Historical Attitudes That Have Shaped the Church's Use of the Arts

By Matthew R. S. Todd

Matthew Todd reflects on two millennia of religious action, reaction, and inaction with the arts. His composition mines the question, "What attitudes have shaped the Church's use of the arts?" The book briefly addresses a range of diverse attitudes encompassing the disciplines of theology, philosophy, sociology, humanities, aesthetics and psychology. A panorama of attitudes are winnowed out from historical epochs in the Ancient, Medieval, Reformational and Modern/Postmodern Church. What emerges is that the Church's attitudes towards the arts is mixed and deeply impacted by secular practices, renewal, philosophical movements, and theological interpretation. Two things can be stated at the outset: first, the Church's attitudes towards the arts have not been conceived in a vacuum. Secondly, as C.S. Lewis pointed out, when "Christian activities have been directed toward this present world... the arts (have) tended to flourish in its neighborhood." This is the first book I've seen that shows the diversity of attitudes that have shaped the Church's involvement in the arts to the present day. The Church's attitudes towards the arts have often been shaped by various movements and interpretations. Often today I find Christians largely unaware of how much Western culture has been shaped by Christian values. Matthew helps us get a more informed perspective. Dal Schindell, Instructor in Art & Christianity, Director of the Lookout Gallery, Regent College

• Language: English
• Publisher: Word Alive Press
• Release date: Jan 4, 2015
• ISBN: 9781770691629

Book preview

About the Author

Matthew Todd (MCS, RegentCollege, and M.A., TrinityWesternUniversity) served fifteen years as adjunct and session philosophy, ethics, and theology teacher with L.I.F.E. and P.L.B.C. Canada. Currently a track Associate in Music Education with PMPGMBC, he has authored a variety of articles on cross-cultural work and music in such journals as Foursquare World Advance, MB Herald, MB Chinese Herald, Christian Sound Song, Spirit Journal, Sword and Trumpet, Direction, CRUX, and Grace Literature.  As a practitioner, he has been extensively involved as a percussionist; some of those contexts have included drumming for World Vision, Promise Keepers, and the Vancouver Chinese Oratorio Society. Apart from various stints in recording studios, of late Matthew has contributed to a recent CD with Harvey Loland (of the Royal Heirs) and eleven CD recordings as timpanist and percussionist with the Dr. David Lam orchestra (alongside Sinfonia Mosaic) of Vancouver, BC. (the latter recordings are now catalogued in the Oberlin Music College Library).  In 2008, Matthew published a book titled, The Interface of the Percussive Arts, Religious Experience, and Sacred Association (Word Alive Press, Winnipeg, MB). The author is currently engaged in a doctoral program at CTC-UBC in intercultural studies.

Endorsements

This is the first book I've seen that shows the diversity of attitudes that have shaped the Church's involvement in the arts to the present day. The Church's attitudes towards the arts have often been shaped by various movements and interpretations. Often today I find Christians largely unaware of how much Western culture has been shaped by Christian values. Matthew helps us get a more informed perspective.

Dal Schindell

Instructor in Art Christianity

Director of the Lookout Gallery, RegentCollege

Art is often the avant-garde of culture, whereas Evangelical Christians have been languishing in this area of influence.  The author challenges us to examine our present attitude towards arts and calls upon the Church to once again provide the artistic leadership for our culture.

Dr. Paul C. Wang

Vice-Principal

Canadian ChineseSchool of Theology

Tyndale Seminary

The Christian Church faces the perennial problem of how to relate to its surrounding culture(s).  Three major areas within this complex and often controversial problem—philosophy, science, and the arts—are especially urgent today.  Matthew Todd’s book is a timely and much needed look at the first, and especially the last of these important areas.  As Todd points out, the Hebrew tradition, of which the Church was an heir, is ambivalent towards the arts.  On the one hand, for example, the origin of the arts is placed in the cursed line of Cain—the acquirer (Gen. 5).  On the other hand, the first person God said he had filled with His Spirit was to do artistic work for Him (Exod. 31:3, 31)!  In the midst of such ambiguity, the Church has been struggling in making up its mind about the arts.  Todd’s research helpfully traces this struggle throughout the history of Christianity to the present day.  Not only does he identify some of the expressed attitudes through the ages, more importantly, he uncovers the underlying philosophies which led to those attitudes.  As Todd shows, these philosophies themselves have often been adaptations of secular cultures.  In fact, the Church’s interactions with both philosophy and the arts have been a complex affair, the complexity of which probably has not been fully apparent to those who have wrestled with it.  This book does much to lay this bare so the Church can continue to think carefully regarding this subject.  May it prompt other Christians—artists, exegetes, and theologians alike—to work towards a God-honouring integration of the Christian faith and the arts.

Marcus K. M. Tso, BASc, MDiv, PhD

Adjunct Professor of Biblical Studies

Carey Theological College

Sessional Lecturer of Old Testament

Regent College

Dedication

At some level, my entire family has been engaged in artistic initiatives in multifaceted ways. My father’s side of the family has had a broad gamut of musicians and entertainers (from professional violinists to drummers); Mandrake the magician was my paternal grandmother’s uncle with a history in theater and vaudeville; my great, great uncle Harold Stoney was our patriarch in organizing orchestras. Dad took the arts to another level as a music performer (motion pictures, TV shows, studio and radio shows, Calgary and Vancouver symphonies), teacher (U.B.C., various colleges), and clinician (B.C.M.E.A., C.M.E.A., A.M.E.A.). My wife and I have given much of our adult lives to bringing shape to various artistic activities on the stage, in the studio, and in the community.

Yet my primary interest in this topic is drawn from my observation of the Church wrestling with its opportunities and limitations in redeeming the arts. I’ve observed the Church draw the line at times on the use of the arts, which has raised questions in my mind. Some of those I address in this work. Even those churches that consider themselves as being on the progressive edge in the usage of the arts need to come to terms with the legacy they have been bequeathed.

The early seeds of creativity for this book grew out of a music performance project that I did in a RegentCollege course in 1997, entitled Christian Imagination, based on the hypothesis of the suppression of rhythm and percussive arts in the history of the Church. My hypothesis was extended more comprehensively with art history and Church attitudes. I am grateful to Loren Wilkinson for challenging me to reflect more broadly and integratively on the arts at that time. This belated published volume represents some closure on the topic with an interest to share its insights in the hope that someone might find it useful. I have only made a few minor revisions to the original manuscript; the initial purpose was to mine the research in building a case that reveals what attitudes shaped the Church’s use of the arts. Hence that template has shaped the trajectory of this brief work.

My dedication of this brief volume is to those who have awakened in me, and supported me in expanding my understanding of the arts and the greater beauty they point to. I especially dedicate this volume to Linda, and to the precious memory of my paternal grandmother and sister, for whom one stage was never enough.

Table of Contents

About the Author

Endorsements

Dedication

Introduction

ONE

Ancient Church Attitudes (Early Church to 600 A.D.)

Attitudes Towards the Arts Inherited from a Hebrew Context

Philosophy that Would Foster Attitudes Towards the Arts

The Church’s Attitude Towards the Arts as Demonstrated in the Arts Generally

The Church’s Attitude Towards the Performing Arts, Music and Percussion

Some Conclusions on Ancient Church Attitudes Towards the Arts

TWO

Medieval Church Attitudes (600 to 1517 A.D.)

Philosophy that Would Foster Attitudes Towards the Arts

The Church’s Attitude Towards the Arts as Demonstrated in Issues and Artistic Works

The Church’s Attitude Towards Music

Some Conclusions on Medieval Church Attitudes Towards the Arts

THREE

Reformation Church Attitudes (to 1799 A.D.)

Philosophy that Would Foster Attitudes Towards the Arts

The Church’s Attitude Towards the Arts as Demonstrated in Issues and Artistic Works

The Church’s Attitude Towards Music

Some Conclusions on Church Attitudes Towards the Arts

FOUR

Modern Church Attitudes (1800 to 2000 A.D.)

Philosophy and Thought that Would Foster Attitudes Towards the Arts

The Church’s Attitude Towards  the Arts in Word and Deed

The Church’s Attitude Towards Music

Some Conclusions on Modern Church Attitudes Towards the Arts

Conclusion

Bibliography and Works Cited

Endnotes

Introduction

This composition mines the question, What attitudes have shaped the Church’s use of the arts?

It will explore attitudes of thinking (i.e., philosophy/theology seminal in the formation and mirroring of inclinations), behaving (i.e., attitudes demonstrated in conduct, like rejection, violence, and rebellion), and feeling (ie., dispositions and expressions of fear or justification) to assess Church opinions.

The project is a brief historical overview of both the Western and Eastern Church with the weight of emphasis resting on the West. A Western bias will become more apparent in the later stages with an increasing focus on Protestant, American, and Evangelical contexts. Only cursory comments will be intermittently made on Coptic, Oriental, African, and Latin American thought about the arts, yet it is recognized that their attitudes tend to break into two streams. First, some of their thinking about the arts has been an extension of Eastern and WesternChurch issues. Secondly, some of their attitudes and traditions have been less suppressive towards the arts on account of the fact they’ve had less connection with some of the philosophical and theological hang-ups that segments of the Western and Eastern Church have had.

This book is comprehensive in scope, but not in detail. It will address a range of diverse attitudes encompassing the disciplines of theology, history, philosophy, sociology, humanities, aesthetics, and psychology (to the extent that speculation is made on the state of mind and conduct).

In different epochs, focus will be given to the attitudes of official Church authorities, monarchs (State heads of the Church), high culture, theologians, the commoner, individual personalities and artists, and the Church broadly. Personalities highlighted will be comprehensive in the sense that they are representative of distinct attitudes of the Church’s history.

Elaboration on artistic techniques or styles will only be done where they suggest attitudes that contributed to their shape and expression.

This sojourn in a panorama of snapshots (of Church attitudes) winnows out glaring historical high points in four parts from the Ancient, Medieval, Reformational, and ModernChurch. The picture of the Church’s attitude towards the arts is often uneven, mixed, and deeply impacted by the dynamics of secular practices, renewal and philosophical movements, and hermeneutics and interpretation.

Two things can be stated here at the outset. First, the Church’s attitudes towards the arts have not been conceived in a vacuum. Secondly, as Lewis has pointed out, when

Christian activities have been directed toward this present world…the arts…[have]…tended to flourish in its neighborhood.[1]

But [they had] this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power may be of God and not from [themselves].

2 Corinthians 4:7 (NASB)

ONE

Ancient Church Attitudes (Early Church to 600 A.D.)

Attitudes Towards the Arts Inherited from a Hebrew Context

The early Christians embraced within their lives art forms, conventions, and worldviews of their time.[2] Their attitudes towards the arts didn’t formulate within a void—there were both Jewish and Hellenistic influences. Some articulate that the legacy they inherited from their Jewish predecessors was an attitude that shunned artistic endeavors out of respect for the Decalogue.[3] In fact, the evidence would suggest that there existed throughout Hebrew literature two streams of thought towards the arts, one pro-iconic and pro-ritualistic, and the other anti-iconic and anti-ritualistic, existing side by side.[4] Laeuchli suggests that neither ancient Israel or Judaism solved their iconic dilemma, hence Christianity

[I]nherited the dilemma from Judaism and to a lesser degree from intellectual Hellenistic culture…We can [also] identify theological as well as social polarities within the iconic dilemma of the Christian church itself, without the need to trace each of them back to a specific Greek, Roman, or Judaic roots.[5]

It is important to note that within this legacy the Jews showed a significant interest in art. There seemed to be an orthodox recognition that Leviticus 26:1 was not against the making of representational art, but against worshipping art.[6] Representational art is portrayed throughout the Bible as commanded by God, especially in connection with the tabernacle (Exodus 25) and the temple’s architecture and contents (1 Chronicles 28:11).[7] The Jews also displayed a positive interest in secular art, as can be seen in the design of Solomon’s throne (1 Kings 10).[8] Jesus even used representational art as an illustration (John 3:14-15). The early Christians inherited the Old Testament Scriptures that showed concern for a variety of art forms.[9]

In the formation of the New Testament, even John addresses art and heaven (Revelation 15:2-3) and lends discussion to the view that at the second coming, the Lordship of Christ would include everything.[10] The EarlyChurch was in a position to inherit attitudes from the historic believing community that had a rich tradition in arts and crafts. Archaeological research indicates that these ranged from potters, architects, carpenters, masons, metalworkers, tanners, dyers, wood and ivory carvers, weavers, embroiderers, and craftsmen in ornaments.[11] In spite of the many imported and imitated styles, there was a tradition that the work of the artist and craftsman could be agreeable to God if the purpose was appropriate (Exodus 28:3; 31:1-5). Schapiro clearly documents that early Christians selected ideas and themes from Jewish art.[12]

Philosophy that Would Foster Attitudes Towards the Arts

Perhaps from a very early period, some Christians "assumed that they had the apostle Paul’s support [along with other New Testament references] in viewing