Christians, Critics, and Romantics: Aesthetic Discourse Among Anglo- American Evangelicals, 1830-1900

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 i 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 ii 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. iii 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 iv 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

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