Drama and preaching are both means for communicating biblical truths. Yet they are fundamentally different in their most typical forms, with preaching presenting a message and drama representing a narrative. This article gives helpful historical perspectives to the use of drama in worship, as well as guidelines for the appropriate relationship of preaching and drama in worship today.
Two places in which we have a right to expect to hear the truth spoken are the pulpit and the stage. For that reason, if for no other, preaching and drama should each find an ally in the other. Sadly, this is not and has not been the case.
Drama in the church arose out of the liturgy in a period preceding the Protestant Reformation, that is before the proclamation of the Word had assumed a central place in Christian worship. For that reason, many elements in the liturgy were receptive to the introduction of dramatic material: the responsive sections, the liberal and expanding use of music, the clergy’s colorful vestments, symbolic actions and gestures, and the architecture of the church or cathedral.
Perhaps the single most important development leading to drama’s emergence in the church was the widespread medieval practice of troping. The custom of beautifying the service of worship by inserting tropes, or verses, could hardly have occurred in early Reformed churches. The idea that the worship of God needed any kind of beautifying introduced an aesthetic concern that the Reformers would probably have considered irrelevant if not irreverent. Any attempt to make liturgy aesthetically satisfying would have underlined the part played by human sensibilities in the worship of God. For those who held the human imagination to be vain and profitless, such beautifications were perceived as leading away from the pure worship of God and toward human self-aggrandizement. Not accidentally did the Puritans in England engage in a steady conflict with the secular theater. It was during Oliver Cromwell’s twelve-year rule that all the theaters in London were closed. Naturally, then, nothing that smacked of theater would find acceptance in the churches.
In Reformed churches, it was chiefly the centrality of the Word that worked against dramatic development. To some degree, all the Reformers, for different reasons, eventually emphasized the service of the Word over the celebration of the Eucharist. These services—Lutheran, Zwinglian, Calvinist—tended toward simplicity, the reduction of opportunities for congregational participation, and the abandonment or simplification of clerical vestments. Preaching became absolutely central. The Word of God was proclaimed and explained. The service shifted from a mysterious rite toward an instructional and educational experience.
This centrality of the Word and the simplicity of the liturgies, especially those of Zwingli and Calvin, diminished the elements that made drama possible: dialogical progression, symbolic action, and symbolic vestments. Calvin, struggling with the question of how Christ is present in the Eucharist, said: “I will not be ashamed to confess that it is too high a mystery either for my mind to comprehend or my words to express, and to speak more plainly, I rather feel than understand it” (quoted in S. F. Brennen, et al., A Handbook of Worship [Philadelphia: The Heidelberg Press, 1941], 50). The Reformer’s apparent discomfort with the mysterious action in the Mass, represented by the doctrine of transubstantiation, helped to push reformed worship in a direction toward which it was already oriented biblically, that is, the predominance of the ear as an organ of perception. In the Mass, the eye was predominant, for it was the moment of the elevation that medieval crowds rushed from church to church to see. In the Reformed tradition, the prominence of the word shifted the emphasis from the eye to the ear as the chief organ of perception, as it was in the Hebrew Bible: “Hear, O Israel … ”
This emphasis on the ear is of course not totally antithetical to drama, but the shift does not particularly encourage the art. Drama performed is essentially an art that appeals to the eye. The Greek word from which our word “theater” is derived is theatron, which is literally “the place of seeing.” Though Aristotle in the Poetics places spectacle last among the six elements of tragedy—plot, character, thought, diction, music, spectacle—the emphasis remains on seeing. We go to see a play not to hear one.
Although many segments of American Protestantism have witnessed a movement for several decades toward more liturgical services, the unadorned worship in churches of the Reformed tradition continues in some places. In a recent visit to the Reformed Church of Hungary, I was struck by the brevity and simplicity of the Sunday morning services. Hymn singing provided almost the only opportunity for the people to participate. Furthermore, the high, prominent pulpits are a testament to preaching’s importance. Here as elsewhere, the dominance of preaching emphasizes the use of reason in the service, in contradistinction of feeling and mystery.
The Church’s Uneasiness
While drama has found a home in some Protestant churches, in many there is still some uneasiness about its use, the causes of which have their source in the writings of the early church Fathers and were strengthened during the Puritan attack on the stage.
In an ethos in which God’s glory and majesty put into sharp relief the sinfulness and depravity of human nature, some saw drama as turning people’s attention away from God, its rightful object, and toward the performer, thus encouraging idolatry.
When used in worship, drama is described by some as “enlivening” the service. For others, like its medieval and Puritan critics, drama makes the church a place of spectacle, where people are drawn by the “cheap tricks” and “false effects” of the theater. Far from enhancing worship, they say, drama detracts from an atmosphere of worshipfulness and reverence.
Some fear that by imitating real life, drama introduces jarring crudities into a place where a reverential spirit should be cultivated. The language of the street and marketplace, gestures appropriate for profane transactions, and attire suitable for the cocktail party are things that cause people discomfort when seen or heard in church. Some suggest that the pretense and human imagination that are drama’s genius stand against the majesty and glory of God, distort our understanding, and confuse our perceptions about worship’s true object.
Finally, in using drama in the church, we stand in danger of undermining the liturgy itself. “Some feel that it is not wise to bring drama into too close contact with worship, as the congregation may turn itself into an audience and confuse the distinction between the two.” (Joyce Peel and Darius Swann, Drama for the Church, 2d ed. [Madras: The Christian Literature Society, 1970], 13). A good deal of the uneasiness about using drama in the church may be resolved by arriving at some clarity about drama’s place and functions in those services of worship in which preaching is central.
Preaching and Drama
To those who think of a play only as a sermon in dialogue form, it should be pointed out that drama and preaching are fundamentally different, not only in form but in intent and function. Preaching is presentational; drama is representational. That, of course, is a general statement which for the moment ignores different styles of preaching and different styles of drama. The preacher proclaims the Word of God. She or he presents the claim of God on our individual and collective lives. The prophetic formula “Thus says the Lord” is the sermonic pattern, even though the language may vary. Using biblical stories, teaching, and exegesis, the preacher analyzes the human situation, delineates to the best of her or his ability what God requires of us, and exhorts us to do it. However embellished by dramatic incident, language, symbolism, or dramatic gesture, preaching’s function is to declare clearly God’s demand on us. Preaching is therefore direct, rationally oriented, instructional, and motivational.
Shakespeare saw the function of dramatic art as holding up a mirror to nature. The figure of the mirror is an important one, for in the play we do not look at life directly but by way of a contrived imitation of an action, the essential parts of which the playwright has selected. Through the medium of human imagination, playwrights, actors, and audiences together construct a “reality” that we know is not an actual fact. Through their creation, our own existential situation is illuminated. The drama, as Picasso is credited with observing, is a small lie in the service of a big truth.
The play, then, cannot fulfill a sermon’s function of declaring directly, clearly, and prophetically what our human situation is, how God has acted, and what response we are called to make. If the play attempts to do this, it runs the risk of becoming propagandistic. It simply imitates an action, the experience of which may illuminate the spectator’s own experience and help to clarify his or her decision making. By allowing the spectators, in all their human vulnerability, to be exposed to a life situation with which they can empathize, response in freedom is made possible.
Drama, then, gives the spectators another place in which to stand to hear the truth. Preaching not infrequently puts the hearer on the defensive and elicits an adversarial response. Drama provides what Francis Ferguson calls “direct perception.” It communicates through the intellect but also above, around, and below it, at the level of the subconscious as well as the conscious. “Because drama is written to be played, it both offers and requires a peculiarly immediate understanding” (Francis Ferguson, The Idea of Theatre [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968], 10). The immediate vision or understanding offered by the play may then be corrected and amplified by theologians, historians, and preachers. Indeed the sermon may complete the work the play has begun.
The Value of Drama’s Ecclesial Use
To appreciate the potential value of drama in serving the church, we must distinguish among its several uses. There are plays that are suitable for use in the worship service itself. The nature of dramatic art does not make it inimical to worship. John P. Newport has reminded us that art refers to the aspect of that life that expresses itself in the creative, imaginative, and dramatic and that the artist is one who awakens and heightens our faculties of perception (“The Arts in Worship,” Review and Expositor 80:71–83). Through symbol, language, and theme, a play may move us to the contemplation of God’s goodness and majesty or to a sense of sin and repentance. Henri Ghoen’s Way of the Cross is a profound meditation on the Passion, which has deeply moved congregations of very diverse traditions.
Some plays are unsuitable for the worshiping service but may be excellent for supplementing or complementing another preaching function: teaching or instruction. Drama is an excellent tool for teaching the Bible. As an incident or event is acted out, the participants gain an immediate and personal understanding of the situation and the play’s interior action. This is especially true in creative dramatics where the participants make up their own play. The exploration of character, circumstances, and conflicts serve to bring to life even well-known biblical stories.
In India, I observed that Hindus for centuries have used drama as a primary means of religious realization and the transmission of the stories of heroes and heroines of faith. The Ras Lila, the dance of love, is a dance-drama used to achieve a living experience of Krishna. In October of each year, the Ram Lila (the play of Rama) is enacted in most of North India’s towns and villages. The exploits of Rama, the ideal king-son-husband, are reenacted with great pageantry over a ten-to-thirty day period. Through these reenactments, devotion to Rama is deepened and the ideals of Hindu society are reiterated most memorably.
Of course, drama as a mode of instruction is not confined to biblical material; it is also an excellent means of exploring social and public questions as well as personal and domestic ones. The nature of drama does not admit of clean-cut answers to questions raised, nor is that result necessary or desirable, but the clarification and examination of issues is in itself of great value. Arthur Miller in After the Fall draws on the great symbolism of the Jewish and Christian traditions to illuminate both his hero’s (Quentin’s) ethnic experience (the Jewish Holocaust) and his personal dilemma focusing on two broken marriages. Standing in the tower’s shadow (symbolic of the Nazi concentration camps) with the woman he’s attracted to, but with whom he fears developing a relationship because of two failed marriages, Quentin’s realization is twofold. On the social level, he acknowledges complicity in the world’s cruelty: “My brothers built this place.” Ironically, his recognition of this fact is gained by realizing his personal guilt in regard to the suicide of his second wife, Maggie. The play ends on a note of hope:
And the wish to kill is never killed, but with some gift of courage one may look into its face when it appears, and with a stroke of love as to an idiot in the house—forgive it; again and again … forever. (New York: Viking Press, 1964, 161)
Finally, drama can be an effective aid to evangelism, the speaking and showing forth of God’s act of forgiveness and mercy toward the whole human race. Because the play makes no altar call and issues no decision cards, it engages those who watch in total freedom. But from that freedom may issue a willingness to hear God’s direct claim on their lives. In this sense drama is preparation for hearing the gospel.
Preaching is the stable, continuing element in most Protestant worship services, while drama waxes and wanes. The longstanding hostility between pulpit and stage should not prevent drama from fulfilling the functions it can perform in worship and church education. Preachers with vision should recognize that preaching and drama complement each other; and performers who, like Grotowski’s “holy actor,” empty themselves and sharpen their skills need to know that their playing may be done well and directed to God’s glory.