by Matthew Millener
Protestants in the arts seem to be caught in a holding pattern of vision casting. In his recent book Senses of the Soul, the prominent evangelical theologian William Dyrness suggests that despite a surge of interest in the arts in Protestant intellectual life, there is still a “residual suspicion” regarding the arts in Protestant congregations. For the Beauty of the Church: Casting a Vision for the Arts is therefore a regrettably necessary, and largely effective, attempt to once more address Protestant distrust of the arts—which is arguably an inextricable groove of Reformation DNA.