Introduction
The Influence of Spectacle on Active Faith
Addressed to His Grace, Archbishop Patrick A. Feehan
of the Chicago Diocese
Your Grace,
It is with trembling humility that I commit these reflections to paper amid the extraordinary tumult now overtaking our city. Chicago, once remembered chiefly for smoke, slaughterhouses, rail yards, and the ruinous fire whose ashes still haunt the memories of men not yet old, has become, almost overnight, the theater of nations.
Beneath electric suns that mock the stars themselves, mankind has assembled to celebrate the four hundredth year since Columbus crossed the dark Atlantic and thrust the restless spirit of Europe upon the shores of a sleeping hemisphere.
The Columbian Exposition rises before us like some alabaster vision from the Apocalypse. Vast domes gleam against the lake. Towers burn with light. Artificial lagoons mirror entire civilizations constructed for temporary admiration. Music pours continually through the avenues. The Midway teems with curiosities from every quarter of the earth. Men and women wander as pilgrims through halls dedicated not to saints or martyrs, but to machinery, empire, industry, novelty, speed and spectacle.
And yet, amid all this magnificence, I cannot suppress a singular uneasiness of spirit.
For, while observing the endless streams of visitors moving reverently beneath those radiant colonnades, I found myself asking whether modern man has not simply exchanged one altar for another. He has abandoned neither worship nor faith. Rather, he has altered the object toward which those instincts ascend.
This, Your Grace, is the concern which compels the present essay.
I do not employ the term faith here in its strictly theological sense alone, though all true faith finds its perfection in Christ Jesus and His Holy Church. Instead, I write of what I shall call active faith: that perpetual inclination within the human heart which reaches beyond itself toward some hoped-for relief, redemption, power, explanation, or deliverance. It is the inward hand of man stretching outward in darkness.
Active faith exists in every nation, among every people, beneath every creed. It animated the Hebrew prophets, the desert anchorites, the Franciscan friars, and the missionaries who crossed oceans carrying crucifixes into wildernesses. Yet the same impulse animated pagan augurs, false messiahs, alchemists, necromancers, political fanatics, and religious charlatans.
Indeed, history demonstrates with alarming consistency that wherever authentic spiritual discipline declines, spectacle rushes in to occupy the empty sanctuary.
The spectacle may be political, religious, scientific, theatrical or commercial. It may adorn itself in priestly vestments or in the garments of progress. Yet its essential purpose remains unchanged: to overwhelm the senses sufficiently that the weary heart mistakes astonishment for transcendence.
This danger is not new.
When Moses delayed upon Sinai, the Israelites did not become atheists. They fashioned a golden calf. Bereft of the invisible God, they demanded something immediate, radiant, tangible, and emotionally satisfying. Their error was not the abandonment of worship, but the degradation of it into spectacle.
That temptation persists in every century.
Even within the history of Christendom, false shepherds have frequently exploited this hunger. One recalls the melancholy disturbances surrounding the Anabaptist kingdom at Münster, where ecstatic prophecy and theatrical fanaticism seduced multitudes into delusion. Men who proclaimed themselves divine emissaries transformed religion into fevered performance. Their followers surrendered reason in exchange for emotional intoxication masquerading as revelation.
Likewise, history records innumerable wandering miracle merchants who trafficked in relics both absurd and fraudulent. Medieval Europe groaned beneath exhibitions of supposed fragments from Noah’s Ark, feathers from Gabriel’s wing, and enough splinters of the True Cross to construct entire fleets. Though many among the faithful were sincere, charlatans understood a dangerous truth: spectacle persuades more rapidly than holiness.
The saint persuades through sacrifice. The charlatan persuades through astonishment. The saint points away from himself toward God. The fraud magnifies himself continually.
Consider the notorious figures who have arisen in nearly every generation claiming secret revelation or supernatural authority. One thinks of the convulsionaries of Saint-Médard in France, whose public ecstasies devolved into grotesque exhibitions drawing crowds hungry for marvels. Or of various spiritualist mediums in our own century, conducting séances in darkened parlors where grief-stricken families surrendered reason in exchange for the illusion of communion with the dead.
Such persons prosper because active faith, untethered from discipline, becomes vulnerable to manipulation, spectacle offering a counterfeit shortcut to transcendence.
It promises ecstasy without repentance. Wonder without obedience. Mystery without moral transformation.
Herein lies the particular significance of our present age.
The nineteenth century loudly proclaims itself emancipated from superstition. Yet never has mankind appeared more intoxicated by illusion. The Exposition itself, marvelous though it undoubtedly is, reveals this contradiction with startling clarity.
Observe the multitudes entering the Court of Honor. Their faces resemble pilgrims approaching a shrine.
They gaze upward at electric illumination with reverence once reserved for cathedrals. Vast machinery halls evoke emotions akin to religious awe. Industrial power has become sacramental in the modern imagination. The machine now promises what previous generations sought from Providence: abundance, mastery, longevity, perhaps eventually even salvation itself.
Ancient Babylon dazzled the eye even while corruption devoured its foundations. Rome reached unmatched architectural magnificence precisely as civic virtue collapsed beneath luxury and cruelty. France glittered before the Revolution while spiritual exhaustion hollowed the nation from within.
The eye is easily deceived by grandeur.
The soul is not.
One of the cruelest ironies of spectacle is that it frequently thrives most powerfully among populations experiencing inward despair. The more uncertain men become, the more feverishly they pursue distraction. Public entertainments increase in proportion to private hopelessness.
The human creature was fashioned for transcendence. When denied Heaven, he manufactures substitutes.
And every substitute eventually demands performance.
This explains the extraordinary influence exercised by certain public personalities whose power rests less upon truth than upon theatrical charisma. The religious impostor instinctively understands crowd psychology. He employs gesture, costume, mystery, repetition and emotional contagion. He creates environments wherein individuals cease to reason independently and instead surrender themselves to collective sensation.
History overflows with such examples.
Savonarola, though initially earnest in reform, gradually became enveloped in prophetic theater that inflamed Florence beyond prudence. The self-proclaimed prophets of the Cevennes convulsed entire communities through dramatic displays. More recently, various revivalists throughout America have transformed sacred preaching into emotional exhibition, measuring conversion not by perseverance in virtue but by visible excitement.
The danger is not emotion itself. Our holy faith rightly engages the heart as well as the intellect. Tears have accompanied genuine repentance since Magdalene wept at the feet of Christ. But spectacle differs from devotion in this crucial respect: devotion humbles the self, whereas spectacle intoxicates it.
The worshipper at true prayer forgets himself. The spectator becomes obsessed with feeling himself feel.
This distinction, though subtle, may determine the destiny of civilizations.
For once religion becomes primarily theatrical, it inevitably conforms itself to the appetites of audiences. Difficult truths are softened. Mystery becomes entertainment. Reverence yields to stimulation. Worshippers increasingly evaluate spiritual experience according to intensity rather than transformation.
Even political movements increasingly adopt religious forms. Crowds gather beneath banners with devotional fervor. Orators assume quasi-prophetic roles. Nations themselves become objects of active faith. Men seek collective redemption through ideology precisely because they can no longer conceive of redemption through holiness.
The modern age therefore does not suffer from insufficient belief. It suffers from disordered belief. The soul still hungers exactly as before. Only the diet has changed.
Your Grace, while conducting research for my work at a Booth on the Midway, I wandered among the Exposition grounds at twilight. Finding myself surrounded by an enormous crowd, I began to use sleight of hand, learned in my youth, and mechanical contrivances that elicited gasps from onlookers. Adults stared with childlike wonder. Some crossed themselves reflexively despite knowing they witnessed deception.
What struck me was not the trickery itself, but the expression upon the faces of the crowd.
For a moment they appeared liberated from weariness. The burden of ordinary existence had lifted. Their astonishment became almost prayerful.
And I thought: here lies the peril and tragedy of modern man.
He still desires miracle. He still yearns for mystery. But lacking confidence in divine transcendence, he increasingly settles for imitation wonders.
The spectacle need not even be believed entirely to exert influence. Men often participate willingly in half-conscious illusion because emotional relief itself becomes desirable. The crowd surrounding me likely knew they were deceived. Yet they remained.
Why?
Because spectacle grants temporary escape from spiritual fatigue.
This insight may illuminate why charlatans continue flourishing even within educated societies. Rational sophistication does not abolish active faith. Indeed, intellectual uncertainty may intensify it. The more fragmented modern consciousness becomes, the more vulnerable it grows to seductive simplifications.
Hence the recurring popularity of occult societies, mystical fads, pseudo-scientific healers, apocalyptic prophets and theatrical evangelists.
All promise immediacy. All offer certainty. All transform inward yearning into outward display.
Against this tendency the Church must stand as guardian not merely of doctrine, but of spiritual sobriety.
Christianity loses its integrity whenever it seeks victory through spectacle alone. The Cross itself constitutes the eternal contradiction to worldly magnificence. Calvary was not visually triumphant. Christ conquered not by overwhelming the senses, but through sacrificial love.
Indeed, the most transformative forces in religious history often emerge quietly.
Saint Benedict rebuilding civilization through monastic discipline. Saint Francis embracing poverty. The Curé of Ars hearing confessions in obscurity.
Hidden sanctity alters history more profoundly than public frenzy. Yet modern culture increasingly distrusts the hidden. It believes only what dazzles.
This may explain why our era admires celebrities more readily than saints. Celebrity depends upon visibility. Sanctity often depends upon concealment. Spectacle elevates personalities into idols because modern loneliness seeks human embodiments of meaning.
But idols inevitably disappoint.
The saint directs admiration upward toward God. The celebrity absorbs admiration inward toward self. Consequently, societies devoted to spectacle experience perpetual cycles of exaltation and disillusionment. Yesterday’s idol becomes tomorrow’s scandal.
We have seen this pattern repeatedly throughout history. False prophets rise upon waves of collective enthusiasm only to collapse amid exposure, corruption, madness or violence. Yet even after disappointment, mankind seldom abandons the underlying impulse. Another spectacle immediately replaces the previous one.
For active faith endures. It is woven into human nature itself.
Thus, the essential question confronting both Church and civilization is not whether men shall believe, but what they shall believe in when suffering arrives.
And suffering always arrives.
Mr. Tesla’s electric lights of the White City cannot abolish death. Industrial progress cannot eliminate grief. Machinery cannot forgive sin. Political systems cannot resurrect the dead.
When catastrophe strikes, man instinctively reaches beyond himself once more.
The dying laborer whispers prayers learned in childhood. The grieving mother lights candles. The lonely soul searches heavenward in darkness. Active faith reawakens because human limitation ultimately reveals itself inexorable.
Perhaps this explains why periods of greatest spectacle are often followed by periods of spiritual reckoning. Excess eventually exhausts itself. The senses tire. Illusions fade. Then the heart, famished beneath endless distraction, rediscovers its deeper hunger.
I suspect our civilization approaches such a threshold.
The Columbian Exposition may represent both the zenith and warning of the modern spirit. Here humanity celebrates its astonishing capacities. Yet beneath the celebration one detects anxiety impossible entirely to suppress. The very extravagance of the spectacle suggests a civilization attempting to reassure itself through magnificence.
But reassurance is not redemption.
No architecture, however splendid, can substitute for moral renewal. No exhibition, however grand, can satisfy the immortal soul.
Therefore, Your Grace, I submit that the task confronting the Church in this new century will not primarily involve combating unbelief in its crude forms. Rather, we must confront counterfeit transcendence. We must teach men to distinguish between awe and worship, between emotional intoxication and spiritual transformation, between spectacle and sanctity.
For the danger of spectacle lies not merely in deception, but in displacement.
It displaces contemplation with stimulation. Character with excitement. Repentance with sensation. And ultimately, God with performance.
Yet despite these concerns, I remain hopeful.
For active faith itself testifies to mankind’s irreducible spiritual nature. Even in corruption, the longing remains evidence of divine imprint. The charlatan succeeds only because the soul genuinely seeks mystery. False prophets flourish because men still yearn for revelation. Spectacle itself parasitically depends upon sacred instincts it cannot create independently.
Thus, beneath modern confusion survives enduring hope. The human heart continues reaching outward.
And perhaps that restless reaching, properly guided, may yet lead wandering civilization homeward again.
May the Church never surrender to spectacle in pursuit of influence. May she instead preserve the difficult beauty of truth, humility, sacrament and sacrifice. For when every artificial illumination eventually dims, mankind will once again seek smaller lights: chapel candles, whispered prayers, the quiet mercy of Christ among the poor and broken.
Those lights have outlasted empires before. I believe they shall outlast ours as well.
Your obedient servant in Christ,
Father Joseph Gregory, S.J.
Prefect of Studies and Professor of Antiquities, St. Ignatius College.
Chicago, Illinois 1893