Art & religion

Preface

ONE puts forth any venture of constructive suggestion for these confused times only with the greatest diffidence, knowing far better than any critic can know the weaknesses and ignorances revealed.

Yet there need be no diffidence about any fresh testimony that beauty is desirable and good : nor about the consequent contention that the religion of Protestantism stands profoundly in need of realizing it. This, together with some practical explications, is all I want to say to churchmen.

To artists and lovers of the beautiful, I want to speak my definite expectation of a time soon to come again when patrons of the arts will see in the religious institution an incomparable opportunity for the most pervasive influence of beauty upon the people. Every church building in village or city should itself be a noble work of art. And the arts have each a proper place in the fostering of the supreme experience of worship.

I am led to say these things by the very oppressive burden of disunity in the spiritual life of the community and the time. There cannot be an age of great artistic brilliance until we reach a more nearly harmonious faith. I am happy in the simple daily work of a parish minister. But I am unhappy and deeply disquieted amidst the discord in the religious world. I wish I could have mental fellowship with the Catholics : I wish I could have it with more of my Protestant brethren : not merely for the easement of my own aesthetic discomfort, but for the sake of countless others. There can be no cure for many souls until we are together.

Inasmuch as many readers wish to know who it is who speaks of any matter, it is proper to state that I am the regularly installed pastor of a Congregational Church. Much of my feeling in things ecclesiastical is doubtless derived, however, from the Reformed Church in which I was bap-

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Preface

tized and to which several American grandfathers belonged, as their fathers before them in the Swiss Church.

The illustrations presented are taken mostly from the free churches. One expects an Episcopal Church to be beautiful and one looks for an altar in it. The noteworthy thing is the number of free churches which have revived the ancient setting for the communion table at the head of an apse or chancel.

I wish gratefully to acknowledge much practical help from Miss Grace E. Babcock. For the loan or gift of photographs, I am very pleasantly indebted to Messrs. Charles Collens, Ralph Adams Cram, Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue, the Society of Arts and Crafts, Detroit, ' and the Society of Arts and Crafts, Boston.

Von Ogden Vogt.

Wellington Avenue Church Study, February 25, 1921.

I. Introduction ..... l

Truth, goodness, and beauty. The new age. The close of the Reformation age. Protestant negation of the arts. Catholic acceptance of modernism. The art of worship the all-comprehending art. Proposals for examining the connections of art and religion, historical, psychological, and practical. Proposals of liturgical principles and materials. Proposals for architectural style, tone, significance, and tendencies. Current writings about the new age.

II. An Age Described by Its Art . . 9

No satisfactory art in a nondescript age. The arts born of the national and time spirit. The relations of art to unified life. The youth, size, and complexity of American life. The coming description.

III. The Unity of Religion and Art . . 18

Religion the source of primitive arts. Religion the principal subject matter of historic art. The inner identity of the mystic and aesthetic experience. The demand for unity in composition and in reality. The feeling of satisfaction derived from beauty and from being. The creativity of art and of religion.

IV. The Cleft between Art and Religion . 34

1. The cleft between religion and science.

2. The cleft between religion and morals.

3. The cleft between religion and art.

The Roman Mass. Catholic architecture. The Anglican Prayer Book. Protestant forms. American church architecture.

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V. The Mutual Need .... 48

The world of the arts the source of spiritual life for many. The world of religion. Art needs religion — to universalize its concepts, to supply moral content. Religion needs the arts — to be impressive, to get a hearing, to be enjoyable, to assist reverence, to symbolize old truths, to heighten the imagination, to fire resolves.

VI. Corporeality in Religion ... 56

1. The corporeality of objects and acts.

2. The corporeality of creeds.

3. The corporeality of crude excitement.

VII. The Sensational Character of Art . 63

The sensational preacher. Modern view of human nature. Sensational conduct of ancient religious teachers. The sense appeal of the Japanese temple and of the English cathedral.

VIII. A Brief for the Cultus ... 67

Religious culture primary in religion. Its historical recognition. Its apparatus or ritual. The necessity of religious acts. The source of perpetuity. The sermon an insufficient basis for religious culture. The background of change. Modern possibilities.

IX. Prophet and Priest .... 82

The conflict between reforming prophets and conserving priests. The prophet as instrument of change. The priest as Teacher, Spiritual Adviser, Pastor, and Artist.

X. The Artist as Prophet ... 90

Traditionalism preserved by the arts. The aloofness and lawlessness of artists. The historic divergence of artistic forms from their content, Egyptian, Greek, Italian. New ideas through the arts. The permanence of beauty.

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XL Symbols and Sacraments ... 97

Classic and Romantic methods. Universality and power of symbols. Danger of symbols. Idolatry. The meaning of a sacrament. The spiritual presence. The material elements. Baptism and the Eucharist. Objective value and validity. Transubstantiation of persons.

XII. Religious Education . . .107

Observing beauty. Modern religion weakly impressive. The power of ritual. Worship in the church school. Children in the church service. Adult education in religion. Theological schools deficient in religious culture. The state university and the Christian college.

XIII. Church Unity . . . .116

Difficulties of unity in thought and action. The unifying effects of feeling. The desire for more inclusive religious experience. The incompleteness of separate types. The service of art in promoting unity. The revival of mediaevalism, liturgically and architecturally. The community church. The flank attack in debate. Universal similarity of mystic experiences.

XIV. Technique and Freedom . . . 133

The positive character of freedom. Futility of complete independency. The incoherence of liberalism. The necessity for critically improved technique in worship. A new service book. Scholarship in liturgies. Ceremonial. Freedom not the gift of formlessness but the mastery of form.

XV. The Mysticism of Isaiah . . 145

The identity of the experience of worship and that of beauty. The elements of the experience: vision, humility, exaltation, illumination, dedication. Isaiah's great record.

XVI. The Order of the Liturgy . 152

Outer expression in the order of worship parallel to the elements of the inner experience of worship. The principal

• xiii • liturgical parts. Dramatic unity. Miss Underbill's analysis of the Mass. The need for experiment.

XVII. Introit and Antiphons . . .166

The revival of the Introit. Materials for it. Process of ideas in it. Copies of antiphonals used at the Wellington Avenue Church.

XVIII. Music 174

Music the highest art. The unity of the service. Faults of anthems. The matrix of the service. Members of the choir as ministers in the sanctuary. Antiphonals. Especially composed services.

XIX. Architectural Style . . .180

Sketch of Greek, Roman, Romanesque, Byzantine, Gothic, and Renaissance building, together with meanings intimated by these historic styles. Current style revivals in Gothic and Classic strains. The question of style revival or translation. The new architecture.

XX. Structural Tone .... 203

Tonal effects of interiors. The faults of neutrality, comfortableness, coldness, agitation. The virtues of repose, austerity, warmth, and brilliance. The effects of proportion, scale, and materials.

XXL The Chancel . . . .214

The historic Christian Church chancel. Its revival amongst non-liturgical churches. The artistic high light, the differentiation of liturgical parts, practical convenience. Recent opinions. The use of altar and candle light. Ineffective compromises. Adaptability of the chancel.

XXII. Practicable Matters . . . 229

Educational and social facilities of the church building. Placement of the structure. Problems of the smaller church.

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Partial construction. The aesthetic character of practicability.

XXIII. Religious Ideas for the Architect . 236

A House of God. A House of Man. A House of Salvation. The intimations of modern free thinking, brotherhood, and art.

XXIV. The Future Church . . .243

The delimitation of church functions. Integrations of the new age. The mergence of historic faith and natural religion, in the Apostolic age, in the coming age. A time of formation. Truth, Goodness, Beauty. The primary category. Survey of the character of the coming cultus. Christian content in ancient categories.

Orders of service in the Wellington Avenue Church, Chicago.

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List of Illustrations

Reredos, St. Thomas's Church, New York . frontispiece

PAGE

Pulpit, First Baptist Church, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania ......

First Church in Cheshire, Connecticut .

Carved Oak Triptych ....

Silver Crozier; Christmas in Heaven; St. Peter

Skinner Memorial Chapel, Holyoke, Massachusetts

Silver Alms Basin; Altar Cross in Silver, Ivory, and Enamel ; Carved and Gilded Candlestick .

First Baptist Church, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Second Church in Boston, Massachusetts .

95 123

193 209 219

House of Hope, St. Paul, Minnesota, Presbyterian

South Church, New York City, Reformed

Second Church in Newton, Massachusetts, Congregational ....... 225

St. Anne's Chapel, Arlington Heights, Massachusetts 231

First Congregational Church, Montclair, New Jersey 237

Second Church in Boston, Massachusetts, Unitarian . 247 xvi

Chapter I : Introduction

IT would seem that humanity permanently values truth, goodness, and beauty. These values are essential to religion. But there is a cleft between the popular religion of our day and all these three. There are many persons engaged in healing the breach between religion and science ; equally many concerned with a new ethical seriousness in religion; few seem to be aware of the cleft between religion and art.

A new age is coming. It will be upon us swiftly and we must bestir our imaginations to prepare for it. We are like the dwellers in the war-swept areas of the old world whose homes were wrecked by shell fire. Our intellectual houses are falling about our ears. We do not yet know whether we must rebuild them or desert them. We are hurriedly wondering what to save from the wreckage. We are half unconsciously taking stock of our valuables; making new appraisals of what is most precious. It is a time of reexamination of all things, a time of changes, profound and universal. The disorganization of normal life by the great war has compelled a new openness of mind and roused new demands for better life.

Yet it is not the war experience that is causing the new age. It hastens it; it more rapidly closes the old age; it will perhaps in history mark the end of a period about ready to be ended anyway. The breakdown of many old sanctions and standards was already taking place. The crisis of war if not the agent was the powerful reagent, precipitating that which the old formulas could no longer hold in solution.

These values that we are reappraising, these formulas that are breaking down, what are they'? In the main they are the work of the Reformation age. We have been living religiously and morally and politically by the premises and forms of thought established by the Reformation. This does not mean that these principles have been accepted by all or that they are now to be entirely displaced. It does mean that Reformation assumptions have quite generally wrought themselves into all departments of human life, that their logic is fairly complete, and that it is now time to estimate their success and failure.

The new premises, sanctions, and standards, whence are they*? They are largely the effects of nineteenth century science and mechanics, both negative and positive. We do not know exactly what they are, nor shall we until they are half consciously established in practice. They relate to changed conceptions of individualism and freedom, authority, property, education, human nature, liberty, art. These and other interests are to be differently conceived than in the period under Reformation dominance. Science is not alone the sufficient cause of these transformations. It is rather the efficient cause, the force that will break much remaining mediaevalism, confirm the central Reformation Protest and then displace both Protestant and Catholic sanctions, preparing the way for the positive work of new forces in philosophy, popular morality, art, and religion.

The Reformation age is being effectively closed by the work of nineteenth century science, its close marked by the upheaval of war. But the new age will not be predominantly scientific. Science has displayed, negatively, what it cannot do for human life as well as what it can do. Approved scientific method will go forward to be one of the major instrumentalities of the new good. But art will be another major instrumentality. Both will be agents in forming the new age after the desires of life itself, that human experience of universal life which we call religion and which alone is the sufficient cause of human good.

A new age is never an entire break with the past. It carries forward from the immediate past much that does not logically belong with the new forms. It carries forward from the more remote past much that is still more out of harmony with the new forms. And it restores some things from the distant past more useful and valued in the new age than they were in the immediately previous one. Feelings and

Introduction

forces are swept out of notice, even for long periods, which later come back freshly to benefit and balance human life. One of these feelings is the feeling for beauty, one of these forces is the force of artistry.

The Reformation age has not been favorable to the arts. Protestantism has been chary of the arts and suspicious of the artist. Ancient and mediaeval feeling for beauty has been all but extinguished throughout large bodies of Christians. It is coming back, irresistibly and swiftly. I am all too unhappily aware that mediaeval ecclesiastics will say: I told you so : you should never have left us : give the Protestants time and they will all return to the fold. Nothing could be more greatly in error than so to estimate our new interest in beauty. Mediaeval ecclesiasticism, incompatible alike with the noble morality and the progressively democratic politics of the Reformation age, will be utterly alien to the new age. It is an all but unbelievable tragedy that the old churches still refuse to hear the great Protest, the very while that children of the Reformers are beginning to see the good things their fathers swept away together with the bad.

There would be no question about the coming of a new and glorious age if the older churches might honestly try to understand the claims of the free churches, and if the reformed churches might with equal candor survey their faults and weaknesses. We cannot enter upon a great constructive time without bold, disinterested, and imaginative effort on the part of religious leaders to these ends. We cannot enter the new age until the old churches give up their concepts of an authoritative faith "once delivered to the saints" and freely accept the spirit of modernism: nor until the rank and file of the free churches do the same thing, as their leaders have already done.

And this effort must begin at home. It is time for every churchman to realize that his particular sect is insufficient for the brilliant life of the new age. Others have examined it and found it wanting. It will do little good for Protestants to lay all the blame upon the Catholics or upon each other. There is needed a rigorous attempt amongst all Protestant faiths to reestimate the essentials of religious life, and to acknowledge how many of these are found in the old church, and how many are lacking in the common American denominational parish.

In a general way, the great lack of Protestantism is not intellectual nor moral but artistic, not ethical but cultural. In the pioneer and commercial stages of American life this lack has not been so noticeable or unfortunate. For the most part those who have recognized the severance of art from religion are chiefly persons who have felt the ungodliness of art rather than the ugliness of religious forms. With the growth of cities and city planning, the rapid improvement in the popular arts, including architecture, and the advancing brilliance of civilized life the church must keep pace.

Beauty is one of the essential necessities of human existence. It is a strange fact that so few of those who are critical of the church from without or anxious within have taken notice of this lack. For several years now, both the religious and secular press have been exercised over the church. Many have attacked the theology or the ethics of the church, few have openly criticised its meager worship. Many experiments have been proposed and many tried, few have touched upon the untold assets of the world of the arts for the cultivation of that spiritual life which is the prime function of the church.

The art of worship is the all-comprehending art. No other art can satisfy the demand of human nature for an all-inclusive experience. Nor can the conditions favorable to that experience be ever freshly reproduced without the aid of all the arts.

The suggestions which are hereinafter set forth might possibly have better been arranged for three books, except that at this time it is desirable to feel the close relationships involved. If architects are to build successful church buildings, they must know more about the requirements of the worship to be conducted in those buildings. If the artist in worship is to be successful, he must know how to set forth his message architecturally as well as liturgically. If worship is to be considered as a great art, there needs to be in the

Introduction

mind of Protestantism in general a new point of view respecting both the history and the possibilities of religious culture. The material to follow, therefore, covers these three things : first, historical, psychological, or polemical matters ; second, liturgies; third, architecture.

The first group of chapters attempts to make some contribution to the polemics of the day respecting the church Jn the new' age. The attempt is born of a deep sense of need for a new popular psychology about the essential religious values. We need to reexamine the practical categories of organized religion. We need to enquire whether the ecclesiastical institution should not function primarily, not for the sake of theology, nor merely as a moral program, but to foster the religious experience.

This group opens with a discussion of the connection of art with the time spirit or national spirit of any people. Next, the historical and psychological connections and disconnections of religion and art, and their mutual need are set forth. This is followed by chapters indicating the normal connection of art with the priestly and cultural side of religion rather than its prophetic and moral side. The close of the division shows the connection of art with current church movements.

The necessity for technique in worship opens the brief liturgical discussion. In this area of liturgies there are only two important suggestions to be presented. After an examination of the nature of the inner experience of worship in the chapter "Isaiah's Mysticism," the findings are in the next chapter applied to the problems of the order of worship. There is stated definitely what I believe to be the only sound principle of liturgical construction. The other suggestion in this department is a detailed proposal for improving the opening part of the ordinary church service by the revived usage of the Introit.

These brief chapters constitute, of course, a very incomplete discussion of the subject. Other books are needed, which will present more comprehensive reports and proposals concerning modern liturgies. These will be forthcoming as improved experimentation proceeds. The definite suggestions of these chapters, however, are sufficient to specify something of the nature of the task involved in the better development of the religious cultus.

Respecting architecture, it has seemed advisable to begin with an extremely short survey of the historic styles, familiar as the history of architecture may be to many persons. Only so, however, is it possible clearly to present even a brief analysis of the meaning of style and of the special intimations of particular historic modes. There is just now a great deal of unintelligent style revival, and also much groping after new stylistic invention. The chapter discusses this situation. Other chapters relate to practical phases of church building; the modern religious ideas which need to be symbolized in the modern church ; and the handling of physical materials to the end of producing the desired atmosphere or structural tone in the building. The facts presented in the chapter on the chancel, together with their illustration, are largely unknown either to the church world or to the architectural world.

These suggestions are written for the attention of architects as well as for church building committees and for people who wish to enrich their powers of appreciation. If I did not know the facts to the contrary, I should be inclined to credit the architectural profession with competency in these matters. There are brilliant leaders who have thought deeply upon the intellectual issues involved in church building, and whose canons of art are of the highest order. This exceptional ability, however, has not yet succeeded in forestalling the construction of many hopelessly ugly churches. It is hoped, also, that the chapters may be of practical assistance to the competent architect in his efforts to persuade building committees to the acceptance of more excellent forms.

The book is not a defence of beauty or of art; they will take care of themselves. It is not so certain that the art of worship will take care of itself. The art of worship is the combination of all the arts ; the experience of worship is the consummation of all experience, whether of beauty or of goodness or of truth. The book is an effort to assist the Teli-

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Introduction

gious world to a recognition of the category of beauty as a primary and necessary element in the religious reconstruction of the new age.

I am well aware that it is talking high talk to use the term "new age," and that the term is being used by many, indefinably and loosely. But in the thought of many other students of history, the issues of the day in all departments of life are of such a character as to warrant the use of the words, with a definite meaning. Although I do not agree with the historical interpretations or the philosophic assumptions of Mr. Ralph Adams Cram, his insistence at this point is illuminating. "History is a series of resurrections, for the rhythm of change is invariable. Each epoch of five hundred years follows the same monotonous course, though made distinctive by new variations. . . . We are today in the midst of just such a grinding collapse as that which overtook Rome and the empire of Charlemagne and the Christian Commonwealths of the Middle Ages. . . . Before the year 2000, now but two generations away, modern civilization will have passed and a new era have taken its place."*

Before the war, the late Professor Charles R. Henderson wrote : "We are now in the midst of a transformation more significant than the downfall of the Roman Empire, the rise of modern nationalities, or the Reformation." In a lecture on architecture, Mr. Claude Bragdon used this phrase: "During the post-Renaissance or the Scientific period, of which the war probably marks the close."f Mr. Alfred H. Lloyd in his paragraphs on "The Glory of Democracy" expresses the same view. "A time of epochal transition! Truly we are nearing something new in life. A time of creative living must be at hand."

The most recent definition of the nature of present-day change, in the light of the historic sweep of human feelings, is that of Professor Albert Parker Fitch. "We are witnessing in fact the final emancipation, or if you please, defection, of society from the enchantment of the Middle Ages. ... If the political, ethical, economic and aesthetic interests of man

* Cram, "Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh," pp. 2 and 3. t Architectural Record, September, 1918.

are changing, it is safe to assume that his religious world is being transformed too."*

These and other writers have each a somewhat differing interpretation of the meaning of the times. They all agree in expressing the long historic power of the Reformation forces, the unsatisfactory character of their practical outcome, and the necessity for new integrations of life so farreaching in character as to constitute a similarly forceful historic movement.

I am not presuming to estimate all the factors material to the new construction of life, but only one of them. In the new age, religion will have new things to say and a new burden of utterance seeking to say them. It will be keyed to the discovery of new forms for telling its word to people. If it does not, it will not reach people. In the world of the arts it will find the means for its new creative and re-creative life. In the experience of worship it will center the joys of its new faiths in human nature and its new hopes of divine life. In the better development of the art of worship it will fulfil its function of lifting life out of its ugly materialism onward and upward toward the truth and the goodness and the beauty that is to be.

* Fitch, "Can the Church Survive in the Changing Order 1 ?" pp. 26 and 43.

Chapter II : An Age Described by Its Art

WE are just now so accustomed to looking at everything from the point of view of peoples, tribes, and nations that it is natural to begin our notice of the arts from the same point of view. Peoples are known by their art, the English by Shakespeare and the Prayer Book, the Greeks by the Parthenon, the American Negro by his folk melodies. So also we know an age by its art, the mediaeval time by the great Gothic buildings, the artificialities of early eighteenth century life by English poems and French palaces, the Classic revival by the Renaissance buildings of Italy and all Europe ; and all the greater and lesser movements of human feeling by their records in stone or letters or music.

The arts constitute the description of the world as an age or a people apprehends it. The spiritual life of a time is depicted with unescapable exactness in its artistry. A spiritual movement that does not find expression in the arts cannot attain self -consciousness or dominance or survival. An age or a people that does not reach any self-realization or any unity of thought or feeling that breaks forth into artistic expression is nondescript.

Three little objects in my study signify what I mean. One is a katchina of the Hopi Indians of Arizona, a small grass mat with the woven figure of an air spirit arrayed in headdress and apron. One is a little brass tray with the beautiful geometric pattern of stars in parallel lines so typical of Saracenic art. The third is a little Catholic image of Santa Barbara from Brittany. You could take up one of these little objects and describe almost offhand the main characteristics of the life from which it came, as a scientist reconstructs some old dinosaur from one of the fossil bones. You could conjure, for instance, the whole structure of fatalism in philosophy, despotism in government, the abstract decoration, the polygamy, and everything else from beggar to caliph that belonged in the same world with the little piece of brass : and also the faiths, feelings, institutions, and customs that belong with the descriptions of the universe of which the others are symbols. Trifling as the little objects are, no such thing is ever produced in any nondescript commonwealth. Each has been cast up from a sea of human life, wide and deep, of which it is, so to speak, only a fleck of foam left to remind us of the tossing waters of many souls. Sorry indeed is that citizenship and weak of mind the generation which cannot leave behind even so slight a mark or sign to testify its struggle for faith or describe its hope.

Or we may come at the idea by another more familiar route. One of the most early and simple of the promptings which lead people to travel to foreign parts is an interest in the picturesque. Partly childish, the interest is also profound. It is the pleasure of discovering communities that are descript rather than nondescript — Oberammergau, Bangkok, Oxford, Kioto, or any other place where there has been some sustained attempt to describe all things and set forth the common view in laws, customs, and all the arts of life from house building to worship. One does not like to see among the maidens at a well in the old land of Ephraim that some carry water in the tall earthern jars of ancient mould and some in the huge tins of an American oil company. It spoils the picture. The charm, the unity, the satisfaction are gone. One does not wish to go abroad unless he may return and say: This is the way the Romans do; thus and so it is among the Fijis. And some people when they find such a place of unity and charm do not come again home to their own nondescript life and town.