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Victorianism and Christianity

by Chris Alexion, Copyright August 14, 2005, all rights reserved. 375 views

I have this theory. I don't have much hard proof; it's more of a question. I wonder how much of what we've come to perceive as "godly" or "proper" or as reresenting "biblical values" is really not so much biblical as Victorian.

The Victorian age is a puzzle. It has detractors who hate its perceived stuffiness or react against it simply because it's a past generation. Too, Victorianism has supporters who revel in its formalities and regulations, and stock their libraries with Kipling and Tennyson. But to both enemies and friends, Victorianism has become somehow associated with the Christian faith. I'm trying to figure out how much.

A related question is how much what we perceive as "godly" is in reality feminine. In an article called "Clergy in Skirts", Doug Jones writes:

Why is there such an interest, in evangelical circles, to admit women into the leadership of the church? The answer is that we do not want feminine leadership; we want more feminine leadership. The men in our pulpits for many years have been simply jury-rigged women; when the request comes to bring in the real thing, on what principle will the request be denied? We cannot say that we must have masculinity in the pulpit because we do not have that now.

For well over a century in the American church, the norms of spirituality have been the standards set by a saccharine Victorian feminism. In the early part of the nineteenth century, like two mobs converging on a quiet crossroads, two revolutions merged to produce this effect, and we have not yet recovered any understanding of what life in the Church was like before this happened to us.

Jones lists several factors, including woman's switch in role from
producer to consumer during the Industrial Revolution, the "senitmental revolt of ministers against the strictures of theological Calvinism," and the need for the newly-disestablished New England churches to compete for parishoners.

Jones also addresses the connection to literature, noting that when women were removed from their role of producing and governing the home–"disestablished"–they became a new leisure class, and "one of the things they began to do was to write and read sappy novels."

The literature of the nineteenth century was not reticent in propagating this new sentimental view of the gospel. In these stories, we see an iron regime of domesticity–feminine tastes and values are set up as the standard of godliness and as a genuine regenerative influence. The unregenerate man in the stories was of course worldly wise, and something of a rake, unless he is converted to . . . what? Until he was converted to see it her way, and came around to bask in the gospel of the feminine aura.

We are so besotted that current "traditional values" Christians are actually reprinting and circulating this nineteenth-century treacle as though it represented a biblical view of the world. But Elsie Dinsmore represents nothing of the kind. She simply stands for an early form of feminism, and conservatives who hail her piety are revealing that they do not know what has happened to the Church.

I haven't yet looked into the issue enough to know whether Jones is right. But he's definitely given us food for thought. Jones seems to be on target; check out the following quote from an opponent of Contemporary Christian Music:

[C]ontemporary music's beat, repetition, and loudness unmistakably convey a mood of defiance, rebelliousness, aggressiveness, and self-assertiveness. …

If music does not claim to communicate a spiritual music (e.g., orchestral music), then (in addition to the above points) that music must be refined, balanced, sublime or subtle, and tranquil.

It seems the author is associating what are essentially feminine qualities–prettiness, tranquillity–with godly standards. But men are not pretty. Men are not tranquil. Given this, is it such a stretch to say that robust, aggressive music isn't such a bad thing?

I wonder in what other areas we've been influenced by Victorianism. Competitive sports? Strong language?

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