David Mellor

Slightly belated, I note this obituary of the designer David Mellor. He is interesting in this connection as one with affinities with Arts and Crafts thinking on the right integration of work, art and life. He was also married to Fiona MacCarthy, biographer of William Morris and Eric Gill, amonst others. He was also something of a cult figure amongst a certain type of Sheffielder in my time there.

'Jim' Cadbury-Brown

I note this obituary of the architect H.T. Cadbury-Brown. He is of note here as the architect trusted by Benjamin Britten to work for him at Aldeburgh, also building there a house for Imogen Holst.

John Masefield's 'The Coming of Christ'

I am bound to note the appearance, on the School of Advanced Study's institutional repository SAS-Space, a post-print text of my article on this play by John Masefield. Commissioned by George Bell for performance in Canterbury Cathedral in 1928 (one of Bell's last acts as Dean before his appointment as Bishop of Chichester), it is often (incorrectly) described as the first play to be staged in an English cathedral since the Reformation. The article explores what precedents there were for such a performance; examines the controversy provoked by the play, on theological, moral and aesthetic grounds; and locates it in the development of Bell's own thinking with regard to the relationship between the Church of England and the arts.

The article is to be published in Humanitas. The Journal of the George Bell Institute later this year. I am extremely grateful to the Editor for permission to publish this version at this time. It was originally given at a conference under the auspices of the Institute last year.

Westminster Abbey

Some early reactions to the proposals made by the Dean of Westminster to add a corona to the Abbey, in connection with the Queen's Diamond Jubilee in 2013; see the Times report, and material on the Abbey's own site.

So far the reactions have been predictable: that money shouldn't be spent on frivolities while anyone is still homeless (see comment on the Times article); that it should be left as it is (editorials and columns in the Guardian and the Evening Standard.) I anticipate further wrangles about style when the competition to design it begins.

More on T. S. Eliot

I note the recent launch of a major new project, editing Eliot's prose and poetry, co-ordinated by the Institute of English Studies (University of London).

The Art Instinct

I note two reviews of this new study by Denis Dutton on the evolutionary biology behind our instinctual appreciation of the arts: they are by Roger Kimball in the TLS and Nigel Warburton in Prospect.

Kimball notes Dutton's avoidance of the gleeful '"existential deflation" which might be expected when such stringent naturalistic terms are applied to concepts such as "beauty"; it remains however still "perforce a coming-down-to-earth" for aesthetics. Kimball also detects a thinness in Dutton's treatment of the religion-art relationship, and notes a continued "craving for transcendence" in much contemporary discourse.

T.S. Eliot

I note that Fulcrum are to re-publish a section from the Cambridge Companion to T.S. Eliot.

It is: Cleo McNelly Kearns, ‘Religion, literature and society in the work of T. S. Eliot’ from A. David Moody (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to T. S. Eliot (Cambridge: CUP, 2002), pp. 77-93.

Delius's 'A Mass of Life'

The Bach Choir are currently preparing a performance of this piece, and a friend made an intriguing observation, to the effect that the piece has an almost cult status in secularist musical circles as one of the very few choral works without an explicitly religious text. It set me thinking about how this might have played out in the piece's critical reception. It also made me wonder about what influence this might have had in its (very limited) performance history. I should be very grateful for any observations anyone might have on this. I don't really know the literature on Delius at all; his own belief position seems quite well documented, but I don't know about his reputation more widely.

Further details of the performance in the Royal Festival Hall on May 21st at the Bach Choir site. The Mass seems to have attracted relatively few recordings, to judge from the discography on the Delius Society site.

Christian Worship Worldwide - Review

Charles E. Farhadian (ed.),
Christian Worship Worldwide. Expanding Horizons, Deepening Practices
Grand Rapids/Cambridge, Eerdmans, 2007: ISBN 978-0-8028-2853-8

[A review, first published in Anvil 25;4 (2008), 330-1, and reproduced by kind permission of the Reviews Editor]

This collection of essays, part of the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship Liturgical Studies Series, is one of many questions and few answers, but arguably none the worse for it. Its central concern is with the exchange of worship practices between cultures, both historically (from the west to the rest) and in the present, when the flow has gone into reverse. Charles Farhadian’s introduction (1-24) identifies the central issue: how may Christians distinguish between elements of worship that may be transcultural and thus fixed (say, the general shape of the Eucharist), and those that may be contextual, and determined by local custom. In addition, which practices may be transferred in their original form, without adaptation (the cross-cultural) and which are counter-cultural, standing out against the receiving culture, and enabling us to examine our own distinctions between what is fundamental and those things to which we are merely accustomed.
All these are useful questions, and particularly so, as Farhadian shows, as the centre of gravity of world Christianity shifts southwards. Yet this is not simply an exercise in cultural relativism, part of the wider analysis of globalisation; rather it is an attempt to relativise those elements that are culturally particular, in order better to isolate those that are genuinely common. The temptation is great to make one’s own worship practice normative for others, and a barometer of spiritual health.

So much for the questions, here usefully framed. Next is a series of case studies of worship from around the world: in the Mar Thoma church in Kerala, India; among Apostles and Zionists in Zimbabwe; amongst Pentecostals in South America, and several others. These studies are by turns stimulating and startling and several stand as the most comprehensive accounts of their subject available. There are along the way useful materials for the historian of Western mission. What is often missing, despite the best efforts of the editor in the short prefaces to each, is much analysis of the question the collection is intended to address; the reader is often required to make many of the broader connections himself.

Part III concludes the book, with essays by C. Michael Hawn, Bryan D. Spinks and Lamin Sanneh, each circling around the analysis that the introduction suggests. Again, there is much suggestive and useful material here, and very little that can actually be faulted, but often also a sense of bets being hedged. Hawn comes closest to nailing colours to the mast, in a most useful examination of how a western congregation might approach using elements of worship from the worldwide church. He suggests an exploratory set of criteria to apply: does this dance/song/ritual draw attention to itself, or does it fit into the progression of the liturgy ? Does it give a voice to the otherwise voiceless ? Does it unify the body ? Does it provoke prayer for the worldwide church ? The challenge presented by this collection is to order our worship in such a way that our relationship with fellow Christians worldwide can be made more immediate, alongside the (hitherto dominant) visible continuity of worship with that of the saints who preceded us. Christian Worship Worldwide, without providing any blueprints, succeeds splendidly in posing the questions that need answering as we begin.

Roger Scruton on beauty

I note some reviews of Roger Scruton's recent On Beauty (OUP). Jonathan Ree reviews it in Prospect (March 2009), noting the tendency in Scruton's work towards the jeremiad concerning contemporary culture, in which there is an implicit historical narrative of decline.

A review has also appeared in the Observer, and an extract in the Times, dealing with the 'kitschification' of religious art in particular. See also Scruton on the 'flight from beauty' in Axess

See also an earlier post on his Culture Counts