"Love is Greater Than Taste": The Moral Architecture of John Betjeman and John Piper. (March 2014)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Mitchell, Philip Irving
• Is Part Of: Christianity and literature. Volume 63:Number 2(2014)
• Page Start: 257
• Page End: 284
• Publication Date: 2014-03
• Subjects: Christianity and literature -- Periodicals; Literature -- History and criticism -- Periodicals; 809.933823
• DOI: 10.1177/014833311406300207
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0148-3331

Abstract

Poet John Betjeman and painter John Piper shared an emphasis on visual attentiveness to place, which in its moral and aesthetic valuation, challenged contemporary standards of taste, especially those modern ones that excluded ornament and the picturesque. With regard to English Christianity, as I argue, both pursued forms of neo-Romantic, moral architectural praise and analysis, engaging the socio-cultural debate, not in terms of a set of frozen critical laws, but within a flexible practice of personal engagements that, nonetheless, set forth strong positions on sentiment, tradition, and sacrament. In doing so, both men reemphasized rootedness and love.