Attack of the Ugly Babies
Readers of this blog know that one of the hobby-horses I like to ride frequently is the issue of art and our worship spaces. Simply put, there has been a dreadful decline in the beauty which once marked a Lutheran place of worship. No matter how humble, Lutherans traditionally attempted to use as much art as they could possibly afford. Now I notice trends toward making our worship spaces look more like the big-box non-denominational churches we see sprinkled throughout American suburbia. It is not only stodgy confessional Lutherans like me who are feeling angst over these issues. Over on the EVANGEL blog, one of my fellow contributors put up a post well worth our attention, titled The Attack of the Ugly Babies. Here is a snippet to whet your appetite:
“A sermon ‘zinger’ used to encourage church plants instead of resuscitating old churches goes like this: ‘It is easier to have a baby than to raise the dead!’ Jesus, however, did only the latter. Evangelism is a bit more complicated than the sound bite conveys, simply because people are. Whether or not they are consciously aware of it, many non-Christians are seeking a deeper, ecclesial reality in their life, not a gospel that caters to their present one.”
~ Matthew Milliner, “Attack of the Ugly Babies,” Evangel
Yes, let’s have beauty in the sanctuary. On the other hand, “The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.” 1 Sam. 16: 17b
At one Lutheran church I know, I find greater zeal for the Lord and a more abiding fellowship in a rather bare classroom — used by a group of immigrants for worship and Bible study in their native language — than in the main sanctuary, which is far more appealing aesthetically.
Wherever the word of Christ dwells richly, there is great beauty indeed.
Paul, I agree with the point you are making, but in my opinion it is actually not germane to the blog post.
I suspect those immigrants, if given a chance and an opportunity, financially and in every other way, would want more than a bare classroom. They haven’t chosen the space they must use, they are making the best of it.
It is a shame congregations choose ugly over beautiful. That’s a whole ‘nuther ball game.
Oops. Make that 1 Sam. 16:7b.
I am reminded of a very good point made by Eastern Orthodox liturgical theologian, Fr. Alexander Schmemann made about “beauty”. He wrote that when we have guests over for dinner, or for holy-day meals, we put out the fine china, the linen, candles and flowers. All that beauty is so non-utilitarian. Beauty simply is. And I would say as the Lord is and His grace. If we dine in our homes, the way a “worship space” is currently configured in our day, then fluorescent lights and it’s not about dining and fellowship, but chowing down is the rule. But Liturgy is about beholding the fair beauty of the Lord in His Temple. And we have become de facto iconoclasts and extreme Calvinists in our sanctuaries. The Orthodox Liturgy begins with, “Blessed is the kingdom of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and forever and to the ages of ages.” We are crossing over again into the Kingdom ever coming toward us. Holy Communion is a proclamation of the Lord’s Death until He comes again. We should have a sense of vertigo entering into the Gottesdienst. And the Sanctuary should be surrounded, in stained glass, statuary, and icons with the family album of the saints, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses.
A few weeks ago I was able to catch on PBS the last 20 minutes or so of a documentary profiling prairie churches, mostly located in the Dakotas. You look at those places of Worship and compare them to the 700 seat concert hall “worship centers” many Lutheran churches are building now and wonder if church architecture and artwork will ever return to its former glory.
Zounds! That’s some ugly baby.
I think that in these circumstances, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Some people prefer ornate, decorated sanctuaries that convey the beauty and glory of God in their appearance. To them, being in such a beautiful places gives them a sense of awe and wonder at the greatness of God and it really enhances their worship. Others prefer a more stark, “plain” appearance with minimal art and decoration. They feel that alot of art, decoration, and “frilly stuff” (someone else’s quote, not mine) tend to be distracting to their worship. Neither camp is “right” or “wrong.”
I think church decoration is adiaphora and is guarded far more by personal preferences than by actual doctrinal principles.
Hi Lindsey, there is some truth to what you are saying, but not entirely. Here is how Dr. Walther put matters about how our churches are distinguished from the Reformed/American “lecture hall” approach to church decoration and practice:
We refuse to be guided by those who are offended by our church customs. We adhere to them all the more firmly when someone wants to cause us to have a guilty conscience on account of them. … It is truly distressing that many of our fellow Christians find the differences between Lutheranism and papism in outward things. It is a pity and dreadful cowardice when one sacrifices the good and ancient customs to please the deluded American sects, lest they accuse us of being papistic.
Indeed! Am I to be afraid of a Methodist, who perverts the saving Word, or be ashamed in the matter of my good cause, and not rather rejoice that the sects can tell by our ceremonies that I do not belong to them?
We are not insisting that there be unity of perception or feelings or of taste among all believing Christians, neither dare anyone demand that all be minded as he. Nevertheless it remains true that the Lutheran liturgy distinguishes Lutheran worship from the worship of other churches to such an extent that the latter look like lecture halls in which the hearers are merely addressed or instructed, while our churches are in truth houses of prayer in which the Christians serve God publicly before the world.
While any good gift can be misused, I think that it is natural for the senses to be drawn in by color and imagery that seeks to communicate the beauty of the Gospel, and even the specifics of what the gathered congregation is focusing on that season or that Sunday. I suspect that people are actually *taught* that ornate decoration is distracting to worship. But realistically, if your mind is wandering in church, what better way to focus again than have your eyes fall upon the purple Lenten paraments, or a crucifix? Better than a blank wall. (As a teen, the utter lack of things to see in my very utilitarian church tended to result in me doodling.) Of course, there will be some who will see a symbol or color and somehow miss what it’s supposed to mean, but if they’re paying attention at all to their pastors and teachers, they ought to be explaining these things, too. Doesn’t CPH have a new resource out for kids about symbols in church?
If you ever get to visit the Cathedral of St John the Divine in New York, while not Lutheran, you can see different sculptural styles of art history played out in carved stone everywhere, especially across the front facade. Since they’ve been building for more than hundred years, you can see the changes clearly. As I recall the right entrance was carved sometime during the late 1800s and is every bit of gothic architecture a good cathedral should be. The entrance on the left looks like it was carved sometime in the 1960s or 1970s and has a dramatically different presentation. Either way it’s an incredibly inspiring environment, inside and out.
At the same time, Martin Luther was concerned about the extravagance of St Paul’s when he visited the Vatican, so who knows?
When looking for a church of my faith (RC) in a newly developed area (such as the suburbs)—I simply look for the most hideous architecture standing. But I must give our Lutheran Brothers credit > yours is often the second ugliest building.
Yet simplicity and austerity do not have to mean ugliness. I’ve seen some chapels of strict monastic orders, here in the USA, whose plainess would have made Calvin, Zwingli, or even George Fox feel comfy, yet these places have a serene beauty to them.
So why oh why must contemporary congregations build these “ugly babies” that look like a Denny’s, or aTGIF, or an OliveGarden???
Lindsey cited above the oft quoted maxim: “Beauty is in the eye of beholder.” This has been around for so long now that it is an almost non-debatable truism. I will debate it because it is important in this discussion of aesthetics, not only in church architecture, but in many fields of endeavors both divine and human. It seems that the use of that maxim boils down to: ‘It’s what I feel about something and my feeling about it is no better or worse than the next guy’s’. This subjectivism is endemic in discussions these days about subjects from aesthetics to morality to religion. For instance: the tip-off to this subjectivism is how many times a sentence in such a conversation begins with, “I feel…”
But this has been around for sometime. C. S. Lewis in one of his thinner volumes, The Abolition of Man: How Education Develops Man’s Sense of Morality, begins with something he read in a school textbook by two authors whom Lewis calls “Gaius and Titus”:
“In their second chapter Gaius and Titius quote the well-known story of Coleridge at the waterfall. You remember that there were two tourists present: that one called it ‘sublime’ and the other `pretty’: and that Coleridge mentally endorsed the first judgement and rejected the second with disgust. Gaius and Titius comment as follows: `When the man said That is sublime, he appeared to be making a remark about the waterfall. . . . Actually … he was not making a remark about the waterfall, but a remark about his own feelings. What he was saying was really I have feelings associated in my mind with the word “Sublime,” or shortly, I have sublime feelings.’ Here are a good many deep questions settled in a pretty summary fashion. But the authors are not yet finished. They add: ‘This confusion is continually present in language as we use it. We appear to be saying something very important about something: and actually we are only saying something about our own feelings.”
And with that Lewis is off to the races. This is central to my disagreement with the almost solipsistic maxim in what later in Abolition Lewis observes:
“The man who called the cataract sublime was not intending simply to describe his own emotions about it: he was also claiming that the object was one which merited those emotions.”(Lewis italicized “merited”)
Again, Lewis is writing about morality and the incipient relativism he saw in that textbook, and in English society and culture (including the Church) but it is also applicable to aesthetics. A great piece of architecture will elicit the emotion, such as a sense of awe, not because beauty is primarily what I “like” but it is inherent in the architecture that we can behold it. So, a church that looks like a bank or a mall simply can not elicit the awe and wonder of what faith is about.
I worshiped for 2 years at Concordia Senior College (Ft. Wayne) in Kramer Chapel. When I went back for my first symposia at Concordia Seminary, same location, same chapel, that Sanctuary, (campus designed by Eero Saarinen), clean lines, no ornamentation, still drew forth from this worshiper the awe due to the reverence of the Almighty God…even after quite of a number of years seeing it last time when I was in my 20s. And so, no, it’s not about ‘modern’ versus ‘ornate’: it’s about a building, a piece of art, well done which serves the purpose of the divine liturgy. The difference between a mega-mall worship ‘space’ and a cathedral (with a wide range of architectural styles): anthropomorphic vs. theocentric.