180 - A Good Word For William Dowsing

A Good Word For William Dowsing
By James F. White

Few ardent Christians have been so sincerely despised as William Dowsing, the Puritan iconoclast. Dowsing began his short but spectacular career in 1643 armed with a commission from the Earl of Manchester for the destruction of "all Crucifixes, Crosses & all Images of any one or more persons of the Trinity . . . & all other Images & pictures of Saints & superstitious inscriptions." He undertook his visitation of the churches of Cambridgeshire and Suffolk, and before the year 1644 had ended, he had purged scores of churches and chapels, carefully recording his work of destructiveness in a Journal. The entry for the Church of All Hallows, Sudbury, is typical: "We brake about 20 superstitious Pictures, and took up 30 brazen superstitious Inscriptions, ora pro nobis, and pray for the soul c"

"Superstitious Pictures" received most of Dowsing's attention, and dozens of pictures of "God the father siting in a Chayer," crucifixes, angels, bishops, saints, and many a "popish Inscription" were demolished or obliterated. Dowsing did a thorough job of destruction and one can easily tell the churches and chapels in the two counties which escaped depredations.

I

For more than three centuries lovers of medieval art have called Dowsing a rascal and a philistine. Fortunately he probably was not above taking a bribe to spare a church, but he certainly wasn't insensible to beauty. In the church at Ufford, Suffolk, Dowsing noted: "There is a glorious Cover over the Font, like a Pope's Triple Crown." The same font cover still remains intact today, its beauty widely recognized. Dowsing destroyed medieval art, not because it was beautiful, but because it possesses such great power in communicating ideas. He actually gave evidence of a much higher respect for art than many modern art lovers reveal. Dowsing had a very high view of the potency-for good or for bad-of the medieval

181 - A Good Word For William Dowsing

art in the churches and chapels of England. And Dowsing, Puritan that he was, considered this art and its ideas patently dangerous.

Because this art possessed such a potency, diverting people from the proper worship of Almighty God and interfering with the maintenance of true doctrine, it obviously had to go. Stained glass was smashed, not because of its beauty, but because it was such a powerful exponent of the invocation of the saints. Medieval art was a valiant antagonist of those who worked to complete the Reformation. It was not a museum piece. Indeed, had museums existed, the Puritans could have found no surer way of destroying the power of medieval art than by shipping it off to museums. Safely buried in galleries, divorced from the life of the parish, the art of the medieval church truly would have been dead. Dowsing simply took the more direct method; he raised his ladder and went to work with his axe.

If Will Dowsing could return today, the actions of his religious descendants would puzzle him. Not only do twentieth-century Protestants have no fear of the potency of art, they seem completely unaware of it. Instead, they generally demand that their churches be filled with those "Images & pictures" which Dowsing felt so ominous. Dozens of large firms specialize in providing stained glass, carved woodwork, and countless varieties of painting and sculpture for the adornment of Protestant churches. Whatever one thinks of the quality of much of this output, there can be no question of the fact that the amount of it has become enormous.

But there is a great difference between this art and the art which troubled Dowsing. Art is used in the modern church because it is decorative. With very few exceptions, the potency of art as a theological force has been completely ignored. Art in modern Protestantism is safe because it has become so thoroughly tamed and domesticated. Dowsing would be considered a fanatic now, for no one believes that these painted or carved symbols possess any real power. They are totally dissociated from the life of our congregations except as ornamentation for the churches we build or remodel.

II

Actually such a situation is quite new to most of American Protestantism outside of the Lutheran tradition. Firm resistance to all visual symbols characterized Protestants in the last century. It

182 - A Good Word For William Dowsing

is hardly remembered now that Anglicans were shocked by the introduction of crosses in their churches a century ago and that in 1851 the Bishop of Manchester personally destroyed the stained glass and sculpture with which one of his congregations had indiscreetly decorated their church. The change began in England, largely due to the efforts of the Ecclesiological Society which flourished from 1839 until 1868. Two Americans loom large in overcoming the suspicions of twentieth-century Protestants about art. Ralph Adams Cram (1863-1942) was an architect, a writer, and a staunch Anglo-Catholic. A convinced gothicist, he sometimes lapsed into other styles for Protestant clients. He loved to boast that one great gothic edifice he built for Presbyterians could be readied for high mass in a few minutes. Even more influential than Cram's buildings were the score of eloquent books in which he sung the praises of beautiful churches fully adorned by all the visual arts. The other great twentieth-century apostle of art and religion, Von Ogden Vogt (1879-), was minister of the First Unitarian Church in Chicago for twenty years. As a minister, a seminary teacher, and a writer, Vogt's views on the unity of religion and art were very influential. Scores of other writers and teachers completed the task of impressing upon the Protestant mind the desirability of art in the place where they worshiped. Many of the great Protestant churches built during the 1920's and 1930's were lavishly decorated with carved, painted, or glazed visual symbols of every kind.

Present-day taste is perhaps more restrained, but few new churches are built without being embellished with stained glass, carved panels, or even some painting. Almost as soon as the building has been completed, the minister or building committee produces a pamphlet describing and explaining the symbols employed. So common has the practice become, that we fail to realize how extraordinary an example it is of putting the cart before the horse. The symbols have to be explained to the congregation. The church is Virtually a museum, handing out guides to new acquisitions. The very fact that the symbols have to be explained to the congregation is good evidence that they are meaningless to it. Had these visual images sprung out of the life of the Church, had they participated in the same reality as the Church itself, had they conveyed the presence of the supernatural, they would need no explanation. But such spontaneity has been lost. Most likely the symbols were culled

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from one of the spate of recent books on Christian symbolism. Or perhaps worse, they were simply ordered from a church goods catalogue.

Dowsing would find very little to do today. There is plenty of "religious art" in our churches but it has become completely innocuous, so that it is now quite safe. The visual symbols have little meaning or spontaneity. At one period in our national history visual symbols had these qualities. After the Revolution, furniture, buildings, coins, and other articles were emblazoned with images of Liberty, eagles, the flag, and George Washington. These symbols represented an exciting reality to the Americans of 1790 just as the bosts of saints ready to intercede for them had to the worshipers of the middle ages. But the textbook symbols of the modern church are quite different. They do not grow directly out of something experienced, but out of a second-hand reality. They tend to be esoteric or antiquarian. In short, they are almost meaningless.

These tired old symbols are well represented by two secular symbols which share the skyline of our midwestern town. Above the court house is the usual statue of blindfolded justice holding the balances. To most of our townspeople, justice is a remote concept which we take for granted but has little concrete meaning in our day by day lives. The statue, in short, means little to our average citizen. But above the county jail there is a symbol which has the greatest significance to a few inmates. This symbol is a giant key, symbolizing in a rather perverse way the freedom they are denied. It is a meaningful symbol to those affected by it. Justice does not convey such a crucial significance to the townspeople for whom it is merely a theory.

The question arises, "Who killed Cock Robin?" Why is it that the symbols which we have in such abundance, glazed in every church window, stitched on every altar hanging, and carved on many a pulpit have lost all potency? Largely, it stems from the fact that when Protestants again did return to the use of visual symbols, they were resuscitated from the dead. They were merely antiquarian specimens. Religious art and symbolism became largely the cult of the esoteric. Medieval religious art had been strong because it represented a faith directly experienced. For people who depended upon the intercession of the saints for their daily survival, repre-

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sentations of the saints possessed great power. But for modern Protestants who considered the saints as remote figures with interesting legends (not all true, of course) the presence of saints was purely decorative.

Will Dowsing would be bored today. The symbols in our churches possess no dangerous potency. There is no need to smash what is merely a matter of taste, and this is what religious art in the service of the Church has largely become. But perhaps we might learn something yet from Dowsing. After all, he took art seriously, much more seriously than as a mere matter of taste. He lived in a time when the old symbols had become inadequate. To Dowsing's mind, the art of the medieval church, peopled with intercessors between man (elect or not) and God, the references to purgatory rather than to an eternal decree, all these were powerful statements, though faulty. And so in his own crude but effective way, Dowsing was a theologian. His task, accomplished with hammer and hatchet was a theological one-defending man's true knowledge of God as the Puritans knew it.

And the theological task continues. Fortunately in our day it has become largely a constructive one. Is it possible that once again art can express the vigor and vitality of the Christian message? The best of contemporary art has demonstrated an extraordinary evocative power, reflecting much of the potency which offended Dowsing in medieval art. Perhaps now the time has come for the Church to make a positive acceptance of the genuine art of the twentieth century.

The work of Dowsing was necessary in his time. Unfortunately his successors forgot this and tried to revive the old symbols and forms. Today we need new iconoclasts to rid us of art which is dead in order that we may attain a truly religious art. Far better to destroy art than merely to decorate with it. It is noteworthy that the new churches built with the most theological consideration (mostly Lutheran) have been very reticent in their use of any symbols. A few, very few, have cared to take the next step-to work towards a utilization of the potency of contemporary art in stating beliefs and in mediating the presence of the holy. Perhaps some day soon we will come to as high an esteem of the power of art as that which Dowsing had. And then we will really be able to use it in a constructive fashion.