Quakerism and the Arts: and Now, the Good News....
A dialogue with the past by Esther Greenleaf Mürer
First published in Friends Journal, October 1994
The historic Quaker antipathy to the arts is well-known. There is no need to rehearse that history here; it is described in harrowing detail in Frederick J. Nicholson's Quakers and the Arts (Quaker Home Service, 1968) and John Ormerod Greenwood's 1978 Swarthmore Lecture, Signs of Life: Art and Religious Experience. I shall therefore content myself with outlining the main reasons for this hostility:
1) the arts were carnal and self-intoxicating, focusing attention on the world of the senses instead of on God;
2) they were untruthful, deviating from literal fact, arousing spurious emotions and encouraging vain imaginings;
3) they were frivolous, idle and useless, a distraction from attending to the pure Life and from doing God's work.However misguided this animosity may have been, it contained a kernel of truth. The charges of self-intoxication, falsity and frivolity do apply to much art of our time. Like the Mock Turtle, we are schooled in "ambition, distraction, uglification and derision." In fact, these have so far become the norm that for many it is hard to conceive of alternatives. Our culture no longer understands what Spirit-led art might be.
I believe that classical Quaker spirituality does have elements which could help us recover that understanding. So foreign are these elements to the modern mindset that I think it best to approach the matter obliquely, by examining the case, cited by both Nicholson and Greenwood, of a noted twentieth-century peace activist, feminist and writer who found Quakerism artistically unfriendly.
In 1945 The Friend, a British Quaker weekly, asked the author Vera Brittain to write an article on "Why I am not a Friend." Her response did much to reinforce British Friends' image of themselves as anti-art. The full text of the article struck so many wrong notes for me that I was forced to reexamine my own assumptions about art's relation to spirituality, with surprising results. Therefore, at the risk of being unfair to Brittain—and of seeming to set up a straw figure for the purpose of knocking it down—I shall quote from her piece at length and then outline my difficulties with it.
Three areas of confusion leap out at me from this passage:
1. It's clear that Brittain doesn't understand Quaker spirituality. She misses the distinction between egotism and self-transcendence, between indulging a need to be the center of attention and humbly putting one's experience at the disposal of God and community. She has no conception of a state in which God, not ego, is the motivating force. If the writings of Augustine and Newman are "egotistical," what about Fox, Woolman, and other Quaker journal-writers? Brittain seems unaware of their existence.
2. "What matters to the artist is not whether his methods are egotistical and therefore morally reprehensible, but whether the use made of his material has in fact provided the reader with the experiences which the writer desired to give him." Now that, to my mind, is egotistical. It implies that one's aim is to manipulate rather than to minister.
Art (like any other ministry) is a risk, it's casting bread on the waters, being a channel for the Spirit/Muse. I speak only what is given to me. I have some notion of what wants to be said, yes; but I'm saying much more than I know. Winifred Rawlins [FJ 3/15/79] puts it thus: "When I begin to write a poem I have no more knowledge of what will happen than when I stand to speak in meeting. In both experiences there is a flash of excitement, a kind of blending of insight and feeling, and the resulting words are a sort of shadow form of the deep hidden push."
Say I write a song. Am I aiming to provide the listener with "a significant experience"? What on earth does that mean? I'm trying to create an island of healing unity in this fragmented world. Work out a musical idea. Bring out hidden layers in the words. Reconcile the irreconcilable. I'm also trying to write something singable. Significant? I hope so, but the nature of the significance is no more under my control than it is when I speak in meeting. I don't see how a piece of music coheres until after I've finished it, and am always taken by surprise. How could I presume to control what my hearers experience? They aren't passive recipients, but co-creators viewing my message through many different lenses. My song will resonate with each person differently, or not at all.
3. Brittain feels oppressed by an implied demand that she "achieve the moral status of a social philanthropist." Friends threaten her artistic integrity.
The question of whether (or in what sense) art should be "useful" is still very much with us. There is a dearth of major works of art coming, not only from Quakerism, but from the whole left wing of the Reformation. People of these traditions are usually involved in good works and regard art as a frill; their religious communities don't nurture artists in ways which give them the courage, patience, grace—and time—needed to resist the temptation to settle for the sort of easy solutions and preordained outcomes which reduce most so-called radical art to the level of propaganda. The pressure to do good works makes artists feel guilty about the long period of gestation necessary to produce a work of importance.
This dilemma is is grounded in the tension between action and contemplation. One cannot be Spirit-led in a vacuum; leadings always point, in one way or another, to community—a fact which individualism denies. Individualism is not to be confused with individuation, the growing into the Christ-Self each of us was meant to be. Individualism substitutes for individuation much as addiction to alcoholic spirits substitutes for trust in the Holy Spirit. And indeed, the prevalence of alcoholism among those in the arts is one symptom of the loss of the corporate dimension.
The Spirit-led artist is not an individualist but a contemplative, a species of hermit. The Society of Friends, while it has always recognized the importance of both the active and contemplative facets of spirituality, has not done well at extending this insight to the arts. Since in God's realm significance hinges not on worldly success but on faithfulness, we must find ways to support holy obedience in all its forms, including the way of the artist.
Looking at my differences with Vera Brittain, I find that they all stem from one central fact: Brittain's assumptions are rooted in the worldly culture of the arts, while mine are drawn from Quaker spirituality. Our tradition does provide fertile soil for art—a truly Spirit-led art which is healing, life-affirming, saving in the deepest sense of the word. We need to recover the understanding of being "in the world but not of it" (John 17)—and rethink its application to the arts.How, then, would Spirit-led art differ from what the world calls art? The points yielded by my wrestlings with Vera Brittain's article are summarized in the following table:
Worldly art
Spirit-led art
Egotism Self-Transcendence Manipulation Ministry, healing Self-will Holy obedience Following fashions Minding one's call Individualist Contemplative (Hermit) Isolation, Alienation Community Success Faithfulness If I can get past the desire to have my work admired because it's mine;
If I can write to heal and not to impress;
If I can serve the work by rigorously attending to what it wants to be rather than imposing my will on it;
If I can resist pressures to do what's fashionable or politically correct and stick to minding my call;
If I can trust my religious community to uphold me without expecting them to promote my work;
If I can trust that Providence will send me as much recognition as is spiritually good for me—
—Then I've found the link between art and attending to the pure Life.Friends, that link exists, right there in our tradition. It is essential to our wholeness that we recognize it.
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