Why is it that all around us we see the rejection of the beautiful and the celebration of the ugly? The art and architecture of the past, especially our public buildings, featured aesthetics which cause a sense of awe and wonder. They show that in their construction there was artistry, craftsmanship, passion and a yearning for even greater heights. You realise that those who built them and were raised amongst them had a sense of belonging and looked towards a better future.
When we look at much of today’s architecture we find brutalism and featureless ugliness. So soulless are they that they are rarely maintained well and often become shelters for drunks and drug addicts before they are pulled down. The most interesting and colourful aspects of them are the graffiti on their surfaces.
Truth To the progressive, like all influenced by Marx, everything is political, which explains why totalitarian regimes such as the USSR, communist China and the Nazis have done their best to regulate which art people were allowed to see. It also explains why progressives attempt to denigrate, deny and deflect the beautiful. They fear the power of beauty to destroy the illusory truth they manufacture.
In order to remake society it is necessary for progressives to replace the meaning of truth. In the strange new world of progressivism truth is no longer based on objective fact, rather it is based on subjective feelings: we have entered the realm of ‘my truth’. This enables progressives to state, in complete defiance of common sense and science, that a man who ‘feels’ like a woman can proclaim that he is a woman and everyone is expected to accept ‘his truth’. An important part of the rejection of truth is the progressives’ rejection of beauty.
Beauty elevates the human spirit. For the left, everything must be equal and interchangeable; multiculturalism teaches that all cultures are equal, and progressivism teaches that women are men are interchangeable. Beauty punctures this deceit. Some buildings, paintings and people are more beautiful than others: beauty opens our eyes to the fact that hierarchies are real. Beauty reminds us that there is a right way to do things and to be, and it draws us towards acting in that way and being that person, however imperfectly we achieve our goal.
Danger of Beauty Following a five year refurbishment the Fitzwilliam Museum, owned by the University of Cambridge, has reopened its five main painting galleries to the public in a rehang placing historical paintings alongside modern works of art. This is in order to emphasise the ‘evolution of its collection’.
The Fitzwilliam has issued a warning to patrons that images of the British countryside in paintings can evoke what it labelled ‘dark . . . nationalist feelings.’ One of the signs in the Nature Gallery, exhibiting Constable’s paintings of the English countryside, noted that the artwork can stir feelings of ‘pride towards a homeland’. As we know, to the progressive, pride towards one’s homeland is only a hop, skip and jump away from outright fascism. Luke Syson, the director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, nevertheless claimed the rehang is ‘not woke’.
Great figures in the history of art can’t be celebrated simply for their incredible talents any more. They now have to be examined carefully in order to find and highlight ‘problematic’ aspects of their work and political opinions. We, the scorned public, must be re-educated via trigger warnings alerting us to the insidious dangers of admiring a work of art produced by someone who has a tangential relationship to slavery or some other cause du jour.
Mediocrity Progressives destroy or replace the beautiful in order to reject that which reminds them that they produce dreary sameness. In the place of beauty they celebrate the boringly ‘edgy’ and ‘confrontational’. The Fourth Plinth, an empty plinth in Trafalgar Square, London, is used to exhibit those monuments to mediocrity which pass for modern works of public art. Typical is ‘The End’ created by Heather Phillipson.
The Londonist website helpfully explained: ‘On first glance, the sculpture seems fairly whimsical: a shiny cherry teetering precariously atop a generous dollop of whipped cream. But note the fly and the drone, and the sculpture becomes somewhat more unnerving, inviting ideas of decay, surveillance and impending collapse.’
Tearing down statues and defacing works of art are more than rent-a-mob protests: underneath lies a desire to sever the past and the present. If there is no connection with the past, especially the beauty of the past, people forget what makes their culture great. As a result we are left with ‘ideas of decay, surveillance and impending collapse’. Brutalist architecture, formulaic films, discordant music, incomprehensible literature; piece by piece the harmonious and beautiful are being replaced by the dissonant and banal.
All must be equal. Those connections which define us and which depend on difference – marriage, nation, culture – are eroded in order to make us interchangeable. Individuals are severed from the connections which give identity so that they can be remade by the state if all are to be truly equal. This plunge towards the lowest common denominator demands that the beauty of the past be rejected and replaced by a drab mediocrity.
God Values Beauty Why should this concern Christians? Surely we can worship God around our kitchen table as well as before the altar in a magnificent Gothic cathedral? It matters because beauty is an aspect of God and his people (Psalm 24:7, 50:2, 96:6). We should value beauty because Jesus values beauty and the creators of beauty who do ‘something beautiful for me’ (Matthew 26:10). Beauty in itself is worship of the Creator and lover of beauty.
Both the Word and the world assume the existence of a God who actively reveals himself, including his beauty. They hold out beauty as a gift from God for our delight prompting us to praise. From the sky of Psalm 19:1-4, to the birds of the air and the lilies of the field in Matthew 6:25-33, God’s glory is reflected in the complex beauty of his creation.
Made in the image of God we were fashioned not only to love beauty but to create it. We should rebel against the drab and banal and reach upwards towards beauty, unless we do so our lives will become drab and banal. Beauty calls out to us: ‘Look and see and live. The one true God is good.’
A Grain of Sand 
Could religious architecture throw light on how earliest, biblically-based beliefs of Christians, who did not build impressive places to worship in, affected a move away from belief in the priesthood of all believers? Buildings began to develop so as to physically move lay worshippers away from that theology, to separate them from a privileged priesthood class. But the Reformation brought them together with a sense of their equality as all being part of this spiritual priesthood. Changing internal church building layout did that. The Middle Ages saw chambers with partitions (e.g. in the East, separation by the iconostasis, a massive solid screen which hid the altar from the laity when its doors were closed. In the West, the division of chancel with the high altar and seats for clergy, and nave with pulpit, and a second altar for the laity.) But with the Reformation, the pulpit was visible to all, with a single table and baptistry close together. Physical separations were removed due to the belief in the priesthood of all believers. Buildings became increasingly simple. The beauty of worship is entirely dependent on the beauty of holiness in the gathering of believers, surely? But when peoples’ eyes are all over the place, at buildings full of gold and silver ornamentation, what attention are they giving the unseen builder of all things? And do they ever think how that may adversely affect their grasp of what the Bible tells them?
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You have opened up a complex area with more questions than answers. Our theology does shape our church architecture, i.e. the font at the door of Anglican churches symbolising baptism as the entrance to the church. But as you point out our church architecture shapes our worship and, to a lesser extent, our theology which is reinforced by the various screens and altars.
There is an intertwining between theology and culture which does not admit of easy answers. I come from a culture in which the churches were traditionally austere, and I like it that way. A plain box shape with whitewashed walls, plain windows and a pulpit in the centre behind a table is where I am most comfortable in public worship, I can focus on Word and sacrament. But if I had been born in Greece I am sure I would find the plainness uncomfortable and would long for a few icons, some gold leaf and stained glass windows which I would find a help to my spiritual apprehension of the presence of God.
The most important part of your comment is the sentence you have highlighted in bold: ‘The beauty of worship is entirely dependent on the beauty of holiness in the gathering of believers.’
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Thank-you so much for this. Ive been a Christian and an artist for several decades and often struggled with the value of landscape painting in the Kingdom of God. I spent many years ‘wanting to be a missionary’ and yet knew God was saying, ‘Ive called you to be an artist’ ! I love beauty, especially in the landscape, and earnestly desire that my paintings, as you say, will call out to viewers, there is a Creator God and He is good.
Stella Brookes
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Mission is about more than leaving home to speak to others about God, it can also be speaking to others of the glory of God and all He has done through paintings, music and other artistic endeavours. I am sure that through his music Handel has done more to glorify God and stir people to worship than most of us.
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“The Fitzwilliam has issued a warning to patrons that images of the British countryside in paintings can evoke what it labelled ‘dark . . . nationalist feelings.’”Who are they to say that such images can’t produce “bright … nationalist feelings”?As I often say, “Who died and made them God?”I appreciate the depth of critical thinking that you and so many of your readers bring to this forum. Neither you nor they will ever be reduced to mediocrity.
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