When the Church Stopped Making Beautiful Things: How We Lost the Arts and Why It Matters
Walk into a medieval cathedral, and your eyes rise heavenward. Walk into most modern churches, and you might mistake them for a conference center. The shift is not just about style. It is about how we see God, and how we believe He deserves to be approached. Somewhere along the way, Christians traded transcendence for practicality, beauty for branding, and art for efficiency.
The Church once stood at the center of human creativity. For centuries, believers built and composed with a holy sense of awe. Michelangelo, Bach, and Handel did not create for applause or money. They created for the glory of God. Their art was theology in color and sound. Their cathedrals were sermons carved in stone. Beauty was not decoration. It was revelation. It told the truth about who God is.
So how did we go from stained glass and Handel’s Messiah to gray walls and four-chord choruses?
Part of the answer begins with the Reformation. While it was necessary and good, it also brought suspicion toward beauty. In an effort to purify worship, many reformers stripped away art and imagery. They wanted to keep people from idolizing creation instead of the Creator. The result, however, was that many churches began to view beauty itself as a distraction. Simplicity slowly turned into sterility.
Centuries later, the industrial age taught us to value speed, utility, and profit above all else. Churches began to imitate the culture around them, and by the twentieth century, the sanctuary had become a multipurpose room. The arts became a tool for marketing, not a vehicle for worship. Instead of forming the imagination, we learned to chase trends. When creativity becomes a means to an end, it eventually loses its soul.
The deeper problem is that we have forgotten that beauty is a part of truth. We often speak about goodness and righteousness, but rarely about wonder. A blank wall may be cheaper than a mural, but it also tells us less about heaven. A song written for mass appeal may sound familiar, but it may not lift the heart to eternity. When art becomes disposable, our worship starts to feel that way too.
It is time for the Church to reclaim beauty. Not as an act of nostalgia, but as an act of faith. We do not need to return to cathedrals or choirs, but we do need to remember that creativity is one of the clearest signs that we are made in the image of God. Every painter, every musician, every sculptor, and every designer in the Church needs to hear that their work is not secondary. It is sacred. When we make something beautiful for God’s glory, we are not being indulgent. We are being obedient.
The Church does not need to compete with the art of the world. It needs to recover the courage to create without needing a reason. To make things that serve no practical purpose except to remind us that eternity is real and that God is worthy of beauty. When we paint again, sing again, and build again, we may rediscover what we were made for. Not just truth and goodness, but beauty too.