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CHURCH AND DRAMA

APPRECIATION OF ART CONCERN OF RELIGION, “The appreciation of art must not be regarded as the privilege of the few; it is a necessity for every man ” said Canon Percival James in his sermon at St. Paul’s Pro-Cathedral, Wellington, last Sunday. “How can you look for idealism or noble behaviour in the man who has not been trained to understand true and beautiful things, whoso capacity to appreciate them has been ruthlessly ground down from his childhood,” he proceeded. “Can you wonder that he flies foY refuge from the bleak ugliness of much of our modern civilisation to the third rate novel, the sex-saturated magazine, and the feeble and suggestive film play. Christians cannot regard the aesthetic realm as alien to their religion. It is clearly the concern of religion that art should be true and good, not false and bad. The vast and expanding realm of art must bo claimed for the Lord Christ, not surrendered to the neopagan.” Teaching and Culture. Commending the endeavours of the British Drama League to foster community drama, th 0 Canon spoke of tho growing recognition amongst educators of the value of the dramatic method as a normal vehicle of teaching and culture. It seemed to stir imagination and to present great ideas with an emotional appeal often lacking in the bare abstract instruction of the ordinary school method or the lecture or sermon. The old prejudice amongst some religious folk against dramatic activity had almost vanished. It must be remembered that this prejudice had its grounds in the coarseness and sensuality of stage plays and other amusements in bygone days; and it was still necessary for Christians sternly to discountenance what was debased ant? morally perilous in art. “But Christians will be wise to recognise that the public gets what the public demands,” said tho preacher. “The Church will help most effectively to preserve dramatic art from debasing influences by encouraging and supporting what is worthiest and best, so that the ap preciation of thc common man and woman may be guided to better things. It will prove a slower process, I think, to educate audiences than to train amateur players. Moral and Aesthetic View “But the success of a good play demands tho essential contribution that the spectators must make, in endoav ouring to appreciate the main theme tho play, and to share the emotion of the players. There is moral and aesthetic value to performers in good dra matic work. It provides exercise in memory and accurate observation. It discovers and develops tho range and flexibility of the human voice—that glorious instrument which some of us misuse and most of us neglect. It is a training in tho perception of thc beauty of the apt phrase and gesture, of tho emphasis and restraint of emotion. And it would be difficult to overstate tho moral valuc of learning something of an art which requires thc sinking of self in generous team work, which demands that appreciation of fine charcter which is a sheer necessity for its effective preservation, and compels you to put yourself into another’s place to sec things from his point of view.”

The Canon went on to speak of the revival of religious drama in England and elsewhere. There were vast possibilities in good religious drama, which might become a powerful evangelistic enterprise and enlist the services of amateur performers within tho churches in a new method of evangelism.

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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/WC19330511.2.31

Bibliographic details

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 76, Issue 109, 11 May 1933, Page 5

Word Count
574

CHURCH AND DRAMA Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 76, Issue 109, 11 May 1933, Page 5

CHURCH AND DRAMA Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 76, Issue 109, 11 May 1933, Page 5