What Can Evangelicals Teach Us About Beauty? - Lecture 1

What can evangelicals teach us about beauty? It's a question that might raise an eyebrow — or a joke. But scholar, author, and evangelical herself Karen Swallow Prior takes it seriously, tracing the surprising and complex relationship between evangelicalism and the arts.

In this first lecture of a three-part series, Prior lays the historical and theological foundation for understanding evangelicalism as a movement — and why its posture toward beauty, imagination, and art is more nuanced than many assume.

In this lecture, you'll explore:

· How the Protestant Reformation, Puritanism, and German Pietism shaped evangelical culture

· Why the Enlightenment and evangelicalism are more deeply connected than they appear

· The long-standing tension between word and image within Protestant Christianity

· John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress as a case study in evangelical ambivalence toward fiction and imagination

· The 18th-century Cult of Sensibility and how it influenced evangelical aesthetics and sentimentality

· How Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility satirized the excesses of emotional virtue signaling

This lecture is part of the Friday Night Lecture Series hosted by the Stephen and Laurel Brown Foundation and New College Madison, whose mission is to lead Christian thought and formation to shape the University of Wisconsin community.

🎓 About the Speaker: Karen Swallow Prior Karen Swallow Prior is a scholar of British literature with a specialty in the 18th century. She holds a PhD from the State University of New York at Buffalo and is the author of The Evangelical Imagination: How Stories, Images, and Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis (Brazos Press, 2023) and On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life Through Great Books (Brazos Press, 2018). Her writing has appeared in Christianity Today, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, First Things, Vox, and The Gospel Coalition, among others.

📚 Books Referenced:

· The Evangelical Imagination — Karen Swallow Prior (Brazos, 2023)

· On Reading Well — Karen Swallow Prior (Brazos, 2018)

· The Pilgrim's Progress — John Bunyan (1678)

· Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners — John Bunyan

· Sense and Sensibility — Jane Austen

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

Karen Swallow Prior, evangelical imagination, evangelicalism and art, Christianity and beauty, Christian aesthetics, Protestant Reformation, Puritanism, John Bunyan Pilgrim's Progress, Cult of Sensibility, Jane Austen Sense and Sensibility, Christian lecture series, New College Madison, Stephen and Laurel Brown Foundation, Madison Wisconsin, evangelical culture, Christianity and literature, British literature, 18th century, faith and imagination, Christian thought, evangelical theology, word and image, Christianity and fiction, evangelical activism