I shall now snootily subvert “the year in culture” blog post genre by linking to one from 2004.  A wonderful essay by Una Cadegan in the Confessing History volume (which I reviewed over here), brought my attention to Judith Shulevitz’s 2004 wrap up in Slate, where she wrote the following about Marilynne Robinson.

For inspiration Robinson has reached so far into the prehistory of American writing that she bypasses the Enlightenment conviction that art is distinct from religion. She takes us back to the time of the Puritans, to the era of great and garrulous and promiscuously confessional diaries and testimonials and yes, sermons, all written by men and women who brought a sense of high drama to their struggle to be good that we can hardly imagine anymore. In Gilead‘s universe, as in theirs, the mundane is sacred and the sacred ubiquitous. God is entirely good but frighteningly unknowable. The past of one’s forefathers—whether biblical or abolitionist—has at least as much reality as the fleeting present. And in that conflation of past and present Robinson seems almost to be issuing a prophecy about American literature, to be pointing us toward a spiritual renewal after decades of ever giddier modernism, postmodernism, and moral indifference. The direction she heads us in strikes me as hopeful and fresh, as fresh as the Bible itself, and also slightly terrifying.

A rising tide of books and centers makes it almost a commonplace to suggest that evangelicals are experiencing ressourcement, a rediscovery of the early church that – in Jason Byassee’s words – “is akin to that enjoyed by Catholics in the last century.”  Nothing could be better for modern evangelicals.  But Robinson is a reminder that such resourcing should include not only the Christian Platonism of the Patristic era, but that of the Puritans as well.

Those Puritans didn’t love the liturgical year, but they were wrong about that.  Merry Seventh Day of Christmas First Things readers, which is puzzlingly referred to elsewhere as “New Year.”

Those frustrated with the art world’s prohibition of non-ironic religious art might enjoy this lecture from art historian John Walford. Walford begins by quoting a contemporary art critic who asserts the non-existence of serious art by Protestant Christians.  Walford then goes on to describe a lifetime of involvement with the very artists who presumably don’t exist: Greg Schreck, Bruce Herman, Joel Sheesley, and Makoto Fujimura among them.

Needless to say, this would not be art history’s first example of creativity flourishing despite being refused.  In the nineteenth century, work unacceptable to the formal Parisian Salon grew so voluminous that in 1863 Napoleon III established a Salon des Refusés (“exhibition of the rejected”), which ultimately resulted in a little something called Impressionism.

Are religious artists therefore the new Impressionists? Not necessarily, but the point is this: There are few things more catalyzing to creativity than not being allowed to exist.  We might therefore take a moment to pity the non-ironic religious artists of the future who will (inevitably) regain acceptance.  The mockery and/or refusal of religious art by the art world may be fleeting.  All the more reason to enjoy it.

Everyone is loving to hate Pastor Joe Nelms’ oft-viewed prayer to open a recent NASCAR event.  I couldn’t even find an articulate condemnation—something with conviction like, “High priest of consumerism breathes oil-addicted Empire’s last pious gasp.”  On offer was only the inevitable autotune remix and haughty snickers.  The twitter hashtag might as well have been #howdarehenotbelikeus?

We cultured despisers seem to leave Pastor Nelms four recourses:  He should 1) not invite God into the recreational aspect of his life at all, 2) bring to it an artificial solemnity that is clearly out of step with his mode of enjoyment 3) prophetically overturn the NASCAR tables with new urbanist fury (a practice which Christ reserved for religious occasions), or 4) he should take to enjoying lacrosse or polo (and watch his ministry disappear).

Why not apply our ample training in appreciating other cultures to this especially robust portrait of vernacular American faith?  The prayer begins, “Heavenly Father, You said ‘in all things give thanks,’ so we want to thank you tonight for these mighty machines.”  Pastor Nelms naturally assumes that the “all” in “all things” includes car racing.  He then goes on to give thanks for multiple car brands – which both lends the prayer poetic specificity and avoids the impression that it was sponsored by one brand in particular.  “May they put on a performance worthy of your strength tonight,” pleads Pastor Nelms, who—when he hears the roar of an engine—knows that God’s power far exceeds it.  More lamentable, it seems to me, would be to think God couldn’t measure up.

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Amidst commentary on the passing of evangelical leader John Stott has been the occasional suggestion that Stott represented the propositionalist, logic-driven, “modern” evangelicalism of the past. For better or for worse, younger evangelicals today, on the other hand, tend to prefer aesthetic modes of reasoning, the mysterious and personal dimensions of truth, multiple atonement theories (rather than exclusive focus on penal substitution), traditional forms of piety, and an emphasis on social justice, not just saving souls.

To test the old man Stott theory, I picked up his The Cross of Christ, once given to me by a youth pastor to bolster my newfound evangelical faith.  It had been a while.  I opened it up, bracing myself for an icy blast of old time evangelical religion.  Instead, I found a book deeply informed by all the sources so (fittingly) fashionable among evangelicals today:  The early Christian fathers and Karl Barth.  It turns out, in fact, that The Cross of Christ anticipates each of the younger evangelical characteristics listed above:

1. Aesthetic Modes of Reasoning:  Because “God is a rational God, who has made us in his own image,” Stott rightly emphasized discursive reason.  And yet, The Cross of Christ begins with an extended meditation on a Holman Hunt painting, only to then move into architectural exploration of St. Paul’s Cathedral, followed by a discussion of early Christian symbolism.  To be sure, William Dyrness has recently taken Protestant aesthetics a great deal further (more on that here), but nor should Stott’s choice to begin his most famous book with art history be ignored.

2. Truth’s mysterious and personal dimensions: Stott, needless to say, was no Pseudo-Dionysios, but nor did he make an idol of Cartesian clarity:  “What actually happened when ‘God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ’ is a mystery whose depths we shall spend eternity plumbing… it would most unseemly to feign a cool detachment as we contemplate Christ’s cross. For willy-nilly we are involved. Our sins put him there.”  Hans Boersma expands these dimensions of evangelical thought, but with Stott – it seems to me – not against him.

3. Multiple atonement theories: As explained by Anthony below, Stott prioritized substitutionary atonement.  But the nuance with which he maintains that focus is anything but reductive:  “‘Salvation’ is the comprehensive word, but it has many facets which are illustrated by different pictures, of which justification is only one. Redemption… is another… Another is recreation.. Yet another is regeneration or new birth… All these belong together.”

4. Traditional forms of piety: “To be disrespectful of tradition and of historical theology,” announces Stott in the book’s opening pages, “is to be disrespectful of the Holy Spirit who has been actively enlightening the church in every century.”   Referring to the practice of Christians crossing themselves, Stott sides with Richard Hooker against the Puritans:  “There is no need for us to dismiss this habit as superstition… the sign of the cross was intended to identify and indeed sanctify each act as belonging to Christ.”  George Hunsinger, among others, take these Protestant liturgical paths much further, but Stott helped show the way.

5. Social Justice:  Stott’s commitment in this area is no secret, and is perhaps best encapsulated in this nice line from The Cross of Christ.  “Good Samaritans will always be needed to succour those who are assaulted and robbed; yet it would be even better to rid the Jerusalem-Jericho road of brigands.”

So yes, evangelicalism changed a great deal over Stott’s lifetime.  But it appears the best of such changes were not about leaving John Stott behind – but catching up.

Though not as good as it might have been (see Thomas Hibbs’ percipient review), Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris is a refreshing step down from the nihilistic soapbox. The lesson—in case we’d miss it—is pedantically spelled out: Beware “Golden Age syndrome,” the assumption that the past is always superior to the present. Accordingly, Allen’s protagonist chooses to bravely live in the present (fortunately populated by sultry Parisians), just as—the movie clobbers us over the head to emphasize—should we.

Allen, however, is as nostalgic as the character he criticizes. Just look at the traditional architecture he chooses to spotlight. If the modern age is really so wonderful, why not an extended scene just outside the exo-skeletal Centre Georges Pompidiou? Perhaps I missed it, but why didn’t the camera lovingly linger on La Grande Arche de La Défense in the opening architectural montage? Indeed, if the point is the present, why not go so far as to film a major portion of the movie in the troubled Parisian suburbs? Why? Because what we love about Paris, just like what we love about Manhattan, was mostly built before 1930. That’s not nostalgia—it’s just human.

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The Venice Biennale – the World Cup of art – just awarded top prize to Germany, the Leone d’Oro for Best National Participation, because of a church. The winning entry, built by the recently deceased artist Christoph Schlingensief, is an impressive pseudo-chapel lined with the artist’s own video installations, evoking the church where Schlingensief once served as an altar boy.  The prize means that pseudo-chapels, where artists mourn lost religion or long for its return, have finally arrived; but they’re not new.  Robert Gober’s churchy installation, complete with a headless crucifix, caused a stir back in 2005.  The same year Banks Violette, under the banner of irony, built a twelve foot tall replica of a burned church inspired by Satanic murders (wish I was kidding).

Pseudo-chapels, however, aren’t all bad (especially when one considers the increasingly ridiculous alternatives).  In 2007, Rusty Reno wrote of artist David LaChapelle’s photomural of a phantasmagoric chapel interior, where worshippers were “shocked by the reality of grace that illumines a flood-destroyed church.”  This year in Chelsea, the Austrian artist Hermann Nitsch presented a relatively tame pseudo-chapel which improved on a previous installation, where Nitsch played high priest by crucifying a lamb and displaying its entrails (really).  Contemporary art’s ecclesial chic can even approximate sermons.  Currently at Manhattan’s Museum of Modern Art, there is an uneven series of video installations by Francis Alÿs; but the “when faith moves mountains” portion – involving a string of shoveling students shifting a massive dune – is a moving exegesis of Biblical text.

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Richard John Neuhaus and Avery Cardinal Dulles were fond of referring to the Catholic Church’s irrevocable commitment to ecumenism.  Why then haven’t any Catholics yet taken up the Andrew and Sarah Wilson’s proposal to respond to their Lutheran pilgrimage from Erfurt to Rome with a return journey?  And why aren’t more Catholics (not to mention Orthodox) Christians discussing Presbyterian George Hunsinger’s serious and compelling ecumenical proposals in Eucharist and Ecumenism: Let Us Keep the Feast?

Just curious.

Father Thomas Hopko, the former Dean of St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, relates an unusual anecdote.  He describes sitting in on the Lesbian Christology session at the American Academy of Religion, where he heard a scholar severely criticize the notion that God the Father would need to deliberately punish and beat God the Son to satisfy the Father’s own appetite for wrath.  The presenter shouted: “This is absolute madness!” Hopko remarks how he wanted to shout out, “I agree with you!”  The story can be heard at the eleven minute mark in Hopko’s characteristically forceful lecture (available for free though the indispensable AFR), entitled Understanding the Cross of Christ (ht: Siedell).

In the lecture, Hopko is careful to point out that the satisfaction theology he is criticizing is a debasement of St. Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo; but its vulgarized, popular form requires his addressing the caricature.  Hopko admits there is an inescapably substitutionary aspect to the Atonement – but the East, he insists, never sees it in terms of punishment.  As Hopko would surely admit, the lecture is only a beginning, and leaves many questions unanswered.  For most American Christians, this is unfamiliar turf.

If only the Orthodox view of the Atonement could be explored further, say, in a symposium with some heavyweight theologians and Biblical scholars.  But wait!  Just such a symposium has been arranged, put on by Princeton’s vibrant Florovsky Society entitled On the Tree of the Cross:  The Patristic Doctrine of the Atonement.  Register soon, as it’s happening in Princeton next Friday and Saturday, Feb. 11 and 12th, 2011.

Needless to say, the Atonement is a mystery best viewed through multiple window panes.  Try, for example, the theology window at the Princeton University Chapel which includes not only Aquinas, Calvin, and Jonathan Edwards, but Paul and Athanasius as well.  If such local beauty is not enough to draw you to the symposium, remember that in Princeton, First Things readers always drink free.  Just tell any bartender you’re a subscriber.  I may be lying about that.

A one-day symposium exploring that questions is being hosted at the Museum of Biblical Art on February 7th.  A PDF of the conference schedule is available here. The intriguing lineup of speakers, chosen by the Association of Scholars of Christianity in the History of Art, appears to be leaning toward the following answer: “There have, but they’ve been ignored.”   I suppose, therefore, it would be especially unjust to ignore this symposium as well. 

In his fitting article on Marian devotion, John Haldane wrote:

Her unique elevation has been criticized from two opposing quarters: On the one hand by Biblical Protestants who view it as superstitious, idolatrous and entirely without scriptural foundation; and on the other by radical feminists who regard it is as part of the confinement of women, casting them in maternal and submissive roles.

Haldane is, of course, correct that criticism of Mary from such quarters has been steady.  But perhaps it is further proof of the soundness of Haldane’s reasoning that there have been fortunate shifts on both those fronts.

Firstly, it’s no secret that Protestants are recovering Mary. A sampling of recent books on the subject would include Blessed One: Protestant Perspectives on Mary, or Tim Perry’s book Mary for Evangelicals.  Perry’s substantial article on Karl Barth’s surprisingly high view of Mary also recently appeared in Pro Ecclesia, entitled “What is Little Mary Here For?” Barth, Mary, and Election.”

Among my favorite pieces are the contributions in Mary: Mother of God, edited by two Lutherans, Carl Braaten and Robert Jenson.  There’s also Scott McNight’s The Real Mary: Why Evangelicals Can Embrace the Mother of Jesus.  These aren’t just academic expressions either, having, if I recall correctly, graced the cover of Christianity Today in a moving article by Sarah Hinlicky Wilson.

Some third-wave feminists have been turning to Mary as well.   Back in the seventies, Marina Warner concluded her study of Mary, Alone of All Her Sex, predicting that while the Virgin’s legend may endure, “it will be emptied of moral significance, and thus lose its present real power to heal and to harm.” Feminists, Warner implied, should give up on Mary.  Thirty years later we have not silence, but The Feminist Companion to Mariology, which is but a sampling of the extensive recent literature, some of the best of which I’ve referenced before.

In short,  I guess there’s something to “all generations shall call me blessed” after all.

“It was inevitable,” writes William Johnsen in the inaugural issue of English Language Notes (Summer 2006), “that the shame associated with admitting religious belief in the secular world of the human sciences in midcentury would prepare the ground for the great succès de scandale of religious (re)turn at the end of the century.” In other words, some of us may need to click refresh on our stereotype of academia. I’ve written about this phenomenon here before, and about the graying of critical theory at my home address. One consequence of the shift is that new phenomena are now subject to the scrutiny to which religion has long been exposed. You could call it the anthropology of secularism, which is being exemplified by Catholics (Charles Taylor), Muslims (Talal Asad), Evangelicals (Hunter Baker), and—perhaps most interestingly—people of no faith commitment at all (Fenella Cannell).

For further evidence of what is widely called the academy’s “religious turn,” consider this call for papers for an upcoming conference entitled Empowerment and the Sacred:

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We all knew that when Stanley Hauerwas, a post-Constantinian if there ever was one, was given the opportunity to review Peter Leithart’s book Defending Constantine, things were going to get ugly.  For a pacifist, Hauerwas sure can get rhetorically violent.  Here is an excerpt from his Christian Century review, which can only be described as cutthroat:

I think Leithart is right. It is not only that Yoder’s account of Augustine… is inadequate. Nor is it simply, as Leithart argues… that Yoder relied on outdated accounts of the patristic period. Rather, Leithart’s fundamental criticism of Yoder is that he betrayed his own best insights when he denied the possibility that by God’s grace emperors (or whoever is the functional equivalent, such as “the people”) might receive a vision sufficient to make them Christian. That is a point that I think Yoder would find worth considering…   As a pacifist I could not want a better conversation partner than Peter Leithart. God is good.

Likewise, we all knew that once Walter Brueggemann, a noted Old Testament scholar, got a hold of the first volume in Brazos’ theological interpretation series, R.R. Reno’s commentary on Genesis, then the dust was really going to fly. Brueggemann, jealously defending his scholarly turf, really let Reno the theologian have it. His Theology Today review reads like a barroom brawl:

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The founding principles of New York’s Museum of Modern Art are not unclear:

Our ultimate purpose is to establish a permanent public museum in this city which will acquire…  collections of the best modern works of art…   We solicit the support of those who are interested in the progress of art…. The Museum galleries will display carefully chosen permanent collections of the most important living masters…

I’m having a hard time reconciling such principles with the fact that MoMA screened the film Jackass 3D last month.

How tempting it is to end this post right there.  Contrasting MoMA’s founding ideals with an isolated event might generate some eye rolls, and were any of us sensitive enough, perhaps even a tear.  But such a jab would lend a false impression.  The Van Goghs haven’t quite been bubble-wrapped.  MoMA still has much to offer, even if it resorts, on occasion, to Abramovician stunts to draw crowds.  If antics can foot the bill for what is more enduring, then all the better.  The current list of exhibitions (take a look) is nothing less than substantial, with nary a mention of crazy glue removing chest hair.  As the Wall Street Journal’s Eric Gibson has pointed out, lowbrow subsidizing highbrow may not be the best scenario, but nor is it the worst of arrangements.

Criticism, to be sure, has its place.  Frankly, it’s also more fun.  But why not fast, for a season, from strictly negative cultural critique?  Western civilization may be in rapid decline, but most of us have gotten the message, and grumbling about it does little to slow the rate of deterioration.  The appetite for gloom need not always be fed.   A different strategy is called for:  Seek and celebrate the good (and if you haven’t found good, you haven’t looked hard enough).  Call it the cultural version of Jim Neuchterlein’s inspiriting reflections this month On the Square, entitled Apocalyspe No.  “Conservatives need no instruction in the dangers of inordinate optimism, but they might need some help with its opposite.”

Artist Enrique Martínez Celaya is lecturing tomorrow night regarding Biblical themes in the show that Rusty reviewed here very positively.  So consider strolling right past the upturned noses of the irreligious art world into the Museum of Biblical Art to hear something interesting.

So they’ve done it. Andrew and Sarah Wilson, tracing Luther’s 1510 journey from Erfurt to Rome, have finally crossed the Tiber. And I mean that literally. They reached their destination.

Ecumenism can be the lightheaded pursuit of the touchy-feely crowd who don’t like to think hard about doctrine, but not in this case. Andrew’s posts were historically loaded and forthright. He admits that Luther’s mission from Erfurt to Rome was actually meant to prevent unity, lending an ironic twist to their journey. Sarah’s winsome writing encapsulated what everyone’s attitude towards ecumenism should be: “Nothing but the sharpest and clearest truth will do. Nothing but the greatest and most generous love will do.” The walk now completed, both pilgrims have challenged Catholics to make it a round trip.

When in Rome, Sarah and Andrew appropriately commemorated Reformation Day by celebrating both Luther and the signing of the Lutheran-Catholic Joint Declaration. They’ve educated their readers, reminding us how much progress has been made, from the Princeton proposal to the Global Christian Forum, and many other advances as well. One stated goal of Here I Walk was to publicize such spiritual advances. Just try to imagine the current Pope doing what Julius II was doing when Luther arrived.

We might also mention that the mutual excommunication between East and West of 1054 has been officially “in oblivion” since 1965. Capitalizing on this rapprochement, Dawn LaValle—a young Catholic—reflected on worshipping in a hospitable Orthodox monastery this summer, and her thoughts are very similar in tone to Here I Walk. But despite all kinds of progress, Christian fractures remain. Henry Chadwick’s saddening quip comes to mind: “The principal reason for Christian disunity, it seems, is disunity itself.”

Joe reports that most teenagers aren’t sexually active in America today. In his Bancroft Prize-winning biography of Jonathan Edwards, George Marsden provides some historical contrast. Here is the skinny on pre-marital sex in eighteenth century Puritan New England:

“Bundling,” which was supposed to be a way of getting acquainted without sexual intercourse, did not always work as advertised. Pregnancies before marriage were rising dramatically in New England… Premarital sex was commonplace. Even when it resulted in pregnancy, so long as the couple married, there was no longer much stigma involved. Alluding to that new attitude, Jonathan [Edwards] perceived another alarming decline. “And there is not that discountenance of such things as there formerly used to be…. Formerly, things were accounted such a wound as a person never could get over as long as he lived…. Now they are so bold and impudent, that they are not ashamed to hold up their heads.”

Edwards’ preaching may have been ineffectual in his day. But times have changed. The National Survey results can only mean that finally, after centuries of struggle, we have burst the shackles of oppressive Puritan sexual morality.

In her explosively intelligent book Empress and Handmaid, Sarah Jane Boss contrasts medieval images of the Virgin with contemporary pornography:

Whereas the worshipper before the Virgin in Majesty is the servant of the Lord and Lady whose presence the statue conveys, the actors in the pornographic film or photograph are servants of the pornographer and viewer who summon and pay for their presence.

The pornographic image is degrading to its maker and user; but the Virgin in Majesty ennobles her devotee.  You may prostrate yourself before her and proclaim yourself her servant, or pour out your sins to her; but in return she will fill you with that dignity and sense of worth by which she first commanded your attention.  The pornographer perpetrates the lie that the human condition and physical world are naturally vile and degraded; but the Mother of God and her Son say truthfully that the whole creation is destined for the highest honour.

Some parallel insights can be found in Jason Byassee’s fine article, “Not Your Father’s Pornography.”

As an undergraduate years ago, those of us in the Wheaton College art crowd piled into a fifteen passenger van for an unusual studio visit. We drove into Chicago to the home/studio of artist Tim Lowly whose work—we were told—is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (which in fact it is). When we got inside, we noticed Tim’s profoundly disabled daughter, Temma, lying silently on the couch. This made some of us uncomfortable at first; but Tim and Temma were not, and they quickly transferred their ease.

An entire show of Lowly’s work devoted to his daughter Temma, entitled Without Moving, is opening this Saturday night at Chicago’s Fill in the Blank Gallery. You can learn more about Lowly’s work from this Image article, or by listening to this more recent interview with the effervescent Christy Tennant. In the latter, Lowly does a fine job of diffusing nearly all misconceptions one might have about his work. His daughter is not in endless “suffering,” his paintings do not “exploit” her, nor is his role as a parent a horrific cross to bear. It’s worth a listen, and if you’re in the Chicago area, worth a visit.

The Gray Lady appears to agree with Micah about Stephen Hawking being something of a bore this time around:

The real news about “The Grand Design,” however, isn’t Mr. Hawking’s supposed jettisoning of God… The real news about “The Grand Design” is how disappointingly tinny and inelegant it is. The spare and earnest voice that Mr. Hawking employed with such appeal in “A Brief History of Time” has been replaced here by one that is alternately condescending, as if he were Mr. Rogers explaining rain clouds to toddlers, and impenetrable.

Terry Eagleton has given us a convenient signifier for the willful (read: profitable) ignorance of basic religious concepts: “Ditchkins” (a conflation of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens). It would be a shame, not to mention linguistically awkward, to have to include Hawking in the mix; but the pre-K manner by which he invokes the term “God” in his latest press releases urges this regrettably necessary conflation. So here’s everyone’s favorite Marxist on why religious believers might not find themselves trembling at Ditchkinsing’s latest pronouncements:

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“Mary Immaculate precedes all others, including obviously Peter himself and the Apostles.”  - John Paul II, Mulieris Dignitatem

“Thou goest to a woman?  Do not forget thy whip!”  - Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Rusty Reno asked me why we can’t build like Ralph Adams Cram envisioned. The answer to that question, I think, is the architectural equivalent to what Reno himself said about education: “Fearful of living in dreams and falling under the sway of ideologies, we have committed ourselves to disenchantment.” Hence today, the Cram passage I quoted would likely horrify the same institution at which it was first delivered. It would be defused in a classroom (using critical theory), as quickly as someone would extinguish a fire in the wastepaper basket.

Ethan Anthony, an author and architect who is perpetuating Cram’s legacy today, put it this way: “Cram’s career, like that of his contemporary Frank Lloyd Wright, was a constant search for architectural absolutes.” Cram, a Gothicist, thought big: “We are handicapped by the deeds of our fathers, but the restoration must be accomplished, however arduous the effort!” Wright, a Modernist, did as well: He hoped to build a mile high structure that, had it been constructed, would have nearly doubled anything in present day Dubai.

But the Modernist ideology failed (see Glazer), and we are disillusioned. As Michael J. Lewis explains, architecture now (pockets of resistance notwithstanding) is All Sail, No Anchor. All Wasabi, No Sushi. A delicious Wittgenstein quote (sent to me by Steven Good) says it best: “Architecture immortalizes and glorifies something. Hence there can be no architecture where there is nothing to glorify” (Culture and Value, 69e).

It’s not, of course, that we shouldn’t sometimes be frightened by full-throated architectural rhetoric. Far from it. It’s just that I can think of those more deserving of our fears than Cram. In The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand created the architect Howard Roark (modeled after Wright), whose Wynard Building was to be “a gesture against the whole world . . . the last achievement of man on earth before mankind destroys itself.” In comparison to that, Cram was a kitten.

I recently came across the following passage from the architect Ralph Adams Cram’s commencement address at the Yale School of Fine Arts (as it was then called), published in The Ministry of Art (1914):

The artist is bound and controlled by the laws of his art, but doubly is he bound by his duty to society. If he is prohibited — as he is under penalty of aesthetic damnation — from denying beauty or contenting himself with expedients, or sacrificing any jot or tittle of the integrity of his art to fashion, or vulgarity, or the lust of evil things, still more is he bound to mankind by the law of noblesse oblige, and by the fear of God, to use his art only for the highest ends, to proclaim only the vision of perfection, to cleave only to the revelation of heavenly things.

The architect who abandons himself to the creation of ugliness, however academic may be its cachet; the painter who “paints what he sees” or makes his art the ministry of lust; the sculptor who regards the form and sees nothing of the substance; the poet who glorifies the hideous shape of atheism, or the grossness of the accidents of life; the musician who exalts the morbid and the horrible; the maker of ceremonials who assembles depraved arts in a vain simulacrum of ancient and noble liturgies, — these are but traitors to man and God, and however competent their craft, they are enemies of the people, and to them should be meted the condemnation of their kind.

Those unfamiliar with Cram (whose polemics, he tells us, were delivered with a twinkle in his eye) might consult Matthew Alderman’s fine reflection, or better yet, walk into St. Thomas Church on Fifth Avenue in New York and gaze at what the exacting standards expressed above could actually accomplish.

He was America’s John Ruskin. But our Ruskin could build.