All in Sync: How Music and Art are Revitalizing American Religion

Sociology of Religion, Summer, 2004 by Sally Armstrong Gradle

All in Sync: How Music and Art are Revitalizing American Religion, ROBERT WUTHNOW. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003, 284 pp.; $29.95 (cloth)

Expansive and complex, Wuthnow's All in Sync offers a wide lens for viewing the intersection of religion and the arts in American culture. As a companion piece to his earlier in-depth qualitative study of one hundred artists and their spiritual journeys (Creative Spirituality: The Way of the Artist, 2001, University of California Press), Wuthnow now focuses on "how music and art enrich the spiritual lives of people who are not professional artists" (249). In addition to obtaining data from focus groups, conducting more than four hundred interviews with various clergy, arts organization leaders, and church members who use the arts as part of their ministry, the Arts and Religion Survey (Wuthnow's design) was administered to over fifteen hundred participants, producing a rich vein of quantitative results informing the reader as well.

Despite journalistic pronouncements and other sociological studies decrying the lack of civic, social, and religious involvement at the end of the twentieth century, Wuthnow asserts that Americans have been consistently committed to religious practice in the last half of the twentieth century, with the numbers of those attending weekly religious services hardly varying a percentage point or two during the last four decades. What has nurtured the vitality of religious practice? Wuthnow answers by suggesting there is a broad based interest in spiritual seeking, one that is occurring within the bounds of conventional religion and seems to accept a growing permeation of the arts in traditional worship settings. Noting that "one of the most important reasons that spirituality seems so pervasive in American culture is the publicity it receives because of its presence in the arts" (16), Wuthnow then explores the many connections between the arts and spiritual content, concluding that the arts are not only influential, but also significant and worthy of study. He contends that even though more formal alliances between arts and religious organizations are being established, the primary link between artistic and spiritual interests is occurring on a personal level--one with roots to a religious past that connects to the arts in some way (30).

Wuthnow suggests, for example, that the type of childhood exposure that matters most in developing a sense of the spiritual is not church attendance, "but the subliminal contact with the holy that comes through hymns and other religious music, pictures, Bibles, crosses, candles, and other sacred objects" (32). It seems to be the case that the childhood activities that shape adult spirituality derive from the pursuits that have brought art and religion together (70). The sweeping range of findings includes data which shows the various types of arts activities that offer spiritual sustenance in troubled times (Table 20), a breakdown of how evangelicals, mainline Protestants, and Catholics score on artistic involvement (Table 25), evidence that artistic activities are included in prayer (Table 15). These are only a few examples in which the data clearly articulates and provides statistical validity to the anecdotal evidence acquired in interviews.

The offered evidence seems to weave a theme throughout this text suggesting that art will often deepen the inner yearnings of the individual's spiritual pursuits, whether as a sought after engagement in religious groups, or as an individual quest. However, the popular portrayal of the prayerful isolate is not entirely accurate according to the findings, Wuthnow suggests. An active devotional life usually involves one with other participants, which is an important assertion that carries the connection of religion and art even further into community life (114). Wuthnow notes that the construction of mental spaces that the arts allow (through spiritual music or dance, for example) seem to lift one out of the immediate sphere of challenges to a place of transcendence and provide a means of reaching outwards to others.

Readers may find Wuthnow's exploration of the less positive associations of the arts with religion equally insightful. The negative relationship that the arts can have with religion, as shown in the Index of Negative Imagery (Table 37) suggests that those more inclined to hold negative opinions of the arts are members of evangelical Protestant churches (219) who may view a literal interpretation of the Bible as truth, or take a stance against perceived permissiveness they feel the arts condone.

One wonders if a further study might address all that is left unsaid and still outside of the current findings, perhaps one that explores the Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, or Jewish perspective on the links that exist between spirituality and the arts in American culture. Would the findings reveal a congruent picture with the large slice of research Wuthnow offers here?