On Aesthetics

The Bagsvaerd Church in Copenhagen, designed by Jorn Utzon, chief architect of the Sydney Opera House.

Useless Beauty

The low evangelical Reformed tradition of the mid to late 20th century in which I grew up struggled with aesthetics in our meeting spaces. Well, “struggled” would be too strong a word for what was a contemporary blind ignorance borne from historical suspicion.

A suspicion that was grounded I suspect in the fear that, if we even considered the colour of the walls, or sought to add beauty into the budget of our new building then anything could happen. One minute we would be poring over colour swabs and wall textures, then nek minnit we’re venerating the saints and considering transubstantiation all over again.

Which, if nothing else, proves that the iconoclasm of the earlier centuries has had a long tail. A tail that has a vigorous sweep.

And a wide sweep too. In my own experience it was not as if the drab buildings that housed our people were hermetically sealed off from other forms of “drab”, so to speak. The building mood reflected our general mood towards the arts and the aesthetic. It was a mood of suspicion.

We probably never articulated it that way. We most likely saw excess  – anything that was not completely necessary – as a waste of time and money.

We did art poorly (or in kitsch fashion). We did not write novels or at least not ones that were not so awful they were ironically good in an awful way. Any commitment to film and art was seen as a lure away from Jesus, a temptress that would lead us down the path of Vanity Fair and away from gospel proclamation.

The exodus of many a fine young artist, or the sidelining of those who called for a richer aesthetic in our architecture is fairly well documented. There were brave souls who stayed, yet they were often on the outer.

And whether it’s apocryphal or not, when a ministry leader tells gifted young Christians that they should delay their desire – and gifting –  to write novels until the age-to-come, and that their task now is to get on with gospel proclamation, well, where to start?

Here’s where to start: At the very time our culture is looking for a better story (and we have one), we’re extremely bland at best, and downright poor at worst, at pitching it. We vacated that space. Others filled it. We’re struggling to refill it at a time when we need to.

So many of the best and brightest culture shapers and story tellers in the modern West have been anti-gospel and they are very good at pitching such ideas aesthetically.  And when ethics in our age is being driven by aesthetics, that’s problematic. Such artists are exceptionally capable of pitching bad news as good news.

We, meanwhile, have become exceptionally incapable of pitching good news as good news.  Though, thankfully, from my vantage point, that seems to be changing. I am seeing a return to compelling aesthetics among a younger generation of Christians, many of whom have used social media in good and wise ways, and ways that are as beautiful as the message is true.

But historically, such a statement by that ministry leader (as I say, apocryphal or not) has left us with a gospel proclamation style in many of our churches that is more like the moon and less like the sun. So what should be warm and enlivening, is now clear, bright and cold, a mere reflection and refraction of what it ought to be. Our preaching is aping our buildings.

Orthodoxy and Architecture

Now don’t get me wrong. I am not calling for a return to a more florid aesthetic in order to tap into the cultural moment we are having. A moment in which, supposedly, hordes of Protestants sick to the back teeth of boring aesthetics, are heading off to flamboyant Rome or the stern but gilded Patriarchs.

There are other reasons – more political and existential – that I can admit to for this exodus. But let’s not overplay its existence or its future. For every Protestant turning up to the Roman Catholic Church, all eager for aesthetic and aged experiences, there are eight or so communicants who are leaving.

And there is an increasing number of secular young people joining our Protestant churches from zero church background at all. Jesus, it turns out, is more beautiful to them, than any of the ugliness portrayed as otherwise in the culture.

Aesthetics is not enough. And it cannot be the centre. I say to those joining Rome that you can have your aesthetics at the alter, but you have to leave your assurance behind at the pulpit.

I am chastened somewhat in my push for a richer aesthetic in our tradition by the always excellent Karen Swallow Prior in her book, The Evangelical Imagination: How Stories, Images and Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis.

For some that very book title is an oxymoron. Swallow Prior, however, reminds us that all of our traditions have a peculiar aesthetic. And if we think that our tradition does not, then we ought to ask someone from another tradition about that.

And in terms of building aesthetics, Swallow Prior, acknowledges the drudgery of much of our building work, but adds:

There is much to justly lamenting anemic church architecture. But there is also much that we might miss by focussing on what is lacking. If we compare ancient European cathedrals with the plain style of old New England churches, for example, we might think that the latter comes up short.

That’s a good reminder. There is something going on here. It reminds us that in church buildings as in all art, the space where there is “nothing” is just as important as the space where there is “something”. At our best we “add lightness and simplicity” in our Protestant buildings . We don’t simply take away in an iconoclastic – and reductionist – flurry and fury.

Iconic Audio-Visuals

Something theological is going on. Karen Swallow Prior quotes David Morgan on the cultural function of visuality. Morgan argues that Protestant worship spaces are not a rejection of beauty, but reflect different beliefs and values.  There is something of the “audio-visual” about our buildings. They are iconic – in the true sense of that term – whether we admit it or not. Swallow Prior states, in both her words, and in quoting Morgan:

…[But]…even a matter as simple as the pews being arranged in rows facing the pulpit creates a visual space and embodied means of reinforcing the priority of the Word. Thus the worship spaces of Protestant churches historically,”underscore the iconicity of words, which Protestants elevate about materiality as they do souls above bodies.”

To which I would says “two cheers for that!” Why not three? Because, firstly and of primacy, is the fact that the “word became flesh”. We come to the Word to be ruled and reigned by King Jesus, the Word made flesh.

And secondly, only two cheers because of the resurrection. We are not dualists. God will not elevate a soul above a body on the last day. Protestants might do that in the here and now. But that runs the risk of a two-speed Christian economy.  One in which my interior life matters and my exterior life does not. God will join soul and body  again at the resurrection because the separator of body and soul – death – is our final enemy to be defeated.

So perhaps, just perhaps, a good aesthetic in our buildings, one that adds to our mood and lightens our experience, is a reminder of the last day and the new creation. Just as the tabernacle and temple had lush fruit and tree designs in them as a reminder of God’s presence in the Garden, surely something about how we shape our buildings can look forward to the garden city of the New Jerusalem?

Perhaps our aversion to aesthetics is in order that the beauty of Christ – who in his flesh had nothing about him that we might desire (Isaiah 53:2) – be not diminished. Yet equally, does not a commitment to aesthetics enhance that beauty? It could be argued both ways. More to the point, why can it not be both?

The question of course is, how did we arrive at the point where we put an ugly fence around the law in order to avoid breaking the law?  How did we arrive at the point that in some inarticulate way we decided to be as bland and boring as possible to avoid the risk of iconography? Drab and dull to avoid the accusation of excess? Why is simple beauty not included in the price of Protestant worship?

To believe that we can bifurcate our own love of beauty, or form and function reduces us to dualism. And the risk of hypocrisy.  The great irony of many of us is that we were forced to “wear our best” to church because of God and all that, but equally forced to do so to sit in a building that was uniformly ugly.

But even as Christians we build our own houses to reflect good modern design, and spend hours (days?) poring over swatches and samples for our own homes. Does this betray a commitment to mammon?

Maybe. But maybe not. Maybe it just reflects the fact that beauty and order and well-crafted materials (within our budget), add something to our lives that we cannot fully articulate. And as the saying goes, we shape our buildings and then they shape us.

As someone who loves modernism, its rich sleekness and functionality, I see no reason why such things cannot be included in a new church building. Of course costs come into it. But just as with a marriage retreat or paid supervision, perhaps we ought to see such costs as investments.

Why can we as Protestants not be delighted in a well formed, aesthetically pleasing church building that is not over-adorned, but is not ugly cheap brick with poor lighting, less than functional spaces, and looks more like the warehouse from whence the building products were delivered, than anything else?

And why should we have to give air cover to such perceived “frivolities” with gospel excuses such as “newcomers will expect a building that they would be comfortable in or are familiar with in terms of amenities”?

Why can we not just project a good aesthetic because it’s delightful? That enfant terrible of French literature, Michel Houellebecq, himself a raucous and devout libertine, observed that (post-Vatican II), the Roman Catholic Church had become ugly just at the very time that we needed beauty.

The gospel is a beautiful gift to the world that has lost a vision for true beauty. Surely our buildings can be such a gift too.