Can You Have Religion without Beauty?

The question is usually presented the other way around. We wonder whether we can have anything that is true, good, or beautiful without religion. But what if these transcendentals are interdependent? If we deny any of them aren’t we in danger of losing the others as well?

Hans ur Von Balthasar put it best: “Our situation today shows that beauty demands for itself at least as much courage and decision as do truth and goodness… we can be sure that whoever sneers at her name as if she were the ornament of a bourgeoisie past… can no longer pray and soon will no longer be able to love.”

His last sentence is striking. Those who sneer at beauty will do the same to God and to love. When analyzing the multitude of problems facing our world it is easy to over-simplify the causes and solutions. Yet whether it be cause or effect, it remains undeniably clear that the decline in religiosity has come with a corresponding decline in our veneration of the beautiful. If we look at changes in our conceptions of what religion means, and what the beautiful is, we may begin to understand their uniform retreat.

We live in a country where 80% of the population professes to be religious, yet only 39% of the population attends religious services. In other words, over half of the religious population sees religion as something concerning their own individual walk in life, rather than a demanding and sacrificial walk meant to draw them nearer to their community and God. We also live in a society that still professes a belief in beauty. New artists and galleries abound. But beauty is now seen as belonging in the eye of the beholder, and isn’t considered something to which we aspire, or as something that draws us out of ourselves. Instead it is something individualist which we are destined to create and find on our own.

T.S. Eliot rightly declared, “Where there is no temple there shall be no homes.” But where there is no artist there can be no temple. Religion is the glue that holds many things together, but it can’t stand alone. If beauty isn’t given her due we may find the temples empty, or not built at all.