Virginia Woolf declared, “On or about December, 1910, human character changed.” She was commenting on the Post-Impressionist art exhibit held that year in London, England. A similar comment was made by New York City’s patron of all things modern Mabel Dodge during a similar show of modern art held at the National Guard Armory in 1913, now referred to as the Armory Show.

At the same time the Armory Show was drawing crowds, J. Gresham Machen published an article in the Princeton Review entitled “Christianity and Culture.” The opening of the Armory Show and the publishing of Machen’s article converging in the same month of the same year is historical irony. The show’s purpose was, in part, to shake up and change American culture. Machen’s purpose in his article was to sound an alarm over the changes occurring in American culture, which were given a disquieting face in the show’s Post-Impressionist art. Observing the sweeping changes taking place throughout Western culture and perceiving the power of modernism, a power not only capable of shaping human character, but of changing the church and her message, Machen called for Christians to engage their culture.

Guess Who’s Coming Down the Staircase

The early twentieth century was a time of tremendous upheaval throughout the West, but especially in the United States, due not only to dramatic social changes like mass immigration, urbanization, industrialization, and unrestrained capitalism, but also the transformation of institutions and centers of influence, thought, and power. The Armory Show signaled these changes. It provided a new language, a new ethos, and a new face in the arts that upset and even revolutionized the status quo. The star of the show was Marcel Duchamp’s painting, Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2. Painted in neutral browns and beiges, the painting is of a human figure abstracted, cubistic, mechanical, and machinelike (even robotic), trailing blurred images of itself down a staircase. Along with Pablo Picasso’s and George Braque’s cubism paintings, the show worked its way into popular American culture and its collective consciousness. People held cubist parties, showing off cubist furniture, preparing cubist food, and wearing cubist fashion designs. A mock children’s book was titled The Cubies ABC. All the major newspapers carried reviews of the show, and some carried parodies as well; in one, abstract human figures tumble down the frame of the cartoon with the caption, “The Rude Descending a Staircase (Rush Hour at the Subway).”

Machen understood that modernism was producing a new world order. But with all the revolutionary newness, and all the material progress, there was a perceptible loss in the spiritual realm, evidenced in the arts. In his introduction to Christianity and Liberalism in 1922, he wrote:

Despite the mighty revolution which has been produced in the external conditions of life, no great poet is now living to celebrate the change; humanity has suddenly become dumb. Gone, too, are the great painters and the great musicians and the great sculptors. The art that still subsists is largely imitative, and where it is not imitative it is simply bizarre.

There seems to be a pessimistic shift from his 1913 “Christianity and Culture.” Though we may argue with Machen’s broad criticism, I believe Machen felt the world’s weariness after the devastating First World War. And with the harsh battles taking place within Protestant churches, especially in the Presbyterian Church, he could have felt the dark cloud of pessimism hanging over the arts in general. Perhaps Duchamp’s Nude is a symbol, or a parody, of how modernity was “changing human character,” but as a dehumanizing force. Machen may have perceived modern art as simply “bizarre”; however, as early as 1913, Machen understood its power in American life and faith.

Losing the Collective Thought

Clearly modern art was a conscious movement away from classical, realist, and romantic styles. It was an expression of a new way of thinking, a new way of being, a new awareness, rejecting old canons of Western tradition for individual freedom, longing for the new. But does art have the power to shape, transform, and change human thinking and awareness? Are Virginia Woolf and Mabel Dodge correct in believing an art exhibit can change human character?

Machen held that modern art represented the changes taking place under the influence of modernity (it is noteworthy how often in his speeches and articles Machen mentions the world of art). His concern was this: there is a danger in losing the collective consciousness of a nation that still had a Christian consensus to a force, modernism, that was assaulting the Christian church. Emphasizing reason and ideas as the engine of cultural change, he warns:

False ideas are the greatest obstacles to the reception of the gospel. We may preach with all the fervor of a reformer and yet succeed only in winning a straggler here and there, if we permit the whole collective thought of the nation or the world to be controlled by ideas which, by the resistless force of logic, prevent Christianity from being regarded as anything more than a harmless delusion. (“Christianity and Culture”)

Machen understood the stakes in losing “the whole collective thought of a nation” (a rather modern way of defining the problem of Christianity and culture). And for Machen, modern art was a clear sign that the collective thought was under assault by a hostile power.

Cultivating and Consecrating

In the face of that power, Machen called for Christians to engage their culture. His position is consistent with classical and Reformed positions of the past, reaching back to Augustine:

Instead of destroying the arts and sciences or being indifferent to them, let us cultivate them with all the enthusiasm of the veriest humanist, but at the same time consecrate them to the service of our God. Instead of stifling the pleasures afforded by the acquisition of knowledge or by the appreciation of what is beautiful, let us accept these pleasures as the gifts of our heavenly Father. Instead of obliterating the distinction between the Kingdom and the world, or on the other hand withdrawing from the world into a sort of modernized intellectual monasticism, let us go forth joyfully, enthusiastically to make the world subject to God.

For Machen, the relationship between Christianity and culture is not an amalgamation or an abandonment, but rather a serious, discerning, and thoughtful engagement.

Machen’s call to cultural involvement includes a call to militancy. His call is for the church to advance the kingdom extensively, through evangelism, and at the same time to advance the kingdom intensively, by bringing about a deep, transformative conviction within the whole person. He explains that

Christianity must pervade not merely all nations, but also all human thought. The Christian, therefore, cannot be indifferent to any branch of earnest human endeavor. It must be brought in some relation to the gospel. . . . The church must seek to conquer not merely every man for Christ, but also the whole man.

The Christian who is called into the sciences or the arts is to attempt to “mold the thought of the world to make Christianity something more than a logical absurdity.” What God desires is this: any obstacle to Christian thought is to be destroyed at its root. Machen has a militant tone in his call to Christians to engage the world, using images of soldiering, warfare, fields of battle, conquering, destroying, and using phrases like, “the dangers of the Lord’s enemies remaining in possession of the field.” Lest we think too harshly, Machen is echoing and expounding Paul’s description of fighting a spiritual warfare (2 Cor. 10:4–5).

But Machen’s call to cultural engagement also has tones of heroism and hope. He writes:

The situation is desperate. It might discourage us. But not if we are truly Christians. Not if we are in vital union with the risen Lord. If we are really convinced of the truth of our message, then we can proclaim it before a world of enemies, then the very difficulty of our task, the very scarcity of our allies becomes an inspiration, then we can rejoice that God did not place us in an easy age, but in a time of doubt and perplexity and battle.

And Christians, not only speaking the gospel in love, but also devoted to cultivating the arts, either professionally or quietly, whether studio artist, writer, designer, musician, architect, or simply believers giving attention to gardens, to hospitality, to raising children, or to decorating home or church, can be assured that on some deep level their aesthetic expressions will speak in profound, collective, and transformative ways.

The author is a retired OP minister. New Horizons, October 2024.