Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-gvh9x Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-17T18:34:56.810Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Western Discovery of Non-Western Christian Art

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

A. F. Walls*
Affiliation:
Centre for the Study of Christianity in the Non-Western World, University of Edinburgh

Extract

Christianity is in principle perhaps the most syncretistic of the great religions. Unlike Hinduism, it does not have a unifocal religious culture belonging to a particular soil; nor, like Islam, does it have common sacred language and a recognizable cultural framework across the globe. Historically, Christian expansion has been serial, moving from one heartland to another, fading in one culture as it is implanted in another. Christian expansion involves the serial, generational, and vernacular penetration of different cultures.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1992

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Extrapolated from figures in Barrett, D., ed., World Christian Encyclopedia (Nairobi, 1982 Google Scholar), esp. Global Table 2, updated by Barrett, ‘Annual statistical table on global mission: 1988’, International Bulletin of Missionary Research, 12 (1988), pp. 16–17.

2 Costantini, C., L’Arte Cristiana nelle Missioni (Rome, 1940)Google Scholar; L’art chrétien dans les missions (Paris,

3 Costantini compiled five volumes of memoirs: Foghe Secche (Rome, nd); Con i Missionari i Cina, 2 vols (Rome, nd); Ultime Foglie (Rome, nd); and Cum Petro in Christo (Rome, 1957). A French abridgement of the whole appeared as Réforme des Missions au XXe siècle (Paris, 1960). The account of his life before his appointment to China is given in Réforme, pp. 13-24.

4 Costantini, Réforme, p. 242.

5 Ibid., pp. 27ff.

6 Ibid., p. 239.

7 Cf., of many passages, Réforme, pp. 223–36.

8 Ibid., p. 238.

9 Ibid., pp. 237-42.

10 Carroll, K., Yoruba Religious Carving: Pagan and Christian Sculpture in Nigeria and Dahomey (London, 1967)Google Scholar: cf. the foreword by the ethnographer W. B. Fagg.

11 Cf.Butler, J. F., Christian Art in India (Madras, 1986), p. 124 Google Scholar. Heras (1888–1955) was primarily a historian, but his work touched many aspects of Indian culture. See the tributes in Indica 25 (1988), pp. 83-91; and M. Lederle, Christian Painting in India through the Centuries (Bombay: Heras Institute, 1987).

12 Costantini, Réforme, p. 243.

13 Especially Ulli Beier, Art in Nigeria 1960 (London, 1960).

14 Carroll, Religious Carving, pp. 70-2.

15 Photographs of exterior and interior in Fleming, D.J., The Heritage of Beauty (New York, 1937). pp. 678.Google Scholar

16 Church Missionary Cleaner, Nov. 1884.

17 Stock, E., History of the Church Missionary Society, 3 (London, 1899), p. 471.Google Scholar

18 See Graham, C., Azariah of Dornakal (London, 1946)Google Scholar. For the cathedral, see pp. 11f.,991., 1141f. Miss Graham rather stresses the Hindu aspect; but the minarets are unmistakable.

19 Illustration in Butler, J. F., Christianity in Asia and America = Iconography of Religions, 24:13 (Leiden, 1979)Google Scholar, plate XIX.

20 Sahi, Jyoti, ‘Reflections on Biblical images/symbols in relation to Indian Christian spirituality’, Image, 37 (1988), pp. 1011.Google Scholar

21 On Roy and Panikkar see Taylor, R. W., Jesus in Indian Paintings (Madras, 1975)Google Scholar, and cf. Butler, Christian Art, pp. 125-9.

22 Examples of Masoji’s painting in Lehmann, A., Afroasiatische christliche Kunst (Berlin, 1966)Google Scholar, plates 161-6.

23 See The Art of Angelo da Fonseca (Bombay, 1980). This booklet, written for an exhibition of da Fonseca’s paintings at the Heras Institute, includes a statement by the artist and an account of his life and work by M. Lederle. Da Fonseca, born in Goa and brought up in Pune, lived from 1910 to 1967.

24 The pictures are also reproduced in Lehmann, A., Die Kunst derjungen Kirchen, 2nd edn (Berlin, 1957)Google Scholar. The SPG had earlier published The Life of Christ by Chinese Artists (London, 1943).

25 Jones, E. Stanley, The Christ of the Indian Road (London, 1925).Google Scholar

26 The issues discussed at length by Taylor, Jesus in Indian Paintings and by Butler, Christian Art throughout their studies.

27 Cf. the examples in Löwenstein, F. zu, Christliche Bilder in altindischer Malerei (Munster, 1958).Google Scholar

28 Examples in the Butler Collection, Centre for the Study of Christianity in the Non-Western World, University of Edinburgh.

29 The Life of the Church International Missionary Council Meeting at Tambaram, Madras = Tambaram Series 4, p. 6.

30 Ibid.

31 Bur the author, J. Prip-Møller, was a delegate at Tambaram and may well have had his say on the subject.

32 The Life of the Church, p. 6.

33 The Life of the Church, p. 8. Reichelt’s controversial views (set out in, for example, Truth and Tradition in Chinese Buddhism, 1 st Eng. edn (Shanghai, 1927), and posthumously in Religion in Chinese Garment (London, 1951), were expressed in equally controversial practice. See Sharpe, E. J., Karl Ludvig Reichelt, Missionary, Scholar, Pilgrim (Tao Fong Shan, Hong Kong, 1984)Google Scholar; Eilert, H., Boundlessness: Studies in Karl Ludvig Reichelt’s Missionary Thinking … (Ringkøbing, 1974).Google Scholar

34 The Life of the Church, p. 12.

35 Ibid., p. 15.

36 Ibid., pp. 15f.

37 Prip-Møller, J., ‘Architecture: a servant of foreign missions’, International Review of Missions, 28, 109 (1939), pp. 10515.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38 There were contributions on Africa (by W. V. Lucas, Bishop of Masasi), China, and Japan.

39 Mabel Shaw, God’s Candlelights (London, 1932).

40 See his contribution, ‘The Christian approach to non-Christian customs’, in Morgan, E. R., ed., Essays Catholic and Missionary (London, 1928)Google Scholar; repr. as late as 1950 in Christianity and Native Races (London).

41 Morgan, ed., Essays, p. v.

42 Prip-Møller,‘Architecture’, p. 115.

43 Pitt, M., ‘Take, for instance, Indian music’, International Review of Missions, 31, 122 (1942), pp. 20510.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

44 There is a rather embarrassed reference in the report of the World Council of Churches Assembly in 1961 to the close historical association of the Church with the arts and the open questions about art and society. The conclusion appears to be that the subject is important, but the Council currently without machinery for pursuing it. There is no reference to the possible contribution in this field of the newer churches: The New Delhi Report: the Third Assembly of the World Council of Churches 1961 (London, 1962), pp. 181ff.

45 The works of M. Lederle, R. W. Taylor, and J. F. Butler have already been mentioned: see nn. 11, 19 above.

46 Fleming, Heritage, p. 17.

47 Ibid.

48 Fleming, Daniel Johnson, Each with his own Brush (New York, 1938).Google Scholar

49 Fleming, Daniel Johnson, Christian Symbolism in a World Community (New York, 1940)Google Scholar.

50 Fleming, Heritage, p. 85. On Fleming’s rheology and place in American mission history, see Hutchison, W. R., Errand to the World. American Protestant Thought and Foreign Missions (Chicago, 1987), pp. 1508.Google Scholar

51 Lehmann, Arno, Es begann in Tranauebar (Berlin, 1955)Google Scholar; rr. It began at Tranauebar (Madras, 1956).

52 Malerei und Plasrik VII: Christliche Kunst in den jungen Kirchen’, RGG, 4, cols 702-4. For Lehmann’s other articles see the bibliography in Afroasiatische christliche Kunst; tr. Christian Art in Africa and Asia (St Louis, 1969).

53 The most important books are Christianity in Asia and America in the Brill Iconography of Religions series, and the posthumous Christian Art in India both already referred to. See also his contributions to G. Cope, Christianity and the Visual Arts (London, 1964), and G. Frere-Cook, The Decorative Arts of the Christian Church (London, 1972). A collection of his articles is in the Butler collection at the Centre for the Study of Christianity in the Non-Western World, University of Edinburgh.

54 The published title was ‘Nineteen centuries of Christian missionary architecture’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 21 (1962), pp. 3-17.

55 Butler, J. F., ‘Can missions rescue modern art?Hibbert Journal, 56 (1958), pp. 37187.Google Scholar

56 The association arose with the support of the East Asia Christian Conference, later the Christian Conference of Asia, and the active promotion of the Sri Lankan churchman D. T. Niles. Niles commissioned Masao Takenaka of Doshisha University to collect work by Asian painters on Christian themes. Takenaka’s Christian Art in Asia (Tokyo, 1975), was a manifesto volume. See O’Grady, R., ‘The tenth anniversary of the Asian Christian Art Association’, Image, 37 (1988), p. 2.Google Scholar