Can contemporary art be “Christian” or “unchristian”? In the United States, Christians, especially Protestants, of many stripes debate the relevance and appropriateness of visual culture to issues of faith. In this paper, I compare the evangelical Protestant attitude toward contemporary art between 1960 and the mid 1980s with the liberal Protestant attitude during the same period. I approach this topic through a case study that compares the material about visual art published in the popular liberal publication The Christian Century with that in its evangelical counterpart, Christianity Today. I ask how the diverging liberal and evangelical stances toward culture inform their postures toward the visual art world and what it means to produce “Christian” art. Broadly construed, my findings point to the reverberating effects of the modernist-fundamentalist split occurring in the U.S. in the 1920s, iconized in the Scopes Trial of 1925. By investigating archival material from two popular periodicals, I explore the artistic narratives that permeated beyond academic circles into the larger public. This methodology produces findings that add to our understanding of the beliefs and values belonging to liberal Protestant and evangelical communities in the U.S.
While many scholars, including George Marsden and Mark Noll, continue to assess the general effects of this controversy and the state of evangelicalism, little has been done to examine its impact on attitudes toward visual art. In particular, a study comparing attitudes between the two Protestant theological poles is needed, especially during the quarter century in question. Scholars have addressed peripheral topics, such as Sally Promey’s work on the liberal relationship with modern art between 1945 and 1965, David Morgan’s work on twentieth-century Protestant material culture, and Jonathan Anderson and Daniell Siedell’s theoretical grapplings with the rift between the contemporary Christian church and visual art.
Thus, this much needed analysis demonstrates that CC and CT agree it is necessary to engage with twentieth-century visual art and the contemporary artist. However, CC encourages an engagement that theologically embraces such artworks and artists, while CT encourages engagement so that its readers can understand and critique these works as pessimistic renderings of the perceived secular culture.
My study begins in the 1960s because the decade marks a newfound evangelical interest in contemporary art. As Sally Promey’s research demonstrates, liberal Protestants began to engage with twentieth-century art around 1945. Liberals clung to modern art to distance themselves from the “kitsch” and “sentimental” art of Christian fundamentalism. At the time, fundamentalist churches remained largely silent on the issue. According to Marsden, when evangelicalism emerged as a tempered offshoot of fundamentalism in the 1950s, the new movement sought to re-engage with culture. Evangelicals founded Christianity Today (CT) in 1956 to challenge the widely popular liberal periodical, The Christian Century (CC). CT quickly became the leading Protestant publication. Discussions about aesthetics and the arts within CT’s pages picked up in the 1960s, as did a wider evangelical interest in the issue. I end my study in the mid-1980s due to an ensuing shift in evangelical engagement with visual art toward politics, a topic outside the scope of this paper. In the late 1980s, the Religious Right, a mode of evangelicalism and fundamentalism, began to decry the rise of allegedly pornographic art like Robert Mapplethorpe’s photography, and the conversation surrounding visual art merged with discussions about pornography and censorship.
Between 1965 and the mid 1980s, CT and CC emerge as theologically opposing camps in a battle over the relevance of visual art. CC invites its Christian readers to familiarize themselves with contemporary art so that the Church may move with and appropriate to the spirit of the age. This cultural embrace is rooted in the aesthetic theologies presented across its pages. Namely, CC embraces the secular by suggesting that all art “contributes to the manifold wonder and glory of creation” and is a servant of “mystery and ultimate reality.” [1] CC is radically open to the possibility that any artwork can be a source of revelation and devotion, and when prompted to define “Christian art,” the periodical refrains from doing so. [2] Meanwhile, CT holds twentieth-century art at arm’s length. Some authors are charitable toward modern and contemporary styles, but present in CT and not CC is a body of authors who critique the art world. [3] They crucify movements like “art for art’s sake” and abstract expressionism as meaningless, immoral, and expressions of rebellion against God. A theology that seeks to be “in but not of the world” undergirds their accounts. Thus, CT calls for a Christian revival within the arts and an alternative economy of the arts to counter the secular onslaught, complete with Christian artists, Christian art historians, and Christian art critics. [4] Therefore, the Christian artist—and by extension, Christian art—should “clothe the timeless in the timely” by speaking in contemporary visual languages in ways that point toward Christian truth. [5]
[1] Ronald G. Goetz, “The Creature’s Creation: Is Art 'Helpful' to Faith?,” The Christian Century 99, no. 11 (March 31, 1982): 369; Marvin P. Halverson, “If the Arts Are to Return,” The Christian Century 78, no. 51 (December 20, 1961): 1527.
[2] Goetz, “The Creature’s Creation,” 370; James M. Wall, “Art Speaks to Us of the Unity of Life,” The Christian Century 103, no. 20 (June 18 - 25, 1986): 572; Jane Dillenberger, “What Is Christian Art?,” The Christian Century 83, no. 16 (April 20, 1966): 499.
[3] Tim Stafford, “Creation: The Ultimate Art,” Christianity Today 23, no. 6 (December 15, 1978): 18.
[4] H.R. Rookmaaker, “Letter to A Christian Artist,” Christianity Today 10, no. 23, (September 2, 1966): 25; Calvin Seerveld, “Can Art Survive the Secular Onslaught,” Christianity Today 25, no. 13 (July 17, 1981): 71-75.
[5] James Wesley Ingles, “Art as Incarnation,” Christianity Today 7, no. 11 (March 1, 1963): 15.
This paper compares liberal Protestant with evangelical Protestant attitudes toward contemporary art between 1960 and the mid-1980s. Following the fundamentalist-modernist split in the United States in the 1920s, theologically orthodox and liberal Protestants diverged on many cultural issues. A study comparing the diverging theological stances on visual art has yet to be done. I approach this topic through a case study comparing content about contemporary art published in the popular liberal publication The Christian Century (CC) with that in its evangelical counterpart, Christianity Today (CT), during the quarter century in question. I demonstrate that CC theologically embraces contemporary art by suggesting all art can contribute to Christian devotion, while CT critiques such art as pessimistic reflections of secularity. By exploring the rhetoric permeating the larger public through popular periodicals, this paper enhances our understanding of the beliefs and values making up liberal Protestant and evangelical communities in the U.S.