The Dangers of Evangelical Austerity

Over at The High Calling, Skye Jethani has written a probing, provocative reflection on the danger of evangelical austerity and the dangers of demanding that beauty submit to practicality.

Likewise, I don’t know any church leader who would utterly deny the value of art. Most churches put astronomical amounts of their budgets into buildings, worship services, and theatrical sound and lighting. But like the Soviets, they only enthusiastically supported the arts that explicitly advanced their narrow agenda. To the Soviets beauty had no inherent value.

They insisted that beauty submit to practicality. Their worldview had no capacity to value anything or anyone that did not advance its mission—a fact manifested in the austerity of socialist societies and horrifically revealed in the murder of millions of people by communist regimes deemed unnecessary to the state.

Is the value of evangelical austerity that different?

Read the whole article here. What do you think?