Fundamentalism

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Note: This is an opinion column. Views expressed here are those of the author and not necessarily those of SI.

In spite of my perplexity about theater, the truth is that occasionally I still see it. I am assaulted with it on airliners. I am exposed to it in other people’s homes. Other circumstances also arise.

Aaron Copland was a composer, not an aesthetician or theologian. But as the honorary “Dean of American Composers,” he was often called upon to discuss musical meaning, and his thoughts on the matter were well-informed, both by his study and experience. In the view of this writer (also an American composer, but of a much smaller order!), Copland’s ideas have great value for Christians who make aesthetic judgments in accordance with Scriptural revelation. In a 1951 speech at Harvard, Copland said,

They say that confession is good for the soul. Well, here’s my confession.

I love the theater.

I fell in love during my junior year in high school. On a whim I tried out for a school play and somehow ended up with a lead role. That was a turning point in my life. Acting was the first thing I discovered that I could do really well.

My parents came to Christ when I was about three or four years old. They responded to the witness of a home missionary who was planting a fundamental Baptist church in their small Michigan town. After they were baptized and joined that church, they brought up their children under the sound of its teaching.