Abstract
This is a rich and engaging book but unfortunately likely to be of more use in the land of the author’s birth (the United States) than in Britain. Initially, the contents outline might seem to suggest otherwise, as before proceeding to assessment (‘discernment’) she offers an outline of the actual treatment of the arts in all three major Christian streams: Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Protestant. While the decision to confine exploration of underlying theological issues largely to recent years is understandable (a manageable project was needed), less comprehensible was her decision to look only at churches built within a similar time frame. So the sort of problems that arise with contemporary art in historical buildings simply pass her discussion by. Even so, there is plenty to learn from her well-informed account even in the case of so apparently unchanging a phenomenon as Orthodoxy. So, for example, our attention is drawn to the kind of differences made through the large influx of former evangelicals into Orthodoxy in the United States (a more complex approach to Scripture, including the new Orthodox Study Bible), as well as to some surprising compromises (the use of photographed reproductions when originals are as yet unavailable).
It is, however, the second part that Lisa DeBoer regards as at the heart of what she has written. Although heavily influenced by the writings of Nicholas Wolterstorff, she pursues her own independent line of thought with a series of tensions explored in respect of each of the three branches of the Church (e.g. universal v. local, public worship v. private devotion) before a set of questions are offered in each case for congregations to pursue further. Herself a Protestant and expecting most of her readers to be similar, she finds their need greatest to overcome what she calls the museum model of art. That is to say, it is one that expects professionalism but unlike Orthodoxy it is not firmly grounded in traditions of practice, nor like modern Catholicism in having considerable advisory resources on which to draw. She also questions whether art is best viewed privately rather than there being more to be gained by the sharing of experience.
The book is well written and partly because of its American context there is much to learn, not just about the position in the United States. There are plenty of other insights along the way. For instance, the chapter on naturalism and abstractionism alerts readers to how much less obvious the meaning of these terms is than at first sight. In the eighteenth century, the latter was in fact conceived of as an idealized variant on the former, while in Byzantine art we sometimes read as unemotional formalism what viewers of the time would have taken quite differently, simply because the symbolic resonances were quite different.