This is part six in a continuing survey of Good Taste, Bad Taste, and Christian Taste by Frank Burch Brown.
Excellence in taste: First, it is important to note that Brown believes there is excellence in taste. He does not fall into the postmodern trap that espouses all cultural expressions as being equal. However, he tries very to hard to strike a balance between developing "astute artistic taste," and appreciating the "value of alien tastes [one] can never hope to enjoy personally."
We pursue excellence in taste because taste plays a critical role in spiritual development: 1) taste helps us form religious perceptions and identities, 2) taste reinforces religious differences, and 3) taste makes possible a wide variety of moral discernments and religious experiences. Matters of aesthetics and morality cannot be compartmentalized; they overlap in significant ways.
Although carefully developed aesthetic taste cannot be equated with spiritual maturity ("otherwise all good Christians would have good taste'), it certainly cannot be separated from spiritual maturity. There are worlds in theological study and aesthetic pursuit only open to those who will engage in developing tastes in difficult and demanding realms.
On the other hand, those who have disciplined their taste to enjoy complex cultural expressions, should not despise those that are more common. Indeed, there is complexity and beauty in the ordinary. We share in the commonality of living our lives in bodies that are remarkably complex machines. The simplest breath, the most regular heartbeat, is performed most excellently. So that when a church choir of twelve gather to sing in a rural church in southern Indiana, there is something to be appreciated: "To be among a group of perfectly average singers giving voice to perfectly average spiritual songs in a moderately reverberant space, to join them in a kind of ordinary singing that becomes genuine prayer and genuine praise--this is to experience how excellently graced our common life can be."
Brown concludes this chapter with a small section entitled "Aftertaste--and Foretaste." He again makes the case for developing taste. How are we to grasp the psalms if we do not understand poetry? How are we to grasp the nuances of Jesus' speech in the parables if we do not know about paradox and irony? Though love demands we enjoy another's enjoyment, an uncritical acceptance of all cultural forms is actually lacking in love, and not a picture of a more developed Christian life--even an ecumenical and inclusive taste must be discerning. Brown makes a plea for the union of charity and criticism: "Such charitable yet discerning taste appears to be one virtue increasingly needed by churches as they consider various aesthetic forms and styles through which faith can live anew."
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