Did the reformers wage war on the illiterate?
I'm reading the book Emerging Churches by Gibbs and Bolger and came across the following quote on page 70.
The Reformation was born in a literary age, and it is difficult to imagine its occurrence without the prior existence of the printing press. The Protestant church itself was a contextualization to print culture, a new form of church created for those who built their worlds around the printed page. In one way, it was the newly literate class waging war on the illiterate, as images were often the only way for the illiterate to understand the gospel. Thus, stained glass, symbols, and the teaching of story came under deep suspicion. With a focus on the logically prepared preached Word, worship became abstract, and the listeners now needed to imagine what they previously had seen with their eyes. Even the worship music was strongly text based, as the words, not the entire experience, carried the meaning. As Martin Luther said, "The ears are the only organ for the Christian." Everything became highly structured, abstract, printed. The print era mirrors the modern era, and one can argue which came first.
Those who know me well can probably guess that this quote didn't make me feel all warm and tingly inside, and your guess would be correct in this case.
This scenario proposes that there is an elite class (the literati, linked here with the Protestants) oppressing a lower class, i.e. "waging war on the illiterate."
It seems to me that a more truthful picture is that the medieval Roman church fit the bill of the elite, literate class, which kept the lower classes in an illiterate condition and that this elite class was able to manipulate and control the lower classes through their image based system.
Dennis McCallum has a great paper at the Xenos website on the objectification of religion, which dovetails nicely with this discussion on image based vs. text based cultures.
McCallum defines objectification this way:
Objectification of religion is one of the most interesting tendencies demonstrated by religious people. It is also one of the most universal features of religion. As Norbeck observes,
"Great religions have indeed arisen as ethical or philosophical principles for the guidance of man, but once they have become the province of multitudes...they have met a common fate of objectification; that is, of being cast into concrete form so that they may be actively appreciated by the eyes, ears, or other sense organs rather than remaining only abstract ideas and beliefs."
And again,
"Objectification in varying degree and form appears in all known religious complexes of primitive peoples and it has been outstanding in the religions of civilized societies."
McCallum explores several theories that claim to account for this practice of objectification. One theory is that the "unwashed masses" are unable to comprehend the abstract, a theory he ably refutes here:
What then should we conclude regarding the "unresponsiveness to the abstract" thesis advanced by Norbeck, Davies and Warnac? To this I answer that, in my view, such an explanation is suspect. It is too easy to assert that the "great unwashed masses" are not as smart as we are. On the contrary, there is frequent response to the abstract on the part of common folk both now, and at various times throughout history. The New Testament is very lean on objectification, and long on abstract truths. Yet, the authors address their letters to the rank and file of the church, not just to the leadership. Also, substantial history in the Christian church demonstrates that this kind of thinking has led to the disenfranchisement of the laity from ministry, and from access to the Scriptures. The thinking that says, "They can't understand the Scriptures, so let us give them a picture of Jesus to relate to..." is foreign to the New Testament.
This position was taken by the leadership in the early church, either because it was the easy way out, (in that it spared the clergy from the burden of educating their people) or as Brow, Schmidt, and Richardson claim, because it led to personal gain on the part of a corrupt clergy.
The latter position cannot be ruled out, in my view, by anyone who believes in the biblical doctrine of the depravity of all mankind. Behavior that benefits oneself is always tempting, and anyone who has experience in church ministry knows the urge to take over and "do it myself."
In truth, the Protestants fostered literacy and enabled these "unwashed masses" to break free from their literate masters who had controlled them with images.
In saying this I am not defending some of the anti-art excesses of the Protestant reformation. You would not have to work very hard to convince me that Protestants have denigrated the image and have failed to give art it's proper place in the Kingdom.
Yet it seems to me that Gibbs and Bolger have things exactly in reverse here. A text based culture puts the Word of God in the hands of the people. An image based culture puts an intermediary - the image - between the individual and the Word of God. Thus, the individual will always be at the mercy of the (image making) interpreter of the Word.
I don't object to Gibbs and Bolger's (or the emerging church's) attempt at re-valuing the image, I object to their de-valuing of the text and their uncritical accommodation to postmodern sensibilities regarding the image.
I want to suggest that it would be a fruitful discussion for the emerging church, and all of us, to consider how a return to an image based culture may lead "to the disenfranchisement of the laity from ministry, and from access to the Scriptures" to quote McCallum.
If we don't yet know what the emerging culture is going to emerge into, it seems we ought to at least consider that, if it emerges into an image based culture, it may also emerge into something like McCallum has described. There could be some unintended consequences here where the emerging church emerges later into something it abhors now.
And, I could be completely off my rocker on all of this - so I'm interested in hearing your responses.
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