Religion, Art, and Money

An introduction, six chapters, and an epilogue compose this cultural history. In part 1, “Churches,” the first three chapters take up Phillips Brooks and Trinity Church in Boston; the Gothic revival and the arts and crafts movement; and American cathedrals. Part 2 also comprises three chapters: “The Social Gospel,” “The Gospel of Education,” and “The Gospels of Wealth and of Art.” A recurring theme is the connection between the Anglican emphasis on the incarnation of the divine in this world and Episcopalians' affirmation of material culture. This unified vision appreciated both this-worldly social service and high culture, expressed in the arts, architecture, and education. Peter W. Williams argues that Episcopalians thus “helped smooth the way for a widespread acceptance of the visual and material as means of religious and cultural expression in a society where an iconoclastic Puritanism had shaped a dominant aesthetic” (p. xii). The most stimulating chapter—one that represents a coherent view of theology, character formation, and architecture, assisted by big money—is “The Gospel of Education.” Williams's account begins not with the Civil War but forty years earlier, with the founding of the Round Hill School. This chapter offers a solid description of its subject. Minor errors appear, however. On page 157, for example, the correct spellings of individual and place names are John Barrett Kerfoot, the College of St. James, and W. R. Whittingham; and Henry Coit died in 1895, not 1995

Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Gospel · Great Depression · Incarnation · Literature · Period (music · Sociology · Spanish Civil War · Subject (documents · The arts · Theme (computing · Theology · Visual arts · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Architecture · Classics · History · Philosophy · Religious studies · Religious Studies