Does Protestantism contribute to Western Civilization?

St Paul's (Anglican) Cathedral, London

I follow a few Roman Catholic bloggers, thinkers, and video bloggers.  As fellow Christians we have a great many shared interests morally, spiritually, politically, and culturally: we proclaim the same Risen Christ, read the same New Testament, recite the same Creeds, worship on the same Holy Days (and even sing some of the same hymns), advocate for the same moral values.  Despite the fact that we have some different understandings of the church, spiritual authority, and how our relationship to God 'works', we nevertheless share a great deal of common interest and concern.
In fact, I would say that Roman Catholics more than either Evangelical or Historic Protestants are really on the forefront of thinking through how to revitalize and preserve Western Civilization.

This is a good thing because (despite the naysayers in some quarters of our culture), while every civilization has its evils (including the West), nevertheless Western Civilization has done more to promote goodness, freedom, truth, reason and mercy than any other human movement in History, and I'm very proud to be a product and heir of it.

Western Civilization is inescapably bound up with Christianity, so much so that Winston Churchill quite happily called it "Christian Civilization".  Inspired by the Christian message, the artistic and spiritual achievements of Western Civilization are simply staggering.

But what I've noticed is that you'll sometimes hear Roman Catholic thinkers say something along the lines of "When I say Western or Christian civilization, I am essentially talking about Roman Catholic Civilization, because the two are the same thing..."  Indeed, a few would even point to the iconoclastic tendencies of some forms of Protestantism (i.e. Puritanism), to argue that Protestantism as a whole has been a corrosive influence on Western Civilization, rather than really a contributor to it.

But clearly it is a mistake to equate Western Civilization with the Roman Catholic Church or its members' contributions.  For one thing, a major contributor to Western Civilization is without doubt the pre-Christian Grecco-Roman heritage.  The art, architecture, literature, philosophy, and legal traditions of Athens and Rome are absolutely essential to Western Civilization, and yet none of these were originally created by Roman Catholics.  Yet what would Western Civilization be without Homer or Plato or Aristotle or Virgil or Cicero?

Even if we narrow the discussion to Christendom and explicitly Christian achievements, we still find that there are major contributions to Western Civilization coming from non-Roman Catholic sources.  For example, if Greece is part of Western Civilization (and it obviously is), then that means that the cultural achievements born out of Eastern Orthodox Churches need to be considered right along side those of the Roman Catholic Church.  And it is certain that the contributions to Christian Civilization coming from Eastern Orthodox creators such as Rachmaninoff or Dostoevsky are substantial.

There can be absolutely no doubt that Protestants also have also made major positive contributions to Western, Christian Civilization as a whole.  A few examples:

Music:
I once heard the (Roman Catholic) Philosopher Peter Kreeft say that one reason he believed in the existence of God was simply the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.  I agree.
And Bach was a Protestant; he composed major spiritual works such as the St. Matthew Passion.
Beethoven was Roman Catholic, to be sure...but Handel was Protestant.  Palestrina was Catholic, but Mendelssohn was Protestant.  So were Paul Manz, and Hubert Parry and John Rutter and Henry Purcell.

Sacred Architecture:
Catholics are quite right to celebrate the great medieval and Renaissance churches...but what of the very iconic and significant contributions to sacred architecture made by men such as Sir Christopher Wren or Richard Upjohn?  The Gothic revival itself was born in Protestant England.

Visual Arts:
I'll freely admit that most of the greatest visual artists, especially those working with Biblical and Spiritual themes were Roman Catholics, such as Michelangelo and Raphael.  But surely the contributions of a Protestant like Rembrandt are nothing to sneer at either?

Literature:
Catholics are quite right to rejoice in the majesty of Dante's Divine Comedy.  But what of Milton's Paradise Lost?  What of Bunyan?  For that matter, what of Shakespeare, whose work is shot through with spiritual themes?  All Protestant.

Many younger Roman Catholics that I know are glad to count Tolkien and Chesterton among their number.  And well they should be, for these are simply outstanding authors.  But let us not forget that C.S. Lewis, George MacDonald, Dorothy Sayers, T.S. Elliot, and Charles Williams were all Protestants.

Of course, for English-speakers the King James Version of the Bible is itself an extremely important contribution to our literary tradition.

Ideas and Learning:
In terms of the "big ideas" that shaped Western Civilization, the Protestant affirmation of 'the priesthood of all believers' meant that each believer was equal in the community of faith, which led to the birth of modern notions of equality and the belief that every citizen should have a say in government (i.e. 'one-man-one-vote' style democracy).  This is why the Pilgrims on the Mayflower all got together and voted on a written constitution for how their colony would be run, which has had a tremendous impact on the emergence of our American Republic.  The Protestant insistence that everyone should read the Bible for himself led to the development of universal education and widespread literacy.

Institutions of higher learning such as Harvard, Princeton, and Yale and many others besides, which have come to have tremendous cultural influence, were originally created for the stated purpose of spreading Protestant Christianity.  This is barely even to begin to scratch the surface of the influence of Protestantism on Western thought and ideas over the course of these last 500 years.

Certainly, I do not aim to downplay the absolutely essential and glorious contributions of Roman Catholics to our Civilization; they are profound.  Nor am I suggesting that we should be content to enjoy or celebrate the contributions of only our own particular branch of Christianity.  The truth I want to highlight is that members of all three major branches of Christianity - Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant - have made significant contributions to our Christian Civilization, and we should celebrate and share together all of them as gifts to us all from the Lord whom we all profess.

For the reasons noted in my previous post, I have come to believe that it is Secularism (not Protestantism) which is incapable of making significant contributions to our civilization, because it has no great Beauty with a capitol 'B' or Truth with a capitol 'T' that has the power to captivate men's minds and inspire their creativity for centuries on end, as the Lord of the Bible has indeed done for Western Civilization.

Beauty will Save the World...

I spent years as a child attending mass at my Roman Catholic School.  Each week we entered a church, fragrant with with candles and hints of incense.  Before us were statues of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, and a statue of Christ crucified, as well as a priest wearing colorful robes.  Surrounding us were dazzling stained glass windows depicting numerous Biblical stories and saints and Christian symbols, much of which I did not understand...but it clearly meant something.

Later in my youth I joined a fervently evangelical Baptist Church.  Many evangelical churches - especially those with roots in the Puritan and Anabaptist traditions - have mostly eschewed iconography and art...though it does have a way of sneaking in from time to time anyway.
Indeed, when the church I attended remodeled its sanctuary (about the time I moved away for college), I was pleased to see that they replaced their opaque purple windows with far more colorful and attractive stained glass windows, each with identical images of the Cross.

These two churches point toward the different approaches Christians have taken to sacred art.  Some Christians (those in the Puritan traditions) have looked with suspicion on all sacred art as potential idols that break the Second Commandment, which says: "You shall not make for yourself a carved image [or 'idol']...you shall not bow down to them..." (Exodus 20:4-5).

Other Christians have pointed out that later in the Book of Exodus itself God instructs his people to build a beautiful tabernacle of Gold and fine cloth and carpentry in which to worship Him, complete with images of plants and angels and golden statues of angels as well.  These Christians (including Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Anglicans, Lutherans, Methodists, and others) have to varying degrees embraced sacred art as an important reminder of the creativity and beauty of God.

I too have come to believe that works of artistic Beauty actually have profound theological significance.  You may note that this is a theme running through my recent posts since the Notre Dame fire.

Not only do I believe works of Beauty have profound theological significance, but also that they will be an important pointer to the reality of God for some who may not be swayed by Reason or logical arguments for God's existence.

I've heard that Dostoyevsky, a Christian author who wrote the profound and theologically significant novel Brothers Karamazov (among others), once said "Beauty will save the world."  I think there is truth in that.

In the beginning, the Bible tells us, God created the Heavens and the earth and all that is in them. "And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good" (Genesis 1:31).  The word for "good" in the Greek version of the Old Testament that was used by many of the early Churches is 'kalos' which means "good, excellent, and beautiful."

But no one who has ever gazed upon the stars, or stood on the rim of a great canyon, or watched the setting sun needs a Greek or Hebrew word study to tell them that God's creation is beautiful and that He is a wondrous creator.  And note: Man was formed in God's image, which accounts for our tendency to create beautiful things as well.  J.R.R. Tolkien, a devout Christian whose magnificent work The Lord of the Rings contains a great many Christian themes, quite consciously saw his work in creating a fictional world as a reflection, however small and imperfect, of the world-creating work of the Living God whose image Tolkien was created to bear.

We have a good and beautiful God who creates a good and beautiful world (though it later became distorted by sin), and he populated it with people created to bear his own image who are themselves blessed with great creativity and love to make wondrous art to the glory of God.  This is why Christians across the ages have written amazing works of literature, composed lovely music, crafted intricate statues and gorgeous stained-glass windows, painted icons, built inspiring sanctuaries and cathedrals.

Even among Churches of the more Puritan traditions you will almost invariably find quite handsome pulpits and very nice leather-bound Bibles with gold-gilt page edges, and will hear lovely hymns being sung, which are all types of sacred art.  We humans cannot get away from this because we are embodied creatures who are creative by nature.

Fr. Patrick Smith, an Anglican priest who was a mentor to me in college (in explaining why his own Episcopal Church put such emphasis on beauty and artistic excellence, and was willing to commit resources to them) pointed out that God certainly does not disapprove of the material world or physical beauty - in fact he created it; and in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ he brought the very Life of God into the world of material stuff, transforming it forever.

This is the theological basis for embracing sacred art.

But such an embrace of beauty also strengthens the mission of the Church as well, which brings me back to the quote from Dostoyevsky: 'Beauty will save the world.'

There are many compelling logical arguments to believe in God.  Yet Beauty has a persuasive power that transcends logic and reason; Beauty has the power to resonate with us on a very deep level; beauty stirs our longing for Him who is the fount of all the beautiful things, the source of all songs and wonder.  We glory in all this beautiful sacred art not simply for its own sake, but also because it serves as a pointer to Him whose life is forever a Dance of supremely Beautiful, Sacred, and Divine Love.

It is into that Triune Dance that we are called by the same Christ who is also the true Way for us to get there.

I had an experience a few years ago that powerfully brought this all together for me (again).  I went with a group from the church I was pastoring to Saint Joseph's Abbey in Covington, Louisiana for a quiet retreat.  Our group was invited by the monks to join with them in chanting the Psalms at their prayer offices sprinkled throughout the day.
On our last night of the retreat, a storm rolled in after we had attended Vespers (Evening Prayer) and eaten dinner.  At first there was no rain, only a howling wind, and distant flashes of lightening and sounds of rumbling thunder.  I decided to walk to the glorious Abbey Church rather early before Compline (Late-Night Prayer), in order to beat the rain.  I found the church very dark - lit by a single candle in the sanctuary - with flashes outside occasionally lighting up the whole place.  When the rain started it came down hard and loud.  I sat down to pray and, after a few minutes in the quiet, turned on my MP3 player, and this is what I heard (close your eyes and imagine you are sitting in the vast, dark Abbey, with the storm raging outside):



Actually, the exact recording I heard was this one (which is even better, but has an annoying commercial before it).

I tell you, this experience was like another conversion.  In that moment I felt that even had I been a militant atheist I would have been converted to faith in Christ by the sheer transcendent beauty of the experience.

Indeed the words of the repeating chorus are the traditional Ave Maria ("Hail Mary") - half of which is taken from Luke chapter 1.  The other words of the more plain-chant sounding verses are also taken from the Birth narratives of Christ (such as Luke 1:38 and John 1:14).  The song tells of the embodiment of the Good and Beautiful Creator God in the flesh, through the Virgin Mary, taking up residence in this material world.  The song was not only about the incarnation of God in Christ in the world, but the beauty of the song, and of the Abbey where I sat, were indeed embodied, that is incarnate, witnesses to this same spiritual reality.  It is hard to fully put into words how Beauty and Truth came rushing together upon my soul in those moments of meditating upon the beauty of the Incarnation of Jesus.

By comparison, the worldviews of atheism and secularism and the kind of "generic popular culture" that secularism produces is utterly incapable of producing anything like this kind of sublime experience of deep soul-stirring beauty.  They can entertain, but they cannot inspire anyone with a genuine experience of transcendence; indeed, for these worldviews, there is no actual transcendent Reality beyond our own feelings.  For this reason, they simply haven't the spiritual depth and mystical freight that is necessary to drive men to erect cathedrals or to inspire the writing of Mendelssohn's "Lift Thine Eyes," or to sustain our Civilization into the future.

The fact that such timeless works of art exist at all, points us to the truth that there is indeed a Transcendent reality - a Divine Logos - And that Word, that Logos, says the Christian faith, was became flesh, and dwelt among us, and his name is Jesus.

So let the people of Jesus - in word, deed, character, and work - be people of creative and life-giving beauty.

Why is (much) Modern Art so bad?

As I mentioned in a recent post, I've run across Brian Holdsworth recently, a web designer, graphic artist, and lay Roman Catholic apologist.  I've really been enjoying his thought-provoking videos on various topics, which are his attempt to do his part to help renew Christian Civilization.

Here is one really insightful example:



I must hasten to add, as with all things, there are exceptions to this generalization - there are works and styles of modern art that are quite good (indeed, numerous different styles fall under the heading of 'modern art').  But a great deal of modern art (contemporary abstract art in particular), and a great deal of modern architecture really is...ugly.  And for that reason, is loathed by the masses of common men who have not taken college courses on appreciating modern art.

I believe the intuitive reaction is quite instructive: A 'common man' intuitively understands that a gothic cathedral is beautiful; the same with the ancient Greek Parthenon in Athens, or Leonardo's Mona Lisa, or Michelangelo's Pieta, or the Mayan Pyramids of the Yucatan, or the knot-work carvings of the ancient Scandinavians.  No one needs to take a university class be taught to appreciate these things.
We all see immediately they simply are beautiful; in some small way they share in and communicate the reality of Heavenly Beauty and Harmony.

On the other hand, I have certainly had the experience of visiting a University Art School's exhibition or (worse still) standing in a museum, looking at some crumpled up pieces of metal or some random smears of color across a white canvas, and said "Why is this considered art?  I could have done that when I was 4..."

Maybe you've had that experience as well.  Why is it that so much unintelligible rubbish passes for art among wealthy or well-educated elites?
I suspect part of the issue may indeed be elitism itself: 'We who have taken courses on modern art are insiders, we get the reference, we are in on the joke, while the poor uneducated folks on Main Street just don't get it.'
But despite the ridiculous prices that some of these works can fetch at auction, it seems to me that more people are waking up the fact that the emperor has no clothes.

Cy Twombly's "Untitled" sold for $46,437,500 in 2017.
It was created by putting a brush on the end of a pole. 

I think Holdsworth, in his video above, puts his finger on the core of the issue: there was a shift in our culture from Artist as expressing praise to the glory of God, or even praise to the nation, or even celebrating another human being, to the Artist as practicing self-expression.  In many (obviously, not all) cases, art has gone from looking out at the world and celebrating something 'other than me/bigger than me' to a kind of navel gazing.

But then the question has to be raised, why is this artist's self-expression so exceptionally valuable?  If there is no objective artistic excellence in the work itself, then why should I pay money to go see this work in a museum or to buy it to hang in my home?  After all, I am every bit as much a 'self' as the artist, and I am more than capable of crumbling up my own tin-foil if that is what I feel like doing to express my own angst or whatever...and it is much cheaper than paying for the expression of some other person I'll never meet.

On the other hand, the more public nature of the classic understanding of what art is all about (not only my own expression, but also celebrating real objective beauty) necessarily puts an emphasis on excellence, which gives such art wider appeal.  The result is that Michelangelo has produced something that I most emphatically could not have done myself - there is a wonder to the fact that another human being created this kind of excellence.

I've heard glad rumors of a renewed interest in representational painting in European schools in recent years, and I expect time and the changing of generations will sift out the more bizarre forms of modernist self-expression.  I also expect quite a few cities will in decades to come begin to wonder how they might be able to remove the huge pillars of polished twisting metal from in front of their otherwise beautiful courthouses.  But people will still travel across the world to crowd shoulder to shoulder in the Sistine Chapel and behold timeless art, and that is a hopeful sign.

Bishop Barron on Jordan Peterson Interview

Two of the "internet intellectuals" whom I've been attending to of late are Jordan Peterson the (agnostic? secular Christian?) Canadian Psychologist and professor and also Bishop Robert Barron, who seems to me one of the most winsome, intellectually compelling, and interesting Christian (and specifically Roman Catholic) voices in the Public Square today.

So, thanks to YouTube algorithms, I ran across this video.  Catholic podcaster Brandon Vogt is interviewing Bishop Barron and asking him to reflect upon the (much longer) conversation that Bishop Barron recently had with Jordan Peterson.  This interview is fabulous and well worth your time.

I love Bishop Barron's observation, when reflecting upon Jungian archetypes and the "hero's journey" that plays so prominently in world literature, that in the Bible people are called on an adventure, a hero's journey with God - Abraham is called to leave his home and follow God; Jesus calls us to leave all and take up the cross and follow him.  Yet in an even deeper sense, Bishop Barron points out, the Bible is the story about God making the hero's journey in order to find us. Also, I now need to go back and re-watch True Grit...