IV/2, The Doctrine of Reconciliation, ed. G. W.
Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1958).
18 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. II/2, The Doctrine of God, ed. G. W. Bromi-
ley and T. F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1957).
19 Torrance, Karl Barth, 23–25.
20 Karl Barth, “Mozart’s Freedom,” in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, with a fore-
word by John Updike, and a new foreword by Paul Louis Metzger (Eugene, OR:
Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2005), 55–56.
21 Barth, Church Dogmatics, III/3, 298. This discussion of Mozart appears in the
context of Barth’s treatment of Das Nichtige—“nothingness” or “chaos”: per-
haps nowhere else in human civilization do we find such “convincing proof” that
nothingness has no part in the creation, not even in its shadow side (299).
22 Ibid.
23 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. I/1, The Doctrine of the Word of God, ed.
G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1975), 60.
24 See Barth’s discussion of God’s unconditioned and conditioned freedom in
Church Dogmatics, II/1, 314–15.
25 Barth, Church Dogmatics, II/1, 658–59.
26 See George Hunsinger, How to Read Karl Barth: The Shape of His Theol-
ogy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 30–32 (actualism), 32–34
(particularism).
27 Barth, “Mozart’s Freedom,” 46.
28 See, for example, Marthinus S. Van Zyl, “John Calvin and Karl Barth—Free
and Obedient Theologians,” Dutch Reformed Theological Journal 50, no. 3/4
(September 2009): 657–69.
29 See Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. III/1, The Doctrine of Creation, ed. G.
W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T. &. T. Clark, 1958), 369–70.
30 Barth, “Mozart’s Freedom,” 46.
31 Ibid., 48–51.
32 Ibid., 51–53.
33 Ibid., 51, 55–56; Barth, Church Dogmatics, III/3, 298.
34 Barth, Church Dogmatics, III/3, 298.
35 Ibid.
36 Barth, “Mozart’s Freedom,” 46, 53.
37 Ibid., 46.
38 Barth, Church Dogmatics, III/3, 298. For a critical assessment of Barth’s
view on the relation of theology to music, see Francis Watson’s treatment
in ­“Theology and Music,” Scottish Journal of Theology 51, no. 4 (1998):
435–63. One may find it surprising, but Barth does not maintain that only
words of creation’s “liberation” and glorification bear witness to God’s pur-
poses. One can also attend to the “jeopardising” of God’s creation. See Karl
Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. IV/3.1, The Doctrine of Reconciliation, ed. G.
W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1961), 123. Any
“abstraction” is only “apparent,” as “the one thing envisaged under all these
aspects is the kingdom and deity of the one living God” (123). Barth does not
claim that only Mozart bears witness but that his creaturely witness is best
because it perceives the whole dialectical movement in which the light breaks
through the shadow.
39 Harold P. Nebelsick, The Renaissance, the Reformation and the Rise of Science
(Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1992), 154–55.
40 Barth, Church Dogmatics, III/3, 87.
41 Ibid., 87.
 Karl Barth’s Doctrine of the Word of God 185
42 Karl Barth, “Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart,” in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, with
a foreword by John Updike, and a new foreword by Paul Louis Metzger (Eugene,
OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2005), 37–38.
43 Barth, “Mozart’s Freedom,” 56–57.
44 See Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. IV/4, The Doctrine of Reconciliation:
Fragment, Baptism as the Foundation of the Christian Life, ed. G. W. Bromiley
and T. F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1969).
45 On the sacramentalist mind-set of the later medievals, see J. Huizinga, The
Waning of the Middle Ages: A Study of the Forms of Life, Thought and Art in
France and the Netherlands in the XIVth and XVth Centuries (London: Edward
Arnold & Co., 1937).
46 Thomas F. Torrance, Theological Science (London: Oxford University Press,
1969), 65–66.
47 Barth, “Mozart’s Freedom,” 56–57.
48 Ibid., 57.
49 Barth, “Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart,” 33–34.
50 Barth, Church Dogmatics, III/3, 299.
51 See Karl Barth, “A Letter of Thanks to Mozart,” in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart,
with a foreword by John Updike, and a new foreword by Paul Louis Metzger
(Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2005), 20.
52 See Busch, Karl Barth: His Life, 409.
53 Ibid., 362–63.
54 See Karl Barth, How I Changed My Mind, ed. John D. Godsey (Edinburgh: St.
Andrews Press, 1969), 72.
55 For other assessments of Barth and Mozart, see Jeremy Begbie, Resounding
Truth: Christian Wisdom in the World of Music (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Aca-
demic, 2007), 152–56 and Philip Edward Stoltzfus, Theology as Performance:
Music, Aesthetics, and God in Western Thought (London: T&T Clark, 2006),
145–57. I wish to acknowledge the brief yet helpful engagement of Barth and
Mozart (including sources) by Ashley Cocksworth, Karl Barth on Prayer, T&T
Clark Studies in Systematic Theology (London: Bloomsbury/T&T Clark, 2015),
56–58.
56 For a treatment of Barth’s approach to the visual arts, see Matthew J. Milliner,
“A Vacation for Grünewald: On Karl Barth’s Vexed Relationship with Visual
Art,” Princeton Theological Review 36, no. 1 (Spring 2007): 3–10.
57 Karl Barth, “Church and Culture,” in Theology and Church: Shorter Writings
1920–1928, trans. Louise Pettibone Smith (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock), 349.
58 Karl Barth, “A Testimonial to Mozart,” in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Grand
Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1986), 16–17.
59 Barth, “Mozart’s Freedom,” 47.
60 Ibid., 48.
61 Here it is worth noting Owen Gingerich’s claim that Copernicus’s scientific and
mathematical formulations served his aesthetic sensibilities. As with Einstein after
him, his keen pursuit of symmetries and aesthetic wholeness guided his revo-
lutionary scientific explorations. Owen Gingerich, “ ‘Crisis’ vs. Aesthetic in the
Copernican Revolution,” Vistas in Astronomy 17, no. 1: 89–90. It is also worth
noting that Immanuel Kant viewed beauty or aesthetics as the bridge between the
realms of physics and ethics. See Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, ed. Nich-
olas Walker, Oxford World’s Classics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
62 Martin Luther, “Heidelberg Disputation,” in Martin Luther’s Basic T ­ heological
Writings, ed. Timothy F. Lull (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1989), 43–44, 48.
63 On the modern fixation with technological efficiency or technique, see Jacques
Ellul, The Technological Society, with an introduction by Robert K. Merton
(Toronto: Vintage Books, 1964).
186 Paul Louis Metzger
64 On the impact of market ideology on all of life, see Michael J. Sandel, What
Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets (New York: Farrar, Straus, and
Giroux, 2012).
65 On marketing popularity, see Naomi Klein, No Logo (New York: Picador,
2002).
66 Barth finds that Mozart’s music expresses freedom, even his church music: for
Barth, Mozart’s music honors God’s Word, but never in a subservient way; it is
“a music bound by the word but in this ‘binding’ still a sovereign shape with its
own nature.” Barth, “Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart,” 39.
12 The Protestant encounter
with modern architecture
Gretchen T. Buggeln

Architect and photographer G. E. Kidder Smith began his lavishly illus-

trated book The New Churches of Europe (1964) with a bold assertion:
“Christian architecture throughout the world today is undergoing the most
momentous changes in its nearly two millennia of history.”1 Page after page
of evocative black-and-white images testify to the validity of Kidder Smith’s
claim: hulking concrete and brick exteriors shelter cool and contempla-
tive worship spaces with vast expanses of raw concrete, brick, and natural
wood. Geometrically patterned colored or clear glass windows shine indi-
rect, dramatic light on barely ornamented interiors, with a simple altar or
table and pulpit the focal points. How did Christian architecture arrive at
this place? What enticed congregations across North America and Europe
to increasingly abandon the historic, decorative flourishes of their beloved
Gothic, Romanesque Revival, or neoclassical traditional churches for build-
ings that looked so different?
Modern church architecture edged onto the scene in Europe and America
in the early twentieth century, boomed in the post–World War II decades,
and its legacy lives on in contemporary church building today. The mod-
ern church architecture movement was ecumenical and far-reaching. Prot-
estants, Roman Catholics, and even Jews shared a vigorous international
conversation about the future of ecclesiastical architecture, and as a result,
the buildings of one tradition can be very like those of another. We cannot
reliably identify a given modern church building as Protestant just by what
it looks like, inside or out. We can, however, consider this global movement
from a Protestant perspective, asking what modernism had to offer the Prot-
estant churches at this time. The answer, it turns out, is somewhat paradoxi-
cal: modern architecture provided an opportunity to both reclaim history
and claim the future. In short, the idea of the modern church squared with
long-standing Protestant cultural values, such as adaptation to context and
simplicity of form, while it offered the churches a way to engage with and
remain relevant to a rapidly changing world.2
Modernism in architecture was both a manner of building and a phi-
losophy that proposed design principles such as the honest use of materials
and an engagement with contemporary culture. These principles appealed
188 Gretchen T. Buggeln
to Protestant church builders, in part, because they resonated with current
social and theological concerns. For instance, when churches used industrial
materials such as steel, concrete, and laminated wood beams, taking open
advantage of their physical properties, they believed they were expressing
both clarity of purpose and a willingness to speak to the present age. Leav-
ing wood surfaces unpainted and having expanses of clear glass open to the
natural world conveyed openness and transparency. When liturgical artists
reworked symbols in a contemporary idiom, it was a means of engaging the
present culture. Modern architecture was thus a vehicle for the churches to
show that they were in step with the times.
Modernism also opened up important spatial possibilities. Church leaders
had grown dissatisfied with the way that the two most common church plans
of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries made spectators of the congre-
gation: the auditorium plan, which arranged the congregation in a theater-
like arc around a central platform, or the more traditional basilican plan, a
long rectangle with rows of pews facing a raised chancel. Engaging modern-
ist ideas of flexibility and utility, architects designed unified worship spaces
intended to do away with spectatorship and make full participants out of the
assembled body. For both liturgical and nonliturgical Protestant denomina-
tions, this spatial emphasis drew attention to worship and communion as
the shared work of the congregation. And, when it came to fellowship and
educational spaces, modernism urged builders to think in terms of “form fol-
lowing function.” Building committees and architects thus frequently spoke
of designing churches from the inside out, ideally allowing a thoughtful and
well-developed program to determine the shape of the building.
In general terms, flexibility in matters of cultural expression, including
architecture, is a characteristic of Protestant culture. Early in their history
Protestant groups had affirmed that the outward forms of the church could
and should change according to time and place.3 In his Institutes of the
Christian Religion, John Calvin wrote:

[God] did not will in outward discipline and ceremonies to prescribe in

detail what we ought to do (because he foresaw that this depended upon
the state of the times, and he did not deem one suitable for all ages) . . .
the upbuilding of the church ought to be variously accommodated to the
customs of each nation and age.
(IV.10.30)4

The Lutheran Augsburg Confession of 1530, Article VII, also states that
“nor is it necessary that human traditions, that is, rites or ceremonies, insti-
tuted by men, should be everywhere alike.”5 Most Protestants in theory
valued practical adaptation. Yet custom can be a powerful force. Protes-
tants of many places and times developed dearly loved traditions of church
building, rooted in a strong understanding of community and their particu-
lar history, and these traditions have proven hard to abandon. As a result,
 Protestant encounter with modern architecture 189
throughout the modern church movement, Protestants experienced a ten-
sion between nostalgia and forging confidently ahead. This push and pull
are at the heart of a commonly voiced sentiment of building committees
considering modernism: “we want a church that looks like a church,” or a
church that looked familiar.
A second persistent question or tension for Protestant church builders
was the relationship between the secular and the sacred. Although one can
find many exceptions, the general thrust of Protestant church building over
time has been towards plain, simple, practical spaces that serve for preach-
ing and teaching and make no claim to be sacred spaces. Early purpose-built
Lutheran churches—for instance, Luther’s church at Torgau—were simple,
relatively unadorned preaching spaces. A seventeenth-century New Eng-
land Puritan multipurpose meetinghouse similarly denies the need for set-
apart, sacred space. Yet in practice (if not doctrinally justified), Protestants
have generally wanted their worship spaces to be places of both immanence
and transcendence, and places that acknowledge an incarnate God’s active
presence in the material world yet where a sense of the divine mystery still
breaks through. They might not call their churches “sacred” places, yet they
do not want them to be purely ordinary places, either.
When the Lutheran theologian and enthusiastic modernist Paul Tillich
addressed the 1965 National Conference on Church Architecture, an annual
meeting attended by architects, pastors, church leaders, and members, he
attempted to sort out this sacred–secular paradox with what he called the
“doctrine of two concepts of religion.”6 On one hand, he explained, reli-
gion was “the state of being driven by an ultimate concern,” a concern that
transcends everything and makes no distinction between sacred and secular.
In this sense, everything is sacred, so we have no need for places set apart.
On the other hand, Tillich noted a second, “narrower” concept of religion:
“religion as the life of a social group which expresses a common ultimate
concern.” Even those who reject the notion of distinct holy places, he argued,
face “a human predicament . . . the universal estrangement of man from his
true being, which demands church in every sense of the word.” Because of
this, “[h]oly places, holy times, holy acts are necessary as the counterbalance
to the secular which tends to cut off our relation to the ultimate ground of
our being.”7 Our human condition requires this concession. However, Til-
lich did not have in mind rarified sacred spaces. A church “should not be felt
as something which separates people from their ordinary life and thought”;
instead, it should “[open] itself up into their secular life and radiate through
the symbols of the ultimate,” he wrote.8 Churches should be integrated into
the world, bringing the holy into everyday life, reminding Christians of the
presence of God in all things.
Although this chapter connects the modern churches of North America to
those of Europe, it is important to point out significant differences in those
contexts. In northern Europe by the 1920s, churches struggled with a sense
of creeping secularism accelerated by scientific rationalism and the legacy
190 Gretchen T. Buggeln
of the disastrous Great War; modern architecture was for many a welcome,
tangible step in a new direction. Meanwhile, American architecture and reli-
gious culture were more comfortably situated in traditionalism and nostal-
gia. After World War II, particularly in Germany, the Protestant churches
of northern Europe had to sort out a tainted relationship with history and
culture and face an ongoing decline in numbers and relevance.9 Christian
leaders there believed that embracing modern design could help them regain
a prophetic voice. In America, on the other hand, church attendance surged
after World War II and thus radical change was less appealing or urgent.10
Overall, churches in Britain, Ireland, and North America, where religion
was a relatively stabilizing and comforting force at this time, were slower
to embrace modern church design. Many American Protestants, particu-
larly Reformed and Baptist congregations in the Southeast and Northeast,
preferred neoclassical churches of red brick with white, pillared porticos
throughout this period, an architecture that they may have chosen to reflect
their early American heritage.11 Europeans were also better prepared for a
revolution in design aesthetics. In northern Europe especially, a modern-
ist design culture had grown out of socialist politics, industrialization, and
urbanization, and this receptive design environment minimized aesthetic
friction with the aims of the modern church movement.12 The average
American or British Christian was less eager to choose this radical new style.
Yet over time, the majority of Protestant denominations in both Europe and
America did embrace modern church architecture.
For the remainder of this chapter, I highlight noted examples of modern
churches as well as modernist expression as it took form in more ordinary
Protestant church buildings. Taking account of common buildings and con-
gregations is important. One can hardly grasp the totality of this movement
by looking at a few iconic buildings or by listening in on the conversation
among elites like Tillich. Even the architects and clients of relatively bland
“modernistic” churches of the 1950s and 1960s often expected church archi-
tecture to address critical theological and social questions. These examples
will reveal the breadth of the movement as well as an overall trajectory of
forms and aims from the 1930s through the 1970s,
Because the independence of Protestant denominations (and in some cases
congregations) led to a great range of responses, reflecting particular theo-
logical and social priorities and aesthetic traditions, the quick survey that
follows can only sketch the outline of a wide movement. Nonetheless, there
were principles and goals, widely shared across denominations, that united
the design of an English cathedral, a German Lutheran parish church, and a
common, mid-century A-frame church in an American suburb. Chief among
these was the hope that modern forms could restore vitality to the church,
vigorously reorienting the congregation to its own place and time, thus pre-
senting the Gospel with renewed relevance, self-conscious clarity, and pur-
pose. These aims echoed characteristics of modernism in general: a desire to
break down the conventional ways of being and an insistence that culture
 Protestant encounter with modern architecture 191
(including visual and material culture) speak truthfully to the contemporary
world. And there were also pervasive tensions—between the traditional and
the modern, the sacred and the secular—that shaped the experience of mod-
ern church architecture.
The first modern churches on both sides of the Atlantic were experimen-
tal buildings like Frank Lloyd Wright’s Unity Chapel (Unitarian, 1908) in
Oak Park, Illinois and Auguste Perret’s Notre Dame du Raincy in France
(Roman Catholic, 1922–23). These structures were noted especially for
their innovative use of technology—steel-reinforced concrete—rather than
a theological or social agenda. Elsewhere in Europe and America, modern-
ism first appeared in church architecture as a smoothing out of surfaces and
lines and a trimming of decorative details—a tentative, aesthetic modernism
that left formal elements in place. Many pioneering and influential mod-
ern church buildings were the work of European Catholics. As Nigel Yates
claims, “[t]here is no doubt that in the British Isles, as in the rest of Europe,
the principle protagonists of modern church design were architects design-
ing buildings for Roman Catholic worship.”13 Decades before Vatican II,
Catholic leaders promoting Christian renewal believed that striking, chal-
lenging worship and assembly spaces could move people to a deeper, more
meaningful experience of worship and community.
In fact, it was a German Catholic architect, Rudolf Schwarz (1897–1961),
who articulated the most thoughtful and influential treatise on Christianity
and architectural form, with Vom Bau der Kirche, published in German
in 1938.14 Schwarz’s writings had a far-reaching effect among both Catho-
lics and Protestants, especially after this work was published in English in
1958 as The Church Incarnate. Schwarz described seven models of church
design—not plans but spatially organizing principles that articulated various
relationships among the congregation, the liturgical center, and the build-
ing’s overall shape. These models, he argued, determined how assembled
Christians would experience liturgy and fellowship. For instance, his Ring-
kirche was a circular form that turned the congregation toward one another
and the altar, whereas his Wegkirche was a processional space that brought
pilgrims forward to the altar. (Only with Vatican II would these ideas be
formally accepted in the Catholic Church). These two forms represent two
possible postures of the church in the world, both frequently invoked by
modern church builders in the twentieth century: the tent for the people
of God on the move, the marching church facing forward, and the cave of
inwardness, a circular, sheltering form.
Schwarz’s buildings were also well known for challenging the way Chris-
tians thought about churches. His wegekirche Sankt Fronleichnam in Aachen,
Germany (Corpus Christi, 1930) was an early example of a common form
of mid-century modern church that combined a rectangular sanctuary with a
large detached tower. This church followed a somewhat traditional basilican
plan, although because of a unified roof over the whole space, a minor differ-
ence in elevation between nave and chancel, and an interior full of d ­ iffuse light
192 Gretchen T. Buggeln
and nearly devoid of ornament, it broke significantly with church architecture
of previous generations. Another early example of this type, the Reformed
church in Alstetten, Switzerland (1942), was the work of Swiss architect Wer-
ner Moser, who had studied with both Mies Van der Rohe in Germany and
Frank Lloyd Wright in the United States. Interior and exterior surfaces are
painted shades of white or gray, and natural wood elements glow a golden
color from indirect and filtered light. The overall impression is one of peace
and simple intimacy, although the nave can hold one thousand people.15
Two iconic American examples of this “rectangle and tower” type
were designed by the Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen, who was president
of Detroit’s Cranbrook School of Art beginning in 1932. His Tabernacle
Church of Christ in Columbus, Indiana (1942), a very large, spare sanctu-
ary with elegant and austere lines, swiftly won praise. Critics also admired
Saarinen’s Christ Church Lutheran in Minneapolis, Minnesota (1949), a
smaller version of the type (Figure 12.1). Perhaps based on these very exam-
ples, many architects designed similar buildings, such as the Scottish architect
Basil Spence’s 1950s’ parish churches in the suburbs of C ­ oventry England

Figure 12.1 Eliel Saarinen, Christ Lutheran Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota, sanc-

tuary from choir loft (ca. 1951)
Source: Photo copyright and permission, Christ Lutheran Church.
 Protestant encounter with modern architecture 193
(St. Oswalds, St. Giles, and St. John the Divine), and Edward Anders Sovik’s
Midwestern American churches of the 1950s, including Trinity Lutheran in
Moorhead Minnesota (1952) and First Baptist (now First United) Church in
Bloomington, Indiana (1957) (Figure 12.2).
Saarinen told the Columbus congregation (many of whom needed to be
coaxed into choosing a modern design—a common dynamic of midcentury
modern church projects) that their denomination had a “simple outer form
and rich inner life,” so “as your church emancipated itself from traditional
theology, so the new architectural thought has freed itself from traditional
styles.”16 “Protestantism was founded by simple men with democratic
beliefs,” Saarinen claimed. “It needs an architecture to express this.”17 This
kind of language often accompanied arguments for modern church design
and proved a natural fit with many Protestant traditions. Indeed, it raised
questions as to how Protestants had possibly justified the fussy Victorian
churches of the previous century. In Churches and Temples (1952), the
American architect Paul Thiry wrote that “until now Protestants haven’t
thought enough about the message of their architecture.” Ostentation, he
wrote, “is not Protestantism, superficial display is not Protestantism, nor,

Edward Anders Sovik, First Baptist Church, Bloomington, Indiana

Figure 12.2 
(ca. 1957)
Source: Photo and permission, First United Church, Bloomington.
194 Gretchen T. Buggeln
obviously, is hypocrisy Protestantism.”18 It is hard to miss the natural corre-
spondence between the claims of modern architecture—honesty, simplicity,
straightforwardness—and the Protestant tradition thus articulated.
Observers noted at the time that this rectangle-and-tower church type
was a blend of old and new, an homage to architectural tradition (high,
rectangular nave leading to a separate chancel) cast in new materials with
an emphasis on modernist characteristics such as simplicity of form and
plentiful natural light. Critics were dismayed at what the prevalence of such
buildings said about the slow pace of architectural change, but congrega-
tions, on the whole, appreciated that sanctuaries of this type were contem-
porary, somewhat familiar and, importantly, worshipful all at once. Another
very common midcentury church type, especially in American suburbs, was
the so-called A-frame, a form with a dominant high-pitched roof over low
sidewalls (Figure 12.3). Like the rectangle-and-tower type, A-frames suc-
cessfully balanced the traditional-modern and sacred-secular tensions for
mid-century congregations. They looked contemporary, but they were also
recognizably “churchy”; they provided a contemplative worship space, yet
their inexpensive, flat-roofed supporting structures epitomized ordinary

Figure 12.3 Edward Dart, St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church, Gary, Indiana (1959)
Source: Photo in collection of Chicago History Museum, with permission of Chicago History
Museum.
 Protestant encounter with modern architecture 195
institutional buildings of the day, for example, public schools, and they fit in
especially well in the expanding suburbs.
In 1956, the American ecumenical body, the National Council of Churches
(NCC), representing the mainline Protestant denominations, released its list
of eighteen “outstanding new churches” erected in America since 1930.19
The list reflected the judgment of the NCC’s Department of Worship and
the Arts, a liberal, progressive committee allied with urban architectural and
art elites.20 The judges selected some of the most well-known and admired
modern churches in America, such as Saarinen’s churches in Columbus and
Minneapolis, and churches by better-known architects Frank Lloyd Wright
and Pietro Belluschi (who was instrumental in developing a Northwestern
American style of modern church, often made of wood with a naturalism
reflecting Asian influences). But they also included humbler, lesser-known
buildings that interpreted the spirit of modern architecture for low-budget
projects. One of these, an economical and efficient Methodist Church in
Plainfield, Iowa, by Chicago architect Paul Schweikher, illustrates just how
widely modernism was affecting the Protestant churches by the 1950s
(Figure 12.4). Today, from the outside, it is not even clear that the building is

Figure 12.4 Paul Schweikher, Methodist Church, Plainfield, Iowa (1951)

Source: Photo, Chicago History Museum, with permission of Chicago History Museum.
196 Gretchen T. Buggeln
a church, let alone an award-winning structure. But inside, one can appreci-
ate the innovative features that make the space light-filled and flexible, such
as hanging partitions and a sliding glass wall dividing the central assembly
space. The NCC’s jury therefore liked Schweikher’s “flexible use of space”
and “simple and dignified” design, “simple and dignified” being reminiscent
of the Calvinist “let all things be done decently and in order in the church.”21
The story behind this church reveals what could lead ordinary Protes-
tant churches to choose modern design, not as a cheap alternative but as
a forward-looking statement about the relationship of the church to the
modern world. Even in this rural village of three hundred, the building com-
mittee was able to forge a connection with the international conversation
about modernism. After fire destroyed the congregation’s former building in
1949, the building committee chairman and his wife contacted the editors
of Progressive Architecture and Architectural Forum, the NCC’s Bureau of
Architecture, and the Museum of Modern Art for advice. They worked to
convince the congregation of farmers that modern church architecture was
not just a passing “fad” but “living architecture,” the proper stance of the
church in the world. The local Methodists were won over by the practicality
and affordability of the church, as well as the excitement of the design. At
its dedication, the congregation celebrated the “modern, functional church
that is a tribute to God and man . . . an example of living architecture, dedi-
cating the best of today’s materials to the worship of God.”22
In addition to architecture, participants in the modern church movement
sought symbols in art and ornament that promised to strengthen rather than
conflict with the contemporary message of the new buildings. A masterful
project that represented the best of cooperation between architects and art-
ists was the rebuilding of the Anglican Cathedral of St. Michael in Coventry,
England. After destruction by German bombers in 1940, the church deter-
mined to rebuild as an act of international reconciliation, and the design and
construction process was well publicized in the architectural press. The win-
ner of the architectural competition, Basil Spence, built a notable modern
basilica that has become a favorite of the British public. Coventry Cathe-
dral also contains an extraordinary collection of liturgical and decorative
art: sculpture by Jacob Epstein and John Bridgeman, a stunning abstract
colored glass baptistery window by John Piper and Patrick Reyntiens, Gra-
ham Sutherland’s enormous chancel tapestry in rich green shades, ten stone
text panels by the German carver Ralph Beyer, and even cathedral seating
specially designed by modernist Dick Russell. It was a showcase of contem-
porary art and craft, a collection that still amazes for its richness and coher-
ence. Paul Damaz, author of Art in European Architecture, claimed, after
a few moribund decades, that “the renaissance of religious art is one of the
most important events in European art since the end of the war.”23
Among ordinary Protestants, however, especially non-liturgical congrega-
tions with a more plain-style tradition, the added expense of modern art was
a tough sell, both for its cost and its content. Many churches, such as the
 Protestant encounter with modern architecture 197
Plainfield Methodist Church, were nearly devoid of ornament at the time
of construction. Yet to the dismay of strict modernists, most congregations
found ways to add color, image, and ornament to these quiet spaces, often
making them more traditional and sentimental than the architecture itself.
Tastemakers preferred art that was edgy and challenging, but that was not
to everyone’s liking. When a Congregational pastor from Omaha, Nebraska,
for instance, wrote to the NCC’s Department of Worship and the Arts in
1956 requesting suggestions about appropriate art to match his congrega-
tion’s new contemporary education building, he sought advice regarding a
picture of Jesus. He did not want to appear uncultured, but he explicitly did
not want the brooding, abstract Jesus by the French expressionist Georges
Roualt, an artist often recommended to congregations by elites. Instead, he
wrote, “I crave something fresh and expressive of searching, yet deeply peace-
ful.”24 For many Protestants, although modern architecture was increasingly
accepted, traditional narrative, representational arts still appealed.
As Sally Promey has noted, within the American churches of this period,
there was a clash of “taste cultures” that ran fairly deep.25 A not insignificant
cultural divide often separated concerned urban intellectuals from the person
in the pew. By the 1960s, Tillich and his peers on both sides of the Atlantic
believed that the increasing prevalence of modern church architecture might
not be such a triumph after all, judging by what they considered to be a large
number of facile, “modernistic” designs by ill-informed architects and their
bourgeois clients. The avant-garde wanted the hard edges of modernism to
challenge and confront. For instance, when describing architect Egon Eier-
mann’s Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, Berlin (1961), which consisted of
a new octagonal nave and high tower flanking the “bomb shattered” ruins
of the old church, Kidder Smith described it as “unflinching” and “unrelent-
ingly hard, taut as piano wires,” the interior a “quiet, cool retreat,” and
“brutal but handsome.”26 To Kidder Smith, these are words of ardent admi-
ration, but an aesthetic founded on such principles was not always welcomed
by rank-and-file Protestants. Change could be frustratingly slow.
In the 1960s and into the 1970s, architectural reformers emphasized more
fundamental concerns about how space shaped religious practice, echoing
the kind of thinking Rudolf Schwarz initiated in the 1930s and the ongoing
reforms of the liturgical movement. In 1962, Anglican Peter Hammond, in
Towards a Church Architecture, claimed that

a church is essentially a place for doing, for corporate action in which

all are participants . . . not a sort of jeweled cave in which the solitary
individual may find some sort of worship experience, and where his
emotions may be kindled by the contemplation of a remote spectacle.27

Sanctuary design moved decisively away from traditional forms such as the
basilica plan, toward what Richard Kieckhefer has called “modern com-
munal” religious architecture. Architects increasingly designed churches in
198 Gretchen T. Buggeln
the round, bringing the congregation closer to the ritual and to each other,
just as they removed barriers such as the altar rail and accelerated the trend
toward informality.
The Anglican church of St. Paul, Bow Common, London (Robert Magu-
ire and Keith Murray, 1960) exemplifies this commitment to community
and social action. From outside, St. Paul looks like a big brick box with
a large, central clear glass lantern. Inside, there is one primary open space
organized into three zones: an outer circle (circulation), a middle ring
(seating for the congregation), and the central circle with the altar directly
under the lantern. The architects used ordinary, local, industrial materials,
such as exposed brick and concrete paving slabs. They claimed the design
was centered on “the actual life of the real local Christian community,”
which anchored the building in its particular place.28 St. Paul, Bow Com-
mon suggests the dominant way of thinking about modern church space in
the 1960s: flexible spaces, solid geometric forms, and very little ornament.
Kidder Smith’s New Churches of Europe is just one of many books pub-
lished in Europe and America that illustrate the massive, angular, ecclesias-
tical buildings of the day, buildings that often look as if designed with the
arches, wedges, and circles of a set of children’s blocks. Not just the notable
churches illustrated in this book but many garden-variety modern churches
from the 1960s reflect an interest in geometric play and a fascination with
the architectural possibilities of concrete and steel.
Leaders of the modern architecture movement had consistently hoped
that church designers could place themselves at the leading edge of artis-
tic culture, but this did not frequently happen. The persistently deriva-
tive nature of modern church architecture was of great concern to one of
its most articulate and theologically informed spokespersons, Minnesota
architect and devout Lutheran Edward A. Sovik. In his 1973 book, Archi-
tecture for Worship, a culmination of three decades of thinking about and
building churches, he presented a strong argument for churches founded on
elemental Christian principles, rising above the shifting whims of culture.
Sovik asked congregations to recover the spirit and practice of the early
church by crafting open and adaptable “nonchurch” spaces that would
serve the gathered church body. He asked them not only to forget the his-
toric revival styles of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries but even the
buildings of Constantine as well. The earliest places of Christian worship,
Sovik believed, were domestic and secular in character—meeting places
patterned after basilicas, not shrines. The significance of the Christian life,
Sovik argued, rested not in “elaborate ritual observances” but in “teach-
ing, healing, cleansing, feeding, and other good works,” and he believed the
unspecific, flexible character of the “non-church” would best serve these
aims.29 Sovik found fault with even the most praised of modern churches,
“examples of technical sophistication coupled with theological and liturgi-
cal naiveté.” He acknowledged that these buildings expressed a willingness
to be alive and responsive but was looking for deeper, structural change
 Protestant encounter with modern architecture 199
that did not rely on any particular architectural “style.” A “single, unified
space”—adaptable to changing needs, impermanent, and human-scaled—
would best serve human beings.
Sovik’s Methodist Church in Northfield, Minnesota (1966) reflects this
kind of thinking about worship space (Figure 12.5). The plain brick sanc-
tuary is a large, square, open, high-ceiled box. Although the space was
designed without any set focal point, a slightly raised moveable platform,
centered along one wall, held the communion table and pulpit, with rows of
pews facing from three directions. Sovik wrote:

This is not the house of God; for it is the world, or more precisely, the
universe, which is the house of God. This is the house of God’s peo-
ple . . . where various enterprises can be sheltered with convenience and
relative comfort so that what needs to be done can be done effectively.30

The building, like the congregation, “makes no pretenses, shies away from
affectations” and “shows the evidence of courage, and a free mind.” This
was a meeting place for independent, resolute, free-thinking Christians who,
having shaken off the institutional cobwebs, gathered to do God’s work.

Figure 12.5 Edward Anders Sovik, Methodist Church, Northfield, Minnesota (1967)
Source: Author’s photo.
200 Gretchen T. Buggeln
It might appear, in the form of St. Paul and Northfield Methodist and in
the words of architects and reformers such as Sovik, that by the 1960s, the
desire for sacred space among Protestants was being properly repressed.
Mark Torgerson has noted that modernism in church architecture, in gen-
eral, reflected “downplaying of supernatural aspects of the faith, a focus on
the secularization of European and American cultures, and a desire to serve
the community at large.”31 Torgerson argues that the desire for transcend-
ence was on the wane as both liberal and more traditional Protestants were
looking to teach and show that God was always working and present in the
details of ordinary life. This is no doubt true. But wanting to localize God’s
presence in a particular sacred space (anathema for Protestants) is not neces-
sarily the same thing as wanting to feel God’s transcendent majesty in a spe-
cial place. Modernists such as Sovik and Tillich never stopped talking about
beauty and transcendence. And, in spite of all of its practical, functional,
and coolly intellectual aspects, modern architecture also sought the sublime.
In a small section of Architecture for Worship titled “The Place of
Beauty,” Sovik invokes Rudolf Otto’s “idea of the holy,” the transcend-
ent experience of the numinous. Along with his promotion of the practical
and theological advantages of the flexible “nonchurch,” Sovik also insisted
that “it is utterly wrong if those structures which a Christian community
erects should be prosaic or commonplace or banal or ugly.” “The beauti-
ful is also a sort of mystery,” he wrote, and “it can open for us portals to
a consciousness not merely of delight, but of the most profound awe, and
awake a sort of yearning. This is why the esthetic and the religious belong
together.” This sense of the holy, in addition to knowledge of theology and
ethics, is what makes a religious person different: an awareness of living in
the presence of something greater, “a magnificent mystery—awesome, fas-
cinating, ineffable.”32 Opening the doors of the church to all the earthiness
and even banality of ordinary life did not preclude the presence of mystery,
and architecture could support both. Then and now, this can lead to a ten-
sion between Protestant theology and Protestant practice, as even attendees
at the most workaday, modern megachurch will often speak of feeling the
particular presence of God in those spaces they regard as beautiful, illustrat-
ing the resilient subjectivity of both aesthetic and spiritual experience.
By the early 1970s, the modern church architecture movement had played
itself out. Postmodernism brought a return to historic forms and symbols
(albeit with more irony and less earnestness than previous revivals) and
a simultaneous backlash against the vacant, chilly, and apparently tradi-
tionless aspects of modernism. For some, particularly many Catholics, a
revival of traditional church architecture (classical and Renaissance) has
appeared to be the answer.33 These Catholics wonder why they ever lis-
tened to Protestants such as Sovik, when their own tradition cherished such
rich and meaningful possibilities for architecture from the Middle Ages and
the Renaissance—possibilities modernism hung out to dry. This kind of
reactionary response, while present, is very faint among Protestants. But
 Protestant encounter with modern architecture 201
it makes sense, given the overall correspondence of modern architecture
to Protestant principles, as well as the lack of theological argument for the
persistence of tradition. We might, in fact, see the bland architecture of the
megachurch as modernist in spirit, the logical culmination of the movement.
This would not be a triumph of high modernism, of course, but a victory for
the dismissal of tradition, celebration of functionalism, and full-on engage-
ment with the culture of the times—a powerful sense that religion, to be
effective and relevant, needs to be expressed in the idiom of the day. Pastor
Douglas Rae, of Sovik’s First Baptist, Bloomington, Indiana (Figure 12.2),
worked closely with his congregation to produce a statement of beliefs that
would guide the church building project. They wanted “a place so sim-
ple and meaningful and honest, that no one will be made afraid by lavish
appointments or pretension in any form,” a church that would “speak of
man’s search for God in the forms and with the materials of our time . . . a
religious symbol in the form of a building to symbolize the nonauthoritar-
ian, Free Protestant Church in the twentieth century.”34 This is exactly the
kind of thinking that guides the building of contemporary Protestant build-
ings that appear like lumbering office parks.
The Protestant church’s encounter with modern architecture was, of
course, only a piece of Protestantism’s negotiations with the dominant
culture of the twentieth-century West. American Protestant theologian H.
Richard Niebuhr articulated the problem in his Christ and Culture, pub-
lished in 1951.35 Niebuhr set out a variety of ways the church could engage
culture, from an embrace of it to outright denial. His chapter, “Christ above
Culture,” most nearly captures the beliefs of architectural reformers. This
cautiously optimistic perspective believes that Christians are called to work
through culture, to transform culture for the sake of the Gospel, building a
world that recognizes the sovereignty of God and the goodness of creation
in spite of the corruption of sin. Church buildings, visible witnesses of the
church, publicly take a stand on the relationship between the church in the
world, and church designers understood what was at stake. While being
open to new discoveries and new knowledge, Protestants had to be on their
guard against the corrosive aspects of culture, making sure that the flexibil-
ity inherent in their tradition was not abused and that the church remained
in control of its engagement with culture.36
Protestant church builders often failed in this regard, something most
evident not just in the compromise buildings noted by disappointed archi-
tectural reformers, but in the obvious consumerist tendencies that many
postwar churches planted across the denominations reveal. That the serious,
renewing and often discomforting aims of the modernist movement became
entangled with optimistic world-building in the here and now is not surpris-
ing, especially in the material abundance of the postwar period. But that is
hardly the whole story. Modernism released Protestants from an aesthetic
traditionalism that for two centuries had hobbled, as they saw it, their free-
dom to express their beliefs honestly in architecture. Modernism prompted
202 Gretchen T. Buggeln
architects and church leaders to deliberately cultivate forms that maintained
a challenging and generative tension between the past and the future, the
sacred and the secular. As Kidder Smith claimed, modernism truly did revo-
lutionize church architecture, inside and out.

Notes
1 G. E. Kidder Smith, The New Churches of Europe (New York: Holt, Rinehart
and Winston, 1965), 9.
2 This chapter is a brief and broad survey of the topic. Fuller accounts of the
modern church movement can be found in Jay Price, Temples for a Modern
God: Religious Architecture in Postwar America (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2013) and my own study, The Suburban Church: Modernism and Com-
munity in Postwar America (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2016),
as well as numerous studies of the work of individual architects. Robert Proctor,
Building the Modern Church: Roman Catholic Church Architecture in Britain,
1955–75 (London: Ashgate, 2015) provides the best study of mid-century mod-
ern churches in Britain. The continuity between modern church buildings and
the earlier Protestant tradition has been noted by many authors, including Anne
C. Loveland and Otis B. Wheeler, From Meetinghouse to Megachurch: A Mate-
rial and Cultural History (Springfield: University of Missouri Press, 2003) and
Mark Torgerson, An Architecture of Immanence: Architecture for Worship and
Ministry Today (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007).
3 One exception might be the Gothic Revival, in the sense that there was one form
of architecture that particularly suited Christian communities, a celebration of
the theocentric landscapes of the Middle Ages.
4 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. John T. McNeill and
Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960).
5 Augsburg Confession, Article VII, “Of the Church,” http://bookofconcord.org/
augsburgconfession.php
6 Paul Tillich, “Honesty and Consecration in Art and Architecture,” in Paul
Tillich: On Art and Architecture, ed. John and Jane Dillenberger (New York:
Crossroad, 1987), 225.
7 Ibid., 226.
8 Ibid.
9 Some pastors and scholars had aggressively criticized the rise of National Social-
ism and Hitler; others connected Christianity to German nationalism. But most
avoided politics to the extent possible, retreating into theological studies and
apolitical concerns.
10 From the end of World War II into the 1960s, affiliation with religious com-
munities of nearly all kinds grew significantly, reflecting both the resurgence of
popular piety and the desire to formally join religious institutions. By the early
1960s, nearly 70 percent of the American population claimed church affiliation.
These numbers start to decline after the mid-1960s. See Sydney E. Ahlstrom,
A Religious History of the American People (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 1972), 952–53. In Britain, church affiliation also increased and remained
strong through the 1950s. See Proctor, Building the Modern Church, 2.
11 See Dale W. Dowling, “For God, for Family, for Country: Colonial Revival
Church Buildings in the Cold War Era” (PhD diss., George Washington Univer-
sity, 2004).
12 See David Ryan, “Scandinavian Moderne, 1900–1960,” Minneapolis Institute
of Art. http://archive.artsmia.org/modernism/e_SM.html.
 Protestant encounter with modern architecture 203
13 Nigel Yates, Liturgical Space: Christian Worship and Church Buildings in West-
ern Europe, 1500–2000 (Aldershot, England, and Burlington, VT: Ashgate,
2008), 157.
14 Rudolf Schwarz, The Church Incarnate: The Sacred Function of Christian
Architecture, trans. Cynthia Harris (Chicago: H. Regnery, 1958). For a fuller
discussion of Schwarz, see Richard Kieckhefer, Theology in Stone: Church
Architecture from Byzantium to Berkeley (New York: Oxford University Press,
2004), 229–64.
15 See Albert Christ-Janer and Mary Mix Foley, Modern Church Architecture:
A Guide to the Form and Spirit of Twentieth-Century Religious Buildings (New
York: McGraw-Hill, 1962), 222–29.
16 Paul Thiry, Richard M. Bennett, and Henry L. Kamphoefner, Churches and Tem-
ples (New York: Reinhold Publishing, 1952), xv. A congregation’s reluctance to
choose modern architecture is a common theme through the 1950s. This was not
necessarily distaste for modernism—the same people were enthusiastically build-
ing modern schools and even homes—but uncertainty about breaking out of a
traditional way of church building. Congregations were often first persuaded
because of the cost savings of the modern style. See Buggeln, Suburban Church.
17 Thiry et al., Churches and Temples, xv.
18 Ibid.
19 “Outstanding New Churches,” National Council of Churches of Christ Records,
RG 6, box 55, folder 18. Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia.
20 For a fuller account of the National Council of Churches’ involvement in the
movement and their work advising both denominations and congregations, see
Buggeln, Suburban Church, 13–28.
21 “Outstanding New Churches,” n.p.
22 Report of Building Committee of First Methodist Church, 1951. Plainfield
Methodist Church Records.
23 Paul Damaz, Art in European Architecture (New York: Reinhold Publishing,
1956), 149. Although such a renaissance was less immediately apparent in
North America, this relatively unstudied subject promises rich discoveries.
24 Roger E. Manners, Countryside Community Church, Omaha, to DWA,
August 31, 1956. National Council of Churches of Christ Records, RG 6,
box 53, folder 16. Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia.
25 Sally Promey, “Taste Cultures and the Visual Practice of Liberal Protestantism,
1940–1965,” in Practicing Protestants: Histories of Christian Life in America,
1630–1965, ed. Laurie Maffly-Kipp, Leigh Schmidt, and Mark Valeri (Balti-
more, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), 250–93.
26 Smith, New Churches of Europe, 123.
27 Peter Hammond, Towards a Church Architecture (London: Architectural Press,
1962), 28.
28 Quoted in Proctor, Building the Modern Church, 92.
29 Edward Sovik, An Architecture for Worship (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1973), 10.
30 Edward Sovik, “Notes on the Design of the Northfield Methodist Church,”
October 23, 1966. Dedication booklet. Records of Northfield Methodist Church.
31 Sovik, Architecture for Worship, 11.
32 Ibid., 60–61.
33 Duncan G. Stroik, at the Notre Dame School of Architecture, is a particularly artic-
ulate Catholic spokesperson. See Stroik, The Church Building as a Sacred Place:
Beauty, Transcendence, and the Eternal (Chicago: Hillenbrand Books, 2009).
34 Quoted in Christ-Janer and Foley, Modern Church Architecture, 248.
35 H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture (New York: Harper Collins, 1956).
36 See Edward Farley, “The Modernism Element in Protestantism,” Theology
Today 47, no. 2 (July 1990): 131–44.
13 Jazz religious and secular
Jason C. Bivins

One prevailing misconception about improvisation holds either that it

involves the eschewal altogether of formal convention or that form posits
determinatively the shape of improvised materials through theme and vari-
ation. The oft-misunderstood music called “jazz” calls such assumptions
into question, since part of its history involves meta-reflection on just what
constitutes “jazz.” This makes jazz perhaps especially difficult to interpret,
since it is less obviously a signifying music than other familiar genres. But
there is more to jazz than improvisation, and more to religion than titles,
lyrics, and other vehicles of ostensive reference. In the following, I show
how this multiplicity can be traced through jazz’s shifting relationship with
(mostly) African American Protestantism.
The historical intertwining of American music and religions has often
expressed itself in anxiety about the form, substance, and consequences of
those sounds. From legends positing that blues musicians sold their souls to
the devil to church-sponsored record burnings at the dawn of rock’s hegem-
ony, American Protestants especially have worried about the libidinous,
the demonic, the rebellious, and the interracial woven into the aesthetics of
popular musics, which these religious authorities habitually contrasted with
their own. This chapter locates an earlier religio-racial panic in American
culture, in which the contested (and plural) identity of Protestant religious
aesthetics was a central register through which jazz’s relationship with the
(avowedly) secular modern took shape.
Emerging at the intersection of genres in the early to mid-twentieth cen-
tury, jazz was also a site in and around which different groups of Ameri-
cans negotiated the complexities of urban modernism by crafting visions of
“authentic” religiosity, ones often shaped by quite different relations with
musical aesthetics. Despite its regular associations with the modern, jazz
was also tied to primitivism and exotica. In each formulation of the music’s
dangers and titillations, constructions of African American religiosity were
central: jazz was posited as the sound of excessive religion, enabling a rap-
ture whose transgressions were heterodox; the music was also heard as the
sound of religion’s absence in the decadent secular, a miscegenated music
that courted the sinful and the demonic.
 Jazz religious and secular 205
These complexities and tensions emerge when examining the music in
relation to African American Protestantism in the industrial North between
the 1920s and 1950s. For it was from these communities that religious criti-
cism of jazz most regularly issued.1 The long historical lineages of music in
these communities are particularly important, since their contested relation-
ship with other genres such as blues and ragtime shaped jazz’s reception.
In their denunciations of the music, ministers and parishioners presided
over the vexed boundary between Saturday night licentiousness and Sunday
morning repentance.
What is fascinating to note, however, is how from this apparent opposi-
tion emerged an aesthetic complexity that shaped very different histories of
jazz improvising on religions. This complex interstitial engagement has three
distinct articulations. First is the aforementioned critique of jazz fashioned
by Protestant clergy. Second is a focus on how, against these early reception
dynamics, jazz came to be seen in the decades immediately following World
War II as capable of articulating specifically Protestant sensibilities. This is
seen in a steadily accepted assumption that “jazz” was channeling the sound
of the “black church.” Beyond this, however, jazz, since the mid-twentieth
century, expresses its religiosities in ways that both challenge and realize the
identification of jazz with African American Protestantism. This aesthetic
scrambling of codes is no mere deviation from what makes jazz jazz; it may
be what is most central to jazz.

A Grand Canyon of echoes

Jazz’s very history is bound up with definitional problems. From its incep-
tion “jazz” was assigned various ethics and aesthetics, setting up a feedback
loop of racial, religious, and musical contestation and evasion. It was often
framed as representing a modern, urban, secular America. Critics feared
that its sensuality undermined traditional religion. Supporters heard it as
art music, the very sound of progress and sophistication. Yet, aside from
these and other debates discussed in the following, what we hear in jazz
from its contested beginnings is the abundance of the religious, even—or
especially—when this category is difficult to locate and pin down.
The ragtime bandleader and composer James Reese Europe is said to have
first spoken of “jazzing” music in the early twentieth century. Walter King-
sley wrote—in the New York Sun, August 5, 1917—that “the word ‘jaz,’
meaning to speed things up, to make excitement . . . had been adopted by
the Creoles as a term to be applied to music of a rudimentary syncopated
type.”2 While initially it was common to think of “jazz” as “nothing but
ragtime, played by ear,” the very controversies of the music demanded a
backstory.3 One story held that there was once a trumpeter called Jasbo who
used to play so much horn that the audience would shout “More, Jasbo,
more!” This was soon abbreviated to “More, Jas, More!” after which the
spelling changed from “Jas” to “Jass” and finally to “Jazz.” Venerable jazz
206 Jason C. Bivins
critic Leonard Feather suggests that the term “came from a French verb
of that time: j-a-s-e-r . . . to liven things up, to brighten things up.”4 Critic
Valerie Wilmer claims that the term comes from the Wolof language (along
with the term hipicat) but was understood in New Orleans to refer pri-
marily to sexual congress.5 Other theories included the idea that it was a
mutation of the first name of Charles Alexander, who led the Dixieland Jass
Band, that it was a bastardization of the slang term jizz, a derivation of jaiza
(which can mean either to hurry or refer to the “distant rumble of drums”),
“an Arab word that means one who allures,” or jazba, a Hindi word for
“ardent desire.”6
Writing in The Ladies Home Journal in 1921, homemaker Ann Shaw
Faulkner expressed the mingling of the erotic and the horrific when cobbling
together an alarmist history. She noted that jazz

originally was the accompaniment of the voodoo dancer, stimulating

the half-crazed barbarian to the vilest deeds. The weird chant, accom-
panied by the syncopated rhythm of the voodoo invokers, has also been
employed by other barbaric people to stimulate brutality and sensuality.
That it has a demoralizing effect upon the human brain has been dem-
onstrated by many scientists.7

By contrast, Sierra Leonean writer Nicholas G. Taylor observed that while

“jazzy” music possessed its own sensation and mystery, “the more ‘jazzy’
the music, the more distant it is from that of the African jungle.”8
Record companies certainly availed themselves of such sensationalism, as
the newness of the musical idiom was married with the older stereotypes of
the exotic and the sexuate. Of this, Charles Wakefield Cadman wrote that
“[j]azz is not peace-bringing; jazz is not spiritual, nor is jazz very uplift-
ing. Its very lack of thoughtfulness . . . make[s] it exotic.”9 In a pre-echo
of the preponderance of experts in the 1950s, trotted out into public life to
denounce American entertainments, and a link in a chain going back not
simply to the Comstock Laws but to Puritan verse, Dr. Frank Damrosch
admitted that jazz “may be clever but its effects are made by exaggeration,
distortion, and vulgarisms . . . the self-expression of a primitive race.”10
Burnet Hershey was somewhat more muted, concurring that jazz musicians
were “masters of noise acrobatics.”11 Clearly, jazz was from its inception—
even before it was called “jazz”—taking shape within a racial habitus that
could not separate the definitions accruing to the music from the anxieties
surrounding it. Like ragtime before it, jazz was surrounded by an “alarmist
language of epidemic, insanity, vulgarity, and outright evil . . . [that points]
to a powerful sense of urgency felt by these critics.”12
And yet, then as now, essentialism was reappropriated by practitioners
and celebrants of the music. The pioneering James Reese Europe boasted
that “[t]he negro musically is always a worshipper of rhythm” and noted,
too, that “[t]he negro loves anything that is peculiar in music, and this
 Jazz religious and secular 207
‘jazzing’ appeals to him strongly.”13 Other musicians, however, worried
about the term’s utility at all, as when Jelly Roll Morton complained that
“[s]omehow it got into the dictionary that jazz was considered a lot of bla-
tant noises and discordant tones, something that would be even harmful to
the ears.”14 Trumpeter Lee Morgan, looking back on this period, concurred
that jazz was “not a word that we made up, it’s a word where we were told
what it was.”15 Duke Ellington insisted that “jazz is only a word and really
has no meaning. . . . I don’t believe in categories of any kind.”16
Although “jazz” has been subject to manifold misrepresentations that
have done disservice not just to its musical values but also to its compli-
cated cultural sources, its very multiplicity and instability have enabled its
creativity and its capacity to generate continually elusive forms of religi-
osity. Yet like the term religion itself, jazz cannot be disentangled from
its associations and myths. Some of the music’s interpreters seek—in a
spirit similar to those brave or misguided souls who still seek to define
religion—to carve out for the name itself the widest possible signifying
freedom. Krin Gabbard calls jazz “the music that large groups of people
have called jazz at particular moments of history.”17 Bearing a superficial
resemblance to Ann Taves’s notion that “religion” exists discursively as a
series of attributes that experiencers apply to experiences that otherwise
elude formulation, this notion, of course, means that smooth jazz is also
jazz or perhaps even that jazz is simply whatever is clearly not jazz. His-
torian Peter Townsend focuses in, nodding to Ludwig Wittgenstein, on
jazz’s supposed “family resemblances,” including “improvisation, rhythm,
repertoire, and instrumental sound and technique.”18 Yet, while interpret-
ers such as Townsend and Gabbard want to avoid the constraints of par-
ticular associations by focusing on the terms polysemy (Townsend goes so
far as to call it a “floating signifier”), the singularities of myth have proved
more enduring and appealing.19 As the genres and the multiple forms of
jazz intertwined in the post-Depression city, this protean music combined
provocatively with mutable religiosities to challenge static notions of
place, gods, identity, and soul.

Jazz and “the church”

Aside from definitional debates, jazz between the 1920s and 1950s took
shape through competing aesthetic essentialisms—Africanism, the “black
church,” and the jazz secular—that musicians steadily complicated through
improvisation. Questions about the proximity of African influence had judg-
ments in tow, so interwoven were racial taxonomies with sex and crowds
and the threat of discord, of boundaries crashed. As often as “jazz” was
pronounced the music of the new, the sleek modern city’s soundtrack, its
appeal, and its revulsions often took shape around understandings of its
African sources or its essential religiosity. Often, such proto-musicologies
paralleled theories of religion that focused on the evolution of “mature”
208 Jason C. Bivins
religions from “primitive” ones or modernist discourses that aimed to dis-
tinguish orthopraxy from the sweaty enthusiasm of black religion.20
Yet alternate essentialisms were vital to musicians in a country that
stomped on their blackness and their artistry. Samuel Floyd wrote that
“the interpretive strategies of African Americans are the same as those
that underlie the music of the African homeland.”21 West African musical
practices such as the ring shout or even fundamental patterns of public,
ritualized call-and-response were also religious ones, constituting value and
aesthetic simultaneously. Christopher Small observed that African ritual and
artistic expression alike “take place within a religious framework.”22 Music
was understood not only to reflect the multiplicity of time and experience
but also to clarify it, thus contributing to the ongoing fashioning of identity
within and against one’s culture, bringing new relationships into being.
It was not just in African or Afro-Caribbean religious communities but
also in African American Christianities that the intersubjective qualities of
this identity were performed and negotiated, the improvisatory remade as
the essence itself. Older ritual elements—and the transformation of bod-
ies through sound and dance—echoed in vernacular musics in the United
States.23 These ritual and sonic forms often thrived in new musical idioms
that were recognizable to practitioners and compelling to outsiders.
Jazz can thus be traced back to a generative tradition of expressivity that
birthed the “invisible institution” and its musics. The cultivation of a sonic
aesthetic was never about preserving what Albert Raboteau identified as
“static ‘Africanisms’ ” or “archaic ‘retentions’ ”; rather, what was at stake
were improvised modes of sonic/musical relationality between humans and
god or spirits, enacted in drums, dances, feasts, and songs.24 Amiri Baraka
and others posited that behind the apparent differences in African-American
culture, then, was a “Changing Same.”25 For Baraka, its musicological
elements establish the fundaments of African American sonic aesthetics:
“[r]hythmic syncopation, polyphony, and shifted accents, as well as the
altered timbral qualities and diverse vibrato effects of African music.”26
These qualities would take shape and develop more fully in later vernacular
musics, in riffs, breaks, blues, stop-time, rags, and more.
Suggestively, the musical aesthetic of trance and ecstasy itself was pre-
cisely what eluded formal notation on either staff paper or along a con-
tinuum of known, acceptable religious expressions. And so the slave songs,
field hollers, and, later, jazz, “were consistently labeled ‘wild,’ ‘strangely
fascinating,’ of ‘peculiar quality,’ and ‘barbaric’ by white observers.”27 Seen
and heard as the essence of African atavism by outsiders, these very features
were championed by practitioners as central to an identity that eluded con-
trol and subjugation.
The cultivation of joy in the midst of agony, the authorship of a “hidden
transcript” that could not be read or notated by outsiders, the conjuration
of transforming, signifying, trickster power were all crucial means by which
musical developments occurred in African American cultures.28 One of the
 Jazz religious and secular 209
great ironies of African American music, however, is that it was through
the very suggestiveness and elusiveness of these meanings that “black cul-
ture” was discovered through music in nineteenth-century America. While
it is clear that African American music was used consistently for counter-
oppressive purposes, the cultures of interpretation that sprang up around
these songs often fixated on their trickster elements, their signifying multi-
plicity in order to fix them, know them, and naturalize them. As Jon Cruz
writes, “a particular cultural aestheticization of black practices” made of
these elements “mere” exotica, becoming the “preferred” black idiom for
white audiences since they were heard as “naturally” black rather than cul-
turally hybrid and multiple.29
So the cultural politics of appropriation were constitutive in the forma-
tion of “jazz” over the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, often
seeking to seal off its root sources of nourishment as ancillary to the purely
aesthetic or the “authentic.” Yet to practitioners, the music that would
become jazz could not be wholly contained by the discourses of racial and
religious “naturalism,” and thus, the encounter between cultures and sub-
jectivities produced not only the kind of doubleness that W. E. B. DuBois
famously described but also what Ralph Ellison later called the shadow side
to African American culture.
As the specific musical combinations that would shape ragtime and early
jazz began to coalesce in the sonic and religious hothouse of New Orleans
(and, almost contemporaneously, in Chicago), it became common for listen-
ers to posit connections between the “religious” and the “artistic” in the
new music. These associations had been present among Catholic musicians
in New Orleans. But nowhere were they more powerful than in the increas-
ingly normative suggestion that “jazz” was, musicologically and culturally,
a product of “the black church.” Some noted the close relation between
sermonic styles and blues vocals, the secular ostensibly bleeding into the
holy.30 For musicians and critics, in quite different ways, “[r]eligious expres-
sion and black musical behavior almost from the start were one and the
same thing.”31 Much was made of the music’s indebtedness to, for example,
the shouting services of African American Protestantism, the polyrhythms
of a choir’s sectional organization, vernacular preaching styles, call-and-
response patterns, and a historical/cultural repertoire that explains such
things by way of storytelling griots and talking drums.
Jazz, then, became acceptable to the extent that its aesthetic could be
tethered to that of traditional African American Christianity. But as we have
already seen, this association itself was something that musicians impro-
vised and jazzed up. Virtuosos such as Joe Oliver “imitate[d] the timbre and
cadence of the stylized speech of sermonizing preachers” in American Prot-
estantism.32 Soul jazz saxophonist Lou Donaldson recalled the importance
of absorbing religious feelings in developing his own sound.33 After his regu-
lar Sunday service, trumpeter Clark Terry recalls sneaking off to a Church
of God and Christ because “[he] dug the polyrhythms of that church.”34 It
210 Jason C. Bivins
was not just the structure of a service but also the emotional investments in
it that animated these explorations, a twinned influence that Paul Berliner
describes as

a complex, integrated model for performance derived from the testi-

monial cries of ministers and worshippers engaged in vocal exchanges,
spirited sermons that stand tantalizingly on the border between speech
and song, and the soulful musical interludes that enhance the service’s
emotional intensity and its message.35

Drummer Max Roach recalled that church musicians were praised not only
because of technical proficiency but because of “their abilities to stir the
congregation’s feelings.”36
Of course, the “respectful” churches of the North—specifically, the more
culturally and religiously conservative institutions in African American
communities, not necessarily those of any particular denomination—were
unnerved by these associations. But in these very dissensions, jazz’s arrange-
ment of religion grew denser and more recognizable, with its own harmonic
range, cultural-moral counterpoint, and interpretative fluidity. Even outside
of specifically African American communities, religious languages and ref-
erences were used to describe jazz and its aesthetics. A Boston archbishop
denounced jazz as “a sensuous, luxurious sort of paganism,” embodying a
religious critique also common to Protestants.37 In the 1920s, Judaism and
jazz were frequently linked in order to undermine each other. Henry Ford
wrote scathingly about “Jewish jazz factories” where “throngs who indulge
in indecent dancing” flocked.38 This period also marked the beginnings of
a complicated relationship between Jews and African American entertain-
ers, not only extending the traditions of minstrelsy in obvious directions
but enabling hybrid or multiple identities in some cases. For example, one
1930s’ performer, Sophie Tucker, was Jewish but had as her stage name “the
Coon Shouter” and hired African American singers to teach her stylistic
tricks that she hoped would confer artistic legitimacy on her.39 Mezz Mezz-
row was so infatuated with black culture that he openly “went so far as to
declare his racial defection.”40 And even outside the United States, jazz was
invoked to deepen and sharpen Adorno’s critique of mass culture. In 1946,
Josef Stalin’s chief aide Andre Zhdanov “warned that jazz would ‘poison
the consciousness of the masses.’ ”41
Those who heard the jittery, antic-sounding new music—with its velocity,
its indeterminate structure, and its infectious rhythm—often attributed their
own excitement and uncertainty to corruption or demonology. Neither jazz
nor religion abided by assumptions about them, and so their relationship,
too, was occulted in sound. This continued in new religious shapes taking
place outside the “black church” continuum in New York. Even aside from
the lofty expressions of Duke Ellington’s earliest bands, New York’s rent
parties and socials proved to be crucial spaces for musical development even
 Jazz religious and secular 211
before a significant club scene existed. Chris Sheridan writes that because
jazz was not through-composed, and because it had such strong rhythms,
it was more appealing than ragtime as a social music.42 Building on the
relatively basic rhythms of the stride and boogie-woogie piano styles, James
Johnson, Fats Waller, and Art Tatum together introduced a more advanced
harmonic sensibility, a lavish melodic expressionism, and a faster, more pro-
pulsive rhythm. Players also supplemented these stylistic developments with
cultural and religious understandings of musicology, community, and artis-
tic purpose.
Consider two competing aesthetic views emerging from the Harlem
Renaissance, where poets and musicians rubbed elbows with churchgoers
and new social or religious movements. This was the period when Mar-
cus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association achieved
its greatest influence. For many supporters of pan-Africanism, the guiding
assumption was that “ ‘excellence in art would alter the nation’s percep-
tions of blacks, [leading] eventually to freedom and justice.’ ”43 Both the
African Blood Brotherhood and the Universal Negro Improvement Asso-
ciation (UNIA) frequently employed jazz and blues music at their gather-
ings “as a means of galvanizing support for their causes.”44 Yet, while the
spiritual leader Father Divine and others celebrated vernacular expression,
even while occasionally downplaying the ontological significance of racial
distinctions, Garvey actually “viewed jazz and spirituals as impediments
to racial progress” and looked down on the Harlem Renaissance.45 Else-
where, many of the most ambitious artists of this period sought consciously
to imbue their creations with vernacular forms, so as to create the sort of
cultural-historical vision of black art. When James P. Johnson, Willie “The
Lion” Smith, or Fats Waller used conventional shouts such as “Carolina,”
this not only extended the musical vocabulary of jazz piano but deliber-
ately yoked jazz innovation to historical memory.46 Reminders of the usually
Protestant religious roots of these idioms flouted the prevailing reception
dynamics as surely as Garvey did.
But the broader cultural concern that jazz was the sound of libidinous-
ness was itself a product of the religious dynamic the music was said to both
disdain and fulfill. The emerging pattern accompanied jazz’s self-awareness,
in which “musicians were responding to the spiritual and aesthetic tastes
of working-class blacks and were essential figures in the most sacred of
communal rites” even as many “thought of jazz as indecent or merely ‘secu-
lar.’ ”47 Against what W. E. B. DuBois identified as the “gross morphology”
of racial pseudoscience, the nascent music “marshaled the resources of the
past as part of defining identity in the present.”48 The confusions, switch-
backs, and false faces of identity continued in jazz’s story, grace notes or
obbligatos to the essentialism recognized by both players and critics as a
main part of the story.
In the cities of the North, where the Great Migration had taken so many
millions of African Americans, jazz blossomed. And with it came continued
212 Jason C. Bivins
injunctions to shun jazz “as you would the ‘Black Death.’ ”49 Its “demonic
noise seemed to infect holy, classical music itself” and its “most frightening
aspect . . . was its mysterious power to strike at the heart of rational conduct
and moral judgment.”50 Even though by the bop revolution (and with it the
growing presence of Ahmaddiya Islam among musicians) jazz was associated
with cool repose and urban sophistication, “when the strange polyrhythms
and exotic, blue intonations . . . became popular, the ‘respectable’ responses
ranged from distaste to outrage.”51 Those who swooned for swing risked
“falling prey to the collective soul of the negro” since “[this] music is sym-
bolic of the primitive morality and perceptible moral limitations of the negro
type. . . [in whom] sexual restraint is almost unknown, and the wildest lati-
tude of moral uncertainty is conceded.”52 Jazz was even outlawed in several
municipalities. A New Jersey judge wrote about a convicted band’s music:
“In response to its call there ensues a series of snake-like gyrations and weird
contortions of seemingly agonized bodies and limbs . . . called a dance.”53
So jazz often either fell outside of its assumed Protestant formation—
as with Islam—or it was seen to undermine traditional understandings of
Protestant aesthetics.
So even several decades after the music’s inception, the same religious
panics attended jazz. The music also continued to be framed as the prod-
uct of “black church” essentialism. Some observers, such as Amiri Baraka,
note that the alleged “Saturday night/Sunday morning” tensions continued
because “[t]he end of the almost exclusive hold of the Christian Church on
the black man’s leisure also resulted in a great many changes of emphasis
in his music.”54 As all that was solid continued to evaporate into air, with
older identities vanishing, there arose curiosities and aversions regarding
the “jazzy emotions” being ginned up by the music, mixed-race dancing at
the jazz band balls, and racy movies.55 This was a music that seemed to spill
beyond limits—moral, cultural, musical—and to many demanded a vigor-
ous reassertion of traditional cultural and religious norms. Big band music,
while it is now often remembered for its art music aspirations, often had a
lower-class or lower-middle-class appeal, and African American churches,
in particular, railed against it (as it had with the blues, which had a sim-
ilar class appeal), frequently trading in typical “devil’s music” discourse.
Mahalia Jackson recalled that “[s]ome colored ministers objected to it. . . .
They didn’t like the hand-clapping and the stomping and they said we were
bringing jazz into the church and it wasn’t dignified.”56 Leroy Davis sug-
gested that his staunch Louisville Baptist pastor forbade even improvisation:
“I’d got into jazz music and I improvised a couple of notes. He stopped and
told me, ‘That is not tolerated in my church.’ ”57 Fats Waller’s father was
a pastor at Abyssinian Baptist Church and likewise condemned jazz. But
the pianist’s innovations were explained by his religious upbringing: “an
irrepressible blend of the secular and the devotional” that made him “an
apostle of joy.”58
 Jazz religious and secular 213
Decades later, it was still common for record reviews, concert reports,
promotional materials, and fans to identify jazz with African American reli-
gion, which meant Protestantism. There is certainly a good deal of sociolog-
ical and musicological merit to these connections, but they obscure as much
as they illuminate. By the time the 1950s broke on a placid, self-satisfied
America, the sounds of soul and gospel returned once more, as an alterna-
tive to bebop. As Whitney Balliett once wrote of these tributaries, “Gospel
singing is jazz gussied up and dressed in the clothes of a lamb.”59 Underscor-
ing the widespread association of jazz with both secularism, and with a kind
of “old time religion,” Balliett’s observation still testifies to how powerful
were assumptions about Protestant musical aesthetics in the music’s recep-
tion dynamics. But in the thick of all these certainties, these confident pos-
tulations about the relationship between jazz and “church,” was the story
really so simple? Or was it the countermelodies and strange syncopations
that we should have attended to?

Passions of a man
The bassist and composer Charles Mingus was ordinary in being influenced
by the religious music of his youth, shaped by the Holiness traditions. But
in almost every other way, Mingus was unique. His story shows the com-
plex fate and reception of African American religious aesthetics in jazz. In
love with the sound of gospel and the melodious cadence of his childhood
preachers, Mingus spent most of his musical career focused on how to cre-
ate a similar emotional intensity in jazz. To do this, Mingus explored lay-
ered voicings, especially layered tempi, not just for their musical effects but
because that layering was symbolically suggestive to him as well: that was
the African American experience, a layering that was more than the one
thing that outsiders wanted it to be. Increasingly, as the scope of his com-
position and thematic exploration grew, Mingus used vernacular materials,
especially religious music, to convey his disdain for American culture and
his understanding of the power of musical aesthetics.
From the mid-1950s until his temporary retirement in the late 1960s,
Mingus used the musicological languages of blues and gospel in music often
pigeonholed as “soul jazz.” He mashed genres together, embraced contrast
and contrapuntalism as thematic, not just musicological elements, and
explored themes ranging from archaeology and evolution to civil rights.
Several key recordings from this era—namely, Oh Yeah, Ah Um, and Blues
and Roots—featured overt influences from African American Protestant
music: gospel tremolos, call-and-response phrases, and vocalic techniques.
Mingus played preacher on the bandstand, where musicians enacted a
revival. And on tunes such as “Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting,” Mingus
even announced confessions: “Oh my Jesus!” or “I know I been wrong,
yeah, I have.”
214 Jason C. Bivins
Surely this had to be the natural extension of the musical aesthetics of
“the black church.” But the matter was more complicated than this, in ways
that reveal much about the apparent stability of aesthetic traditions. Mingus
was not interested in a curatorial approach to vernacular culture but in cre-
ating openings for new creative and political possibility. Critics and listeners
often took the bait, likening the quiet passages to church and the exuberant
ones to camp meetings. Some even noted, credulously, that Mingus’s fond-
ness for collective improvisation was a product of the “oral tradition” of
African American religiosity.60 But while Mingus certainly performed exhor-
tations, issued altar calls, and confessed, he was often mugging, taking the
piss, or generally calling attention to irony, deceptions, and doubleness in
traditions—jazz and religion—that many wanted to be singular and stable.
Even if Mingus believed his music could serve as an “imagined church ser-
vice,” he was a fierce critic of these same traditions, denouncing “religious
minds or primitive minds” and complaining that “black people of America
don’t have a folk music, unless it be church, which is pretty corny.”61
Mingus was certainly sympathetic with African American religious
organizations participating in the civil rights movement. His music from
the late 1950s to the mid-1960s often had a social-critical component to it,
one that was much less slippery than any religious component. Occasion-
ally this political edge landed him in hot water with record companies, but
he was beloved by critics and audiences, even if this adulation also rankled
him. Part of this had to do with his renowned ambivalence about the cat-
egory “jazz.” On one hand, he imagined that the idiom might become “a
sacred music for our people,” something “religiously involved, without the
Christian tones,” but he also feared that “[j]azz means ‘nigger.’ ”62 If jazz
meant conformity or knowing your place, it was a musical and cultural
dead end.
The goal was for “religion” not to know its place either, not to serve up
the expected enthusiasm of “soul jazz” but to sound out the complexity
and multiplicity of African American history itself. Neither aesthetic princi-
ple nor denomination should hold apart a creative impulse that would link
exhortations on behalf of the Sioux, attacks on exploitative record labels,
and a love of Swami Vivekananda. Identifying jazz as linked with the exu-
berant black Protestant song some heard in Mingus was thus to overlook its
actual aesthetic, which was its fluidity, its doubleness, and its indissolubly
multiple collision of musical genres and identities.

Fulfill the note

A very different relationship to Protestantism is heard in the music of fellow
bassist David Friesen. Friesen was reared Jewish but converted to (Prot-
estant) Christianity when he was fourteen. In time, he came to acknowl-
edge a direct link between his religion and his expressive improvising. Miles
away from the secular projections and sexual panics of early jazz, or the
 Jazz religious and secular 215
essentialist formations of African American religion that accompany the
music’s development, Friesen links music-making to the ability “to discern
truth by the power of the Holy Spirit.”63 As a young Bible student at Mult-
nomah School of the Bible, Friesen was attracted to jazz’s emotional inten-
sity and expressive potential. He began performing the music regularly and
experienced a profound sense of religious conviction and connectivity when
he performed. To Friesen, focusing on self-expression was incorrect as far as
the music went; rather, the music was the expression of the divine through
the instrument of the player: “the Lord filled the note that I played, and the
substance was love . . . it has nothing to do with me, it has everything to do
with the Lord.”64
In this sense, playing jazz does not so much locate or conform to an aes-
thetic as jazz is one possible expression of a religious sensibility that does
not require any particular form of music or religion. Categories get in the
way, although particular forms possess depths of beauty. Music requires
no particular harmonic or rhythmic content so much a kind of rigorous
focus and egolessness. Friesen puts it thus: “take my eyes off myself so
I can listen and be able to respond creatively to what I hear.”65 Friesen’s
regular performances themselves, imbued with something of the spirit
of the 1960s’ “counterculture,” flowed from these convictions. Friesen
backed this up with a pattern of discipline that involved prayer, medita-
tion, scripture reading, and practicing the bass, each element indispensable
in his reckoning.
More than simply a general cultivation of religious motives for music-
making, however, Friesen claims that he had a life-altering religious experi-
ence that, while he attributes it only to divine intervention, he was able to
recognize and interpret because of his musical sensitivity. To his great sur-
prise, he was shown a pool of great depth and beauty, filled with unknown
colors. From this pool, Friesen attested, the Lord appeared and told him,
“This is a pool I’ve given to you, and it will fulfill the note.”66 But, Friesen
added, this sui generis pool was itself also a note, one that made possible the
creation of worldly, temporal sound itself. The mundane and the fantastical
notes are both products, Friesen was told, of a divine love that “will splash
and cover” those who listen.67
Suggestively, then, this vision is both a product of and a precondition
for the music Friesen strives to create. Jazz is in his reckoning a kind of
discipline and ethic as much as it is a form of music; it requires conviction,
intensity, removal of the ego, and a commitment to show others God’s glory.
This is what it means for Friesen to “follow the note,” which is linked to
one’s ability to “be still in the Spirit and listen,” referring to that real-time
challenge of improvisation (as well as to things off the bandstand).68 There
are harmonic and rhythmic considerations, among others, still to be made,
of course. But fundamentally, for Friesen music is neither good nor bad in
simple aesthetic terms; it is either faithful to God’s voice or it is not. The
improviser must follow what God wants from them, trust in the rightness of
216 Jason C. Bivins
this path, and make sure only that music glorifies the right things: “it’s the
Lord that gives it its own power or not.”69

“I ain’t got no wings!”

Saxophonist Charles Gayle’s experience of Protestantism and jazz looks
different altogether from those discussed earlier. An exuberant avant-garde
player, Gayle combines ferocity with a kind of searching quality to his play-
ing. To Gayle, the avant-garde is just another way of playing roots music.
He acknowledges the deep history described earlier in this chapter, noting
that what we now call jazz “started in old churches . . . they would play a
motif and then go off and do their own thing.”70 The sound he goes for on
his tenor is, he said, trying to capture “the way people sing in church . . .
all vibrato.”71 But where Mingus played a game of shifting, playful identity
with religions and Friesen undertook a kind of imagistic evangelism, Gayle
understands his music to be prophetic.
Like many young African Americans in the 1960s, Gayle felt compelled
by movements for social change. He was taken by the music of that decade’s
jazz avant-gardists, feeling that its emotional rawness was closest to his
own Christian devotionalism. Gayle arrived in Manhattan just as the jazz
scene was beginning to suffer economic hardship. And into the 1970s, he
participated in the underground, do-it-yourself loft jazz scene. He despised
the idea of compromising his musical or personal integrity just to score a
few gigs. So he gave up the hustle entirely and chose a life of busking and
homelessness. Gayle believed poverty was worth it in order to hold onto his
integrity. He also felt that his stripped-down life made it more likely for him
to create raw religious experience with his horn.
In time, Gayle got a break. He began recording and performing at clubs
again in the late 1980s. Hipster audiences were taken aback not just by
the ferocity of Gayle’s playing but by the unabashed evangelical Christian-
ity that shaped his album titles, dedications, and audience interactions too.
This was not the big-tent spirituality of some 1960s’ players. For Gayle, free
jazz was about understanding what the blood of the lamb was really about.
Claiming that he was a vehicle for God’s own voice, Gayle said he was not
a musician but a witness: “when you play free improvisation, God is there
too . . . whether you like it or not.”72
With this laser focus came a political sensibility that many of Gayle’s
listeners found unsettling. In the 1990s Gayle began appearing more
frequently onstage in his Streets the Clown persona. With full makeup,
bowler hat, red nose, and all, Streets was Gayle’s response to his relative
success. He wanted to maintain his connection to his earlier hardship,
which was his authenticity. He performed pranks onstage and generally
undermined his audience’s expectations. And it was not lost on viewers
that Gayle was also tapping into the symbolism of minstrelsy, which was a
biting comment about his mostly white fans. More controversially, Gayle
 Jazz religious and secular 217
began proselytizing onstage, railing in particular against abortion and
homosexuality. The intensity of these pronouncements matched the furor
of his music. Gayle exhorted his audiences: “[w]e’re gonna talk about
abortion. . . . We’re gonna talk about God.”73 Jazz was not about hipsters’
aesthetic pleasures but about confessing: “[w]hether you being a homo-
sexual, you drinking, you lying . . . I’m not trying to do nothing but set
the record straight.”74
Again, jazz meant total creative conviction. But for Gayle, it had to be
grounded in an ironclad religiosity that neither streets nor stage could cor-
rupt. He lost some listeners who could not reconcile their expectations for
artistic innovation with Gayle’s politics. He dismissed their charges of con-
servatism, saying, “I ain’t no right wing nothing! I ain’t got no wings!”75 For
Gayle, it was a matter of fidelity to the Bible, or infidelity. It was a matter of
following Christ or not. Was this Protestantism? Was it jazz?

Conclusion
Working through the religious aesthetics of Mingus, Friesen, and Gayle
seems to locate us far from the early eras of jazz, where the blending of
African American Protestantism and vernacular music was at times scan-
dalous. Yet jazz scholarship since the 1970s has, when it deigns to engage
religion at all, reflexively emphasized the constancy of these links between
expressive culture and spirituality. In locating the conceptual and artistic
tangles in jazz’s early decades, and by working through a trio of even more
religiously unpredictable case studies, I hope to have shown that the over-
arching assumption about jazz and religion insufficiently appreciates the
unpredictability and instability that are the music’s constants. Even to iden-
tify basic aesthetic elements such as call-and-response patterns and to nod
to their cultural/religious sources, is to immerse oneself in their multiple,
code-scrambling articulations; it is to listen to the music’s restless resistance
to categorization. Fluidity, contact, and blending have consistently been the
norm in “jazz,” which was never simply a secular force or a sacred “reten-
tion” or a freestanding music embodying one’s sleek urban lifestyle. As pia-
nist and vocalist Nina Simone put the matter, “Negro music has always
crossed all those lines.”76
So there is culture everywhere behind and around and underneath the
music. And in many cases, this culture moves through identifiably religious
buildings and crowds and books. That is substantive. That is important.
But these are the same traditions, recognizably African American in their
religiosity and their music, that value manyness and ambiguity and play.
The very fact of the profound social constraint often shaping the conditions
of music-making in some way explains the value given to fluidity and non-
fixity. There is also, we should note, a deep political subversiveness at work
in jazz, religious and secular. Thelonious Monk once opined that he wanted
his music to be difficult for white people to understand; that way, it would
218 Jason C. Bivins
be harder for them to steal. Jazz is a word worth using. But it should not be
understood too easily.

Notes
1 This is not to suggest, of course, that religious anxieties about jazz were only
Protestant and occurred only in the North. In jazz’s formative decades in New
Orleans, Catholic clergy, among others, were sometimes critical of the new
music. My point is that the imbrication of secularism, religion, modernist aes-
thetics, and race was more obvious and influential elsewhere.
2 Lawrence Gushee, “The Nineteenth-Century Origins of Jazz,” Black Music
Research Journal 14, no. 1 (Spring 1994): 1–24, here 8.
3 Quoted in ibid., 2.
4 1966 Symposium reprinted in Cadence 4, no. 11 (November 1978): 22.
5 Valerie Wilmer, As Serious as Your Life: The Story of the New Jazz (London:
Pluto Press, 1987), 22.
6 Bunny Crumpacker and Chick Crumpacker, Jazz Legends (Layton, UT: Gibbs
Smith Publishers, 1995), 8.
7 Ibid., 34.
8 Ibid., 37.
9 Ibid., 43.
10 Ibid., 44.
11 Ibid., 31.
12 Susan Curtis, “Black Creativity and Black Stereotype: Rethinking Twentieth-
Century Popular Music in America,” in Beyond Blackface: African Americans
and the Creation of American Popular Culture 1890–1930, ed. W. Fitzhugh
Brundage (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2011), 125.
13 Quoted in Robert Walser, ed., Keeping Time: Readings in Jazz History (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 12–13.
14 Ibid., 19.
15 Quoted in Wilmer, As Serious as Your Life, 23.
16 Paul Austerlitz, Jazz Consciousness: Music, Race, and Humanity (Middletown,
CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2005), 1.
17 Quoted in Peter Townsend, Jazz in American Culture (Jackson: University of
Mississippi Press, 2000), viii.
18 Ibid., 2.
19 Ibid., 123.
20 These racialized understandings of religion are housed not only in the geneticist
theories of E. B. Tylor, James Frazier, and Max Mueller but also in earlier analy-
ses cum histories from David Hume and Herbert of Cherbury.
21 Samuel A. Floyd, Jr., The Power of Black Music: Interpreting Its History from
Africa to the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 5.
22 Christopher Small, Music of the Common Tongue: Survival and Celebration in
Afro-American Music (New York: Riverrun Press, 1987), 21.
23 See Samuel Charters, A Language of Song: Journeys in the Musical World of the
African Diaspora (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009).
24 Albert J. Raboteau, Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum
South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 4, 17.
25 Amiri Baraka, Blues People: Negro Music in White America (New York: W.
Morrow, 1963), 16.
26 Ibid., 8, 47.
27 Ibid., 74.
 Jazz religious and secular 219
28 James Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992).
29 Jon Cruz, Culture on the Margins: The Black Spiritual and the Rise of American
Cultural Interpretation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 5.
30 See S. Margaret W. McCarthy, “The Afro-American Sermon and the Blues: Some
Parallels,” The Black Perspective in Music 4, no. 3 (Autumn 1976): 269–77.
31 James Standifer, “Musical Behaviors of Black People in American Society,”
Black Music Research Journal 1 (1980): 51–62, here 52.
32 Paul Berliner, Thinking in Jazz: The Infinite Art of Improvisation (Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1994), 69.
33 Ibid., 68.
34 Clark Terry, with Gwen Terry and Bill Cosby, Clark: The Autobiography of
Clark Terry (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), 4.
35 Ibid., 29.
36 Ibid.
37 Thaddeus Russell, A Renegade History of the United States (New York: The
Free Press, 2010), 159.
38 Ibid., 165.
39 Ibid., 170.
40 Ibid., 171.
41 Ibid., 285.
42 See Chris Sheridan, “Chapters,” Cadence 6, no. 9 (September 1980): 19.
43 Ibid., 106. Note, too, that this was also the Harlem of George A. Baker, Jr., also
known as Father Divine, and Sweet Daddy Grace.
44 Eric Porter, What Is This Thing Called Jazz? African American Musicians as Art-
ists, Critics, and Activists (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002), 7.
45 Beryl Satter, “Marcus Garvey, Father Divine, and the Gender Politics of Race
Difference and Race Neutrality,” American Quarterly 48, no. 1 (1996): 43–76,
here 59.
46 Floyd, Power of Black Music, 111.
47 Sterling Stuckey, “The Music That Is in One’s Soul: On the Sacred Origins of
Jazz and the Blues,” Lenox Avenue 1 (1995): 73–88, here 84.
48 George Lipsitz, Time Passages: Collective Memory and American Popular Cul-
ture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990), 115. On DuBois, see
Nikhil Pal Singh, Black Is a Country: Race and the Unfinished Struggle for
Democracy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004).
49 Walser, Keeping Time, 11.
50 Ibid.
51 Ibid., 9.
52 Ibid., 12.
53 Ibid., 14.
54 Baraka, Blues People, 67.
55 Neil Leonard, Jazz: Myth and Religion (New York: Oxford University Press,
1989), 10.
56 Quoted in Patrick Allitt, Religion in America Since 1945: A History (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2003), 45.
57 Ibid., 46.
58 Ibid., 42.
59 Quoted in George McKay, Circular Breathing: The Cultural Politics of Jazz in
Britain (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005), 302.
60 Horace J. Maxile, “Churchy Blues, Bluesy Church: Vernacular Tropes, Expres-
sion, and Structure in Charles Mingus’s ‘Ecclusiastics’,” Annual Review of Jazz
Studies 14 (2009): 65–81, here 71, 75.
220 Jason C. Bivins
61 John F. Goodman, Mingus Speaks (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press,
2013), 11.
62 Ibid., 11, 104, 17.
63 Interview with author, January 2011.
64 Ibid.
65 Ibid.
66 “Interview with David Friesen,” Cadence 31, no. 6 (June 2005): 13.
67 Ibid., 14.
68 Personal conversation with author, January 2011.
69 Ibid.
70 Todd Margasak, “Interview with Charles Gayle,” Butt Rag, no. 9 (Spring 1994):
7.
71 Interview in Cadence 27, no. 4 (April 2001): 16–17.
72 Phil Freeman, New York Is Now! The New Wave of Free Jazz (Brooklyn, NY:
Telegraph Company, 2001), 78.
73 Author transcription of performance from Gayle, Look Up (ESP, 2012).
74 Ibid.
75 Interview in Cadence 27, no. 4 (April 2001): 19.
76 Lawrence W. Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American
Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1978), 200.
14 “Gorgeousness inheres in
anything”
The Protestant origins of
John Updike and Marilynne
Robinson’s aesthetics of the
ordinary
Alex Engebretson

Although an engagement with Protestantism has become considerably rare

in American literature of the last fifty years, Marilynne Robinson (1943– )
and John Updike (1932–2009) are exceptions to the rule. They are the two
representative American Protestant authors of the postwar period. Both
spent their lives in Protestant churches. Marilynne Robinson is a prod-
uct of the largely Calvinist mainline churches, having had a Presbyterian
childhood and a Congregationalist (United Church of Christ) adulthood.
John Updike’s childhood was Lutheran, then Congregationalist in middle
age, and Episcopalian at life’s end. Their lives in church are reflected in
their fiction. Both have written novels about clergymen, entertained ques-
tions about theology and doctrine, and dramatized the tensions between
belief and doubt. For both Updike and Robinson, religion, as embodied by
American Protestantism, is an animating force of their literary productions.
Indeed, this chapter argues that both authors express and embody a particu-
larly Protestant aesthetic modality, an exuberant attention to the mundane,
the everyday, the quotidian. It is an aesthetic that enacts one of Protestant-
ism’s major contributions to Western cultural history, or what Charles Tay-
lor calls the “affirmation of ordinary life.”
This chapter makes two interventions in the scholarship on Updike and
Robinson. The first provides a wider framework for considering aesthetic
qualities of their work, namely, by interpreting Updike and Robinson as
late manifestations of specifically Protestant cultural, theological, and aes-
thetic tendencies. Rather than reading Updike and Robinson as generically
“Christian” authors, particularizing their identity as “Protestant” yields
new interpretive possibilities, despite the outward similarities they may
share with Catholic authors such as Flannery O’Connor and Walker Percy.
The second intervention builds on the comparative study of James Schiff’s
article, “Robinson and Updike: Houses, Domesticity, and the Numinous
Quotidian.”1 While Schiff offers a close reading to argue for the authors’
222 Alex Engebretson
similarities, this chapter probes the causes of their similarity, linking them
to a shared Protestant culture.
Of course, the concept of “Protestant culture” is far too ambiguous to
provide any kind of useful analysis. It would be simplistic to depend on it,
just as it is simplistic intellectual history to attribute all that is vile or valu-
able about modernity to so-called Protestant culture, whether it is capital-
ism, liberal democracy, or the infamous work ethic. This chapter does not
concern the totality of “Protestant culture,” if such a concept could ever be
fully understood, but one small, rather well-established feature of Protes-
tantism, what philosopher Charles Taylor calls “the affirmation of ordinary
life.”2 Limiting our attention to this strain of Protestant cultural history
and its aesthetic implications will enable a richer, more persuasive under-
standing of what exactly is “Protestant” about John Updike and Marilynne
Robinson.
There is no evidence that these two authors ever met in person. Yet
there is one sign that Robinson recognized their shared sensibility. Pub-
lished in The New York Times book section in 1987, “At Play in the Back-
yard of the Psyche” is Robinson’s mostly favorable review of Updike’s
story collection Trust Me. What is striking about the review is the empha-
sis she places on Updike’s attention to the quotidian. She writes, “The
plainest objects and events bloom in these stories as if they had at last
found their proper climate.” Citing Updike’s description of a dead dog
in the story “Deaths of Distant Friends,” she concludes, “The passage is,
altogether, a virtuoso’s laughing demonstration that gorgeousness inheres
in anything.”3
It is a commonplace observation of his work that Updike’s fiction locates
beauty in anything, even something as conventionally “ugly” as a dead
dog. James Wood refers to it as “Updike’s customary tranquil aestheticism,
which so swells the textures of his books.”4 Perhaps the reason Robinson
celebrates it is because of her own devotion to the “the plainest objects and
events.”5 Here is an example from her novel Gilead:

There was a young couple strolling along half a block ahead of me. The
sun had come up brilliantly after a heavy rain, and the trees were glis-
tening and very wet. On some impulse, plain exuberance, I suppose, the
fellow jumped up and caught hold of a branch, and a storm of luminous
water came pouring down on the two of them, and they laughed and
took off running, the girl sweeping water off her hair and her dress as if
she were a little bit disgusted, but she wasn’t.6

Such passages of simple beauty, of laughter, water, and light, seem to affirm
what might be taken as their artistic creeds: for Robinson, “ordinary things
have always seemed numinous to me”; for Updike, his desire “to give the
mundane its beautiful due.”7
 “Gorgeousness inheres in anything” 223
In Modernism and the Ordinary, Liesl Olson offers a definition that is
useful to this study:

[T]he ordinary consists of activities and things that are most frequently
characterized by our inattention to them. This definition considers the
ordinary as a genre: unheroic events and overlooked things, neither
crucial moments of plot development nor temporal points that signify
accomplishment.8

It might be said that Updike and Robinson exaggerate the space available
to this definition of the ordinary. Their work testifies to an extraordinary
witness of those objects and habits made invisible by inattention. As Updike
says, existence

does not feel horrible; it feels like an ecstasy, rather, which we only
have to be still to experience. Habit and accustomedness have painted
over pure gold with a dull paint that can, however, be scratched away,
to reveal the shining underbase. The world is good, our intuition is,
confirming its Creator’s appraisal as reported in the first chapter of
Genesis.9

This desire to attend to the ordinary is hardly unique to Robinson or

Updike. It is an ambition shared by novelists beginning in the eighteenth
century, by Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, and Henry Fielding. In his
famous study The Rise of the Novel, Ian Watt argues that a hallmark of the
novel is a detailed depiction of everyday life, including an accurate represen-
tation of time and the textures of physical experience.10 This desire to capture
the ordinary comes to a pitch of intensity in the modernist writers—James
Joyce, Gertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf, and Wallace Stevens.11 It even contin-
ues to be relevant to such postmodern artists as John Cage: his “intention is
to affirm this life, not to bring order out of chaos nor to suggest improvement
in creation, but simply to wake up to the very life we’re living, which is so
excellent.”12 Updike and Robinson stand in a long tradition of modern artists
who understand their artistic purpose as related to the “ordinary.”
Their difference within this tradition is their theological interpretation
of the ordinary. This theological interpretation is certainly debatable, but
it is distinctly their interpretation. For whatever personal or idiosyncratic
reasons, these two authors feel the need to have a theological underpinning,
to know the ordinary as the locus of the sacred, and everyday life as numi-
nous. In their expressions of the ordinary as somehow sanctified, Updike’s
and Robinson’s aesthetics depend on attitudes and ideas found in Christian
tradition, specifically in Protestantism.
They receive the tradition in two ways: theological and cultural. Since
their understandings of the ordinary depend on a theological conceptual
224 Alex Engebretson
framework—concepts such as “God” and “nature”—their work implies a
dialogue with theology. As I argue in the following, Updike’s and Robin-
son’s imagination of these concepts is decidedly Protestant, and they self-
consciously draw on theologians such as Martin Luther and John Calvin.
Let me stress that this is their imagination of Luther’s and Calvin’s ideas and
not an “objective” or “scholarly” theological and cultural understanding of
these complex figures.
Moreover, if their ideas owe a debt to Protestant theology, their attitude
toward the ordinary owes a debt to the Reformation. Charles Taylor writes,
“With the Reformation, we find a modern, Christian-inspired sense that
ordinary life was on the contrary the very center of the good life. The cru-
cial issue was how it was led, whether worshipfully and in the fear of God
or not”.13 The Reformation is largely responsible for Taylor’s previously
mentioned “affirmation of ordinary life,” the opening for this affirmation
being made possible by a critique of Catholicism’s idea of the sacred. The
Reformers’ critique of the medieval church, their rejection of the idea of
sacred times and spaces, of the church’s mediating role between humans and
the divine: all this made what was once considered “profane life” the only
life worth living.
Calvinists gave these antihierarchical ideas and the hallowing of ordi-
nary life their most extreme expression, particularly with their notion of
“vocation,” or God’s specific call for an individual’s labor no matter how
mundane. The Puritan William Perkins put it this way: “Now if we com-
pare worke to worke, there is a difference betwixt washing of dishes, and
preaching of the word of God: but as touching to please God none at all.”14
Taylor called Perkins’s articulation a “sanctification of the ordinary,” a per-
fect phrase for what would become a strong aesthetic impulse in Updike and
Robinson. Taylor goes on to write that in the intervening centuries, the turn
to ordinary life would also be secularized, to the point where it became used
as a critique against religion, that is, that religion separated a person from
ordinary human fulfillment in love, work, family, and pleasure.15 However,
Updike and Robinson both continue to find a role for religion and so resist
this fully secular variant, tracing a deeper affinity with the traditional Prot-
estant notion that the ordinary is charged with sacred meaning. Neither
author is willing to abandon the metaphysics that ground their conception
of the ordinary. It is a conception that depends on metaphysical ideas about
“God” and “nature,” self-consciously informed by a selective engagement
with Protestant theology.

Theologies of the quotidian

The “God” that Updike and Robinson’s fiction assumes is primarily the
God of creation. In biblical terms, they share a preference for Genesis over
the Gospels, creation over redemption. As Updike says, “[m]y religious sen-
sibility operates primarily as a sense of God the Creator, which is fairly
 “Gorgeousness inheres in anything” 225
real to me.”16 Robinson often associates God with being and beauty: “The
signature of God in creation is beauty.”17 For both writers, their aesthetics
of an enchanted quotidian is rooted in a shared focus on the doctrine of
creation. Yet they arrive at this doctrinal focus through two different tra-
ditions of Protestant theology: Updike via Lutheranism and Robinson via
Calvinism.
Although Updike eventually became a member of the Episcopal Church,
his childhood Lutheranism would never leave him. Updike said of himself,

I would call myself a Lutheran by upbringing, and my work contains

some of the ambiguities of the Lutheran position, which would have a
certain radical otherworldly emphasis and yet an odd retention of a lot
of Catholic forms and a rather rich ambivalence toward the world itself.

In the same interview, Updike contrasts Lutheranism and Calvinism, claim-

ing that “Lutheranism is comparatively world-accepting.”18 His positive
attitude toward the world with regard to the imminence of God’s presence
finds important echoes in Luther’s writings on the Eucharist, which state
that the power of God “must be essentially present at all places, even in
the tiniest tree leaf.”19 Luther also describes Christ as “present in all crea-
tures, [as] I might find him in stone, in fire, in water, or even in a rope,
for he certainly is there.”20 Luther, in this sense, accepts the traditional
Catholic position that the world is sacramental. Unlike Calvin, who tends
toward a more transcendent view of God, Luther relies on the concept of
incarnation, of God flooding the world with His presence at Christmas.
As Darrell Jodock writes, “[o]perating with the ‘incarnational principle,’
Lutherans detect God’s presence in the world—an ambiguous presence,
perhaps, but a presence nonetheless. From this point of view, a truthful
account of the world is thus not distracting but revealing.”21 When Updike
says, “I describe things not because their muteness mocks our subjectiv-
ity but because they seem to be masks for God,” he is being true to his
Lutheran upbringing.22
This Lutheran theological orientation toward the world becomes, in
Updike’s aesthetics, fiction that might be said to enact a theology of descrip-
tion. In an interview with Jan Nunley, he associates description with praise:

Any act of description is, to some extent, an act of praise, so that even
when the event is unpleasant or horrifying or spiritually stunning, the
very attempt to describe it is, in some ways, part of that Old Testament
injunction to give praise.23

Description is an aesthetic element that all novelists share, and surely many
of them would affirm Updike’s impulse to hymn the world. However, com-
paratively few contemporary writers would load the act of description with
this much theological weight. As Jodock notes, “Description becomes praise
226 Alex Engebretson
only when God is understood to be present in the world being described.”24
It is Updike’s Lutheran sense of God’s active presence in the world that
underwrites his lavishly descriptive prose.
In Marilynne Robinson, we find a different theological influence: John Cal-
vin. Robinson, as mentioned, has spent her entire life in Calvinist denomi-
nations, and if Updike’s Lutheranism is more of a subconscious influence,
shaping his fundamental attitude toward the world, then Robinson’s Cal-
vinism is more consciously felt. The Gilead novels—Gilead, Home, and
Lila—each feature theological debates couched in Calvinist terms, just as an
important motivation of her essays is revising popular misconceptions of Cal-
vin and New England Puritans. Specifically, in her essays and interviews, she
tends to emphasize two aspects of Calvin’s theology: beauty and perception.
As Calvin writes in the fifth chapter of his Institutes,

Wherever you turn your eyes, there is no portion of the world, how-
ever minute, that does not exhibit at least some sparks of beauty,
while it is impossible to contemplate the vast and beautiful fabric as
it extends around without being overwhelmed by the immense weight
of glory.25

Calvin considered the perception of the universe, especially the perception

of beauty, a sacred communication between the individual and God. In her
preface to a selection of Calvin’s writings, Robinson states,

The beauty of what we see is burdened with truth. It signifies the power
of God and his constant grace toward the human creature. It signifies
the address of God to the individual human consciousness. . . . For Cal-
vin, there is great, continuous instruction in perception itself.26

She adds that “Calvin is intensely this-worldly, in fact, and sees the task
of the soul as deep perception of the givenness of this world rather than as
looking through or beyond it.”27 In the essay “Freedom of Thought,” she
also invokes Calvin’s metaphor that “nature is a shining garment in which
God is revealed and concealed.”28 The aesthetic apprehension of beauty is
therefore an aspect of Calvinism that Robinson deeply admires and embod-
ies in her fiction. As one of her characters John Ames says, “[w]herever you
turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. You don’t have to
bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see.”29

The Catholic other

It is worth noting that both Robinson and Updike see themselves as dis-
tinctly Protestant, at times defining themselves against Catholic fiction writ-
ers. Robinson has said, “For some reason it is not conventional for serious
fiction to treat religious thought respectfully—the influence of Flannery
 “Gorgeousness inheres in anything” 227
O’Connor has been particularly destructive, I think, though she is consid-
ered a religious writer, and she considered herself one.”30 Updike said,

What strikes me when I think about Flannery O’Connor and Graham

Greene is how far they are willing to go in presenting a suffering, appar-
ently Godless world. That is, the very scorchingness with which God is
not there is something that I don’t feel in my own work. It amazes me.31

Although these are off-hand remarks, unsupported by literary analysis, they

do suggest an anxiety that Updike and Robinson share when responding to
Catholic-inspired fiction. They both seem to conceive of their aesthetics and
worldviews as different from contemporary Catholic models.
In these comments, what concerns them about these Catholic fictions is
their Jansenism, referring to the sect that emphasized the fallenness of the
world. This seems particularly true in the fiction of Flannery O’Connor.
Allen Tate called it O’Connor’s temperamental Jansenism, her view of the
world as radically fallen and humanity as fundamentally depraved.32 How-
ever, to take this part for the whole of the Catholic imagination does not
do it justice. Indeed, a wider view of Catholic fiction and its fundamental
aesthetic assumptions, as embodied by O’Connor and Walker Percy, also
reveals a shared emphasis on the sanctity of the ordinary in both the Catho-
lic and Protestant imaginations.
Much of what Farrell O’Gorman writes in his study of O’Connor and
Percy, Peculiar Crossroads, might equally apply to Updike and Robinson.
For all the differences between Percy and O’Connor, O’Gorman writes that
the two authors share “a common emphasis on the concrete and a faith that
the immediate world itself holds a mystery and a meaning that does not
have to be imposed by the artist but is already present, if only recognized.”33
In O’Connor, this emphasis on the concrete often means her stories turn on
mundane things, such as the peacock in “The Displaced Person” or the hogs
in “Revelation.” In the latter story, hogs suggest grace, as Mrs. Turpin

bent her head slowly and gazed, as if through the very heart of mystery,
down into the pig parlor at the hogs. They had settled all in one corner
around the old sow who was grunting softly. A red glow suffused them.
They appeared to pant with a secret life.34

Despite the Jansenist tendencies, O’Connor’s work contains clear moments

of the sacramental imagination, as even ordinary farm animals “pant” of
transcendent mystery.
This emphasis on the ordinary is even clearer in Walker Percy. Dr. Thomas
More prays in Love in the Ruins, “Dear God, I can see it now, why can’t
I see it other times, that it is you I love in the beauty of the world.”35 Percy’s
fiction often turns his readers away from a romanticized southern past, or a
deeper dive into interiority, to a focus on the material world in the present
228 Alex Engebretson
tense. In The Last Gentlemen, the character Ed Barrett, haunted by his
father’s suicide, touches the “the warm finny whispering bark” where an
oak tree has wrapped around an old hitching post and thinks:

Wait. While his fingers explored the juncture of iron and bark, his
eyes narrowed as if he caught a glimmer of light on the cold iron
skull. . . . Wait. He has missed it! It was not in the Brahms that one
looked and not in the sad old poetry but—he wrung out his ear—but
here, under your nose, here in the very curiousness and drollness and
extraness of the iron and the bark.36

Percy calls such moments a “glimpse of the goodness and gratuitousness of

created being.”37 In a letter to Shelby Foote, Percy outlines his commitment
to “the Sacramental Life”: “Love in the Ruins will be a celebration

of the goodness of God, and of the merriness of living quite anony-

mously in the suburbs, drinking well, cooking out, attending Mass at
the usual silo-and-barn, the goodness of Brunswick bowling alleys (the
good white maple and plastic balls), coming home of an evening, with
the twin rubies of the TV transmitter in the evening sky.38

Percy’s hymn to American suburban life, and his trust that God is present
even in this seemingly mundane world, is strongly resonant with Updike’s
positive attitude toward ordinary middle-class life.39
If there is significant common ground between some of the major Protes-
tant and Catholic writers of postwar America—sharing a this-worldly ori-
entation or finding transcendence within imminence—then it does present a
challenge to some commonly held ways of distinguishing the two traditions.
Holding Percy, O’Connor, Updike, and Robinson together creates difficul-
ties for such common dichotomies as Andrew Greeley’s list in The Catholic
Imagination:

The classic works of Catholic theologians and artists tend to emphasize

the presence of God in the world, while the classic works of Protestant
theologians tend to emphasize the absence of God from the world. The
Catholic writers stress the nearness of God to His creation, the Protes-
tant writers the distance between God and His creation.40

Other scholars, such as Paul Giles, have asserted similar oppositions, that
“Protestant romance dissolves the mundane world into a more lucid spir-
itual allegory; Catholic realism invests the mundane world itself with sacra-
mental significance.”41 O’Gorman, too, emphasizes the Protestant value of
the Bible over the world: “For the Catholic writer the divine is found not
only in sacred Scripture but also in the world.”42 Such distinctions, while
certainly applicable to some texts, become strained in light of Updike’s and
 “Gorgeousness inheres in anything” 229
Robinson’s commitment to creation. Perhaps it would surprise these schol-
ars to hear a Protestant say, “I think the concept of transcendence is based
on a misreading of creation. With all respect to heaven, the scene of miracle
is here, among us.”43
To be fair to Greeley, he does qualify his argument. Despite his habit of
opposing the two sides, he states that

if there is a Catholic imagination there is perforce a Protestant imagi-

nation, and to write about one is not to oppose the other. . . . In a
more unified Christianity, the necessary critique of one by the other may
someday proceed more smoothly and gently. Yet they are different—not
completely different, but somewhat different.44

This is a useful reminder for anyone attempting to establish definitive,

essentialist differences between these two traditions: there is much common
ground. And perhaps it would be useful to abandon the Protestant/Catholic
distinction altogether and speak holistically of a “catholic Christian aes-
thetic imagination.” But to do so would be to ignore the persistent sense,
felt among the scholars and fiction writers discussed here, that there are
important, nameable differences between Protestant and Catholic writers.
My argument here is, if a distinction must be made among major Chris-
tian writers in postwar America, then it should not be on the grounds of
an emphasis on imminence and the sacramentality of ordinary life. I shall
briefly recommend an alternative source of difference: the value of suffering.
The traditional Catholic emphasis on Christ’s Passion, and the sacra-
mental value of suffering with Christ, sits uncomfortably next to Protestant
sensibilities. It is difficult to imagine a less Catholic view of suffering than
Robinson’s character John Ames claiming it is never “right to cause suf-
fering or to seek it out when it can be avoided, and serves no good, practi-
cal purpose. To value suffering in itself can be dangerous and strange.”45
Compare this to Walker Percy: “Suffering is an evil, yet at the same time
through the ordeal of suffering one gets these strange benefits of lucidity,
of seeing things afresh.”46 In Percy’s novels, suffering becomes “an asset,
a cognitive avenue toward knowledge, or grace.”47 O’Connor’s insistence
on violence as a means of grace is quite alien to Robinson’s and Updike’s
religious imagination.
The world that Updike and Robinson present in their fiction does contain
profound suffering and loss, but it is never ugly or obscene. Their artistry
beautifies the world, making beautiful even the dead dog that Robinson so
admired in Updike’s story. Their aesthetics do not accommodate or regis-
ter the ugliness, brutality, grotesqueness, and nullifying qualities of violence
and bodily suffering. Simply put, they do not find God there. They do not
value redemptive suffering. But the ideal Catholic writer, committed to the
sacramentality of nature, searches for God in the midst of suffering. Labrie
writes, “Catholic writers have, whether deliberately or not, committed
230 Alex Engebretson
themselves to reality in whatever unwelcome and inconsistent form it might
appear, in the expectation that God, the epitome and ultimate author of all
reality, will thereby somehow be present.”48 O’Connor found a language
for the ugly, grotesque, violent, “unwelcome,” and “inconsistent” realities
she saw around her, perhaps, in part, because she did find the suffering
Christ there. Updike and Robinson’s habit of making the “unwelcome” and
“inconsistent” beautiful suggests a different attitude toward suffering, per-
haps a desire to soften or blunt its effects. It is this different attitude toward
suffering, embedded in the aesthetics, that may prove a fruitful ground
for discussing the identities of major Protestant and Catholic writers after
World War II.

The light of the ordinary

Through two different Protestant theological traditions, Robinson and
Updike arrive at a similar view of reality. While Updike’s Lutheranism uses
the incarnational principle to establish the presence of God, Robinson’s Cal-
vinism locates God’s presence in the mind’s ability to apprehend beauty.
Updike’s aesthetic response is description; Robinson’s is dramatizing the act
of perception. Both authors seem most willing to affirm a God of creation,
perhaps less inclined toward a God of redemption and suffering. Although
their metaphysics coalesce in an affirming attitude toward ordinary life, spe-
cific examples of their aesthetic habits reveal their individual interpretations
of how exactly the ordinary is enchanted.
We can begin comparing Updike’s and Robinson’s aesthetics by noting
their shared use of a specific metaphor: light. Without the dazzling effects
of light on ordinary things, they may not seem enchanted at all. James
Schiff writes, “In Updike’s work, light, which serves as an emblem of God,
both reveals and glorifies.”49 In his memoirs, Updike says, “The sun was
like God not only in His power but also in the way He allowed Himself to
be shut out, to be evaded.”50 Robinson, too, sees the connection between
light and the divine, affirming it in her essay on the Puritan divine Jonathan
Edwards; as Timothy George has put it, as with Robinson, “[l]ight for
[Edwards] is a virtual synonym for beauty, and the given world is saturated
with it.”51 For all their attraction to the imagery of light, a few examples
will prove Robinson’s and Updike’s different aesthetic approaches toward
the ordinary.
Robinson’s plain diction attempts to capture the act of perception, as if
she is attempting to describe the feeling of light. Here is Gilead’s narrator
John Ames:

I have paid a good deal of attention to light, but no one could begin to
do it justice. There was the feeling of a weight of light—pressing the
damp out of the grass and pressing the smell of sour old sap out of the
boards on the porch floor and burdening even the trees a little as a late
 “Gorgeousness inheres in anything” 231
snow would do. It was the kind of light that rests on your shoulders the
way a cat lies on your lap. So familiar.52

Robinson’s description emphasizes the mystery (“no one could begin to do

it justice”) and the familiarity of light. It is ubiquitous, yet strange; ordinary,
yet uncanny. Robinson attempts to capture the perception of light, what her
character John Ames calls “the feeling of a weight of light.” This passage is
not attempting to describe the specific effects of light on objects but, rather,
how the mind apprehends light. And there is always mystery in the appre-
hension. Robinson’s fiction suggests a humble sensibility, one that recog-
nizes the fallibility of consciousness, an awareness that the wonder of reality
outpaces the mind’s ability to comprehend it. For Robinson, the ordinary is
strange, mysterious, as if there is a hidden intention behind all things. Her
aesthetics suggest the uncanny qualities of ordinary life.
Updike’s descriptive prose exudes confidence. James Wood writes,
“Updike’s language has seemed to encode an almost theological optimism
about its capacity to refer.”53 Here is a moment from his novel Rabbit, Run:
“[Nelson’s] little neck gleams like one more clean object in the kitchen
among the cups and plates and chromium knobs and aluminum cake-
making receptacles on shelves scalloped with glossy oilcloth. His mother’s
glasses glitter.”54 The density of Updike’s description, and its rapid pacing
caused by the conjunction and, has the effect of accumulation. It is intensely
specific: the receptacles are “cake-making”; the knobs are “chromium.” The
whole common, domestic scene “gleams,” as if by divine light. Yet, in con-
trast with Robinson, there is less of a sense of the mysterious, uncanny prop-
erties within the ordinary. Updike’s prose does not strive for a metaphysical
effect—of some lurking presence behind things—than for a direct, factual
presentation of imminence. The facts, the mundane objects of this kitchen,
“gleam” and “glitter,” not some reality pushing through or enfolding them.
For Updike, to reveal the numinous quality of ordinary things, nothing else
needs to be added to a precise description of them. His aesthetics directly
represent the imminence of ordinary life.
When Robinson attempts description, it usually has a metaphysical
valence:

There’s a shimmer on a child’s hair, in the sunlight. There are rainbow

colors in it, tiny, soft beams of just the same colors you can see in the
dew sometimes. They’re in the petals of flowers, and they’re on a child’s
skin.55

The “shimmer” of the hair in light brings it beyond the ordinary, illuminat-
ing it with a divine radiance. And this radiance extends to other common
things, marking with “rainbow colors” the “dew,” the “petals of flowers,”
and “child’s skin.” Robinson finds each of these objects participating in a
larger reality: existence. The sense of this quote depends on metaphysical
232 Alex Engebretson
categories such as “being” and perhaps also on a theological concept like
“glory.” In light, much like Jonathan Edwards, Robinson’s narrator beholds
the glory that saturates existence.
Although they often differ in their aesthetic modes and their characteristic
objects of attention—Updike is drawn to the human body, while Robinson
fixates on domestic ritual—these two authors share a uniquely Protestant
form of attending to ordinary life. From Protestant cultural history they
have inherited a welcoming, religious disposition toward the ordinary, find-
ing in even the most mundane domestic activities and objects sources of
sacred wonder. Their aesthetics stand apart from other literary traditions,
since they self-consciously adopt a theological view of reality. For Updike,
it is Luther’s view of God’s immanent presence; for Robinson, it is Cal-
vin’s emphasis on the perception of beauty. Remarkably, in the United States
after 1945, there continues to be the presence of self-consciously Protestant
modes of aesthetic attention.
Despite the centuries-long tradition of artists engaging with Protestant-
ism, and the sublime achievements of Protestant artists—Milton and Bach
come to mind—there remains the suspicion that Protestantism is incompat-
ible with beauty. Catholicism is taken to be the great aesthetic tradition
within Western Christianity. This common understanding is well expressed
by the theologian Gerhard Nebel: “Whoever loves beauty will, like Winckel-
mann, freeze in the barns of the Reformation and go over to Rome.”56 This
cultural narrative, which posits an opposition between frigid Protestants
and the warm beauty of Catholicism, clearly needs revision. The “barns of
the Reformation” are far from frozen, as any honest account of cultural his-
tory would reveal. As this discussion about the aesthetic merits of religious
tradition continues into our contemporary moment, John Updike and Mari-
lynne Robinson represent two more literary exemplars who prove the deep
compatibility between Protestantism and beauty.

Notes
1 James Schiff, “Robinson and Updike: Houses, Domesticity, and the Numinous
Quotidian,” in This Life: New Essays on Marilynne Robinson’s “Housekeep-
ing,” “Gilead,” and “Home”, ed. Jason W. Stevens (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 237–53.
2 Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1989), 23.
3 Marilynne Robinson, “At Play in the Backyard of the Psyche,” review of Trust
Me, by John Updike, New York Times Book Review, April 26, 1987.
4 James Wood, The Broken Estate (New York: Picador, 2010), 212.
5 Robinson, “At Play.”
6 Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004), 27.
7 Marilynne Robinson, “The Art of Fiction No. 198,” interview by Sarah Fay,
Paris Review no. 186 (Fall 2008): 37–66; John Updike, The Early Stories: 1953–
1975 (New York: Knopf, 2003), xv.
8 Liesl Olson, Modernism and the Ordinary (New York: Oxford University Press,
2009), 6.
 “Gorgeousness inheres in anything” 233
9 John Updike, Self-Consciousness (New York: Knopf, 1989), 230.
10 Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001),
9–30.
11 Liesl Olson’s book Modernism and the Ordinary clarifies this relationship and
offers a theoretical framework for how the ordinary operates in these major
modernist writers. See n. 8 in this chapter.
12 John Cage, Silence: Lectures and Writings (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan Univer-
sity Press, 2001), 12.
13 Taylor, Sources of the Self, 13–14.
14 Quoted in ibid., 224.
15 Ibid., 221.
16 James Plath, ed., Conversations with John Updike (Jackson: University Press of
Mississippi, 1994), 103.
17 Marilynne Robinson, interview by Bob Abernethy, Religion and Ethics News
Weekly, accessed 12 March 2018. https://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/
2009/09/18/september-18-2009-marilynne-robinson-extended-interview/
4245/.
18 Plath, Conversations, 94.
19 Martin Luther, “This is My Body” (1527), in Luther’s Works, Volume 37: Word
and Sacrament III, ed. and trans. Robert H. Fischer (Philadelphia: Fortress Press,
1961), 57.
20 Ibid., 342.
21 Darrell Jodock, “What Is Goodness? The Influence of Updike’s Lutheran Roots,”
in John Updike and Religion: The Sense of the Sacred and the Motions of Grace,
ed. James O. Yerkes (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Com-
pany, 1999), 133.
22 Plath, Conversations, 45.
23 Ibid., 253.
24 Jodock, “What Is Goodness?” 133.
25 John Calvin, Institutes of Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Peabody,
MA: Henrickson Publishers, 2008), 1, 51–52, 59.
26 Marilynne Robinson, “Preface,” in John Calvin: Steward of God’s Covenant:
Selected Writings, ed. John F. Thornton and Susan B. Varenne (New York: Vin-
tage Spiritual Classics, 2006), xxiii.
27 Marilynne Robinson, “Calvinism as Metaphysics,” Toronto Journal of Theol-
ogy 25, no. 2 (2009): 177.
28 Marilynne Robinson, When I Was a Child I Read Books (New York: Farrar
Straus and Giroux, 2012), 76.
29 Robinson, Gilead, 245.
30 Scott Hoezee, “A World of Beautiful Souls: An Interview with Marilynne Robin-
son,” Perspectives 20, no. 5 (May 2005): 12–15.
31 Plath, Conversations, 95.
32 John J. Quinn, ed., Flannery O’Connor: A Tribute (Scranton, PA: University of
Scranton Press, 1995), 90.
33 Farrell O’Gorman, Peculiar Crossroads: Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy, and
Catholic Vision in Postwar Southern Fiction (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Uni-
versity Press, 2004), 108.
34 Flannery O’Connor, The Complete Stories, ed. Robert Giroux (New York: Far-
rar, Straus and Giroux, 1971), 508.
35 Walker Percy, Love in the Ruins (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971),
104.
36 Walker Percy, The Last Gentlemen (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux,
1966), 260.
234 Alex Engebretson
37 Walker Percy, “Diagnosing the Modern Malaise,” in Signposts in a Strange
Land, ed. Patrick Samway (New York: Farrar Strauss and Giroux, 1991), 221.
38 Jay Tolson, ed., The Correspondence of Shelby Foote and Walker Percy (New
York: Norton, 1996), 129.
39 Although I do not have the space in this chapter, there are many links between
Updike and Percy worth considering. Not only do they share a sacred imagina-
tion of the American suburb, but they also both cite Kierkegaard as a significant
intellectual influence.
40 Andrew Greeley, The Catholic Imagination (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2000), 5.
41 Paul A. Giles, American Catholic Arts and Fictions: Culture, Ideology, Aesthet-
ics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 168.
42 O’Gorman, Peculiar Crossroads, 104–5.
43 Marilynne Robinson, The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought (New
York: Picador, 2005), 243.
44 Greeley, Catholic Imagination, 20.
45 Robinson, Gilead, 137.
46 Lewis A. Lawson and Victor A. Kramer, eds., Conversations with Walker Percy
(Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1985), 219–20.
47 Bradley R. Dewey, “Walker Percy Talks about Kierkegaard: An Annotated Inter-
view,” Journal of Religion 54, no. 3 (1974): 292.
48 See Ross Labrie, The Catholic Imagination in American Literature (Columbia:
University of Missouri Press, 1997), 18–19, my italics. Labrie also notes that in
the twentieth century “the Catholic view of nature . . . has been more rational
than romantic” and “in the United States has sometimes been marred by strong
tendencies toward Jansenism” (4–5).
49 James Schiff, “The Pocket Nothing Else Will Fill: Updike’s Domestic God,” in
John Updike and Religion: The Sense of the Sacred and the Motions of Grace,
ed. James O. Yerkes (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 1999), 57.
50 Updike, Self-Consciousness, 68.
51 Timothy George, “Marilynne Robinson and John Calvin,” in Balm in Gilead: A
Theological Dialogue with Marilynne Robinson, ed. Timothy Larsen and Keith
L. Johnson (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2019), 51; see also Mari-
lynne Robinson, “Johnathan Edwards in a New Light,” Humanities 35, no. 6
(November–December 2014): 14–45.
52 Robinson, Gilead, 51.
53 James Wood, “Gossip in Gilt,” review of Licks of Love: Short Stories and a
Sequel, “Rabbit Remembered,” by John Updike, London Review of Books,
April 19, 2001, 30–31.
54 John Updike, Rabbit, Run (New York: Knopf, 1960), 22.
55 Robinson, Gilead, 52.
56 Quoted in Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aes-
thetics, Seeing the Form (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1982), 69.
15 Black Protestantism and the
aesthetics of autonomy
A decolonial theological
reflection
Rufus Burnett

This chapter is a reflection on the history of ideas lurking behind the term
black Protestant aesthetics. The reflection is aimed at contributing a critical
evaluation of the agency suggested in the term black Protestant aesthetics.
Rather than beginning from the assumption that there are black Protestants
who have aesthetics, I want to interrogate the historical preconditions that
produce a demand for a black Protestant aesthetic. To narrow the reflec-
tion, I investigate a fairly well-established group of black Protestants, black
Baptists, who are affiliated with the European Protestant denomination
known as the Separatists or the Baptists. The reflection assumes that “black
Protestantism” is a particular Christian organization that implies more
than a racial distinction from white Protestantism. As historian of religion
scholar Charles Long argues, black Protestantism and black American reli-
gion at large can be characterized by the way it makes meaning with the
following:

1 The involuntary presence of Africans in the Americas

2 Africa as a historical reality and religious image
3 The experience and symbol of God in the religious experience of blacks1

We can add to this framework for interpreting black Protestantism, the

reflections on black aesthetics offered by philosopher Alain Locke. Locke
assumed that the pinnacle for black American art was for it to cut across
the divide of antiblack racism and reach universal appeal.2 Such a moment,
Locke argued, would communicate that black Americans had overcome
the aesthetic alterity of colonization, enslavement, and white supremacy.3
By this, Locke argued that the rise to universal appeal required a type of
end to the valuation principles of racial uplift. A new aesthetic representa-
tion of black being, a “New Negro,” had to be imagined, represented, and
promoted. Extending our earlier provisional definition with the insights of
Locke and Long, we can already begin to see the preconditions that precipi-
tate the demand for a black Protestant aesthetic.
We see these demands in greater illumination if we add the concept of
coloniality to the framework of our analysis. Briefly stated, the theory
236 Rufus Burnett
of the coloniality of power names a system of domination that unfolds
in the Americas from 1492 to the present.4 The aforementioned defini-
tion of black finds its critical distinction in the theory of coloniality as
articulated by Anibal Quijano. According to Peruvian sociologist Anibal
Quijano, coloniality names a method of domination that subjugates non-
European peoples under the collective will of Europeans. It is through
the subjugation of the will of Africans, Amerindians, and Native Ameri-
cans that Europeans were able to remake the Americas and the Carib-
bean in the image of Europe.5 Black American Protestantism emerges
amid the dynamics of coloniality in ways that are often obscured and
overlooked. This reflection, while focused specifically on black Baptists,
also aims to clarify a piece of this obscurity.
Under these preconditions, Protestantism and the aesthetics of black
Americans can be seen as tools to confront and surpass the human degra-
dation imposed by racialization and its incipient alienation. As such, the
primary aesthetic of black Protestantism in the early years of its identity
is an aesthetic of autonomy, which is a way of representing the beauty
of the free-thinking black American subject.6 With Long, Locke, and the
theory of coloniality in mind, I want to analyze how the rise of an autono-
mous black Protestant aesthetic both belies and affirms the hopes of a
self-determined black religion replete with its own evaluative power. Since
the whole of the black Protestant movement is too vast to cover in this
limited space, we focus our attention on the aesthetics of autonomy in the
largest convention of black Baptists, the National Baptist Convention. In
particular, we will look at the history of the Women’s Convention, an aux-
iliary organization within the National Baptist Convention, and one of its
founders, Nannie Helen Burroughs. It is within the history of the Women’s
Convention and the activities of Burroughs that one can see an organic or
autonomous movement that attempted to cultivate the collective will of a
people just one generation removed from the institution of chattel slavery.
The term “aesthetics of autonomy” signifies the way in which black Amer-
icans develop an intraracial mediation of evaluative standards for artistic
expression and cultural production that reassert them as a group. These
group reassertions indicate how black Americans are conscious and aware
of themselves in distinction from the ways they are racialized within the
modern world and the colonial matrix of power.7 By investigating black
Protestant aesthetics within the Baptist tradition, this chapter illumines
how a critical reading of Protestant Aesthetics can contribute to the analy-
sis of coloniality and point towards constructive theological options for
delinking the Christian imagination from the colonial matrix of power. As
such, this brief investigation resists the temptation to assume the givenness
of Protestant Aesthetics as an isolated phenomenon to be further distin-
guished as an entity unto itself. Instead, the goal is to think through the
concomitant factors and the colonial dynamics at work within the aesthet-
ics of modern Protestants.
 The aesthetics of autonomy 237
Nannie Hellen Burroughs: a cultivator of a black
Protestant aesthetic
Nannie Helen Burroughs is most noted by her biographers as an integral
participant in the evangelical arm of the racial uplift movement.8 From
1900 until her death in 1961, Nannie Burroughs’s organizing work led to
the founding of two major institutions within the racial uplift projects of
the early twentieth century. The first of these projects was the development
of the Women’s Convention Auxiliary to the National Baptist Conven-
tion.9 The National Baptist Convention was the first national convention
of independent black churches founded in 1895 (more on this later). The
Women’s Convention was founded just five years later in 1900 in order that
black women in the convention might have a self-determined voice.10 Bur-
roughs’s second major accomplishment was the founding of the National
Training School for Women and Girls that was subsequently named the
National Trade and Professional School for Women and Girls.11 The school
was erected to provide an educational curriculum aimed at professional-
izing the trade labor of the black female working class. Organized under
slogans such as “until we realize our ideal we are going to idealize our real,”
Burroughs’ work was dedicated to constructing a symbol of “respectable”
black humanity that belied the normative symbols of black life within the
broader American society.12 While a detailed historical sketch of Burroughs
and the Women’s Convention is beyond the parameters of this chapter, our
focus will illumine how Burroughs’s work is guided by an autonomous aes-
thetic of respectability. Furthermore, we will look to interpret the project of
the Women’s Convention and how it grafted Baptist values of respect onto
the bodies of black American women and an emerging black female trade
labor force of the early twentieth century. The aim of this historical excursus
is to distill an example of how autonomy is represented as a foundation for
black Protestant aesthetics.
The Women’s Convention Auxiliary of the National Baptist Convention
was a culmination of the much broader black American fight for religious
and sociopolitical autonomy from Euro-American domination. This black
American desire for autonomy seems to have been in line with the founding
European Baptists leaders John Smyth and Thomas Helwys, who established
autonomous Christian churches on the grounds of believer baptism, reli-
gious freedom from Anglican theocracy, and the equality of persons before
God.13 The history of those Europeans who separated from Anglicanism
to form Baptism was a history based on the conflict of clerical authority
versus the authority of local churches. Smyth, Helwys, and their supporters
established their autonomy on the theological grounds that the local church
was just as fit to interpret the revelation of God as any person of authority
within the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches.14 However, the differ-
ence between the European debate over clerical versus individual author-
ity within the Protestant Reformation was quite distinct from the question
238 Rufus Burnett
of authority of those mainline Baptist churches that came of age within
the American institution of chattel slavery in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries.
Burroughs’s work and the work of the National Baptist Convention are
also entangled within the history of American-born questions of authority
that emerged as Euro-American Baptists permitted the membership of the
enslaved in their churches in 1760.15 Euro-American Baptists established
their authority and autonomy through their commitment to a rigorous code
of conduct. Their hope was to embarrass the Christian piety of those still
beholden to the Church of England. Unlike the Church of England, the
Baptist code of conduct was managed through democratic processes con-
tained within autonomous congregations.16 Each congregation determined
for themselves, through voting, how they would enforce codes of conduct
based on their interpretation of the Bible. Sexual propriety, sobriety, and
rigorous allegiance to biblical principles were at the core of the Baptist codes
of conduct. Congregational members, including the enslaved, could call into
question the conduct of others.17 Under the theological ideal of the equality
of persons, the enslaved were welcomed to call into question the conduct
of their masters. While indictments against slave owners rarely led to disci-
plining, it provided enslaved black Americans with access to a semblance of
equality that was unavailable within the broader society. As members of the
Baptist faith, enslaved black Americans leveraged the codes of conduct and
devotion to embarrass lapses in piety amongst their Euro-American coun-
terparts.18 Pious living amid these circumstances operated as an aesthetic
that could be harnessed by the enslaved to gain access to a limited form of
dignity.19
Nevertheless, some Euro-American Baptist congregants interpreted the
very practice of slaveholding to be a threat to the theological principle of
the equality of persons before God as well as their rigorous standards of
moral conduct. For instance, many enslaved persons were often coerced
into acts of adultery as a consequence of their spouses being sold to other
owners in far-off lands. If an official divorce was not confirmed by a con-
gregation then any attempt of an abandoned spouse to go into union with
another would be seen as adultery.20 The precarious nature of marriage
amongst the enslaved shows how the system of enslavement impeded the
Baptist standards of Christian piety. Baptist congregants could not fairly
hold enslaved black Americans to the same standard of conduct as free
persons. Such an aberration was injurious to the sanctity of the ideals of
equality and moral propriety espoused by American Baptists. A substantial
number of Euro-American congregations split over the issue of enslave-
ment. For example, in 1808, the Mount Tabor Baptist Church of Kentucky
split on the issue of enslavement after two members, John Murphy and Eli-
jah Davidson, renounced their membership due to the church’s toleration
of slaveholding members. While a substantial number of Baptists including
influential pastors such as John Leland, organized national efforts to end
 The aesthetics of autonomy 239
slaveholding among Baptists, the matter itself was left up to individual con-
gregations. In cases where congregational consensus could not be reached,
members defaulted to the authority of their respective states. Of course,
such a default would prove to motivate the desire and need for black Amer-
ican Baptist autonomy.
Enslaved black American Baptist leaders such as Nat Turner, who led a
violent and deadly revolt against white slave owners, reflected the lengths to
which black American Baptists would go to represent themselves as digni-
fied persons. Events such as Nat Turner’s rebellion further complicated the
ability of Euro-American Baptists to reach a consensus, not only on the
morality of enslavement but also on the equality of persons under God.
With their freedom and dignity at stake, black American Baptists began
to establish their own grounds for affirming the fullness of their humanity
under God. Prior to the end of the Civil War and the enforcement of the
Emancipation Proclamation, black Americans free and enslaved organized
independent congregations.21 The Providence Baptist Association in Ohio,
formed in 1834, and the Wood River Baptist Association in Illinois in 1838,
represent some of the first actions of independent Baptist congregations to
organize conventions. By the time of the emergence of the National Baptist
Convention in 1885, black Americans had established a substantial basis for
autonomy by separating from white American Baptist oversight and build-
ing their own independent conventions.22 Nannie Helen Burroughs and the
Women’s Convention represent a continuation of the legacy of black Baptist
autonomy and an emergent project of black Baptism.
Prior to her work with the Women’s Convention, Burroughs worked
as a bookkeeper and an editorial secretary for Lewis Jordan, director of
the Foreign Mission Board of the National Baptist Convention.23 Jordan
would later become an ally to Burroughs and the Women’s Convention as
they struggled to gain male support for the founding of the Women’s Con-
vention. In addition to Burroughs’s work with Jordan, she also worked to
establish a number of women’s industrial societies that trained unskilled
black women workers in trades such as bookkeeping, shorthand, typing,
sewing, cooking, child care, and handicrafts.24 She was a skilled orator and
is most known for her speech, “How the Sisters are Hindered from Help-
ing.” In the speech, given in 1900 at the annual National Baptist Conven-
tion, Burroughs stressed the importance of women having an autonomous
basis for developing their unique gifts and talents. The speech proved piv-
otal for the establishment of the Women’s Convention and highlighted her
vision for “uplifting” the race.
Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham argues that Burroughs’s work and the work
of the Women’s Convention was distinguishable from the Euro-American
women’s club movements of the late nineteenth century. This distinction
is significant because of how it clarifies the aesthetic born in black Bap-
tism. Burroughs and the Women’s Convention were unique in how they
established a movement at the intersection of race and gender in ways
240 Rufus Burnett
unparalleled by Euro-American women’s clubs and black American secular
women’s clubs such as the National Association of Colored Women. Black
women looking to join the secular Euro-American women’s club movements
of the late nineteenth century were often excluded on the basis of race.
Euro-American women argued that black women were unfit for inclusion in
the women’s clubs on the basis of their immorality. In response, middle-class
black women organized to create their autonomous clubs, most notably the
National Association of Colored Women (NACW).
Unlike the primarily racial focus of the NACW, the Women’s Convention
was focused on inequalities born from the conflicts over the autonomy of
women within the National Baptist Convention.25 As such, it was focused on
confronting and curing the inequities amongst women and men within black
communities. In addition to the concerns prompted by antiblack racism, the
organizers of the Women’s Convention struggled for the interracial auton-
omy of women towards self-determination and self-representation. Similar
to the pro-black racial autonomy won by the National Baptist Convention,
black Women Baptists required freedom from prescriptive restrictions placed
on the way they envisioned themselves in the world.26 By caucusing in secret
and soliciting the support of key black male ministers as allies, black women
convinced the then all-male voting body of the convention that women, as
well as men, had a moral and divine right to govern their own affairs.27
Nevertheless, the history of the work of the Women’s Convention pro-
ceeded in its own women-led form of gender prescription. While the conven-
tion was progressive in regard to affirming the capability of black women to
self-govern, they resolved that this was not a natural capability; it was one
that had to be developed. This development required reimaging the women
within the convention as well as within the broader society. Christian wom-
anhood, as Burroughs argued, was a progressive achievement that uplifted
black women from depravity. She referred to black females who had not
yet aspired to Christian womanhood and the work of Christian mission as
“unpolished gems.” Like her predecessors Anna Julia Cooper and Mary
Church Terrell, Burroughs was convinced that the future of black Ameri-
cans depended on how well black women were able to distance themselves
from the racial and sexist stereotypes that labeled them as shiftless, sexually
deviant, and unfit for the domestic role of motherhood.
Burroughs’s vision of the “Christian woman” was one who was mor-
ally circumspect, socially concerned, and professional. The founding of the
National Training School for Women and Girls under the leadership of Bur-
roughs and the Women’s Convention symbolizes the hope that they had in
the potential of ordinary women. Dedicated to the professionalization of
industrial labor among the black working poor, the school worked to pre-
sent black women’s work identity as “skilled” rather than “menial.”28 Bur-
roughs’s success in this endeavor is corroborated by the many students who
were often requested to work as domestic workers in Virginia, West Vir-
ginia, and Washington, D.C.29 The training school prepared black women to
 The aesthetics of autonomy 241
perform the aesthetic of Christian womanhood envisioned by the Women’s
Convention. The professionalization of their domestic skills afforded them
a stage to debunk the myth that black women, and therefore the black race,
were biologically predisposed to licentiousness.
It is important to stress just how difficult it was for black Americans to
garner respect in a world that constantly rendered them persona non grata.
As Higginbotham reports, one white journalist writing in the 1920s argued
that

Negro Women evidence more nearly the popular idea of total depravity
than the men do. . . . When a man’s mother, wife, and daughters are all
immoral women, there is no room in his fallen nature for the aspiration
of honor and virtue. . . . I cannot imagine such a creation as a virtuous
black woman.30

Neil McMillen affirms the consequences of the public denigration of black

women in his study of Jim Crow Mississippi. McMillen discloses that white
males found guilty of raping black women were not convicted if the black
woman was past the age of puberty.31 Sander L. Gilman’s study of the medi-
cal and aesthetic iconography of the eighteenth century gives some clues
to how these public assumptions have their basis in aesthetic representa-
tions of whiteness and blackness.32 By charting the representation of black
women in medical and visual art, Gilman indicates how the representation
of the white feminine as genteel is primarily affirmed through an aesthetic
of comparison that renders that black feminine as debased, animalistic, and
primitive.33
The production of “scientific” images of black female genitalia, such as in
the history of the visual representation of Saartjie Baartman, suggests that
an aesthetic of inferiority and anthropological depravity is enforced and
reinforced in the matrix of white aesthetics.34 These negative visual stereo-
types, which masqueraded as objective science, normalized the racial ideol-
ogy that black Americans were a lower species predisposed to a “primitive”
sexuality and incapable of achieving sexual propriety. Nannie Burroughs’s
speech to the executive board of the Women’s Convention in 1915 gives
some examples of how women in the convention resisted the antiblack rac-
ism particularly aimed at black women. In her speech, she proclaimed the
following: “Fight segregation through the courts as an unlawful act? Yes.
But fight with soap and water, hoes and spades, shovels and paint, to remove
any reasonable excuse for it, is the fight that will win.”35
It is clear from Burroughs’s words that she considered respectability to
be more powerful than legal redress. Any slip in the comportment of black
women, especially when being viewed by white Americans, was a slip that
would put black women at risk not only for antiblack racism but for missing
opportunities for a host of goods including legal redress for rape, and white
philanthropic support from white allies. Amid the ideological assumptions
242 Rufus Burnett
of antiblackness, Burroughs and the Women’s Convention consciously used
the black female body as a canvas on which to assert a counter-aesthetic to
the myths reified by Eurocentric representations of the black female form.
While more can be said about Burroughs and the Women’s Convention,
this brief historical overview captures how Black Baptist women worked to
fashion a public and a private aesthetic of autonomy built around ideals of
propriety and respectability.

Blackness, Protestantism, and the coloniality of power

With the history of Nannie Burroughs and the Women’s Convention in view,
we can now consider how their work can be read in light of the project
of modernity and the enduring legacy of colonialism. As mentioned in the
introduction, we will refer to the legacy of colonialism and the Atlantic
world as the “coloniality of power.”36 With the theory of coloniality one
can reconsider the conscious agency of the Women’s Convention and the
aesthetic activity of fashioning the black body as a counter-representation to
the white supremacist aesthetic of antiblackness. By critically reconsidering
“conscious agency,” a way will be cleared toward a decolonial option for
grounding an aesthetic of autonomy. Let us first turn our attention to the
project of modernity and how it enforces a comparative standard of human-
ity between the European and the non-European.
According to Anibal Quijano, one of the founding theorists of coloniality,
the foundation of modernity rests in how Europeans reimage humanity via
race, knowledge, and economics. Under this guise, “all” of humanity is lin-
early represented as a historical development from “a state of nature” to the
modern European person.37 The epistemic assumption of European moder-
nity projects European being as the highest representation of human cul-
ture and civilization.38 The precondition for this assumption is a theological
dualism based on the Christian imagination of the body and the nonbody.
As the secularization of humanity occurs the human is no longer a theologi-
cal problem for God and salvation history. Instead, the human condition
becomes a problem for the activity of reason. Nevertheless, the dualism
remains, and it sustains itself in secular hierarchies of race that never slough
off the foundational separation that is theological in nature. These dualisms
are part of the epistemic problem that creates the preconditions for the idea
of a black American Protestant aesthetic.
The dualism between body and nonbody is significant because it is the
basis for determining where the subjectivity, the conscious agency, of the
human person rests. For Quijano, the original body/nonbody dualism on
which modernity is based is Christian in nature. For the Christian, the
dualistic relationship of body and nonbody is signified in the relationship
between soul and body.39 Soul, and in some instances the spirit, is repre-
sented as the nonbody. The soul from this perspective is above the body
and is the material active in Christian consciousness. When one is governed
 The aesthetics of autonomy 243
solely by the body, they are acting from a “state of nature” and are suffer-
ing from the effects of an underdeveloped soul.40 Or, to invert the Pauline
scripture, they are walking after the flesh and not after the spirit (Rom.
8.1). On their own, these epistemic assumptions are benign and are only
made problematic through the use of them in constructing the image of
non-­Europeans. Charles Long prefigures Quijano’s assessment of how Euro-
centric dualisms are leveraged to interpret non-Europeans. In his essay “The
Primitive/ Civilized: The Locus of the Problem,” Long argued that Europe-
ans represented their collective identity as “civilized” in a way that required
a simultaneous representation of the “primitive.”41 The aesthetic represen-
tations of the uncivilized—the “primitive”—were derived from the aesthetic
tropes that that established “empirical otherness” from the rest of civilized
peoples of Europe. Long points to two examples of these tropes—the “hys-
terical woman” and the “wild man.” The wild man was used to primitivize
rural Europeans and “hysterical female” was used to pathologize (particu-
larly via Freudian psychology) and primitivize the women of Europe. The
reification of these tropes into literature and science are identified by Long
as prototypes for the more absolute empirical othering that would happen
to the Native Americans and black Americans of the Atlantic World.42
Where Long emphasized a critique of the European ideology of civiliza-
tion and the binary of the primitive versus the civilized, Quijano emphasizes
a critique of how this binary is used to corroborate Eurocentric notions
of evolution in which non-Europeans are relegated to the past. Under the
domination of Spanish and British colonialism, Africans, Amerindians,
and Native Americans, and their respective histories and epistemologies,
were used to represent “the state of nature.” Under this rubric, it was the
European that represented the ideal dualism in which the soul governed
the body and allowed for the European to represent an ideal humanity that
had fully evolved from their natural state. This degree of evolution toward
the modern European subject was eventually represented biologically in a
hierarchy of skin color from dark to light. The category of race was used
to negatively color code the difference between the modern European and
the non-­European.43 With the Eurocentric episteme in view, the racialized
non-European is lacking history because they are stuck in a European past
where the soul and reason are not yet capable of governing the body. One
cannot overstate how much the aesthetic dimension of human experience is
implicated in these dynamics of domination.
As Nelson Maldonado-Torres has argued, the conquistadors assumed
that the Tainos of the Caribbean were “people without religion” because
they did not appear to worship anything. As Columbus wrote, Ellos no
tienen secta ninguana ni son idolatras (they don’t have religion, nor are
they idolaters).44 It is the outward-facing aesthetic of religiosity that com-
municates, or fails to communicate, the humanity of the non-European. The
Valladolid debates of the sixteenth century (the Spanish debates over the
humanity of the Amerindians) are a lasting example of how the Eurocentric
244 Rufus Burnett
episteme was unable to grant a priori assumptions about the humanity of
non-Europeans.45 The fact that the humanity of another people was debated
affirms Quijano’s theory concerning the coloniality of power and Eurocen-
trism. It is the European and the European alone who has the reason and the
elevated soul to determine whether or not the humanity of the African and
the Amerindians is equal to or lesser than the European.
In North America, the dynamics of coloniality were forged in an emergent
entanglement with the spiritual egalitarianism of Protestant Evangelicalism
and the solidification of the modern nation-state (via chattel slavery and the
annihilation of Native American life). This entanglement that takes place
in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries often veils coloniality behind the
supposed white “acceptance” of racialized blacks and Native Americans
as equal in the sight of God, yet predestined to subjugation.46 As a rep-
resentation of the fulfillment of the prophecy suggested in the evangelical
interpretation of Psalm 63:8, converted enslaved blacks were a sign of the
global reign of God—an incarnate manifestation of “Ethiopia stretching out
her hands to God.”47 The overarching reality that this chapter explicates is
that spiritual egalitarianism, represented through the conversion of black
Americans in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, is more of an aes-
thetic of autonomy harnessed for political reform and not yet a decolonial
option. As such, the egalitarianism of Protestant evangelicals is focused on
a theological ideal that is represented in the change in attitude and morals
of black Americans. This change in attitude and morality, primarily read
through outward-facing aesthetics of dress, speech, and physical gentil-
ity, has rarely produced lasting social, political, and economic effects that
give historicity and political weight to spiritual egalitarianism. When black
Christian convictions have risen to give historicity to the theological claims
of egalitarianism, it has been violently stamped out by the American nation-
state. Coloniality persists despite black Americans increasing their agency
as authentic subjects within the practice of Protestantism, Evangelical or
otherwise. As historian of the Great Awakening Thomas S. Kidd has noted,
the conversion of blacks to Christianity can in large part be accredited to the
evangelical movements and their collusion with the spiritual predisposition
of the enslaved Africans. Nevertheless, in the North American aggregate
there, was no clear consensus about the benefits of black American con-
version.48 According to Kidd, black conversion was read by some Euro-
American Evangelicals as a “sign of the coming of the Kingdom of God”
and by others as “the rise of a malevolent spirit.” This ambiguity over the
meaning of black conversion indicates how black American conversion to
Christianity did not guarantee them entry into the promised land of an egal-
itarian society.
While more can be said about the collusion of American Evangelicalism
with coloniality, suffice it to say that modernity is also shaped by the North
American history of the Christian religion and how it provided enslaved
Africans and their descendants with a language to solidify their own sense
 The aesthetics of autonomy 245
of common humanity. Independent black Protestant churches that emerge
in the nineteenth century represent the solidification of a church-based black
public that became increasingly entangled with the politics of the nation-
state as it tried to make whole on the spiritual promise of the equality of
persons. Black Protestant Aesthetics worked to close the gap between aes-
thetic and political manifestations of egalitarianism. As seen in the analy-
sis of Nannie Helen Burroughs earlier, the efforts of black Americans to
close the gap between spiritual egalitarianism and political egalitarianism
in the nineteenth century were often troubled by antiblack aesthetics that
reinforced the idea that blacks were primitive creatures unfit for full par-
ticipation in American civilization. Antiblack aesthetics and the reification
of black primitivism provided the foundation for the public assent to the
state-sanctioned disenfranchisement of black Americans. To counter disen-
franchisement, many black Americans, like Burroughs, worked to cultivate
the popular will of black Americans toward a politic of respectability. The
pragmatic genius and agency in the use of respectability politics by black
Americans should not be understated or repudiated. That black Americans
had to go the way of epistemic allegiance to some components of Eurocen-
trism via the politics of respectability is more a testament to the pernicious-
ness of coloniality than it is an indictment of the efforts of black Protestants.
Reading the activity of the Women’s Convention and Nannie Helen Bur-
roughs in light of the coloniality of power and Eurocentrism illumines the
entanglement of black Protestant aesthetics with Eurocentric epistemology
and the legacy of the colonial aesthetic. The respectability politics employed
by Burroughs and the Women’s Convention leveraged the assumptions of
Eurocentrism as a way of writing themselves into Eurocentric modernity.
Black American Baptists chose to perform an aesthetic of being that indi-
cated that they were indeed evolved and not stuck in a state of nature. In
the adoption of mainline Protestant aesthetics of being, black Americans
worked to displace Eurocentric suspicions concerning the fullness of their
humanity. If we recall Long’s notion of the theory of black American Reli-
gion, the adoption of the Protestant aesthetic of piety establishes a way to
explain the involuntary presence of Africans in the Americas, Africa as a his-
torical reality and religious image, and the experience and symbol of God.
As such, black American Baptists saw their presence in the Americas as an
opportunity to receive the revelation of God and to reestablish themselves in
counter-distinction from the anti-African racialization cast on them via the
colonial mark of blackness.
With Long and Quijano in mind, the aesthetics of autonomy of the Wom-
en’s Convention and Nannie Hellen Burroughs can be considered for the
ways in which it explains the modern/colonial imagination of the soul/body.
Second, it can also be read in terms of how it dislocates or reifies the Euro-
centric understanding of humanity as a natural evolution from a state of
nature to the modern Euro-American self. Reading the aesthetic activity of
the black Baptist church from this perspective allows for one to be vigilant
246 Rufus Burnett
in recognizing how the colonized can participate in reifying the colonial-
ity of power. In the case of black Baptism, the reification of coloniality is
specifically identifiable as a repression of one’s African ancestry. This form
of repression provided a way of reasserting black Americans as respectable
modern subjects. In addition, and more important, clarity on the persistence
of coloniality among the colonized can assist in providing a more radical
alternative to racial domination. Recent works on coloniality have affirmed
this option as a decolonial option or decoloniality.
Decoloniality looks to articulate a non-European epistemic foundation
as the basis for pursuing liberation and freedom.49 The move toward deco-
loniality looks to change not only the content of liberation, a trading out
of white hegemony with black hegemony, but also the frame that is the
primary a priori assumptions about reality. Read against the history of Bur-
roughs charted earlier, the aim of decoloniality as enacted by black subjects
would not be to shame white Americans by revealing how European one
can be with respect to moral, spiritual, and religious comportment. Rather,
the aim of decoloniality is to think about an alternative life option that
affirms rather than belies the internal evaluative standards of so-called black
life. Black Americans need not out European Euro-Americans in order to
gain their freedom or their salvation for that matter. Consider Burroughs’s
notion that hard work, virtuous living, and piety will persuade white Ameri-
cans to accept the fact that the natural inferiority of black people is a myth
made objectively real via power. For her campaign of racial uplift to work,
Burroughs had to assume, at least tactically, the evolutionism that relegated
black Americans, in particular, and the African, in general, to the past.
While Burroughs did not internalize the inferiority of black Americans as
an a priori assumption, her contention that black life required “uplift,” dis-
ciplined by Baptist piety and Victorian ideals, did require, albeit in the aes-
thetic dimension, an acceptance of the Eurocentric understanding of human
evolution. This aesthetic dimension was tactically harnessed as a means
to participate within the dominant market economy, that is, the National
Training School for Women, which had already long been dominated by
European notions of capital and the distribution of labor. From the deco-
lonial perspective offered here, black Protestantism is understood as politi-
cally progressive in so far as it reifies the epistemic system that separates the
body from the reason of respectability politics. Blacks are “seen” as rational
when and only when they adopt the prescribed politics of respectability as
the representation of a black self that has “evolved” from the “primitivism”
of Africa. The repression of the ring shout, ecstatic worship, the “primi-
tive” sound of negro spirituals, and the relegation of jazz and blues to the
dimension of the secular, provide examples of how organically grown black
aesthetics are relegated to the prerational realm of the body. Black Baptists
constructed their own soul/body, reason/body dualism. While their efforts
may have physically improved the lives of many black Americans, the ques-
tion of epistemic freedom is left untouched.
 The aesthetics of autonomy 247
Recent scholarship in the field of theology is exposing the need for epis-
temic freedom within the theological imagination of black American Chris-
tians. One poignant example of this is the work of Jawanza Clark, who
argues that mainline black Christian churches tend to be based on an anti-
African sentiment.50 Alternatively, he proposes an African-centered theology
that situates itself within the tradition of ancestor veneration in African tra-
ditional religions. In particular, Clark draws from the Akan ontology of the
self in which one’s deceased ancestors are an integral part of each individual
within the society.51 Clark’s text is unique in that it is primarily aimed at
African Americans who have internalized the Eurocentric contempt for the
ontologies and cosmologies of African traditional religions. As such, Clark’s
approach changes both the content and the frame of theological reflection.
To this point, Clark writes that

acceptance of Protestant Christianity requires a negative distancing

from Africa, which, in the person of African descent, works to manifest
internalized, tacit acceptance of black and African self-consciously con-
struct a theology that privileges indigenous African religious thought
and theological categories, specifically the idiom of the ancestor.52

Similar to Clark’s emphasis on constructing an “indigenous black theol-

ogy,” the idioms of black cultural production can provide creative ways of
regenerating an indigenousness or an indigeneity that dislocates one’s need
to base the representation of the self within the dualism and evolutionism of
European modernity. In a recent publication titled Decolonizing Revelation:
A Spatial Reading of the Blues, I have argued that the blues is an epistemic
framework from which black Americans can ground their adoption of the
Christian faith or any other faith for that matter.53 While the alternatives
to Eurocentric notions of the self are not perfect or free from flaws, they
do provide a basis of “delinking” from an overdependence on Eurocen-
tric foundations of evaluating human life. Aesthetics that begin from an
alternative decolonial basis can invent and regenerate representations of the
human that reinforce other possibilities for human activity. As these decolo-
nial aesthetics emerge, they bring with them an implicit dislocation of those
Eurocentric aesthetics that are backed by racial hierarchy, patriarchy, and
the domination of labor.

Conclusion
In this chapter, I have endeavored to provide an analysis of an instance of
black Protestant aesthetics within black Baptism. With an attention to the
aesthetics of autonomy that emerge within the National Baptist Conven-
tion and the Women’s Convention Auxiliary, I have shown how the politics
of respectability work to represent the piety, sexual propriety, thrift, and
racial consciousness toward the goal of “uplift.” It is through these aesthetic
248 Rufus Burnett
representations of the self as “respectable” that black American Baptists
affirmed themselves as modern American subjects. In taking up this line of
analysis my effort has been to reread the agency implicit in black American
Protestant aesthetics in light of the legacy of colonialism. This approach has
illumined how black American agency in the struggle for justice, equality,
and dignity can easily lapse into an espousal of an aesthetic that is overly
dependent upon Eurocentric notions of human identity. While Burroughs
and the National Baptist Convention are celebrated for their struggles to
“uplift” the race, we have concluded that their use of respectability politics
undermined the black working poor by using self-denial as a requisite for
pursuing the goal of uplift. Such a conclusion highlights the grip of the
colonial constructs that repress the humanity of both the colonized and the
colonizer. It is through the dislocation of the a priori assumptions of Euro-
centric dualism and evolutionism that black American Baptists, and maybe
Protestants in general, can enact notions of the self that allow them to affirm
their own creative grounds for imaging and evaluating their humanity.
The alternative theological visions for delinking Christian aesthetics from
coloniality signal the importance of the critical study of Protestant aesthet-
ics. As the theory of coloniality suggests, there are historical moments in
which the aesthetics of Protestantism collude with the colonial matrix of
power. Recognition of this collusion contributes a methodological offering
to the study of Protestant aesthetics that diversifies the way in which the
study of both Protestantism and aesthetics are framed. The reflection on the
Women’s Convention, in particular, reveals how the Protestant aesthetics of
the modern world are implicated in the racialization and gendering prac-
tices of Eurocentrism that overdetermine the subjectivity of black Ameri-
cans even in their attempts at resistance and reform. Groups such as the
Women’s Convention which experience modernity as an imposition, rather
than a positive foundation for aesthetics, remind us of how difficult it is to
establish autonomy from the dynamics of coloniality. Rethinking how the
aesthetics of black Protestantism functions in the conditions determined by
modernity and coloniality is an audacious step that threatens easy positiv-
istic readings of black Protestantism. Nevertheless, such a move must be
taken to honor the unrealized visions of freedom imaged in the life and
work of figures like Nannie Helen Burroughs.

Notes
1 Charles H. Long, Significations: Signs, Symbols, and Images in the Interpreta-
tion of Religion (Aurora, CO: Davies Group, 1999), 188.
2 In 1925 Alain Locke published an essay titled “The New Negro.” The essay
articulated what he as an aesthete thought of the cultural and spiritual contribu-
tions of black Americans, then “Negroes” to American society at large. Locke
thought that the migration of black Americans into urban centers offered new
opportunities for them to contribute to human civilization. He was especially
hopeful about the prospect of Harlem, New York, becoming the center of a
 The aesthetics of autonomy 249
movement towards the establishment of a new cultural and aesthetic foundation
for black life that he described as the New Negro. The New Negro was one who
was increasingly divorced from the obscurity inscribed by the projects of enslave-
ment, racialization, and institutional racism. I mention Locke here because of
how his “New Negro” essay articulates how black Americans were maintaining
and establishing a strong sense of aesthetic autonomy from their Euro-American
counterparts. See Alain Locke, The New Negro (New York: Simon and Schuster,
2014), 48–50.
3 Ibid., 41–43.
4 Anibal Quijano, “Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America,”
trans. Michael Ennis, Nepantla: Views from South 1, no. 3 (2000): 533–80, here
533.
5 Ibid., 551.
6 While Alain Locke did not use the term aesthetics of autonomy that I am evoking
here, he does see the aesthetic world, idiom, and vernacular of those racialized
as black Americans as expressing an autonomy from elements of Western Chris-
tianity, enslavement, and colonialism that give it rise. His clearest articulation of
this is his reading of Negro spirituals that affirms how black Americans produce
an aesthetic that belies both a pure assimilation to Western Protestantism and a
rigid retention of African cultures. For more on this, see Alain Locke’s speech on
“The Negro’s Contribution to the Culture of the Americas,” in Jacoby Adeshei
Carter, African American Contributions to the Americas’ Cultures: A Critical
Edition of Lectures by Alain Locke (New York: Springer, 2016), 5.
7 My use of the term aesthetics of autonomy is evoked here to distinguish the type
of aesthetic that I see unfolding in the activities of black Baptists. Philosophers
of aesthetics have used this term to identify how individual artists distinguish
their work from the artistic form of the “acceptable” evaluative modes reified
by a given culture. My working definition of the aesthetics of autonomy has
some similarities with Theodor Adorno’s notion of aesthetic autonomy which he
uses to describe the way in which modern art distinguishes itself from previous
periods of art. This similarity should not be read as an attempt to apply Adorno
to black Protestant aesthetics. For more on Adorno’s aesthetic autonomy, see
Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, ed. Gretel Adorno and Rolf Tiedemann
(London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 25–28.
8 My reading of Burroughs is greatly dependent on those historians who have
chronicled her life. For more on Burroughs, see Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham,
Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church,
1880–1920 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993); Sharon Harley,
“Nannie Helen Burroughs: ‘The Black Goddess of Liberty’,” Journal of Negro
History 81, no. 1/4 (1996): 62–71; Easter V. Opal, Nannie Helen Burroughs,
Studies in African American History and Culture (New York: Garland, 1995).
9 Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 151.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid., 211–21.
12 Ibid., 212.
13 In their letters to their congregations and their potential members, Smyth and
Helwys set out their dissatisfaction with compulsory infant baptism and how
the Church of England colluded with the state to deny the religious freedom of
Anabaptists, Separatists, and eventually Baptists. For more on their positions,
see their letters as collected in Joseph Early, Readings in Baptist History: Four
Centuries of Selected Documents (Nashville, TN: B&H Academic, 2008), 1–3,
13–17.
14 Marvin Jones, The Beginning of Baptist Ecclesiology: The Foundational Contri-
butions of Thomas Helwys (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2017), 46.
250 Rufus Burnett
15 Monica Najar, “ ‘Meddling with Emancipation’: Baptists, Authority, and the
Rift over Slavery in the Upper South,” Journal of the Early Republic 25, no. 2
(2005): 157–86, here 158–61.
16 Jeff Forret, “The Limits of Mastery: Slaveholders, Slaves, and Baptist Church
­Discipline,” American Nineteenth Century History 18, no. 1 (2017): 1–18, here 3.
17 Ibid., 4.
18 Ibid.
19 Ibid.
20 Jeff Forret, “Slaves, Sex and Sin: Adultery, Forced Separation and Baptist
Church Discipline in Middle Georgia,” Slavery and Abolition 33, no. 3 (Septem-
ber 2012): 337–58, here 343.
21 C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence H. Mamiya, The Black Church in the African
American Experience (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990), 23–26.
22 Ibid.
23 Ibid., 26.
24 Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 159.
25 Ibid., 152.
26 Ibid., 153.
27 Ibid., 155.
28 Ibid., 213.
29 Ibid.
30 As quoted in ibid., 190.
31 Neil R. McMillen, Dark Journey: Black Mississippians in the Age of Jim Crow
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990), 17.
32 Sander L. Gilman, “Black Bodies, White Bodies: Toward an Iconography of
Female Sexuality in Late Nineteenth-Century Art, Medicine, and Literature,”
Critical Inquiry 12 (1985): 204–42.
33 Ibid., 204.
34 Ibid., 216–18.
35 Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 193.
36 Quijano, “Coloniality of Power,” 536–40.
37 Ibid., 555.
38 Ibid., 542.
39 Ibid., 554–56.
40 Sylvia Wynter has extended Quijano’s point in her work on the spirit/flesh dual-
ism as the representation of Eurocentric being and the “overrepresentation” of
“Man” as a universal human being. Wynter pushes Quijano’s epistemic critique
on evolution and soul/body dualism and extends it to the question of ontology or
the interpretation of being. See Sylvia Wynter, “Beyond the Word of Man: Glis-
sant and the New Discourse of the Antilles,” World Literature Today 63, no. 4
(1989): 637–48; and “Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom:
Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation—An Argument,” CR:
The New Centennial Review 3, no. 3 (Fall 2003): 257–337.
41 Long, Significations, 95.
42 Ibid., 90–94.
43 Quijano, “Coloniality of Power,” 536–40.
44 Nelson Maldonado-Torres, “AAR Centennial Roundtable: Religion, Conquest,
and Race in the Foundations of the Modern/Colonial World,” Journal of the
American Academy of Religion 82, no. 3 (September 2014): 636–65, here 638.
The translation is by Nelson Maldonado-Torres.
45 Daniel Castro, Another Face of Empire: Bartolomé de Las Casas, Indigenous
Rights, and Ecclesiastical Imperialism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press,
2007), 126–34.
 The aesthetics of autonomy 251
46 For a treatment of how nineteenth-century Protestants in North America
thought about the Christian instruction, see Charles Colcock Jones, The Reli-
gious Instruction of the Negroes in the United States (Savannah, GA: T. Purse,
1842).
47 Thomas S. Kidd. The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity
in Colonial America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 213.
48 Ibid., 213.
49 For more on the process of decoloniality, see Chela Sandoval, Methodology of
the Oppressed (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), 21; Wal-
ter D. Mignolo and Catherine E. Walsh, On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analyt-
ics, Praxis (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018), 118–21; Walter D.
Mignolo, “Decoloniality and Phenomenology: The Geopolitics of Knowing and
Epistemic/Ontological Colonial Differences,” Journal of Speculative Philosophy
32, no. 3 (2018): 360–87, here 365 and 380.
50 Jawanza Eric Clark, Indigenous Black Theology: Toward an African-Centered
Theology of the African American Religious Experience (New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2012), 34.
51 Ibid., 89–95.
52 Ibid., 174–75.
53 Rufus Burnett, Decolonizing Revelation: A Spatial Reading of the Blues (Lan-
ham, MD: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, 2018), 8, 73–112.
16 The borderlands aesthetics
of Mexican American
Pentecostalism
Lloyd Barba

Sacred space comes in many forms. Whatever event is claimed to have

occurred at certain sites, few (if any) would elude a physical description.
Accounts of the materials, bodies, and processes tell us about the human
construction of sacred spaces.1 Sanctuaries, literal human constructions, are
the most ubiquitous kinds of sacred spaces. Most American sanctuaries are
made sacred by the processes of human consecration, contestation, and,
at times, inversion of power.2 This chapter takes readers into sanctuaries
designed and maintained by Mexican Pentecostals in California’s agricul-
tural empire in the 1940s and 1950s. Believers throughout the U.S.–Mexico
borderlands made sacred aesthetics in their own cultural image.
I take borders to be sites and metaphors of contact as well as contain-
ment between Protestantism and Catholicism, private and public spheres,
physical and spiritual matters, and sacred and profane spaces.3 Aesthet-
ics, I maintain, often work unwittingly to blur the lines that dichotomize
these phenomena. In the religious context of the U.S.–Mexico borderlands,
and specifically in the context of industrial agriculture, these lines are mud-
died by perennial contact between migrant laborers of differing religious
backgrounds. This chapter challenges us to look with a transnational eye
to where and how we designate “Protestantism,” by suggesting that in the
borderlands, the distinctions between “Catholic” and “Protestant” might
indeed matter but not along the well-worn stereotypes that Catholics have
an aesthetic and Protestants do not. A historic perspective on lived practices
of religion complicates our understanding of “high” or “sacred” aesthetics.
I begin by situating Mexican Oneness Pentecostals (Apostólicos) in their
larger historical, social, and cultural context of the early and mid-twentieth
century in order to show the porosity of categorical borders.

Mexican Pentecostalism at the border

Mexican Pentecostalism emerged in California in the early twentieth century,
steadily gaining momentum on the heels of the Azusa Street Revival’s heyday
(1906–08).4 The broader Pentecostal movement in the U.S. splintered into
many small and a select few large denominations by the late 1920s.5 The
 Aesthetics of Mexican American Pentecostalism 253
Apostolic Assembly of Faith in Christ Jesus, a Oneness Pentecostal denomi-
nation organized in the late 1920s, stands as a flagship Latino Pentecostal
organization in the United States and the Americas. They emerged among
the many Pentecostal groups from la frontera quemada (the burned-over
border), which offered fertile social soil for a host of new religious move-
ments to flourish.6 As former Mexican states, California, Arizona, New
Mexico, and Texas (among others) claimed the largest population of Mexi-
cans and witnessed the influx of migrant laborers pushed out of Mexico
due to the country’s revolution and subsequent social upheaval. The rapidly
expanding sectors of agriculture, railroad work, construction, and mining
pulled millions of Mexican workers into the U.S.–Mexican borderlands. In
this context of migrant labor, Pentecostalism spread rapidly across the U.S.
Southwest.7
Pentecostals, in general, offer radical scriptural interpretations and an
emphasis on spiritual gifts that set them at odds with many Protestants.8
The movement, by and large, is marked by ecstatic, direct encounters with
the divine spirit that may manifest in bodily ecstasy, speaking in tongues,
gifts of prophecy or communal exhortation, and a radical sense of God’s
direct intervention into everyday life. Even within Pentecostalism, Mexican
Oneness Pentecostals are in the minuscule minority camp of Christians who
rejected the classical notion of the triune nature of God (hence the moniker
“Oneness”). They are part of a radical (heterodox) minority within Pente-
costalism itself.
Even as they were at odds with certain strands of Pentecostalism, their
disavowal of Marian devotion conflicted with Mexican religious and cul-
tural sensibilities. Most Mexicans were Catholic (the two identities at times
seemingly inextricable) but cut from a very different cloth than American
Catholics, one colored by “folk Catholicism, full of rituals and rural village
culture.”9 Latino Catholicism, according to Orlando Espín, did not emerge
from Roman or even Tridentine Catholicism. Rather, it reflected Iberian
forms, medieval and pre-Tridentine, as these were “planted in the Americas
approximately two generations before Trent’s opening session.”10 The pre-
Tridentine nature of Mexican Catholicism introduced to the borderlands a
world of heavy material culture replete with rituals, candles, rosaries, altars,
yard shrines, prayer cards, crucifixes, and items in Guadalupan devotion.11
To not be Catholic in this context also meant largely renouncing deeply
embedded cultural symbols that marked Mexican identity. Those who aban-
doned Catholicism suffered ridicule and were accused of having forsaken
their national tradition.12
Apostólicos faced several obstacles in their attempt to fashion an aes-
thetic that they could call their own. Their minoritized status in the United
States (as Spanish-speaking, nonwhite, non-Catholic, nontrinitarian) situ-
ated them in a position of limited “cultural coalescence” a phenomenon
in which “[i]mmigrants and their children, pick, borrow, and retain crea-
tive distinctive cultural forms.”13 Instead of fighting for respectability in
254 Lloyd Barba
mainstream society, Apostólicos incubated their own arts and aesthetic
practices in the social margins/borderlands of the state’s industrial agri-
culture, a site designed to keep populations deracinated with little chance
of cultural vibrancy.14 Their aesthetic choices evidence how performance
and ritual overlapped with Catholics across doctrinal and geographical
borders. Early photographs and the material culture of the movement
prompt this contextualized study of the “borderlands aesthetic” consist-
ent throughout many sanctuaries, an aesthetic I want to call an “aesthetic
from lack.”

Toward a borderlands aesthetic

The visual and material aesthetics captured in this chapter constitute a “bor-
derlands aesthetic” marked by relentless crossing and collision. Here we
may draw from various cultural theorists of the U.S.–Mexico borderlands to
better situate the aesthetics of the Pentecostal poor. The border’s most noted
critic, Gloria Anzaldúa, proposed the concept of a mestiza consciousness.
She describes this as a “consciousness of the borderlands” and one that is
“in a constant state of mental neplanitism, an Aztec word meaning torn
between ways, la mestiza [being]. a product of the transfer of the cultural
and spiritual values of one group to another.” This transfer, however, is
not characterized by smooth transitions between bicultural performances.
Anzaldúa further notes, “the coming together of two self-consistent but
habitually incompatible frames of reference causes un choque, a cultural
collision.”15 The relentless back-and-forth and in-betweenness of the bor-
derlands’ consciousness conditions its bearers toward a tolerance of ambi-
guity and contradictions.
Mexican Pentecostal aesthetics bear the hallmarks of ambiguity and
contradiction, as they are neither clearly situated in Catholic or Protes-
tant traditions. It is precisely the creative possibilities in this borderlands
consciousness that led Luis León to imagine the border as a place and
metaphor characterized by its actors’ “religious poetics.” Religious poiesis
is enacted

through a strategy of performed and narrated religious discourse, tac-

tics, and strategies, social agents change culturally derived meanings
and, indeed, the order of the phenomenal world by rearranging the
relationships among symbols and deftly inventing and reinventing the
signification of symbols—especially those held sacred.16

León’s concept lends itself to better understanding the performative, ritual,

and aesthetic world of the borderlands. In this chapter, I am primarily con-
cerned with a few key objects and the stylistic choices made by Mexican
Pentecostals striving to come to grips with their religious and cultural het-
erodoxy. We catch our first glimpse of this in Figure 16.1. Analyzing this
 Aesthetics of Mexican American Pentecostalism 255
image carefully reveals many details of the aesthetic choices made to trans-
form ordinary spaces into sacred spaces.
This 1950s’ photograph sheds light on the aesthetic contradictions and
ambiguity of the borderlands. It also captures the highly gendered aspects
of aesthetic spaces, performance, and material production. Nine men stand
in an area designated as the “platform” (however, unelevated) in a church
in Calexico, California. One stands directly behind the pulpit in a com-
manding posture with his hands firmly rested atop. The platform here is set
apart from the rest of the sanctuary by a simple wooden railing. Because
most Apostólico churches started out in homes, canvas tents, or repurposed
small buildings, members had grown accustomed to lacking vertical space,
and thus, many churches made do without an actual elevated platform. In
such cases, they placed a simple railing to cordon off the platform. The
pulpit and platform were afforded a special status within the sanctuary.
From there, ministers preached and read holy writ.17 To make a place look
sacred, Apostólicos drew from the world of handmade goods made almost
entirely by women. And this sacred facelift would not go without a robust
borderlands touch.
In this photograph, which is angled counterclockwise (a common mishan-
dling of the camera committed by amateur photographers), we can quickly
spot the lack of symmetry. The pulpit is flanked by typical Mexican Pente-
costal accoutrements. A flower arrangement on the left side is placed in a
vase and on a short side table which appears to be too short for the railing
directly in front of it. The vase, however, affords the bouquet enough height
to be seen from the pews. Another flower arrangement, on the right side
of the pulpit, rests in a larger vase on the floor. Immediately to the right of
the pulpit, a record player sits atop a table that, unlike the table on the left,
is slightly taller than the railing. Atop the pulpit, stand two small flower
arrangements unequally spaced and of differing height. With the exception
of the tejido (embroidered cloth) that reads “Dios es Amor” (God is Love),
none of the items appear to be particularly religious in nature. The asym-
metrical arrangement of the railing, flowers, mismatched tables, and tejido
nevertheless coalesce in this consecrated space.
First, we see the intimate aesthetics of altar decorations. The railing and
decorations on and immediately around the pulpit are not only items of the
platform; they are also items of the altar. The altar is the area to which the
preacher summons the congregation for a time of prayer.18 The tapestry of
artwork contained in Figure 16.1 was chosen accordingly so as to inspire
the congregation to act once the altar call was made. The “object-centered
aesthetic quality” and the “subject centered performance” fuse together in
a “religio-aesthetic practice.”19 The decision to use the items in Figure 16.1
over other more conspicuously sacred objects arose from both religious and
cultural sensibilities. The items captured in Figure 16.1 are common to the
ubiquitous home altarcitos (home altars) of Catholics in the borderlands.
Home altars are a decidedly female-designed space, as many of these altars
256 Lloyd Barba

Figure 16.1 The platform and altar of the temple in Calexico. The décor items in
this photograph are typical of other Apostólico sanctuaries
Source: Photograph courtesy of Milca Montañez-Vizcarra.

are “composed bricoleur-style by the matriarch of the family” and are made
with sacred and mundane items, effectively blurring the lines between the
two.20
These handmade material markers tend to be clear indications of
female-produced spaces. Pentecostal women visualized and produced a
borderlands aesthetics in the making of needlework goods which occu-
pied the most sacred spaces in their houses of worship and spaces of
everyday life (la vida cotidiana).21 Doilies such as those in Figure 16.2
covered the holiest objects of all in the temple: the bread and cup offered
in Santa Cena (Holy Communion). Knowing that they would be used to
cover sacred objects, women designed these with fastidious details, disci-
pline, and consecration.22
Flowers are among the most common décor items in Mexican sacred
spaces. From the famous roses of La Virgen de Guadalupe to orange
cempoaxóchitl (marigolds) used in offerings made during the Días de los
Muertos. Few Mexican sacred spaces go without displays of flowers (live,
artificial, or pictorial).23 Certainly, Mexicans Pentecostals did not ascribe
the same meaning to flowers as devotees of Guadalupe or observers of the
 Aesthetics of Mexican American Pentecostalism 257

Figure 16.2 Doily for the Santa Cena. The privilege to weave together the doily
came with the utmost honor
Source: Object courtesy of Marta Vizcarra; photograph by the author.

Day of the Dead did, but flowers are one of the many kinds of borderlands
aesthetics that were created and re-created. León maintains that in religious
poetics of the borderlands, “religious actors can manage the often harsh and
potentially overwhelming conditions they confront—the battle for survival
and more, dignity, love, freedom—by deploying the most powerful weapon
in their arsenal: signs, myths, rituals, narratives, and symbols.”24 These
flowers, however, believed to be pruned of any deeper Aztec or Catholic
symbolism, still provided a familiar cultural symbol and referent of what
Mexican-made sacred space ought to look like. The scene in Figure 16.1
contains further telltale makers of sacred space, and it is here that we begin
to see what I will call an “aesthetic from lack” through the use of sanctified
rasquache.

Sanctified rasquache
The assortment and arrangement of items are characteristic of a low art
form well known among Mexicans in the borderlands. The common use of
these items in various Mexican sacred spaces occasions us to consider the
religious dimensions of Mexican low arts. For this, I offer that we conceive
of the borderlands aesthetic in Apostólico sanctuaries as a sanctified ras-
quache. I offer the modifier “sanctified” as a way to explain its use in con-
secrated rituals and to set it apart from a more “bawdy” and “irreverent”
258 Lloyd Barba
deployment of this art form.25 According to Tomás Ybarra-Frausto, rasqua-
chismo is

neither an idea nor a style, but more of a pervasive attitude or taste.

Very generally rasquachismo is an underdog perspective—a view from
los de abajo [from those below]. It is a stance rooted in resourcefulness
and adaptability, yet ever mindful of aesthetics.26

The term rasquache ought to be understood and applied carefully, as it has

historically been used to denigrate cultural-artistic expression of the lower
classes in Latin America. First, it ought not to be conflated with kitsch.
Artist Amalia Mesa-Bains maintains that rasquachismo differs from kitsch
for several reasons including that rasquachismo is not mass-produced, but
made with a particular “attitudinal position,” and it arises from a par-
ticular set of social-historical conditions.27 Unlike mass-produced kitsch,
rasquache belongs to a larger set of cultural aesthetics production. Curtis
Márez offers the term “Brown style” as a larger umbrella term to cover
many art forms, including rasquache, as they are all founded on “the pro-
cess of constructing and valorizing racial identities in the context of eco-
nomic and political oppression.”28 This style can often be deemed “too
ornate, too gaudy, too florid, too loud, too busy, too much—an embar-
rassment of riches.”29 Second, rasquache is not a term that groups and
individuals have used to describe their aesthetic traditions. Ybarra-Frausto
comments that “[o]ne is never rasquache, it is always someone else, some-
one of a lower status, who is judged to be outside approved taste and deco-
rum.” Like many terms and labels leveraged against minoritized groups
and their expressions, rasquache is a term that many have taken and reap-
plied with pride. Anchored in a Mexican American bicultural sensibility, it
exemplifies grit, determination, and an “imaginative impulse” to display
some semblance of cultural vibrancy in contexts where Latinos are denied
public space.30
It is no surprise to find the deployment of rasquache arts in the
industrial-agricultural context. In fact, rasquache-type arts are the first that
one should assume to find in these contexts of pervasive poverty. For cen-
turies Latin Americans have made home altars and devotional spaces out
of a hodgepodge of repurposed materials, objects some might deem tacky
or, worse, disposable.31 In fact, descriptions of Chicano arts and exam-
ples of rasquache often include Mexican religious paraphernalia such as
estampas religiosas (religious images), altares (altars), candles, and alma-
naques (calendars) complete with reminders of holy days.32 As with the
altar in ­Figure 16.1, the items listed here individually do not constitute ras-
quachismo, but their grouping together and seemingly “clashing” stylistic
deployment certainly does. The robust assortment of different materials,
symbols, colors, and styles corresponds to aesthetics in contexts of poverty
and extreme lack.
 Aesthetics of Mexican American Pentecostalism 259
Sanctified rasquache as lack
Mexican Pentecostal material aesthetics are anchored in a tradition of lack
and aesthetic mis-reading. Borrowing from Vincent Wimbush’s concept of
“lack” among communities that “mis-read scriptures,” I propose that we
reflect on the sanctuary scenes in Figures 16.1 and 16.3 as mis-readings of
aesthetics against the dominant (hegemonic) arbiters of taste and religious
respectability. It is here that we might see this form of Mexican Protestant
aesthetic clashing with a dominant U.S./Anglo/white Protestant aesthetic
that during the mid-twentieth century sought to define itself as austere,
awe-inspiring, and purged of all low or “kitsch” elements of mass culture.
Liberal Protestantism’s artistic introspection and treatment of high culture
as revealing “ultimate concerns” indeed differentiated itself from “mass”
Protestant aesthetics.33 Wimbush takes “lack” to be a type of transgressive
misreading of a cultural semiosphere:

[Like] so much that must be confronted in such a world constructed as

white, some among nonwhite communities have reconceptualized and
embraced the association of being black or brown or . . . with some sort
of “lack.” Such “misreadings” are far more profound, more poignant,
more tragic, certainly, embracing of wider and deeper consequences and
power dynamics.34

The transgressive mis-reading of aesthetics is largely a product of coloni-

zation in the borderlands. Photographs especially expose the laden power
dynamics always at play. At the turn of the twentieth century, and certainly
by mid-century, photographs offered visual evidence of what certain spaces
(e.g., homes and churches) ought to look like. The “everyday” came to be
understood as ordinary, the expected, the status quo. The upper-middle
class functioned as purveyors of these cultural representations. Laura Wex-
ler describes this “regime of sentiment” as “a private practice of represent-
ing family and domesticity that in turn became an aggressive popular social
practice.” She asserts that the regime of sentiment “aimed not only to estab-
lish itself as the gatekeeper of social existence, but also aimed at the same
time to denigrate all other people whose style or conditions of domesticity
did not conform to the sentimental model.”35 The internalization of senti-
ments and aesthetics that were perceived to be the status quo conversely
constituted (by direct comparison) a category of “lack.” People and groups
that did not match up to the status quo faced denigration under this regime
of sentiment. We see Apostólicos inhabiting a denigrated aesthetic from lack
by compensating with the excess of rasquachismo in Figures 16.1 and 16.3.
This category of lack is easily read into Apostólico houses of worship,
blurring neat lines between Protestants and Catholic arts, sacred and profane
sites, and public and private devotional spaces. Rasquache as “the underdog
perspective (los de abajo) presupposes a world view of the have not, but it is
260 Lloyd Barba

Figure 16.3 The San Jose sanctuary. Many churches used scriptural décor to beau-
tify their temples. Blackletter was among the most common fonts used
to render holy writ
Source: Photograph courtesy of Milca Montañez-Vizcarra.

a quality exemplified in objects and places and social comportment.”36 This

lack, or aesthetic misreading, makes up the attitudinal position of sanctified
rasquache as a “combination of resilient and resistant attitudes devised to
allow the Chicano to survive and persevere with a sense of dignity.”37 The
mixing and collision of religious categories are exemplified in rasquache, a
sensibility attuned to “mixtures and confluence.”38
The items on the altar and platform in Figures 16.1 and 16.3 evidence
that this aesthetic from “lack” was indeed preferred by Apostólicos. The
latter figure shows that even the most elaborate sanctuaries of the time were
steeped in borderlands aesthetics. Figure 16.3 captures a snapshot into one
of the largest and most modern temples at the time. Built in 1957, the temple
in San Jose represented the pinnacle of Apostólico arts and upward mobility
(relative to the economics of the day). To build the grandest of Apostólico
temples, the congregation initially summoned Pilar Moreno, pastor of the
Delano church and a skilled architect. By the late 1940s, his temple renova-
tion projects began to change the landscape of Apostólico temples. While
congregations still convened in tents, houses, and small house-like churches
(such as the temple in Calexico), Moreno built “templos hermosos” (beauti-
ful temples) from adobe bricks styled after Spanish mission in California.39
 Aesthetics of Mexican American Pentecostalism 261
The congregation in San Jose would not allow the exterior of the temple to
go unmatched by its interior. To accomplish this, they turned to borderlands
aesthetics of the day as shown in Figure 16.3.
No two Apostólico sanctuaries were the same in this era, but the border-
lands aesthetics indeed linked them visually and materially. Other photo-
graphs of the same (emptier) platform shown in Figure 16.3 evidence the
prominent use of bouquets and tejidos as shown in Figure 16.1. The most
prominent artistic feature in the photograph is perhaps the artwork on the
wall. The mural of the “living” waters over the baptistery would lead the
eyes of spectators to the pinnacle of the artwork: two unraveled scrolls theo-
logically linked to the living waters mural. Together the scrolls read: “Pedro
les dice: Arrepentíos, y bautícese cada uno de vosotros en el nombre de
Jesucristo para perdón de los pecados; y recibiréis el don del Espíritu Santo.
– Hechos 2:38” (Peter says to them: Repent and be baptized each one of
you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will
receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.—Acts of the Apostles 2:38). The oppor-
tunity to write the verse on the wall lent the artist a creative license, as the
verse is rendered in the painted scroll in the present tense as “Pedro les dice”
rather than “Pedro les dijo”. This unusual move in scriptural quotation,
however, was not completely out of interpretive bounds of Oneness Pente-
costals who emphasized, above all, restoring the baptismal rituals from the
book of Acts. This scripture encapsulates the most important soteriological
tenets of Oneness Pentecostals, namely, Jesus-name baptism and the infilling
of the Holy Spirit.40 To render the words on the wall as holy writ, Apos-
tólicos chose a font common among Mexicans. The ways in which they
drew from arts in vogue among Mexican American and Chicano communi-
ties is evident in their choice of objects and font style. Blackletter, used for
several centuries in Mexico, became popularly associated in the mid- and
late twentieth century in U.S. Chicano contexts, with Mexican prison gang
tattoos and lowrider culture. Catholics and Protestants in the borderlands
inscribed it as a sanctified script. The font was supposed to exude “elegance
and exuberant transcendence,” possessing “the quality of being beyond the
normal.”41 Mexican Pentecostals used blackletter scripts on the wall behind
the podium, over baptistries, on the front of the temple, and embroidered
into tejidos and banners (partly captured on the far-left side of Figure 16.3).
The extensive use of the script, especially with certain scriptural phrases or
verses (e.g., “Dios es Amor” and Acts 2:38), linked Apostólico aesthetics
across the borderlands.

Conclusion
Religious poiesis characterized the borderlands. The Pentecostal altar
and women’s handmade goods hold in check assumptions about gen-
dered presence in particular places, as it was women in the Pentecostal
tradition who made the temple look holy. The handmade goods produced
262 Lloyd Barba
by Pentecostal women offer an alternative material locus of borderlands
consciousness and provide a base to compare the aesthetics of Catholic
and Protestant devotional spaces. We can locate the everyday and ritu-
alistic artistic productions of proud ethnic Mexican women in a vari-
ety of contexts as they are, according to Angie Chabram-Dernersesian,
“linked to a barrage of mixed popular cultural practices, including Gua-
dalupe, holy-roller, lowriding, styling, and sarape sandals,” and an array
of popular phenomena in the late twentieth century.42 More specifically,
the presence of flowers, doilies, tejidos, and items with blackletter font
remind us of the various forms of rasquache art once alive in the border-
lands aesthetics of Mexican Pentecostalism. This material culture demon-
strates how, despite their staunch disavowal of Catholicism, Pentecostals
ultimately drew from their context of lack to decide how their sacred
spaces should be adorned. In doing so, they fashioned a temple aesthetic
that drew from an artistic tradition steeped in Mexican Catholicism. The
borderlands, as a site of crossing, contact, and containment, show us a
new way of identifying the process of fashioning a Protestant aesthetic.
This chapter has drawn from only a few of the objects common to Catho-
lic and Pentecostal devotional spaces in hopes of showing the possible
comparisons to be made between material productions and aesthetics in
the borderlands.

Notes
1 Louis P. Nelson, “Introduction,” in American Sanctuary: Understanding Sacred
Spaces, ed. Louis P. Nelson (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006),
6–12; David Chidester and Edward T. Linenthal, “Introduction,” in American
Sacred Space, eds., David Chidester and Edward T. Linenthal (Bloomington, IN:
Indiana University Press, 1995), 15–20.
2 Chidester and Linenthal, “Introduction.” Sites of miraculous happenings (com-
mon in Catholicism) would be the major exceptions.
3 Luis León, “Metaphor and Place: The U.S. Mexico Border as Center and Periph-
ery in the Interpretation of Religion,” Journal of the American Academy of Reli-
gion 67, no. 3 (1999): 541–71.
4 Gastón Espinosa, William J. Seymour and the Origins of Global Pentecostalism:
A Biography and Documentary History (Durham, NC: Duke University Press,
2014); Gastón Espinosa, Latino Pentecostals in America: Faith and Politics in
Action (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015); Cecil Robeck, The
Azusa Street Mission and Revival: The Birth of the Global Pentecostal Move-
ment (Nashville: Emanate Books, 2006).
5 Arlene Sánchez-Walsh has labeled the era of the late 1920s “the golden years
of Pentecostalism.” Arlene Sánchez-Walsh, Pentecostals in America (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2018), xxi.
6 Rudy Busto, King Tiger: The Religious Vision of Reies López Tijerina (Albu-
querque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005), 87.
7 Daniel Ramírez, Migrating Faith: Pentecostalism in the United States and Mex-
ico in the Twentieth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
2015); Lloyd Barba, “Farmworker Frames: Apostólico Counter Narratives in
California’s Valleys,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 86, no. 3
(September 2018): 691–723.
 Aesthetics of Mexican American Pentecostalism 263
8 Vinson Synan notes the particularly strong reactions from Holiness and Funda-
mentalist leaders of the day. Vinson Synan, The Holiness-Pentecostal Tradition:
Charismatic Movements in the Twentieth Century (Grand Rapids, MI: William
B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1997), 146–48.
9 George J. Sánchez, Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Iden-
tity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press,
1993), 154.
10 Orlando Espín, The Faith of the People: Theological Reflections on Popular
Catholicism (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1997), 117–19; Orlando Espín, “Pentecos-
talism and Popular Catholicism: The Poor and Traditio,” Journal of Hispanic/
Latino Theology 3, no. 2 (1995): 14–43.
11 For contemporary examples in Texas, see Laura A. Lindenberger Wellen,
“Latino Folk Art,” in The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, Volume 23:
Folk Art, eds. Carol Crown and Cheryl Rivers (Chapel Hill, NC: University of
North Carolina Press, 2013), 125–30.
12 Vicki Ruiz, From Out of the Shadows: Mexican American Women in Twentieth-
Century America (1998; repr., New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), xvi.
13 Historian Vicky Ruiz further maintains that rather than “a single hermetic Mexi-
can or Mexican-American culture, there exists permeable cultures rooted in gen-
eration, gender, and region, class and personal experience.” Ruiz, From Out of
the Shadows 43–45.
14 Edwin Aponte, “Views from the Margins: Constructing a History of Latina/o
Protestantism,” in Hispanic Christian Thought at the Dawn of the 21st Century:
Apuntes in Honor of Justo L. González, eds. Alvin Padilla, Roberto Goizueta,
and Eldin Villafañe. (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2005), 85–97.
15 Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (San Francisco:
Aute Lute Books, 1999), 99–101.
16 Luis León, La Llorona’s Children: Religion, Life, and Death in the U.S.-Mexico
Borderlands (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004), 4.
17 The Pentecostal “extreme embrace” of sola scriptura is not without special
importance here. See Ramírez, Migrating Faith, 42.
18 Maclovio Gaxiola, Constitucíon de la Asamblea Apostólica (1945; repr., Mex-
ico: self-pub., 2007), 83; Arlene Sánchez-Walsh, Latino Pentecostal Identity:
Evangelical Faith, Self, and Society (New York: Columbia University Press,
2003), 86, 90.
19 Kay Turner, “Voces de Fe: Mexican American Altaristas in Texas,” in Mexican
American Religions: Spirituality, Activism, and Culture, eds. Gastón Espinosa
and Mario T. García (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008), 192.
20 Kay F. Turner, “Mexican American Home Altars: Towards Their Interpreta-
tion,” Aztlán 13 (Spring–Fall 1982): 318; Turner, “Voces de Fe,” 180–89.
21 Everyday spaces comprise a locus of Latina devotional practices. See Loida
I. Martell-Otero, “From Satas to Santas: Sobrajas No More: Salvation in the
Spaces of the Everyday,” in Latina Evangélicas: A Theological Survey from the
Margins, eds. Loida I. Martell-Otero, Zaida Maldonado Pérez, and Elizabeth
Conde-Frazier (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2013), 33–43.
22 Marta Vizcarra, interview with the author, Corona, CA, February 2015.
23 Turner, “Mexican American Home Altars,” 319; Lara Medina and Gilbert R.
Cadena, “Días de los Muertos: Public Ritual, Community Renewal, and Popular
Religion in Los Angeles,” in Horizons of the Sacred: Mexican Traditions in the
U.S. Catholicism, eds. Timothy Matovina and Gary Riebe Estrella, (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 2002).
24 León, La Llorona’s Children, 5, 85–97.
264 Lloyd Barba
25 Tomás Ybarra-Frausto, “The Chicano Movement/The Movement of Chicano
Art,” in Beyond the Fantastic: Contemporary Art Criticism for Latin America,
ed. Gerardo Mosquera (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996), 173.
26 Ibid., 171.
27 Amalia Mesa-Bains, “Domesticana: The Sensibility of Chicana Rasquache,”
Aztlán 24, no. 2 (1999): 158.
28 Curtis Márez, “The Politics of Working-Class Chicano Style,” Social Text 48
(Autumn 1996): 121.
29 Ibid., 122.
30 Tomás Ybarra-Frausto, “Rasquachismo: A Chicano Sensibility,” in Chicano Aes-
thetics: Rasquachismo (Phoenix: MARS Movimiento Artiscico del Rio Salado,
1989), 5; Turner, “Voces de Fe,” 189.
31 Mesa-Bains, “Domesticana,” 158.
32 Ybarra-Frausto, “The Chicano Movement,” 169–71.
33 Paul Tillich, On Art and Architecture, eds. John and Jane Dillenberger (New
York: Crossroad, 1987), 119–38; Sally M. Promey, “Taste Cultures: The Vis-
ual Practice of Liberal Protestantism,” in Practicing Protestants: Histories of
Christian Life in America, 1630–1965, eds. Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp, Leigh E.
Schmidt, and Mark Valeri, 250–93 (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University
Press, 2006); Frank Burch Brown, Good Taste, Bad Taste, and Christian Taste:
Aesthetics in Religious Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 128–
59; Colleen McDannell, Material Christianity: Religion and Popular Culture in
America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), 163–97; David Mor-
gan, Visual Piety: A History and Theory of Popular Religious Images (Berke-
ley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998), 21–26. On Mexican
American altars as sites of alterity, see Laura E. Pérez, Chicana Art: The Politics
of Spiritual and Aesthetic Altarities (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007),
91–145.
34 Vincent Wimbush, “Knowing Ex-Centrics/Ex-Centric Knowings,” in MisRead-
ing America: Scriptures and Difference, ed. Vincent Wimbush (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2013), 3.
35 Laura Wexler, “Seeing Sentiment: Photography, Race, and the Innocent Eye,” in
The Familial Gaze, ed. Marianne Hirsch (Hanover, NH: University Press of New
England, 1999), 256.
36 Ybarra-Frausto, “Rasquachismo,” 5.
37 Mesa-Bains, “Domesticana,” 157–58.
38 Ybarra-Frausto, “The Chicano Movement,” 171.
39 On the outward aesthetics of Apostólico temples, see Barba, “Farmworker
Frames,” 710–13.
40 David Reed takes the importance of the invocation of “Jesus name” to offer
an overview of Oneness Pentecostals’ emphasis on this term. See David Reed,
“In Jesus Name”: The History and Beliefs of Oneness Pentecostals (Bland-
ford Forum, Dorset, UK: Deo Publishing, 2007); Gaxiola, Constitucíon de la
Asamblea Apostólica.
41 Cristina Paoli, Mexican Blackletter (West New York, NJ: Mark Batty, 2006),
12–14.
42 Angie Chabram Dernersesian, “I Throw Punches for My Race, but I Don’t Want
to Be a Man: Writing Us—Chica-nos (Girl, Us)/ Chicanas—into the Movement
Script,” in Cultural Studies, ed. Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, and Paula
Treichler (New York: Routledge, 1992), 89.
17 Embodied aesthetics and
transnational Korean
Protestant Christianity
Minjung Noh

Introduction
Introduced by North American missionaries in the late nineteenth century,
Korean Protestant Christianity has become one of the major religions in
South Korea. Famous images of twentieth-century Korean Christianity
include the gathering of a crowd of 1.1 million at Billy Graham’s 1973
sermon at an airstrip in Seoul, the capital of South Korea,1 and the colossal
evangelical megachurches that symbolize the dramatic economic growth of
the country since the Korean War (1950–53). Korean Protestant churches in
the United States have played a quintessential role in the Korean American
community, which is one of the most Protestant ethnic groups in the United
States.2 On the whole, Korean Protestant Christianity, both in South Korea
and in the United States, is usually characterized as distinctively evangeli-
cal and well known for its exceptional scale of growth. Besides these frag-
mentary images of the large crowds, modern church buildings, and Korean
ethno-cultural identity, there has been little discussion of the aesthetics of
Korean Protestant Christianity.
This chapter explores the multiple layers of aesthetics in Korean Protes-
tant Christianity, moving among South Korea, the United States, and Haiti,
where Korean Protestant Christians have established mission fields in the
late twentieth century. Following the transnational itineraries of Korean
and Korean American Protestants, I identify two distinctive but not exclu-
sive orientations of Korean Protestant aesthetics. The first is an aesthetic of
progress, which has been prominent since the inception of Protestant Chris-
tianity in Korea. The aesthetics of progress sees Protestant Christianity as
a harbinger of modern progress and celebrates Korean Protestants as the
deliverers of the modern Korean nation-state. The second is an aesthetic of
Koreanness, which has been employed to acknowledge indigenous Korean
identity and which responds to the imagined authentic Korean past. The
aesthetics of Korean Protestant Christianity vacillates between aesthetics
of progress and Koreanness, which are themselves expressions a condi-
tion of Korean transnational postcoloniality. That is, these two aesthetic
266 Minjung Noh
orientations are selectively adopted and sometimes weaved together
according to the geographical and social locations of Korean Protestant
Christians.
To make my case, I first clarify what I mean by aesthetics. I invoke Aris-
totle’s concept of aisthesis, the archaic form of the modern term aesthetics,
to understand religion through its total sensory experiences. This concept
encompasses not only the artistic forms employed by the religious agents
but also the habitus that clothes their bodies and bodily practices. Second,
I identify the aesthetics of progress and Koreanness through an analysis of
the history of Korean and Korean American Protestant Christianity and
their theological commitments. Third, I draw on a case study of transna-
tional missions of Korean and Korean American women missionaries in
Haiti where the hybridity between the distinctive aesthetics manifests.
Finally, I argue that the analysis of the aesthetic aspects of Korean Protestant
Christianity sheds new light on understanding the multifaceted unfolding of
the religion in transnational settings.

Embodied aesthetics as habitus

The modern Western philosophical concept of aesthetics, or aesthetica,
was initially suggested by Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten as the “science
of sensuous knowing (scientia cognitionis sensitivae),” which is distin-
guished from the science of rational knowledge. This Enlightenment incep-
tion of the concept culminates in the theory of Immanuel Kant, who set
the categories of beauty, discussed the universal structure of aesthetic judg-
ment that requires a disinterested beholder, and put forth the category of
the sublime which transcends sensuous beauty. Since Kant’s theorization,
aesthetics has been established in modern Western philosophical tradition
as one of its recurring themes.3 Although there have been innumerable
ways of defining aesthetics and its role in human life, the Kantian tradi-
tion has been the grand narrative to which later theorists inevitably refer.
In general discussions of modern Western aesthetics, the hierarchy among
the senses and the mind–body distinction limited the domain of aesthetic
discussion to cerebral and rationalistic explanation about beauty and art-
work, thereby alienating the body and emotions from the discussion. The
faculties of sight and hearing acquired superiority over smell, taste, and
touch; the concept of beauty applied only to the former, while the rest of
the corporeal senses and undifferentiated emotions were detached from
aesthetic discussions.4
Modern theories of religion do not deviate from this limited view of aes-
thetics. In his discussion on Puritan religious ethics and its idea of salvation,
Max Weber articulates the tension between “the religious ethic” of Protes-
tantism and “this-worldly life-forces,” including the “spheres of esthetic and
erotic life.”5 In Weber’s view, the “sublimated religions of salvation”—of
which Protestant Christianity is chief among them—focus on the meaning
 Transnational Korean Protestant Christianity 267
alone and not on the form of religious art and its “magical religiosity,” by
which Weber refers to prerational religious beliefs that enchant the Mass
through materiality and practices that are believed to be filled with spiritual
power. Along with the “development of intellectualism and the rationaliza-
tion of life,” more rational religious forms depart from the irrational magi-
cal religiosity that dwells in the mystical forms of religion. This is one way
Weber accounts for the differences between Puritan Protestantism and Cath-
olic Christianity and partly how he describes the distinctly “modern” nature
of Protestantism as disenchanted and anti-superstitious. Simultaneously, as
Protestantism emerges as a modern religion, art pursues its autonomy in the
modern era, cutting its ties from the controls of religious authority. Weber’s
evolutionary hierarchy places rationalized Protestant Christianity above
other magical forms of religion as a mark of its “modernity.” This hierarchy
sets the general orientation of the modern study of religions: the prioritiza-
tion of meaning and bodiless ideation as opposed to magical religiosity that
relies on sensational and material forms. In this system, the place of aesthet-
ics and art, which are seen to accompany magical religiosity, is separated
from rationalized forms of religion such as Protestant Christianity.
Given the aforementioned account, how relevant is this split between aes-
thetic forms and Protestant religion? Does the everyday practice of Protes-
tant Christianity successfully enact this separation? Recent interventions by
scholars of religion challenge the dualistic discourses that separate aesthetics
and religion, body and mind, form and meaning. Writing about Pentecos-
tal Protestant Christianity in Ghana, for example, Birgit Meyer argues that
overlooking the aesthetic forms in the practices of Protestant Christianity
led scholars to miss critical aspects of the religious phenomena. She claims
that scholars need to pay attention to “sensational forms,” within which
religious actors are conditioned to practice and consider the negotiations
between the practitioners and the sensational forms they encounter.6 Here,
Meyer diverges from the modern Western meaning of aesthetics and offers a
new way of seeing the relationship between aesthetics and Protestant Chris-
tianity. Particularly, one of the references Meyer expands on is Aristotle’s
term, aisthesis. Aisthesis refers “to our total sensorial experience of the
world and to our sensuous knowledge of it.”7 In this account of aesthet-
ics, all five senses of the human body are considered as a whole, unlike the
modern Western discourse of aesthetics that privileges visual and auditory
faculties.
Meyer’s reconfiguration of aesthetics aims at understanding Protestant
Christianity through the analysis of the sensory experiences of religion and
the specific forms that allow them. Her challenge to the Enlightenment aes-
thetic tradition is important to my exploration of Korean Protestant aes-
thetics. However, another sense of aesthetics, which incorporates societal
and communal contexts into the term, is significant for making sense of the
transnational community of the religion whose aesthetics is inseparable from
its history and geopolitics. Anthropologist Nicholas Harkness discusses the
268 Minjung Noh
“aesthetics of progress” of Korean Christianity to explain the “triumphalist
narrative” of Korean Christianity and its attachment to Western musical
forms.8 His use of aesthetics in the discussion of Korean Christian music
is not only critical to my narrative of Korean Protestant aesthetics (I will
return to his discussion of the aesthetics of progress in what follows), but
he also adds another dimension to the term aesthetics that is helpful to my
analysis. Drawing on the existing discussion of aesthetics in anthropology,
Harkness defines aesthetics as “a specific form of ethnometapragmatics . . .
a native view of the social appropriateness and effectiveness of semiotic
form contextually mobilized in (and as) social action, which is revealed in
discourse with varying degrees of explicitness.”9 Here, aesthetics encom-
passes even broader signification, as a kind of style or form of social action
whose efficacy is structured by the context of each society. The aesthetics
of a society is produced socially and constitutes its sensus communis. This
mutual relationship between a community and its aesthetic forms leads to
the idea of embodied aesthetics, or habitus.
Meyer’s “sensational forms” suggests that aesthetics signify sensory and
bodily forms with which religious actors, including Protestant Christians,
engage. This is one way of revisiting the embodiment of religious practice.
The anthropological sense of aesthetics, on the other hand, helps us under-
stand the sociality of this embodiment. The koine aisthesis, or the embod-
ied communal aesthetics,10 is what I seek to explore in Korean Protestant
Christianity. Finally, Pierre Bourdieu’s term habitus encapsulates the phrase
“embodied communal aesthetics.” Bourdieu writes that “bodily hexis is
political mythology realized, em-bodied, turned into a permanent disposi-
tion, a durable way of standing, speaking, walking, and thereby of feeling
and thinking.”11 Here, “a permanent disposition” refers to habitus,12 which
produces “a commonsensical world”13—or the world of koine aisthesis—of
bodily dispositions that directs people’s ways of feeling and thinking. In the
following section, I trace the two distinctive embodied aesthetics, or habi-
tus, of Korean Protestant Christianity.

Between aesthetics of progress and Koreanness

The first embodied aesthetics of Korean Protestant Christianity is deeply
rooted in the entangled history and geopolitics of Korea and the United
States. Analyzing the aesthetics of Korean Christian music which is fixated
on the clear vocal sound of the Western classical musical style, Harkness sees
a parallel between the supremacy of the Western musical style and West-
ern modernity in the Korean Protestant Church.14 The Christian aesthet-
ics of progress requires Korean Christians to not only remove traditional
and “rough” traditional Korean-style singing voices but also “to expunge
from believers’ religious faith and practice all traces of a superstitious, unen-
lightened Korean past.”15 Here, the “rough” singing voices refer to “raspy
and buzzing” voices of Korean traditional P’ansori and Shamanistic music,
 Transnational Korean Protestant Christianity 269
which is contrasted to the Western bel canto style that produces vocal tones
using “abdominal breathing to draw air through an open larynx” in order
to produce clear voice.16 These contrasting voices—one is the rough and
throaty singing voice that resembles hard rock music–style vocals; the other
is clear and well-trimmed European bel canto–style singing voice—starkly
represent a dichotomy between Western and Korean traditional voices. The
aesthetics of progress in Korean Protestant Christianity upholds the western-
style clear singing voice rather than voices of a Korean past. This is a part of
the narrative of Protestant Christianity in Korea: a vanguard of enlighten-
ment, disenchantment, modernity, and material prosperity departing from
premodern Korean traditions. In the Weberian sense, Western singing voices
in Protestant churches are rationalized religious forms detached from magic
and superstitions. Korean Protestants repeatedly experience this narrative of
progress through these specific musical forms in their communal worship.
The backdrop of Protestant aesthetics of progress is inextricably entan-
gled with the transnational history of South Korea as a peripheral proxy of
the U.S. empire in the twentieth century.17 Protestant Christianity in Korea
was first established in the 1880s through the efforts of Presbyterian and
Methodist missions from the United States.18 Horace Newton Allen (1858–
1932), a Presbyterian medical missionary from Ohio, entered Korea in 1884
and built a close relationship with the Chosun dynasty on the peninsula.
Following Allen, pioneering figures such as Henry Appenzeller (1858–1902)
and Horace G. Underwood (1859–1916) conducted systematic mission
work in the country. Allen is an important figure not only because he was
the first American Presbyterian missionary in Korea but also because he
mediated the first immigration of Koreans to the United States.19 In 1903,
the first Korean immigrants to the United States left for Hawai‘i to work as
contract laborers in sugar plantations. The group included 101 Korean men
and women; about fifty of them were congregants of the Chungdong Pres-
byterian church in Seoul.20 From the outset, Protestant churches in Korea
have been a major inflow route of Korean immigrants to the United States.
The first Korean American Protestant Church was established in Hawai‘i
in November 1903 upon the arrival of the first immigrants. Korean immi-
grants in the States ever since have maintained close ties with their mother-
land through the Korean immigrant Protestant churches.21
Not long after this first immigration to the United States, Japan annexed
the Korean Peninsula in 1910. The Korean American community in the
early twentieth century fashioned an identity as an exile community, escap-
ing from Japanese-occupied Korea.22 After World War II, the Japanese
Occupation came to an end and Korea was subjected to three years of
U.S. military rule (1945–48). During this period, American missionaries
and Korean American Protestants played pivotal roles in the formation of
the modern South Korean nation.23 Seung-Man Rhee, a Korean Methodist
deacon who lived in the United States for nearly three decades, returned
to Korea and became the first president of the South Korean government
270 Minjung Noh
in 1948. At that time, Christians—Protestant and Catholic combined—­
represented only five percent of the Korean population, but twenty-
four percent of the parliament representatives were Protestant Christians.24
The Protestant Christians in South Korea, a powerful minority, obtained
their leverage through their connection to the United States, which aided
South Korea financially and politically in being elevated to an Organisa-
tion for Economic Co-operation and Development–participating nation in
1996. Connections to U.S.-based theological seminaries, Korean American
churches, and affinity to the English language became indispensable habitus
of the Korean Protestant Church. As a result, contemporary South Korean
Protestant churches have enjoyed unprecedented growth in their scale and
sociopolitical influence.25
On the other hand, Korean Americans adopted Protestant Christianity
as part of their assimilation into the United States. As an ethnic minority
group in the country, Korean immigrants simultaneously desired homogeni-
zation with the host society and pursued ethnic solidarity based on the com-
monly shared struggle to maintain their ethnic identity. For many Korean
immigrants, attending Korean American churches, which mainly belonged
to Protestant denominations, provided them with a way of ­achieving these
goals. Korean American churches have functioned not only as centers of
ethnic community but also as vehicles for Americanization since Protestant
Christianity represented a “bland national religion in the United States.”26
As will be discussed, Korean Americans, in particular, had to navigate the
aesthetics of progress with the aesthetics of Koreanness.
But before turning to the aesthetic of Koreanness, it is important to
note that the Christian aesthetics of progress also operates as an appara-
tus of concealment for the inherent hierarchy of gendered agents in soci-
ety. Korean and Korean American churches, for example, participate in the
long-standing patterns of patriarchal culture common across many strands
of Christianity. Despite their significant presence and participation in the
church, Korean American women are dismissed from leadership and are
required to maintain a silent and submissive attitude in the public life of the
church.27 Even those women who achieve social and economic success out-
side of the church are expected to “behave” in the church community and
are expected to undergo a “double life.”28 Women’s legitimate role in the
church is confined to assistants, such as the wife of the pastor or caretakers.
Ai Ra Kim states that women take on “roles as caretakers, nurturers, and
providers. Above all, cooking and preparing feasts were given undisputed
priority.”29 Moreover, marriage is a norm in the family-centered church.
Unmarried women are considered to be incomplete and outcasts.30 There
has been a considerable body of scholarly work that characterizes these
patriarchal Korean American and Korean cultures as Confucianist.31 This
perspective often argues that since Confucianism has a misogynistic culture,
the Korean and Korean American culture are also intrinsically misogynistic.
This argument often assumes that Christianity helped Koreans overcome
 Transnational Korean Protestant Christianity 271
their premodern Confucian culture and thereby elevated women’s status by
transmitting modern civilization and the idea of human rights. By blaming
Confucian culture for women’s oppression, the extant gender inequality in
Korean American churches is seen a remnant of the past, themselves in need
of purgation by the Christian aesthetics of progress. Whether acknowledged
or not, this standpoint draws on a Weberian hierarchy between Korean
traditional culture (Confucianism) and modern Protestant Christianity.
This hierarchal dichotomy between modern Christianity and the “premod-
ern” patriarchal tradition acts as an apparatus of concealment of the ever-
existing patriarchal oppression in most cultural or religious institutions,
including Christianity. Hence, the place of the patriarchal gender norm
between the aesthetics of Koreanness and progress needs more complex
analysis, which requires other occasions for discussion.

Aesthetics of Koreanness and its hybridity

The aesthetics of progress is historically rooted and strategically adopted
by religious participants of Korean Protestantism. Likewise, the aesthetics
of Koreanness has been redefined and adopted by Korean Protestants in
recent years. The emergence of generational differences in the immigrant
churches32 and the development of the idea that sees Korean Christians as
“God’s chosen people” have resulted in the reappraisal of the aesthetics of
Koreanness.
First, due to the increase in the population of the second- and third-
generation Korean Americans, Korean American churches now conduct
their services and events in both Korean and English to accommodate these
later generations.33 They are already well assimilated in the States linguisti-
cally and culturally, and they perceive the Korean ethnic identity and tra-
ditions as one of their cultural resources, unlike the previous generation.
Although the dichotomy between tradition and modern Christianity and
their hierarchy has been the backdrop of the aesthetics of progress since the
early inception of Korean Protestant Christianity,34 the dichotomy does not
work for the later generations in the same way. Instead, to the second and
later generations of Korean Americans, the Korean language and tradition
became part of their identity or even cultural capital in the diversity-­
encouraging society as the second generation easily adapted to the main-
stream American society both culturally and linguistically. Thus, the anxiety
about assimilating to American society decreased, allowing them to appreci-
ate and adopt the aesthetics of Koreanness with ease.
Second, the theology of “chosen people” among Korean Protestants ele-
vated the place of Koreanness in Korean Protestant thought and aesthetics.
Most Korean and Korean American Protestants belong to evangelical Prot-
estant churches because they inherited a particular theology from the early
twentieth-century North American evangelical missionaries who introduced
Protestant Christianity in Korea. While evangelicalism is hard to define, in
272 Minjung Noh
this case, it often marks a more conservative theology, which emphasizes
the inerrant character of the Bible and strict enforcement of moral ideals.35
This theology was combined with Korean Christians’ idea of themselves
being “God’s chosen people”36 in the late twentieth century. The narrative
of “chosen people” compares the experience of Koreans to the narrative of
the Exodus and sees Koreans as the bearers of authentic evangelical theol-
ogy and morality, in contrast to secularizing societies in Western Europe and
the United States. In both cases—younger generations navigating their rela-
tionship to Korean identity and the theology of Korean exceptionalism—the
aesthetics of Koreanness obtain new significance and power.
The intersection of the aesthetics of progress and Koreanness can be seen
most clearly in contemporary missions of Korean evangelical Protestants.
While South Korea sends out the second-largest number of missionaries
overseas, Korean American churches are also passionate about missions
ranging from short-term laypeople mission groups to professional mission-
aries.37 Contemporary missions aligned with humanitarian aid are unavoid-
ably entangled with the aesthetics of progress. Indeed, missions may signify
the culmination of the aesthetics of progress: Korean Protestants are new
evangelists of the world inheriting the work of their American predecessors,
accompanied by the material success that allows them to help others. But
recent configurations of Koreanness are actively employed in the mission
field as well, complicating the aesthetics of progress as purely the adoption
of “Western modernity.” Here, I examine a case study to capture this move-
ment. In the following, I introduce a group of Korean American evangelical
women who went to Haiti and performed a Korean traditional dance form
that is exclusively performed by women. This case involves both first- and
second-generation Korean American women, and their engagement with the
aesthetics of Koreanness in the midst of the culmination of aesthetics of pro-
gress, namely, overseas mission.

Case of the “fan dance”: women’s performance between

aesthetics of progress and Koreanness
A group of Korean American women went to Haiti in December 2014 for a
short-term mission trip. Founded in 2010, the Crystal Korean Presbyterian
Church in Atlanta emphasizes evangelizing missions.38 As soon as the new
church building was established in 2012, the church began sending short-
term mission groups to Haiti in 2013.39 In 2014, another short-term mission
team from the church visited Haiti. Composed of about fifteen laypeople
and a male pastor, nine of the group members were women. Five hundred
thirty-one photos of the mission were uploaded publicly on the website of
the church,40 and twelve video clips of the mission trip were uploaded on
YouTube. These were taken by members of the mission team. The photos
follow the daily activity of the mission team, and the video clips focus on the
stage performances of the church members
The team’s activities are mostly composed of “cultural” activities, such
as teaching the Haitian people balloon art and origami, singing hymns,
 Transnational Korean Protestant Christianity 273

Figure 17.1 Fan dance performances in Philadelphia Yuong-Sang Korean Presbyte-

rian Church, 2011

and performing dances. Unlike other activities, the fan-dance performance

is undertaken exclusively by female members of the mission team (Fig-
ure 17.1). Photos were taken while female members of the church practiced,
rehearsed, and performed the fan dance on the stage. Fan dance is a form
of dance performance accompanied by large folding fans with flamboy-
ant colors and pompoms; the dancers wear the Korean traditional dress,
Hanbōk. Performers hold two large fans, one in each hand, and wield them
while spinning and dancing. The long Hanbōk skirt spreads out while danc-
ing, and the fan moves dynamically. When performed by a group of ten
to fifteen women, the dance fills the stage with a stunning visual display
of elaborate dance moves and formations expressing a flying butterfly and
cascade of flowers. When the group forms a circle and spins together, the
fluttering skirts and brightly colored fans and clothes emphasize the femi-
nine nature of the performers who take on heightened gendered roles in the
dance. The music accompanying the dance are usually Korean hymns set to
Western melodies, but recently, hymns in Korean traditional musical style
have been frequently adopted as well.41 Participation in the fan dance is the
most visible activity of the female members of the church on this mission
trip. Although members of all genders participate in the prayers, relief work,
and services, the fan dance stands out as exclusively women’s work.
At first glance, the flamboyant ethnic aesthetics of the dance is too sensa-
tional to be Protestant. However, some Korean Protestants do employ the
274 Minjung Noh
dance in missions and regular church worship, marking it as a distinct Prot-
estant aesthetic practice.42 What then makes Korean Protestants continue
with this particular dance? First, this is the dance form acceptable in the
existing gender norms in Korean American churches. Second, the aesthetics
of Koreanness of the dance corresponds with the needs of Korean churches
in the global setting that have been looking for an apparatus to address their
Korean identity. Third, Korean Protestants welcomed the fan dance while
they were searching for a distinctive aesthetic form to mark their uniqueness
in a competitive mission field, which we have already discussed is itself a
manifestation of a Korean aesthetics of progress. While the second motiva-
tion is based on the idea of Koreanness and its aesthetics, the third motiva-
tion of the mission strategy suggests the aesthetics of Koreanness functions
to fortify the aesthetics of progress embodied by Korean Protestants. That
is, forms of embodied, communal worship that reflect the “modernness” of
Korean Protestantism are further transformed by an aesthetic of Koreanness
on the mission field, itself the site where the progress of the Korean Protes-
tant church can be seen most clearly by its practitioners. When the aesthetics
of Koreanness—as in the fan dance—enters into the religious practices of
Korean Protestants, the forms of worship already prepared by the aesthetics
of progress embraces it. Koreanness in the mission context is already a new
aesthetics of progress. To see how gender and aesthetics work together in
this form of Protestant practice—and this movement from progress to Kore-
anness and back again—let us unpack the three overlapping motivations to
include the fan dance in Korean Protestant practice that I outlined earlier:
it is acceptable to existing gender norms, it fortifies Korean identity, and it
allows Korean missionaries a distinct “edge” in the mission field.
First, the heavily gendered performance is supported and recognized
by traditional gender norms in the Korean American church since it does
not transgress male authority in the theological and intellectual realms.
Along with the female gender role as caretakers and providers, staging a
feminine form of dance on the stage does not constitute a deviation from
the normative gender roles of Korean American churches.43 It is a “cul-
tural” activity in that it is differentiated from vocational and technical
skills, which are considered to be men’s professional duty in the church.
Male members are vocal, and the majority of the ministry is male. They
preside over the so-called public realm, such as church sermons, services,
and theological orientation, while women take charge of the private realm
such as church kitchens, youth community, choirs, and often marginal-
ized “cultural” activities. The fan dance thus can be interpreted as one of
the “sidekick” activities of women within the church, evidently relegating
them to an auxiliary role in the mission and church. Therefore, the dance
easily acquired acceptance in Korean Protestant churches due to the exist-
ing gender norms. That said, as I discuss later, it also has a possibility to
bring about an unexpected effect on the gender roles due to the transna-
tional mission context.
 Transnational Korean Protestant Christianity 275
The second motivation is the aesthetics of Koreanness. Performers of
the fan dance acknowledge that it is a Korean traditional dance form, dis-
tinct from the churches of other nationalities. However, the fan dance is a
complex composite of cultural constructs. First, it is a tradition that was
invented in the 1950s in South Korea.44 Second, the fan dance’s emergence
as a Korean traditional cultural form is heavily indebted to the Unification
Church (so-called Moonies) and its entertainment group, the Little Angels
Children’s Folk Ballet of Korea, which toured the United States and per-
formed the fan dance in the 1960s and the 1970s.45 Considering the fact
that the Unification Church is intensely condemned as a heterodox group
by evangelical Christians, there is a kind of irony in Korean Protestants
adopting the fan dance in worship and missions. In this case, the desire
of the church institution to remain relevant to its audience46 overrides the
heterodox prehistory of the adopted culture form. The generational change
and shifting attitude toward Korean tradition in the churches reinforce the
expected relevance of the cultural form. As discussed earlier, the different
perceptions of Korean identity among different generations produced a
more relaxed attitude toward assimilation to the U.S. and Korean ethnic
identity. As the later generations of Korean American church members per-
ceived Korean ethno-cultural identity as their cultural capital rather than a
regressive past, the fan dance, which visibly signified Koreanness, was seen
as an attractive cultural form. In addition, the fan dance was even more
suitable for adoption because the form was already well organized in South
Korean churches and well known as a form of Korean art.
The third motivation can be drawn from the fact that the women’s fan
dance works as a mission tool. In small mission groups where female mem-
bers outnumber the male members, women are likely to take over more lead-
ership roles to compensate for the shortage in the number of people who are
required for the mission and church work, resulting in the increased influence
and power of women members in the mission group.47 Moreover, the church
needs to appeal to its Haitian audience who are potential converts. Arguing
that obtaining the religious audience is based more on religious habitus and
collusio than rational choice, Terry Rey and Alex Stepick showed how a
choice of religious community happened among Haitian people.48 The choice
is often dependent on the Haitian religious habitus that is full of dance,
music, and vocal prayers.49 The Korean Church needs a strategy to adjust
to this environment. Thus, the cultural forms of practice such as fan dance
and music draw people to the church, rather than its theology and sermons.
Material activities such as the fan dance, which has been considered to be
auxiliary, have a high possibility of playing a major role due to the changed
dynamics in the mission field. In this situation, women’s exclusive work
obtains more importance within the mission group and the church, offering
a case of changing gender roles in transnational mission circumstances.
In short, the fan dance of Korean American female missionaries in Haiti is
a distinctively female practice within the context of the patriarchal Korean
276 Minjung Noh
American Protestant church, an auxiliary practice that does not affect
male authority. Moreover, the practice was selected and acknowledged as
embodying the aesthetics of Koreanness by Korean American Protestants.
The dance form was available to be adopted when Korean Protestants were
looking for aesthetic forms they could employ, especially since the attitudes
towards tradition and ethnic identity changed with the increase of second-
and later generations of Korean Americans in the church. Moreover, in the
mission field where more women were involved and in which their physical
and material activities were emphasized to adjust to the different environ-
ment, women’s fan dance played more than just an auxiliary role in the
mission group.
Koreans made their way to the mission field to spread not only their reli-
gion but also the aesthetics of progress they were baptized into and that
formed the core of Korean Protestantism since the late nineteenth century.
In transnational missions at the end of the twentieth century and the fol-
lowing century, however, the aesthetics of Koreanness was adopted by
different generations and genders of Koreans. The coexistence of the two
distinctive aesthetics highlights the resilience and the dynamic practices of
the religious actors. Moreover, the adaptation of these aesthetics reminds
us of the centrality of sensory and bodily forms Korean Christians utilize.
Particularly, the koine aisthesis, or embodied communal aesthetics, is shared
among Korean Protestants according to their locations—in South Korea,
the United States, or Haitian mission field—and generations and genders.
The aesthetics of Koreanness and progress show different sides of the com-
munal aesthetics of Korean Protestants and how these aesthetics transform
and intersect in transnational exchange.

Conclusion
Looking at the changing dynamics of aesthetics helps us make sense of how
Korean Protestants adopt different habitus and fashion their religious prac-
tice. In this chapter, I first showed the historical and geopolitical backdrop
of Korean Protestant Christianity and their different aesthetic orientations.
The aesthetics of progress and Koreanness are two axes of embodied aes-
thetics in Korean Protestant Christianity. Korean Protestants throughout
the twentieth century strongly endorsed the aesthetics of progress embodied
in clear Western-style singing voices. The fan dance of Korean American
female missionaries in Haiti, on the other hand, shows how the aesthetics
of Koreanness has returned according to the gendered habitus and the new
attitudes toward the Korean tradition within the Korean American church.
In both cases, the embodied aesthetics of Korean Protestant Christianity is
translated into specific practices of Korean Protestant women in relation to
evangelical missions. Korean Protestants assume the role of the evangelists
of the world as one of the so-called First World nations while grappling
with their ethnic identity and pre-Enlightenment past as the Third World.
 Transnational Korean Protestant Christianity 277
The interplay between the aesthetics of progress and Koreanness provides
an important outlook for understanding contemporary Korean Protestant
Christianity, and perhaps, the role of aesthetics in contemporary Protestant
Christianity as well.

Notes
1 Billy Graham’s Crusade in Seoul is extensively archived with photos and audio
recordings. See Accessed May 29, 2019, https://billygrahamlibrary.org/tag/
seoul/. Also, Graham’s sermon has been examined here: Nicholas Harkness,
“Transducing a Sermon, Inducing Conversion: Billy Graham, Billy Kim, and the
1973 Crusade in Seoul,” Representations 137 (Winter 2017): 112–42.
2 Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, Asian Americans: A Mosaic of Faiths
(Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, 2012), www.pewforum.org/2012/07/19/
asian-americans-a-mosaic-of-faiths-religious-affiliation/
3 Birgit Meyer and Jojada Verrips, “Aesthetics,” in Key Words in Religion, Media,
and Culture, ed. David Morgan (London: Routledge, 2008), 22–24.
4 Ibid.
5 Max Weber, “Religious Rejections of the World and Their Directions,” in Max
Weber: Essays in Sociology, trans. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1946), 340–43.
6 Birgit Meyer, “Aesthetics of Persuasion: Global Christianity and Pentecostalism’s
Sensational Forms,” South Atlantic Quarterly 109, no. 4 (Fall 2010): 741–63.
7 Meyer and Verrips, “Aesthetics”; Jojada Verrips, “Aisthesis and Anti-aesthesia,”
in Off the Edge: Experiments in Cultural Analysis, ed. Orvar Löfgren and Rich-
ard Wilk (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum, 2006), 32.
8 Nicholas Harkness, Songs of Seoul: An Ethnography of Voice and Voicing in
Christian South Korea (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014), 7–10.
9 Ibid., 234n12.
10 This phrase can also be translated as “common sense.”
11 Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge: Polity
Press, 1990), 70. Emphasis mine.
12 Ibid., 53.
13 Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. Richard Nice (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 80; Robert Holton, “Bourdieu
and Common Sense,” in Pierre Bourdieu: Fieldwork in Culture, ed. Nicho-
las Brown and Imre Szeman (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000),
87–89.
14 In a narrower sense, “Western classical music” refers to a musical style devel-
oped in the period in which the central “classics” of the standard repertory, such
as the works of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, were composed from the mid-
eighteenth to the early nineteenth centuries. In addition, in the Korean context,
classical music may also refer to the set of music following European musical
theory developed in the aforementioned classical period. For example, while
European musical theory usually divides the octave into a series of twelve tones,
called a chromatic scale, Korean traditional musical theory relies on completely
different scales passed down from premodern Chinese Confucian court music
and indigenous folk music. There are two basic types: one anhemitonic penta-
tonic (p’yŏngjo) and one of variously five, four, and three notes (kyemyŏnjo).
The five- and four-note kyemyŏnjo are used to describe pieces of court music,
and the three-note kyemyŏnjo is used for folk music. Last, Western classical
music also includes styles of singing voices, famously bel canto vocal style. See
278 Minjung Noh
Robert C. Provine, Okon Hwang, and Keith Howard, “Korea,” Grove Music
Online (2001), https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.45812.
15 Harkness, Songs of Seoul, 9–10.
16 Ibid., 97.
17 Ju Hui Judy Han, “Shifting Geographies of Proximity: Korean-led Evangelical
Christian Missions and the U.S. Empire,” in Ethnographies of U.S. Empire, ed.
Carole McGranahan and John F. Collins, 194–213 (Durham, NC, and London:
Duke University Press, 2018).
18 A German Lutheran missionary, Karl Friedrich August Gutzlaff (1803–51), who
visited Korea in 1832, is said to be the first Protestant missionary in Korea.
However, his one-month visit could not establish a continuous Protestant Chris-
tianity movement in Korea.
19 Su Yon Pak, Singing the Lord’s Song in a New Land: Korean American Practices
of Faith (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005), 3–4.
20 David K. Yoo, Contentious Spirits: Religion in Korean American History, 1903–
1945 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010), 34–57.
21 Ibid.
22 Pak, Singing the Lord’s Song, 5–6.
23 Wi Jo Kang, Christ and Caesar in Modern Korea: A History of Christianity and
Politics (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), 71–80.
24 Ibid.
25 Phillip Connor, “6 Facts about South Korea’s Growing Christian Population,”
Pew Research Center, August 12, 2014, http://pewrsr.ch/1AafR0a.
26 Jung Ha Kim, Bridge-Makers and Cross-Bearers: Korean-American Women and
the Church (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997), 14–15. Kim refers to Nathan Glazer
and Daniel J. Boorstin to make this point. Kim writes: “Glazer and Boorstin
articulated that “pressure within American culture is the main driving force for
religious assimilation of ethnic/racial groups, who form a ‘bland national reli-
gion’ in the United States . . . and inevitably become a ‘part of the large American
denomination.’ ” In this framework, the Christianization of Korean immigrants
is also perceived to be an Americanization.
27 Kim, Bridge-Makers, 78–80.
28 Ai Ra Kim, Women Struggling for a New Life (Albany: State University of New
York Press, 1996), 69–71.
29 Ibid., 76.
30 Ibid., 75.
31 Kim, Bridge-Makers; Kim, Women Struggling; Byung-Kwan Chae, “Confucian
Protestant Churches Crossing the Pacific: A Sociological Study of Pre-Christian
Asian Influences on Korean Immigrant Churches in America” (PhD diss., Temple
University, 2014).
32 Pak, Singing the Lord’s Song, 13–15. See also Ho-Youn Kwon, Kwang Chung
Kim, and R. Stephen Warner, eds., Korean Americans and Their Religions: Pil-
grims and Missionaries from a Different Shore (University Park: Pennsylvania
State University Press, 2001), 113–40.
33 Robert D. Goette, “The Transformation of a First-Generation Church into a
Bilingual Second-Generation Church,” in Korean Americans and Their Reli-
gions, ed. Kwon, Kim, and Warner, 125–40.
34 Young-chan Ro, “The Korean Immigrant Church and its Culture in the Soci-
etal Context: Issues and Prospects,” lecture Given at the ICAS Summer Sympo-
sium, Montgomery County Community College, August 14, 2004. www.icasinc.
org/2004/2004m/2004mycr.html.
35 Elaine Howard Ecklund, Korean American Evangelicals (New York: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 2006), 9. See also Dae Young Ryu, “The Origin and Characteristics
 Transnational Korean Protestant Christianity 279
of Evangelical Protestantism in Korea at the Turn of the Twentieth Century,”
Church History 77, no. 2 (2008): 371–98.
36 Soo-young Lee, “God’s Chosen People: Protestant Narratives of Korean Ameri-
cans and American National Identity” (PhD diss., University of Texas at Austin,
2007). Also see Han, “Shifting Geographies of Proximity,” 203–4.
37 In the case of South Korea, the number of missionaries has grown explosively
since 1979. In 1979, the existence of 93 Korean missionaries was reported, but
1,178 Korean missionaries were identified in 1989, and the number keeps grow-
ing: 1,645 (1990) to 8,103 (2000), and then to 14,905 (2006). Korean mission
groups claim that they are ranked in second place regarding the number of mis-
sionaries, following the United States. See statistics in Steve Sang-Cheol Moon,
“The Protestant Missionary Movement in Korea: Current Growth and Develop-
ment,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 32, no. 2 (April 2008):
59–64.
38 According to the website of the church, the pastor in charge, Seongjun Ryu,
was dispatched from the South Korean Presbyterian denomination in 2011.
He received his pastoral education in Korea. Among four staff members of the
church, two of them are members of the Korean Campus Crusade for Christ
U.S.A., a Korean American student missionary group in the United States.
39 A local Korean newspaper reported the church’s first mission trip to Haiti.
“Mudŏwiwa Yŏrak’an Hwan’gyŏng Ait’i Sŏn’gyo Hyŏnjangŭi Kajang K’ŭn
Yŏlmaenŭn? (Sweltering Heat and Great Difficulties: What Would Be the Great-
est Fruit of Haitian Mission Field?),” Kidogilbo (Christianity Daily), June 24,
2013, http://kr.christianitydaily.com/articles/73272/20130624/무더위와-열악
한-환경-아이티-선교-현장의-가장-큰-열매는.htm.
40 Crystal Korean Church, http://crystalkoreanchurch.com/?p=2177
41 For an introduction of Korean traditional musical style adopted in South Korean
Protestant churches, see Jungjoo Park, “The Music of Korean Hymns with Tra-
ditional Musical Elements: An Introduction,” The Hymn 62, no. 1 (Winter
2011): 17–38.
42 The fan dance in the evangelical Protestant churches has been performed in South
Korea. There is a group of Presbyterian churches (Haptonghansŏngch’onghoe,
합동한성총회), with about two hundred member churches, that promotes this
form of dancing, and educational institutions for church fan dance are attract-
ing church women, offering diverse degrees. This Presbyterian group is com-
parably small in its size, and its material practices are often questioned by
larger groups. Based on Onsesanggyohoe (All World Church) at Kimpo, South
Korea, their distinctive material practice has been regularly used in mission
trips too.
43 Kim, Bridge-Makers, 103–19.
44 Paekpong Kim is known as the creator of fan dance. Fan dance was first staged
in Seoul, South Korea, in 1953 at Kim’s art institute. In 1954, the chief of film
department in U.S. Information Service in South Korea watched the performance,
filmed it in the newsreel Liberty News, and showed it nationwide. Afterward,
fan dance was recognized as a distinctive Korean art form. It was solo dance at
first but was revised as group dance in 1968, when the dance team was invited to
the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico. Yu Okchae, “Cultural-Historical Mean-
ings of Korean Fan Dance,” Korean Journal of Dance 30 (2001): 41–50.
45 Rhonda B. Sewell, “Korean Culture Takes the Stage,” The Blade (Toledo, OH),
February 28, 2003, www.toledoblade.com/Music-Theater-Dance/2003/02/28/
Korean-culture-takes-the-stage.html
46 Conrad Eugene Ostwalt, Secular Steeples: Popular Culture and the Religious
Imagination (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2003), 29.
280 Minjung Noh
47 Dana L. Robert, “The Influence of American Missionary Women on the World
Back Home,” Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 12,
no. 1 (Winter 2002): 59–89.
48 Terry Rey and Alex Stepick, Crossing the Water and Keeping the Faith: Haitian
Religion in Miami (New York: New York University Press, 2013), 152–56. See
also Karen E. Richman, Migration and Vodou (Gainesville: University Press of
Florida, 2005), 250–71.
49 It is part of the spiritual renewal and Pentecostal form of religion that is extremely
popular in Haiti. In this setting, physical activities and affective experiences are
deemed to be important. Terry Rey, “Catholic Pentecostalism in Haiti: Spirit,
Politics, and Gender,” Pneuma 32, no. 1 (2010): 80–106.
Conclusion
Sarah Covington

The essays in this volume have offered a broad range of perspectives on

aesthetic thought and artistic practices that were unleashed in the centuries
after the Protestant Reformation. As Kathryn Reklis has pointed out in the
introduction, each contribution refutes in its own way the false supposi-
tion that Protestantism emerged as an iconophobic “religion of the Word”
and remained inferior to the Catholic Church in the production of artistic
riches; the essays also, by extension, move beyond scholarship on religious
or Christian aesthetics to interrogate their subjects more specifically through
a distinctly Protestant lens.1 But while each contributor argues for a “Protes-
tant” element in their case studies, can one make the case for a general Prot-
estant aesthetic or artistic practice that somehow binds them all together
and stands apart from the arts and theological aesthetics of Christianity
more generally?2
In many ways, the answer would certainly be no, not least because
even early “Protestantism” contains so many denominations and orienta-
tions that feed into artistic approaches ranging from the decorative and
quasi-Catholic abundance of high Anglicanism to the fierce anti-idolatry
(though not anti-artistic) tradition of Calvinism. Protestantism also dif-
fers along historical lines, given that its sixteenth- and seventeenth-century
iterations were in many respects as connected to the late medieval period
as they could, at least according to Weber, harken to modernity. Not least,
Protestantism, as we have seen in essays by Lloyd Barba and Minjung
Noh, extends itself globally and, as with Catholicism, adapts itself to par-
ticular historical and cultural realities of those many places in which it
is embedded. Further complexities within a generalized “Protestantism”
are revealed along racial lines, whether in Nannie Helen Burroughs’s con-
tribution to a “black Protestant aesthetics,” examined by Rufus Burnett,
or with the African American jazz tradition as explored by Jason Bivins.
Literary themes, in turn, can cross faiths, as Alexander Engebretson has
explored with regard to the “ordinary” aesthetic of a Marilynne Robin-
son or a Walker Percy. Without one overriding classificatory system or
ecclesial authority to contain them, Protestant churches and the artistic
productions that emerge from them can therefore be multitudinous, just
282 Sarah Covington
as they can intersect with those produced by other confessions and faiths,
including Catholicism and Judaism.
Just as the field of Christian aesthetics may therefore mask a great deal of
confessional diversity, so can studies of “Protestant” aesthetics and the arts
cloak the multiplicities residing within the religion’s different faith commu-
nities. Despite these qualifications, this volume nevertheless suggests themes
and tendencies that reveal certain strains of aesthetics and the arts as being
distinctly Protestant—and “Protestant” rather than simply Baptist, Meth-
odist, Anglican, Lutheran, Calvinist, or Quaker.3 While Catholics and Prot-
estants were and are concerned with an aesthetic that seeks out transcendent
encounters with Jesus through artistic forms or an aesthetic centered on
subjective experiences of beauty or taste, the role of the arts and aesthetic
theology in producing and mediating the sacred can profoundly differ as
well. And this difference, we believe, should be pushed to the center and
cross disciplines, even if Hans Urs von Balthasar and others have already
explored Protestant theological aesthetics, however tangentially, in their
own pioneering works.4
All the subjects in these essays are traceable in some way back to the
debates which emerged in the wake of the sixteenth-century Reformation,
when Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, and others engaged in thorny questions over
beauty, artistic mediation, and the nature of art and the sacred after their
rejection of the Roman Catholic church’s “idolatrous” embrace of images
and objects. As Frank Burch Brown put it, Protestant critique of the arts
has continued in different ways to be based not on aesthetics per se but
on history and the authority of a Bible that appeared to condemn idol-
atry.5 William Dyrness in his work and contribution to this volume has
also pointed out that Luther and Calvin were not themselves against the
destruction of art, but that their “larger prey” was the “entire medieval
project,” expressed in novenas and pilgrimages that took the believer away
from God and knowledge of unmerited grace. Still, an association came to
accrue around the notion that Protestants of all stripes were anti-art and
anti-aesthetic: for the German expressionist poet Gottfried Benn, Luther
“destroyed the medieval synthesis of beauty and the sacred for the sake of
his conscience,” and of course, the notion persists even now of Puritans as
killjoys and busybodies who had a “horror of beauty” and rejected all artis-
tic expression in favor of somber Bible reading around the family despot on
Sabbath day—a notion that has been wholly refuted by scholars for more
than forty years now.6
Yet profound questions relating to aesthetics and artistic expression did
indeed emerge from reformers’ call for a return to a purer church. The quest
for that early church, however, paradoxically led to innovation not only in
art but also in the way one looked at art; not least, the rejection of idola-
trous images raised new questions as to what, exactly, a post-iconoclastic
visual, musical, architectural, literary, and theatrical world was to be. How
could one represent or express—or not—that which was used so falsely and
 Conclusion 283
even idolatrously before? As for beauty how was one to reconcile this with,
say, Luther’s preoccupation with the ugliness and struggle of sin?
We would argue that a kind of unease if not anxiety resulted from these
debates and one that endured through time, affecting future artistic forms
and aesthetic theology, however indirectly. It should be noted that the
reformers, of course, were not alone in expressing trepidation over the mat-
ter of images, the sensory, or beauty and the spiritual waywardness toward
which they could lead. Sixteenth-century Protestants joined a long history
of Christian anxiety about images and aesthetic excess, their rhetoric finding
an echo in Augustine through the Byzantines to Saint Bernard of Clairvaux
and the reformed Cistercians.7 But the Reformation’s renewal of these ques-
tions also led to an artistic and aesthetic efflorescence that continues, we
believe, to inform a wider and distinctly Protestant art and way of thinking
about art, no matter how many forms and varieties and even secular mani-
festations they have assumed over the centuries.
Another characteristic that distinguished early reformers’ contributions to
artistic traditions was the printing press; while hardly ignored by Catholics,
the technology was forcefully exploited by Protestants, resulting in new ideas
about the relationship between word and image or even—Walter Benjamin
aside—the almost-providential workings of the mass-produced woodcut.
From the beginning of the Reformation, questions therefore became embed-
ded in debates that focused on the nature and function of images, objects,
music, theatrical productions, or ideas of beauty in the wake of the techno-
logically abetted theological storms that occurred. And while the Protestant
rejection of images, objects, and music by the Catholic Church might have
unleashed new forms of creativity, it did not, again, release reformers from a
continued preoccupation with how to forge new artistic or religious expres-
sions. One can trace the struggle to find new “Protestant” art forms in the
realm of theater, as demonstrated in Adrian Streete’s essay; in architecture,
as with Emily Fisher Gray and Gretchen Buggeln’s contributions; and in the
transformation enacted in sacred song, as Stephen Marini has examined
with regard to Isaac Watts.
Visual art, of course, also elicited new challenges, even though some of it
was subsequently dismissed by art historians who could not, perhaps, look
beyond their own assumptions of what a painting should be. Joseph Leo
Koerner, who has done so much to overturn misunderstandings about Ref-
ormation visual culture, attributes a great deal of this dismissal to traditional
art historians’ general aversion to “Protestant” art and to Hegel, who con-
demned it for its “formal blandness and semantic transparency.”8 Koerner,
however, not only stresses the importance of this art but also argues that it
elicited a very particular way of seeing and one that distinguished it from
Catholic perceptions. For Koerner, Protestants (although he focuses primar-
ily on the German traditions) no longer joined Catholics in apprehending
an image as a bearer of presence; rather, a painting or object was perceived
primarily for the meaning it could impart. The fact that images had become
284 Sarah Covington
so closely entwined with words in Protestant culture only reinforced the
idea that they required an eye “to understand” larger religious and aes-
thetic concepts, all of which led to a transformation in perception as well.9
Although later forms of global Protestantism do not self-consciously reflect
on this legacy, we can see it exerting continued force in aesthetic practices,
such as the choice of the Korean fan dance on the mission field as a kind of
dual “aesthetic of progress” and aesthetic of “natural Koreanness” in Noh’s
work; the desire to convey meaning through sacred space in Mexican Pente-
costal border churches in Barba’s chapter; and in competing interpretations
of what jazz “means” in relation to black Protestant Christian worship in
Bivins’s chapter.
More contemporary and global perspectives, however, suggest that
Koerner’s reading of early modern Protestant aesthetic perceptions should
be extended into greater complexity, especially given what Kathyrn Reklis,
in her introduction, describes as the faith’s “proclivity for hybridity, adap-
tation and change” over time. Koerner, to be fair, is discussing visual cul-
ture, but his thesis, at least if read superficially, can nevertheless feed into
other false stereotypes about Protestantism (or perhaps Puritanism), which
is that it not only forgoes presence in art—as the viewer searches instead for
didactic meaning—but negates bodily aesthetic experience as well. Kath-
ryn Reklis, however, discusses Jonathan Edwards and his embrace of bodily
ecstasy as an aesthetically informed spiritual awakening (even if he did not
view it as “the beginning and end of real conversion,” as his more radical
cohorts liked to believe); Jason Bivins discusses the bodily (and nonverbal,
nontextual) experience of jazz among Protestant African-American Prot-
estants, and its celebration of “fluidity” and “contact,” “ambiguity” and
“play.” Burnett demonstrates how black Protestant aesthetics could also
issue forth in highly constrained and choreographed bodily comportment
to combat the racism of the modern project. And in a more global context,
Minjung Noh describes “flamboyant” and intensely physical fan dances
among Korean women as an instance of Protestants deploying a “distinc-
tive aesthetic form to mark their uniqueness.”
Given the richness and different perspectives that reveal themselves in
studies of Protestant art and aesthetics and the convincing case for a Prot-
estant aesthetics made years ago by William Dyrness, what then, are some
possibilities that future scholars could explore?10 In terms of visual culture,
the Protestant woodcut, in its many reproducible states, has generated much
research in the last twenty years, while David Morgan, Andrew Coates, and
Sally Promey have contributed significantly to an understanding of (and
respect for) mass-produced images and objects otherwise dismissed by theo-
logians such as Paul Tillich.11 These explorations could be extended more
widely across Protestant visual cultures and in the digital realm today, espe-
cially as they focus on the question of reception. Scholars have uncovered
the reception history of such profoundly Protestant texts as John Bunyan’s
Pilgrim’s Progress, while David Morgan has asserted that Warner Sallman’s
 Conclusion 285
Head of Christ, previously dismissed as kitsch, served an important func-
tion for Protestant laypeople, who came close to treating it no differently
than Catholics with their own images of saints. Barba’s essay in this volume
also presses us to think about the conscious deployment of “low” aesthetics
by postcolonial Protestants as a means of asserting theological and cultural
identity against their marginal position. By the same token, more could be
written on the question of resistance, following Gretchen Buggeln’s intrigu-
ing discussion of the popular reception of architectural spaces—a topic that
also intersects with recent work on high and low culture, “good” and “bad”
taste.12
Reception theory has, of course, been in existence for quite some time, but
other theoretical concepts, such as that of coloniality (as utilized in this vol-
ume by Rufus Burnett) could be applied to other frameworks of Protestant
aesthetics and the arts, while material culture studies as well as theories of
space and spatiality, pioneered by historical geographers, have yet to be fully
engaged in the field. Modernization (or neo-modernization) theories con-
tinue to be heatedly debated and are at the very least implicitly interlinked
with Protestantism; one means by which studies of Protestant aesthetics can
engage with this is through Kathryn Reklis’s argument that, in the case of
Jonathan Edwards’s theology, “beauty enacted in bodily ecstasy” was “not
an alternative to modernity, but . . . an alternative within it, which is to say,
‘aesthetics’ in Protestant theology already come laden with the accumulated
weight of competing projects of modernity.” Finally, and not least, theories
around race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and class merit continued research
through the lens of Protestant aesthetics and the arts, as do current debates
engaging ecocriticism and postmodernity more generally.
Transculturalism, a term first utilized by Fernando Ortiz—and deployed
in this volume by Noh—has also proved a valuable interpretive tool, with
early modernists such as Bridget Heal examining the portability of a Prot-
estant aesthetics, in this case, a “Lutheran Baroque,” across courtly and
burgher cultures in post-Reformation German territories.13 Relatedly, global
Christianity, including its Protestant forms, has been explored by scholars
such as Birgit Meyer14 or, in the case of Nigeria, Ruth Marshall, who argues
that Pentecostalism is “a community without an institution . . . a com-
munity of a new type, proper to the forms of diffuse, individualized, and
nonisomorphic forms of connectedness in our globalized world.”15 While
Marshall’s study is distinct to Pentecostalism, a good comparative study of
Protestant faiths more generally, including institutionally based ones such
as Anglicanism, could yield important insights with regard to structures of
political and ecclesiastical authority and the means by which they are but-
tressed and expressed through artistic forms.
This volume above all has sought to break down the walls of time peri-
ods and disciplines, bringing together radically different perspectives that
could lead to new connections, questions, and research involving Protes-
tant theological aesthetics and (or) its artistic manifestations. Challenges
286 Sarah Covington
arise, of course, when disciplinary boundaries harden against each other,
as they sometimes must: historians, art historians, and literary scholars of
the sixteenth-century Reformation—who are themselves divided within
­disciplines—will always be bound to some extent by their historical moment
and view Protestant movements of that time on their own terms rather
than as precursors to what came later. Theologians, modernists, or schol-
ars of the contemporary world, on the other hand, remain more commit-
ted to studying Protestantism as a living, evolving tradition, one that forms
itself in accordance with particular contexts or political and philosophical
imperatives that may have very little to do with the momentous events that
occurred in the sixteenth century. The Mexican Oneness Pentecostals exam-
ined by Lloyd Barba, after all, not only differ from Luther and Calvin in
their religio-­aesthetic expressions and theology, but so, too, do they practice
their beliefs in as radically different a milieu as could be imagined from
sixteenth-century Wittenberg Castle or Geneva.
However strongly or weakly they are attached to their historical roots,
the subjects of this volume’s essays reflect the sheer diversity of aesthetic
thought and artistic expression that remain, at the same time, distinctly
Protestant. From Isaac Watts to certain strands of African American jazz,
from Lutheran churches to today’s one-stop-shopping mega-churches, from
the aesthetic philosophies of Hegel to Kierkegaard and Barthes, or from the
sobriety of Dutch still lifes to Jonathan Edwards’s “aesthetic enactment” of
Christ-trembling bodies: each branch of expression extends outward into its
own independent live-faith direction, carrying some trace, however faint, of
its five-hundred-year-old theological DNA.

Notes
1 Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord, 7 vols., trans. Erasmo Leiva-
Merikakis (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1982–1991); see also James Fodor and Oleg
V. Bychkov, eds., Theological Aesthetics after von Balthasar (Abingdon: Ash-
gate, 2016); Nicholas Wolterstorff, Art and Action: Toward a Christian Aes-
thetic (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1980); Gerardus van der Leeuw,
Sacred and Profane Beauty: The Holy in Art, trans. David E. Green (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2006); John Dillenberger, A Theology of Artistic Sensi-
bilities: The Visual Arts and the Church (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 1986).
2 For recent general treatments on the subject, see Richard Viladesau, ed., The
Oxford Handbook of Religion and the Arts (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2014).
3 Jeremy Begbie, Voicing Creation’s Praise: Towards a Theology of the Arts (Edin-
burgh: T&T Clark, 1991); Sounding the Depths: Theology through the Arts
(London: SCM Press, 2002).
4 Von Balthasar, Glory of the Lord, esp. 1, 45–69.
5 Frank Burch Brown, Religious Aesthetics: A Theological Study of Making and
Meaning (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 2.
6 Joseph Leo Koerner, The Reformation of the Image (Chicago: University of Chi-
cago Press, 2008), 28; for “horror of beauty,” see Henri Fluchère, Shakespeare
and the Elizabethans, trans. Guy Hamilton (New York: Hill and Wang), 70; for
 Conclusion 287
one refutation of the stereotype, see Margot Heinemann, Puritanism and Thea-
tre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 18–19.
7 Donald Walhout, “Augustine on the Transcendent in Music,” Philosophy and
Theology 3, no. 3 (Spring 1989): 283–92; Miikka E. Anttila, Luther’s Theol-
ogy of Music: Spiritual Beauty and Pleasure (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2013),
24–31.
8 Koerner, Reformation of the Image, 33–35.
9 Ibid., 37.
10 William Dyrness, Reformed Theology and Visual Culture: The Protestant
Imagination from Calvin to Edwards (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2004). See also Dyrness, The Origins of Protestant Aesthetics in Early Modern
Europe: Calvin’s Reformation Poetics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2019).
11 David Morgan, Protestants and Pictures: Religion, Visual Culture, and the
Age of American Mass Production (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999);
Sally M. Promey, “Taste Cultures: The Visual Practice of Liberal Protestantism,
1940–1965,” in Practicing Protestants: Histories of Christian Life in America,
1630–1965, ed. Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp, Leigh E. Schmidt, and Mark Valeri (Bal-
timore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 2006), 250–94.
12 Frank Burch Brown, Good Taste, Bad Taste, and Christian Taste: Aesthetics in
Religious Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).
13 Bridget Heal, A Magnificent Faith: Art and Identity in Lutheran Germany
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).
14 Birgit Meyer, ed., Aesthetic Formations: Media, Religion, and the Senses (New
York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).
15 Ruth Marshall, Political Spiritualities: The Pentecostal Revolution in Nigeria
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 208.
Index
adiaphora 41, 72
Adorno, Theodore 124, 210
aesthetic(s): of autonomy 236 – 40,
242, 249n6 – 7; borderlands 254 – 7;
embodied 266 – 8, 276; of Koreanness
271 – 7, 284; of lack 254, 257, 260;
of ordinary life 223 – 4, 230 – 2; of
progress 268 – 71, 284; of sacred song
138 – 43
affections 21, 130, 132 – 3, 135 – 9, 150
Alexander VI, Pope 103, 105
altars 58 – 65, 71 – 3, 191, 198;
altarpieces 25 – 6, 63, 73, 113; home
altars 255 – 8
Anabaptists 49, 159
Andreae, Johann Valentin 65 – 9
Aristotle 38n45, 266 – 7
Augsburg: Confession 188; Peace of 62
Augustine 79, 116, 283
Balthasar, Hans Urs von 2 – 5,
175 – 6, 282
baptism 21, 28, 60, 137, 237, 261;
infant 49
baptismal font 57, 59 – 60, 68, 70, 73
Baptists 98n52, 190, 237 – 40, 245 – 6,
249n13; see also National Baptist
Convention
Barnes, Barnabe 105 – 10
Barth, Karl 3, 11, 175 – 83
Barthes, Roland 87, 286
Baumgarten, Alexander Gottlieb 133,
160 – 3, 266
Belting, Hans 25, 35n2, 115
Benjamin, Walter 124, 283
Bible/Scripture 24, 93, 170 – 1, 228,
238, 272; communal reading of 57,
282; lectio divina 25
blues 204 – 5, 209, 211 – 12, 246 – 7
bodily ecstasy 146 – 8, 153 – 5, 253
body (human) 20 – 1, 88 – 9, 147 – 55,
232; black 242; dualism of soul
and 242 – 3, 246, 266 – 7; see also
embodiment
borderlands see aesthetic(s)
Boulton, Matthew 24 – 6
Burroughs, Nannie Helen 237 – 42,
245 – 6, 249n8
call-and-response 208 – 9, 213, 217
Calvin, John: on architecture 188; on
beauty 226; on creation 33 – 4, 93; on
drama 26 – 32; on images 3, 19 – 21,
282; on language 20 – 6; on music
116; on sacraments 77 – 9, 87
Calvinists 86, 147; as iconoclasts 68,
113, 116, 123, 281 – 2; society 90 – 2;
theology of 33, 92, 109, 224 – 6
capitalism 16n14, 92, 98n52, 148 – 9,
153, 222
Catholicism: imagination of 226 – 30;
vs. Protestantism 4 – 7, 252 – 3; and
theater 100 – 107
Charles I, King 100, 109, 117
Church of England 3, 131, 133, 238
Claesz, Pieter 78 – 80, 84 – 7, 90 – 3; see
also Heda, Willem Claesz
Climacus, Johannes 168 – 70
colonialism 6, 14, 122, 148, 242 – 3,
248; see also coloniality; decolonial
option
coloniality 235 – 6, 242 – 8, 285;
postcoloniality 265, 285; see also
decolonial option
contemplation of images 24 – 5, 38n44,
58, 93, 126, 159
conversion 51, 130, 147, 150–4, 165, 244
Cranach, Lucas: the Elder 25, 42 – 3,
45 – 7, 49 – 53, 63, 117; the Younger
46 – 9, 52

creation 2 – 3, 26 – 8, 32 – 4, 176 – 82,
224 – 5, 228 – 30; new creation 29, 31;
see also natural world
crucifix 65, 68, 116, 119, 253
Crucifixion scene 51 – 2, 176
death 146, 177; of Christ 21, 26, 35, 42;
figure of 42; see also memento mori
decolonial option 242 – 8, 251n49
Dekker, Thomas 104 – 5
description, theology of 225 – 6, 231
desire 154, 164, 167, 206
disenchantment see enchantment
Donne, John 29 – 30
drama see theater
dualism 242 – 3, 246 – 8, 250n40
DuBois, W. E. B. 209, 211
Duffy, Eamon 20, 118
Dürer, Albrecht 46, 117
ecstasy, bodily 146–8, 153–5, 156n7, 253
Edward VI, King 100, 119
Edwards, Jonathan 3, 132 – 3, 141,
146 – 55, 230, 232
Elizabeth I, Queen 100 – 101, 133
embodiment: and language 22 – 4;
of religious practice 268; see also
aesthetic(s), embodied
emotion 28, 118, 130, 168, 212, 266
enchantment 225, 230, 267;
disenchantment 5, 16n13 – 14, 116,
122, 267 – 9
Enlightenment 5, 132, 148, 160 – 1,
266 – 7, 276
Eucharist 28, 35, 36n11, 58 – 9, 79,
225; see also transubstantiation
Evangelicalism 130 – 3, 136, 139 – 43,
244, 265, 271 – 2; see also New Birth
evangelicalism, American 147, 244
fan dance, Korean 272 – 7, 279n44
forgiveness 31, 45 – 6, 157n23, 167
fragments 5 – 6, 115, 121 – 6, 146
freedom 171, 174, 211, 239, 246;
creative 162, 165, 182; creaturely
178 – 83; divine 178, 180, 184n24;
epistemic 247; religious 237, 249n13
Friesen, David 214 – 16
Furttenbach, Joseph (elder/younger)
69 – 71, 73 – 4
Gayle, Charles 216 – 17
gender 106, 239 – 40, 248, 255, 261,
270 – 6; segregation 60, 65, 68, 73
Gosson, Stephen 101 – 3, 111n20
Index 289
grace 150, 178, 227, 229, 282; in
artistic creativity 15n3; experienced
through affections 130, 136 – 7; and
faith 49, 63; in language 22, 25
Great Awakening 146, 244
Greeley, Andrew 228 – 9
Gregory, Brad 18n24, 37n29, 113
Gunpowder Plot 103 – 4, 111n27
habitus 206, 266 – 70, 275 – 6
Heal, Bridget 74, 97n36, 285
Heda, Willem Claesz 78, 80 – 1, 84 – 6,
92 – 3, 96n34
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 118,
124, 163 – 5, 172, 283
Henry VIII 42, 100, 118
Holbein, Hans 25, 42
Holy Roman Empire 62, 69
Holy Spirit 35, 130 – 7, 141 – 3, 215,
261; in music 215; in preaching
20 – 1, 25; in revivals 152
hybridity 14, 209 – 10, 266, 271 – 2
hymns 3, 116, 130 – 5; function of
135 – 8; performance of 61, 273
iconoclasm 5, 80, 87, 97n36, 159;
afterlives of 118 – 22; and modernism
122 – 26; of reformers 19 – 20, 29,
113 – 16; and violence 41, 57
idolatry 5 – 7, 57, 87, 101 – 2, 115 – 18,
282
imagination 2, 22–5, 30, 133; Catholic
7, 227–9; Christian 236, 242; colonial
245; of devotion, 161–2, 166;
kinesthetic 152; Protestant 7, 227,
229; sacramental 227; visual 25, 41
immigrants 269 – 71
irony (Romantic) 162 – 6, 172, 200
jazz: and church 207 – 13; history and
definition 205 – 7
Jesus 117, 139, 167, 174 – 80, 183n17,
282; body of 115; depictions of 63,
119, 197
Judaism 115, 210, 282
Kant, Immanuel 6, 160 – 1, 172,
185n61, 266
Karlstadt, Andreas Bodenstein von
41, 116
Kierkegaard, Søren 164 – 72
kitsch 13, 258 – 9, 285; see also
rasquache
Koerner, Joseph Leo 16n12, 25, 113,
283 – 4
290 Index
language 20 – 6, 35, 37n26, 122, 162 – 3,
167; see also Taylor, Charles
liturgy 19 – 21, 26 – 30, 34 – 5, 191;
changes to 19, 57, 158n27; Lutheran
67, 72 – 4
Locke, Alain 235 – 6, 248n2, 249n6
Locke, John 23 – 4
Long, Charles 235 – 6, 243
love of neighbor 50, 169
Luther, Martin: on iconoclasm 5, 57,
116, 282 – 3; on images 41 – 6, 61;
on language 20 – 6; on music 3, 116,
133, 182; theological doctrines of
49 – 53, 225
magic 16n13, 31, 106, 267 – 9
Mary, Virgin 41, 95n20, 133 – 5;
devotion to 253
Mary I, Queen 100
Mass: as drama 26 – 8, 38n41, 101 – 2;
experience of 53
memento mori 80, 89, 93
metaphysics 22, 179 – 80, 224, 230 – 1
Methodists 98n52, 196, 269
Mexican Oneness Pentecostals
(Apostólicos) see Pentecostals
Meyer, Birgit 267 – 8, 285
Milton, John 117, 232
Mingus, Charles 213 – 14
miracles 27, 50, 109
missions 240, 260, 265; from Korea
272 – 6, 279n37; to Korea 269 – 71,
278n18
Mochizuki, Mia 87 – 9, 117 – 18
modernism: in architecture 187 – 91,
195 – 202; and iconoclasm 122 – 6;
and language 37n26
modernity 1 – 2, 4 – 7, 146 – 8, 154 – 5,
167; and colonialism 242 – 7; and
Protestantism 222, 267; Western
272; see also disenchantment;
enchantment; fragments; rationalism;
rationality; secularism
Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 3, 174 – 83
National Baptist Convention 236 – 40
Native Americans 236, 243 – 4
natural world 93, 109, 150, 188
New Birth 130, 133, 139 – 40
Niebuhr, H. Richard 201
O’Connor, Flannery 221, 227 – 30
organ (musical instrument) 61, 64, 68,
70 – 1
Passion (of Christ) 77, 116, 176, 229
pathos 167 – 72; see also subjectivity
patriarchy 247, 270 – 1
Pentecostals 147, 285; aesthetics
of 254, 259; Mexican Oneness
(Apostólicos) 252 – 4, 261 – 2
perception 89, 160, 163, 226, 230–2, 284
Percy, Walker 227 – 9, 234n39
Pietists 98n52, 130, 144n7, 144n15,
164 – 7, 170 – 1
play, concept of 162, 174, 181 – 2, 217
poetry 28 – 9, 131 – 3, 142, 158n27, 163
prayer 25, 28, 57 – 8, 141, 275
preaching 20 – 6, 33, 36n15, 130, 141;
spaces for 57 – 8, 71, 73, 118, 189
predestination 92, 108 – 9
Promey, Sally 35, 197, 284
Protestant principle 1, 18n25, 123 – 4
providence 39n71, 92, 149, 167, 177, 179
Psalms: A New Version of 133 – 5;
performance of 21, 26, 28, 116;
Watt’s imitation of 138 – 43
pulpit(s) 21, 30, 57 – 74, 187, 199,
255 – 6
Puritans 3–4, 101–2, 131–2, 266–7, 282,
284; American 34, 148, 226; as iconoclasts
116; literature 29; preaching 23, 147
Quijano, Anibal 236, 242 – 4; see also
coloniality
ragtime 205 – 6, 209, 211
rasquache 257 – 60
rationalism 2, 132, 136, 148, 160 – 1,
189
rationality: disinterested 147;
instrumental 2, 5, 34
redemption 26 – 8, 31 – 3, 161, 224, 230
relics 26, 58, 115, 117
Rembrandt 82, 84, 86, 89, 95n20
revelation 2 – 4, 15n3, 132, 161,
175 – 81, 245
revivals 131 – 2, 146 – 7, 150 – 4, 213,
252; see also Great Awakening
ring shout 208, 246
ritual 5, 22 – 3, 153 – 4, 198, 253 – 4,
257; of liturgy 23, 58 – 61; and music
208; and theater 31, 38n41, 105
Robinson, Marilynne 155n4, 221 – 32
Romantics 37n27, 121 – 2, 161 – 3, 165,
168, 172
Rubens, Peter Paul 81, 83, 84
ruins 120 – 2, 128n37, 161
Ruisdael, Jacob van 31 – 2

sacraments 25 – 6, 57 – 9, 79, 87, 94n3;
Jesus as 180; medieval 19 – 21;
sacramental imagination 227;
sacramentalism 5, 7, 123, 180,
185n45, 229; sacramental poetics
39n63; world as 225, 228; see also
baptism; Eucharist
salvation 27, 29, 130, 150 – 1, 246, 266;
and sin 29, 160; through faith 51,
138; through works 49
sanctification 29, 130, 138, 224,
257 – 61
Schwartz, Regina 21, 30 – 1, 39n63
Schwarz, Rudolf 191
Scripture see Bible
secularism 4 – 5, 17n15, 189, 213,
218n1
senses 19, 117, 148, 150, 160, 266 – 7;
see also perception
sexuality 106 – 7, 146, 238, 241
Shakespeare, William 30, 102,
104, 108
Sidney, Philip 28 – 9, 111n20
sin 32, 86, 123, 169, 201, 283; see also
salvation
Snyders, Frans 84 – 5
Sovik, Edward A. 193, 198 – 201
spirituals 211, 246, 249n6; spiritual
songs 135 – 8, 140 – 1
subjectivity 5, 149 – 53, 162, 167, 242
sublime 142, 161 – 4, 172, 200, 266
suffering 25, 176, 227, 229 – 30; Christ’s
51, 230; redemptive 229
superstition 6 – 7, 33, 94n10, 146, 269
Index 291
Taylor, Charles 23, 34, 221 – 2, 224;
see also language
Teellinck, Willem 77 – 8, 92
theater 29 – 31, 99 – 110, 116, 160
Tillich, Paul 3, 123 – 4, 155, 158n27,
189 – 90, 284; see also Protestant
principle
time 23, 28, 93, 165, 208, 223
transubstantiation 27, 58, 87, 94n10
Trinity 141
Tyndale, William 22 – 3
Updike, John 174, 221 – 6, 230 – 2
vampires 146
vocation 224
war: American Civil 239; English Civil
104; Korean 265; Thirty Years’ 69,
74; World War I 124, 190; World
War II 187, 190, 269
Watts, Isaac: hymns of 133 – 8; life and
legacy 130 – 3; on translation 138 – 41
Weber, Max 5, 92, 116, 266 – 7, 281;
see also disenchantment
Westphalia 61, 74
white supremacy 146, 235
whitewashing 87, 117 – 18, 124 – 6
Wittenberg 41 – 2, 46, 63, 286
Women’s Convention 237, 239 – 42, 245
Wood, James 222, 231
woodcuts 1, 42, 116, 283 – 4
Zwingli, Ulrich 41, 116, 282