William Dyrness examines how particular theological themes of Reformed Protestants impacted on their surrounding visual culture.

An intriguing, substantive look into the relationship between the church and the world of art.

What is Protestant Art? presents an introduction to Protestant visual culture from the Reformation to the present. Examining historical images as evidence of changing practices and attitudes, Andrew T. Coates explores three major themes in the history of Protestant visual culture: 1) the religious work of images, 2) the relationship between word and image, 3) the power of the Bible and its visual representation. The book analyses images such as prints, paintings, maps of the ‘Holy Land,’ and Bible illustrations to demonstrate the broad range of images that could be classified as Protestant ‘art.’ This work argues that the variety of images and visual practices throughout Protestant history might better be described by the term ‘visual culture’ than ‘art.’

In this lavishly illustrated book, David Morgan surveys the visual culture that shaped American Protestantism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries--a vast record of images in illustrated bibles, Christian almanacs, children's literature, popular religious books, charts, broadsides, Sunday school cards, illuminated devotional items, tracts, chromos, and engravings. His purpose is to explain the rise of these images, their appearance and subject matter, how they were understood by believers, the uses to which they were put, and what their relation was to technological innovations, commerce, and the cultural politics of Protestantism. His overarching argument is that the role of images in American Protestantism greatly expanded and developed during this period.

The aesthetics of everyday life, as reflected in art museums and galleries throughout the western world, is the result of a profound shift in aesthetic perception that occurred during the Renaissance and Reformation. In this book, William A. Dyrness examines intellectual developments in late Medieval Europe, which turned attention away from a narrow range liturgical art and practices and towards a celebration of God's presence in creation and in history. Though threatened by the human tendency to self-assertion, he shows how a new focus on God's creative and recreative action in the world gave time and history a new seriousness, and engendered a broad spectrum of aesthetic potential. Focusing in particular on the writings of Luther and Calvin, Dyrness demonstrates how the reformers' conceptual and theological frameworks pertaining to the role of the arts influenced the rise of realistic theater, lyric poetry, landscape painting, and architecture in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

What are the poetics of everyday life ? What can they teach us about God? Art, music, dance, and writing can certainly be poetic, but so can such diverse pastimes as fishing, skiing, or attending sports events. Any and all activities that satisfy our fundamental need for play, for celebration, and for ritual, says William Dyrness, are inherently poetic and in Poetic Theology he demonstrates that all such activities are places where God is active in the world. All of humanity s creative efforts, Dyrness points out, testify to our intrinsic longing for joy and delight and our deep desire to connect with others, with the created order, and especially with the Creator. This desire is rooted in the presence and calling of God in and through the good creation. With extensive reflection on aesthetics in spirituality, worship, and community development, Dyrness s Poetic Theology will be useful for all who seek fresh and powerful new ways to communicate the gospel in contemporary society. William Dyrness s bold invitation to a poetic theology shaped by Scripture, tradition, and imagination one luring us toward a fuller participation in beauty than argument or concept alone allow reminds us that truth itself is beautiful to behold and poetic to the core. . . . If poetry is in its deepest reflex an intensification of life, then Dyrness s call for a poetic theology is one we ignore at our peril, reminding us that faithful living is not only about proper thinking but also and, perhaps, more properly about the texture of our living and the quality of our loving. Mark S. Burrows Andover Newton Theological School Makes a strong case for aesthetics as one of the avenues used by God to draw human beings near to him and his glory. . . . A wonderful journey through Reformed spirituality and a wake-up call for Reformed theology. Cornelius van der Kooi Free University, Amsterdam

Religions teach their adherents how to see and feel at the same time; learning to see is not a disembodied process but one hammered from the forge of human need, social relations, and material practice. David Morgan argues that the history of religions may therefore be studied through the lens of their salient visual themes. The Forge of Vision tells the history of Christianity from the sixteenth century through the present by selecting the visual themes of faith that have profoundly influenced its development. After exploring how distinctive Catholic and Protestant visual cultures emerged in the early modern period, Morgan examines a variety of Christian visual practices, ranging from the imagination, visions of nationhood, the likeness of Jesus, the material life of words, and the role of modern art as a spiritual quest, to the importance of images for education, devotion, worship, and domestic life. An insightful, informed presentation of how Christianity has shaped and continues to shape the modern world, this work is a must-read for scholars and students across fields of religious studies, history, and art history.