A Matter of Taste (pt 2)

Chapter One:  Good Taste, Bad Taste, and Christian Taste

These chapters are long and thorough, so I will probably have to break them up a bit.  Let me give you the subtitles through the first chapter so you can grasp Brown's train of thought:

I.  The Religious Problem with Questions of Taste

        -Taste perceived as irrelevant to religion
        -Artistic taste seen as theologically suspect
        -Taste regarded as prejudice and elitist
        -"Taste" irretrievable?

II.  Preparing to Pursue Taste Theologically

III.  Features of Taste for Theological Reflection

        -Taste as aesthetic perception
        -Taste as aesthetic enjoyment
        -Taste as aesthetic judgment
        -Excellence in taste

IV.  Aftertaste--and Foretaste

Brown begins by noting how believers tend to trivialize matters of taste compared to matters of theology and morality.  Jesus didn't drive people out of the temple because they had done a poor job of interior decorating; he didn't teach his disciples how to sing in four-part harmony.  Nothing is gained spiritually by being a connoisseur of religious art, so why be concerned about matters that only cause embarrassment and divide?

He does a quick survey of church history to demonstrate that many theologians disregard beauty entirely, or place it only on a lower level of spirituality "due to its entanglements with the senses, materiality, and worldly imagination."  Ever since the Renaissance patronage for the arts has gotten increasingly secular as art and artists retreated from the church (Kandinsky, Eliot, and Schoenberg being notable 20th c. exceptions).   

However, there is a stream of Protestant thought that values some aspects of the arts:  Bach as the "fifth evangelist;" Luther using music as a means of proclamation; and the arts as a revealer of man's depravity: art glimpses Canaan from a distance, even it is not able to dry our tears in the griefs of life (Bavinck).

Of course the onslaught of postmodernism has all but destroyed art as supplying any meaningful "text" for spiritual contemplation and appreciation.  Art is anti-theological; deconstructed, it contains no metaphysical authority, power, or truth.  Aesthetic judgments are political: "prejudiced signs and tools of status, class, and entitlement."

This leads to the criticism that matters of taste are hopelessly discussed because they inevitably boil down to a theologically and morally unacceptable elitism.  Brown contrasts two views by recommending two authors and their works:  White Soul: Country Music, the Church and Working Americans by Tex Sample, and Why Catholics Can't Sing: The Culture of Catholicism and the Triumph of Bad Taste by Thomas Day. Day argues that bad taste is bad for spiritual life and advocates a view building on Brown's:  a nonelitist analysis of taste.  This tells you where we are going.

Brown concludes this first section in chapter one by emphasizing the importance of matters of taste to religious life despite the fact there is little in Christian habits or theological training to encourage it.  He says: "Religious life and thought are nevertheless far more conditioned...by matters related to taste than has commonly been acknowledged....no other term [taste] so readily combines a concern for aesthetic delight with a concern for imaginative discernment...that...can be good for life, morally and spiritually, and communally as well as individually....We are in search of a concept and theology of taste that is both spiritually challenging and nonelitist.  It is my own judgment that, in an era in which imagination, sensory experience, and embodiment have become more theologically respectable, reconsiderations of taste might well contribute to new theological understandings of faith, community, and spiritual growth."

I should be able to finish chapter one tomorrow.

Comments

[Joel]

In all of this, is the term 'elitist' ever defined (for use in nonelitist)?

I like the castigation about trivializing matters of taste. What I find so interesting about the world of Jane Austen's novels is that they judged people because of their good taste or lack of it. We, in turn, are barbarians with a fancy word with those who make us uneasy; 'elitists'.

Sorry to snob all over your blog, but it seemed like a good chance!

[jon]

Joel, I don't think Brown ever defines elitist, except to use it as a synonym with dogmatist, and an antonym to indiscriminate relativism. He is obviously going to advocate a critical pluralism, that will probably be broader in application than some of us our comfortable accepting. We'll like a lot of his thinking along the way, however.

[Donald C S Johnson]

Hi Jon,

To get us on to a different topic, my copy of FBB's book arrived today. I thought the cover art was quite interesting given the subject matter: Gustav Dore's *The Temptation of Jesus*. That pretty much sums up the cultural struggle, don't you think?

Regards,
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3

[jon]

Well, I don't know if you will like FBB much, Don, but I have enjoyed reading him. I do need to get back to it, but other things have been pressing. As to your observation about the cover, it does seem rather intentional, does it not?