In late March, people packed into the entry hall of a Macy’s Department Store in downtown Philadelphia. The store was closing, but the crowd had not come for the close-out sales. They were there for one last day (at least for now) with the famed Wanamaker organ. The events’ organizers knew there was just one thing they needed to do to make the case for that organ as integral to the city’s social fabric: Play it.
In an extraordinary outpouring of love, well over 10,000 listeners came out for a series of eight recitals performed across nine hours. No doubt the motivations for attendance varied. There were organ aficionados in the crowd; there were department store nostalgists as well. But the day was about much more than nostalgia or niche knowledge. It was about the remarkable (and ever rarer) chance to gather in community and experience beauty together.
One observer on the scene noted:
It’s true that Philadelphians do not want for great music. The Philadelphia Chamber Music Society and Philadelphia Orchestra have few peers anywhere in terms of quality and ambition, and dozens of other music groups fill out an incredibly lively musicscape. But art palaces like the Kimmel Center and other venues are largely patronized by those who self-identify as arts consumers. There’s an important egalitarian aspect to the Wanamaker Organ recitals; they are a free, aleatory experience, a gift of surprising generosity.
Another said:
You walk into the store to buy a coffee maker or pair of desert boots, and you walk out a half-hour later lifted up by Handel, Sibelius, or Sir Arthur Sullivan. That’s art serving its highest purpose — not sequestered in a museum or concert hall, but woven into the real world where it can best regulate perceptions of what’s important in life, not to mention spread a little pixie dust of delight.
Roman Catholic activist Dorothy Day was famed for claiming that “the world will be saved by beauty.” In fact, she was paraphrasing Dostoevsky’s The Idiot, in which the character Prince Myshkin (a Christ figure) says that “beauty will save the world.” Day deeply admired Dostoevsky, and she often reflected on the power of beauty — not merely aesthetic beauty, but moral and spiritual beauty — to bring about personal and social transformation.
For Day, beauty was a glimpse of the holy — a sign that God is real, present, and active in the world. Beauty calls forth awe, gratitude, and reverence, softening hardened hearts. In this sense, beauty doesn’t merely entertain; it awakens the soul to love, and it draws people toward the good.
Strikingly, Day saw this saving beauty most in acts of selfless love — hospitality toward the poor, connecting with the oppressed, witnessing to peace and justice. For her, the beauty that would save the world wasn’t found primarily in art galleries or concert halls (though she loved art and music), but in lives lived in radical faith in Jesus Christ, lives that embody mercy, justice, forgiveness, and joy amid suffering.
Understood in this way, beauty becomes a form of resistance in a world marred by war, injustice, consumerism, and alienation. Beauty refuses the lie that brutality and greed are the final words. It insists that creation is fundamentally good and destined for redemption.
As we wrote in our last post, we don’t know of any church’s ministry that has a separate “committee on beauty,” which is probably just as well. Instead, in this fraught season, we encourage your church board to turn toward it together — to ask what beauty has to do with the future of faith, the future of your congregation, even the future of your church building.
What strikes you in the two quotes about the Wanamaker organ?
When have you experienced beauty in community with others? How were the two (beauty and community) related in that experience?
What connection, if any, do you see between beauty and salvation?
How would you evaluate your church’s ministry based on the beauty it offers and the beauty it encourages?
No Comments