May 1, 2008
Can anyone name me an evangelical classical composer of international stature? If we were to think about Roman Catholics, or Eastern Orthodox, it’d be fairly easy, even if we were to limit ourselves to the 20th/21st century. Off the top of my head, Olivier Messeian, James MacMillan, Arvo Part, John Tavener, Igor Stravinsky come to mind. But evangelicals?
Or how about an evangelical novelist or poet? Again, think High Anglican, or Roman Catholic and it’s easy, even for someone with my limited knowledge of literature: T. S. Eliot, Flannery O’Connor, Dorothy L. Sayers, Tolkien, R.S. Thomas… But not evangelicals.
Now, why is that?
May 1, 2008 at 11:32 am
Are you dissing Tim LaHaye and Delirious?
Depends on your (artistic) view of Pilgrim’s progress. I know many cite it as instrumental in the development of the modern novel.
I also saw a programme a while ago arguing that protestant and reformed theology was essentially behind the development of the biography and autobiography (not the same as poetry or a novel I know, but a serious engagement in the development of literature, and that for the glory of God).
Where was Handel coming from, confessionally speaking?
Slim pickings though isn’t it?
May 1, 2008 at 11:48 am
Pete, um, how can I put this, erm…
If you go back to C16 and C17 you get a slightly different picture. Not only Bunyan (which I do rate as literature), but also Milton, Spenser, Herbert, Donne (to name just 4 very great English Protestant writers, albeit some with a rather different churchmanship to Bunyan). But since C18?
Handel was a Lutheran, as was Bach. And Bach stands in a tradition of very great Lutheran Music.
Interesting re (auto)biog.
May 1, 2008 at 3:20 pm
I’m working to change that, though clearly not by becoming an internationally renowned composer.
But I think it may be a while before my novel hits the shelves. Jam Cary’s written a novel which I’m hoping will be coming out much sooner.
May 1, 2008 at 4:40 pm
Thanks Matthew, that’s interesting.
So, what happened to reformed thought and life in the C18 that might account for the change? Pietism? Revivalism? Methodism
? The baptists :)? Or was it the rationalism v romanticism thing?
What is it about Roman Catholicism and High Anglicanism that meant those streams carried on producing the goods?
May 1, 2008 at 5:52 pm
Great questions. And I have no idea. Might liturgy and high sacramental theologies play a part? Certainly those would be common factors between the Lutheran musicians, high Anglicans, RCs, and EOs, and also earlier Anglicans like Donne, Herbert etc. I suspect pietism plays an important part, and revivalism to the extent that it led to an evangelism is all htat counts mentality. Romanticism led to lots of great literature (not much of it to my taste, and as far as I’m aware little of it Christian, but nevertheless…). Charles Wesley was, imo, a literary genius, and Samuel Wesley (his son? John’s son?) was a fine, though far from great composer. But John and Charles Wesley were, in some ways, high Anglicans, I think. It’s a fascinating - someone needs to do some research (or point us in the direction of research that’s already been done.)
May 1, 2008 at 6:02 pm
Ralph Vaughan Williams? Or are you distinguishing “Protestant” from “Evangelical?”
Perhaps some factors are:
* Gnostic creep into evangelicalism– emphasizing “spiritual” (though obviously an incorrect use of “spiritual”
over “material.”
* Decline of rigorous education and treatment of subjects such as art and music as “extras.” Also, increasing emphasis on vocational training and skills more than in teaching children how to think (which is related to the next point). Therefore, children are often not equipped intellectually for the later discipline required to create great works of art (in music, literature, painting, etc.). I would assume that Catholic schools offer a more rigorous education than your average public or evangelical-private school, but I don’t know.
* That our society seems more 9-to-5-job-oriented than calling-oriented. (Not that this is always wrong, of course!)
* Non-postmillennial thinking. We often don’t build churches, establish organizations, engage in activities, etc. with a view toward benefiting many generations in the future. We’re not Magnum-opus-oriented, mostly git-r-done-oriented.
Of course, some of these factors have more to do with trends in society than with evangelicalism in particular. I’ll be interested in hearing others’ thoughts about your question.
May 1, 2008 at 6:05 pm
I have no idea why a “winking face” appeared in my comment!
May 1, 2008 at 8:25 pm
Well, now, who has been the head-and-shoulders most popular novelist in the world for a decade or so? Isn’t it some brother called John Grisham?
Also Nate Wilson and Peter Leithart are giving it a bash!
I think the exceptions prove the point…
If evangelical means commitment to “getting the idea of the gospel into someone’s head” rather than “ruling over the cosmos as Adam was meant to (cultural mandate and all that Jazz) and spreading Christ’s rule by proclaiming his Lordship over all people so that they will bring all their endeavours into the kingdom” then it’s not massively surprising.
Why would you write a novel when you could tell someone about Jesus, namely, tell them that they too need to tell someone about Jesus and abandon whatever creative effort they were engaged in (unless it’s a lucrative effort, in which case, do please fund the rest of us).
May 1, 2008 at 9:25 pm
Yes, I agree with Steffen. I think a lot of it is to do with the doctrine that ‘the only worthwhile thing to work for is conversions, and more of them.’ So music and literature are considered frivolous ways of wasting your time.
May 2, 2008 at 9:03 am
Hi Angie. How Protestant was RVW? I always had him down as an atheist/agnostic who happened to write lots of lovely church music. Educationally, I think the scene is a little different in England, not least because a lot of evangelical leaders have had great educational benefits at fee-paying schools that do take music and the arts seriously.
Steffen and Ros, yes, agreed, I’m sure that’s (a big part of) the immediate cause. But this kind of reductionist theology is so badly wrong, and so markedly different from that of our forebears, that I wonder what has shaped it? What social, economic, cultural, philosophical, and historical influences have led to our stunted thinking and practice? And what have been the different influences on e.g., atheists and agnostics, and RCs and EOs, or why have similar influences produced different results in these cases?
May 3, 2008 at 9:19 pm
The lack of evangelicals in the arts has always fascinated me. I’m giving a talk on the subject on Saturday, so I’ll be blogging some of it in due course. But the headline story is that Evangelicals have convinced themselves that everything that isn’t gospel-proclaiming evangelism is a waste of time and that we have to save as many souls as possible because Jesus could be back any second now. I used to think that until about two years ago and have been unpicking everything since then. God’s glory is undoubtedly seen when people come to Christ for the first time, but it really isn’t the only way. To place man’s salvation at the centre of everything is breathtakingly arrogant but it happens a lot.
Therefore, because evangelical churches focus on evangelism, anyone who can sound plausible in front of other people is immediately poked into training to be a full-time Bible teacher. It’s a glorious calling, but it’s the art community’s loss in the long run.
Ultimately conservative evangelicals have a hard time embracing the wastefulness, frivolity, beauty, ambiguity and subversiveness of art and creativity. And yet God is into all of those things.
The greatest compliment that you can pay a conservative evangelical on their sermon is that it is ‘clear’. Not moving, or inspiring, or anything else, but clear. By these standards, Jesus would get some serious crit if he preaches his way today - telling confusing parables that turned some people off and that even the disciples didn’t get. Jesus showed us the way. I can’t wait till the time when we actually follow.
Ros has kindly ‘bigged up’ my novel - which will be coming out this year sometime. It’s called Crossword Ends in Violence (5)…
May 3, 2008 at 9:24 pm
For novelists, how about Tim Winton? Australian guy. I think he’s probably more evangelical that he’s prepared to admit. Not sure why I think that but he would call himself a Christian.
May 4, 2008 at 9:25 am
It seems that our collective answer to Matthew’s question in 10
And what have been the different influences on e.g., atheists and agnostics, and RCs and EOs, or why have similar influences produced different results in these cases?
would be: the default influence on everyone living in God’s world is to be creative. That covers atheists and RCs and Muslims and Hindus and nihilists. It has taken a great deal of effort, including false exegesis, false Biblical theology, false logic, press-ganging, gullibility, emotional manipulation and bullying for our modern breed of evangelical to break away from the pack and create our lovely tradition of men by which we overturn the word of God.
This has been going on for so long that we have a new problem. When brothers want to do better in this, they don’t know how, so they do it badly, so they reinforce the axiom that it’s a waste of time.
e.g., one gets convicted wrt stewarding the creation, and then throws one’s lot in with the most virulent form of statist oppression available in order to fight Global Warming and makes Carbon Footprints such an obvious alternative God that everyone can see it’s a blatant distraction from mission.
May 4, 2008 at 7:07 pm
Let’s not forget that the original meaning of ‘Evangelical’ was ‘Lutheran’, so let’s mention the current Cranach exhibition at the Royal Academy. And let’s bring in Luther, Walther, Praetorius, Schuetz, Buxtehude, Handel, the entire Bach family, Mendelssohn, even Brahms (though he lost his faith early on).
Why? Because in Lutheran thought, the world is seen as God’s good creation, and the means through which He comes to us. No Barthian or Bapticostal (or Zwinglian/Anabaptist) zapping of people in the ether, but spoken word, water, bread and wine. And so, since created stuff is good, we can also use it for good. No iconoclasm, and no cap on godly creativity, within and outwith church.
Secondly, a healthy view of tradition: the church did not start at Pentecost, run till roughly AD90, to be resumed briefly in the 16th century, only to be rediscovered some time around 1978, or whenever “Make me a channel of your peace” was published. No, Jesus meant what he said in Mt 28.18. And so the liturgy of the church had no need to be thrown out wholesale, but only reformed, like the rest of church life. And since there was liturgy, there was a call for beautifying that liturgy with the God-given gift of music.
As a sporadic outside observer, I’m heartened that some neo-evangelicals, as we like to call them (and that’s not a pejorative term, just historical pedantry) are beginning to rediscover these things, and so I read this blog and its comments, and I thank God for you guys. In the meantime, start writing, painting, composing - to God’s glory and for the benefit of your neighbour. That is, if that’s your vocation.
P.S. Isn’t it funny that my list of Lutheran composers stopped at the end of the 19th century? Guess what happened then. Starts with G and rhymes with nosticism…
May 5, 2008 at 7:18 pm
Maybe we’ve also tended to see the Bible as concerned to communicate propositional revelation and have neglected its other purposes and the various ways in which it communicates that revelation in addition to stating truths?
May 5, 2008 at 10:52 pm
Wendell Berry is Baptist. And incredible. Read “The Memory of Old Jack.” (On the other hand, the novel feels very sacramental, anyway, it did to this Catholic.)
May 10, 2008 at 5:44 pm
Evangelical novelist: Chris Walley. Excellent science fiction - the Lamb Among the Stars series. Final part due in the next month or so.
Evangelical poet: Don Carson (Yes *the* Don Carson). His book of sonnets may be out of print, but I believe he writes worship song lyrics, too!