This Friday Night Lecture was led by scholar and author Karen Swallow Prior, who explored the connections between art, beauty, and the evangelical tradition. This sometimes complicated relationship has important things to teach us about both art and the beautiful. She will also explore the human appetite for beauty and how it's easy to fill it with poor substitutes. One such substitute is often branded as “evangelical” art and characterized as sentimental: It might produce good feelings, but does it satisfy our desire for the beautiful?

Dr. Prior discussed these ideas and the roots and broad influence of sentimentality in evangelical art. She will invite us to consider what it means to pursue true beauty—art that inspires and transforms—even when it requires sacrifice.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Karen Swallow Prior, Ph.D., is a reader, writer, and professor. Among her many publications are The Evangelical Imagination: How Stories, Images, and Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis (Brazos, 2023); and On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Books (Brazos 2018). In addition to a monthly column for Religion News Service, her writing has appeared at Christianity Today, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, First Things, Vox, and The Gospel Coalition; she is also a contributing editor for Comment.

Prior’s academic focus is British literature, with a specialty in the eighteenth century, a period she loves for its emphasis on philosophy, ethics, aesthetics, community, and its efforts to correct the universal human impulse toward extremes. Learn more about Swallow Prior’s presentations and affiliations on her website.

This event was recorded live at Upper House on March 14, 2025.