Christians, Critics, and Romantics: Aesthetic Discourse among Anglo

566 Pages·2014·1.84 MB·English

Christians, Critics, and Romantics:
Aesthetic Discourse among Anglo-
American Evangelicals, 1830-1900
Author: Chad Philip Stutz
Persistent link: http://hdl.handle.net/2345/745
This work is posted on eScholarship@BC,
Boston College University Libraries.
Boston College Electronic Thesis or Dissertation, 2009
Copyright is held by the author, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise noted.
Boston College
The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
Department of English

CHRISTIANS, CRITICS, AND ROMANTICS: AESTHETIC DISCOURSE AMONG
ANGLO-AMERICAN EVANGELICALS, 1830-1900

a dissertation

by
CHAD P. STUTZ

submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy

August 2009
© copyright by CHAD P. STUTZ
2009
Christians, Critics, and Romantics: Aesthetic Discourse among Anglo-American
Evangelicals, 1830-1900
Chad P. Stutz
Professor Judith Wilt, advisor
ABSTRACT
Though contemporary evangelical Protestants have shown an increased interest in the
fine arts, scholars have often seen the aesthetic history of Anglo-American
evangelicalism as one marked by hostility and indifference. In contrast to this view, this
study argues that the history of evangelicalism’s intellectual engagement with the fine
arts has been complex and varied. Throughout much of the nineteenth century,
evangelicals writing in a variety of denominational periodicals carried on a robust inquiry
into aesthetics. This study traces the rise of this discourse among Anglo-American
evangelicals and maps some of the main features of the evangelical theoretical landscape
between 1830 and 1900 – a high point of evangelical critical activity. Christians, Critics,
and Romantics describes how evangelicalism’s contact with Enlightenment thought
initiated a break with the Puritan aesthetic tradition that contributed to the growth of a
modern aesthetic consciousness among some eighteenth-century evangelicals. By the
1830s, evangelical aesthetic discourse had come under the influence of romanticism. Not
only did many evangelical writers define art according to the expressivist principles
adduced by major romantic critics but some went even further in asserting, after
Coleridge and the German idealists, that art is an embodiment of a higher reality and the
imagination an organ of transcendental perception. Evangelical critics, moreover, valued
art for its contribution to the stability and progress of “Christian nations” such as England
and the United States. By refining the moral feelings of individuals, fine art helped to
safeguard the socio-moral cohesion of Protestant “civilization.” For a time, evangelical
critics attempted to celebrate art in romantic terms while insisting on art’s subordination
to traditional Christianity, but such an arrangement ultimately proved unsustainable. By
the end of the nineteenth century, a rift had opened up within Anglo-American
evangelicalism between conservatives and liberals. This rift, created in part by the spread
of romantic thought and by various other secularizing trends, had important implications
for evangelical aesthetic thought. While liberals continued to advance high claims for the
spiritual and educational potential of art, conservatives largely abandoned the
philosophical exploration of art in order to turn their attention to the threats of Darwinian
evolution and biblical criticism. Nevertheless, both liberals and fundamentalists retained
in their respective ways many of the aesthetic assumptions of the romantic tradition.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Perhaps my greatest lesson in bringing this project to completion (at least for now) has
been a newfound appreciation for the communal nature of scholarship. No scholarly
works – especially those which, like this one, aspire to some kind of interdisciplinary
perspective – are composed in a vacuum. My intellectual debts to the excellent work of
other scholars and critics are, I trust, amply documented in the endnotes that conclude
each chapter. Many were the times that I arrived at what I thought was an original insight
only to find that it had already been better expressed in the works of one of these writers.
Thus I can say with C.S. Lewis that “of all writers I make least claim to be
αύτοδίδακτος.” In addition, many others have had a profound influence on the shape and
scope of this dissertation, whether directly or indirectly. Whatever the strengths of this
project, they are very much the result of this influence, while the weaknesses, I am
humbled to admit, remain very much my own.
I am particularly grateful to my advisor and chair, Professor Judith Wilt, for her
support and encouragement throughout this project. With a critical vision that can only
be described as “razor-sharp,” she helped me repeatedly not only to clarify my own
thoughts but also to consider new possibilities and perspectives. Professor Dennis Taylor
likewise provided me with extensive and invaluable feedback and encouragement along
the way, and he supplied several key insights at what I now realize were key moments.
Both Judith Wilt and Dennis Taylor have served as intellectual mentors to me throughout
my time at Boston College, and it is no overstatement to say that this project is an
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outgrowth of these relationships in ways too subtle to articulate. I am grateful, too, to
Professor Cynthia Lynn Lyerly of the History Department at Boston College, who not
only showed me the meaning of collegiality in her willingness to cross disciplines and
departments but also of perseverance in her willingness to carry on through a period of
personal adversity. Moreover, her historian’s eye for detail has provided me with a
scholarly standard to which I can only hope to aspire.
I would also like to thank Professor John L. Mahoney of Boston College and
Professor Roger Lundin of the English Department at Wheaton College, IL. Though my
exchanges with each of them concerning this project were comparatively brief, both
offered critical bits of support and/or insight that affected its ultimate direction. What my
interactions with these veteran scholars lacked in quantity was more than made up for in
quality.
My brother-in-law, the Rev. Jeramie Rinne, and Mark Jennings have listened with
longsuffering, and at times with a healthy skepticism, to many of the ideas presented
here. I am thankful to both of them for their insights into the nuances of Reformed
theology and for helping me to think theologically about all things, but mostly I am
grateful to call them brothers and friends. Several others have also blessed me at various
times with the kind of general support that enables one to endure through the “lean”
periods of composition. Whether they know it or not, Jaime Goodrich, Sara Hong, Ryan
J. Jack McDermott, Patrick Moran, and Tim Thompson have all left their fingerprints on
this project and, more importantly still, on my thinking in general.
Finally, words cannot express the debt I owe to my family. Without the moral
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and financial support of my in-laws, Bill and Jan Rinne, this dissertation – not to mention
graduate school in general – would not have been possible. My parents, Philip and
Valerie, in addition to providing financial assistance, honored me with the sort of love
and encouragement, but also honesty, which only parents can give. I am grateful, too, for
the patience and love of my children, Jason and Susana, who, at seven and five, have yet
to know their father outside of graduate school. (Daddy has at long last finished his
“paper.”) My greatest debt, however, is to my wife Jillayne, whose patience with me has
been nothing short of Job-like. On too many occasions to count, she listened with
something like supernatural fortitude as I prattled on, often in less-than-constructive
ways, about some idea I was struggling to articulate. Were it not for her ongoing love
and encouragement, I could never have completed this project.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
Evangelicals, Aesthetics, and History………………………………………………..........1

CHAPTER 2
Asymmetries and Ambiguities: From Puritanism to Evangelical Romanticism……..….54

CHAPTER 3
Expressing the Ideal: Changing Conceptions of Art and the Imagination……………...155

CHAPTER 4
What Has the Gospel of Christ to Do with the Gospel of Art?............…………………245

CHAPTER 5
Aesthetic Ministrations: Art, Morality, and the Christian Nation……………………...336

CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSION
The Religio-Aesthetic Divide of the 1890s and Beyond: Art, Aesthetics, and the
Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy………………………………………………..435

APPENDIX A
A Note on Periodical Citations……………………………..………………………......507

APPENDIX B
Selected Periodical Sources Consulted……………....…………..…………………......508

WORKS CITED………………………………………………………………………..510
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CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
EVANGELICALS, AESTHETICS, AND HISTORY

We are of the opinion that the evangelical canon admits of the appropriation of all
belonging to taste and imagination….
– “The Works of the Rev. Richard Watson,” London Quarterly Review (1854)

In its April 1863 issue, the Southern Presbyterian Review published two consecutive
articles, the juxtaposition of which would undoubtedly strike modern readers as peculiar
and even shocking. The first of these, entitled “The War of the South Vindicated,”
concluded with a rousing summons, couched in the rhetoric of biblical prophecy,
charging all Southerners to rally in defense of the Confederate cause: “let the trumpet
blow in Zion, and let all her watchmen lift up their voice; – let all the people, everywhere,
old and young, bond and free, take up the warcry, and say, each to his neighbor, ‘Gather
ye together, and come against them, and rise up to the battle.’”1 If this article’s
unabashed promotion of a war effort that, if successful, would have preserved intact the
institution of slavery seems distasteful and offensive, it is rendered even more surprising
by that which followed. Immediately opposite to this vindication of the Southern cause
there appeared the conclusion of a two-part article, begun in the January issue, “On the
Nature and Uses of Art.”2 Published at the height of the Civil War only three months
after Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation and a mere two months
1