Uplift at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival

'Uplift' is a heart-warming play illuminating the significant contributions of the Windrush Generation to Britain, the scandal around their wrongful treatment and their journey in overcoming this atrocious injustice with the support of friends and allies. Dave Neita, lawyer by profession, wrote 'Uplift' to celebrate the culture, impact and resilience of the people who came to Britain and contributed to the rebuilding of the nation following the destruction caused by the Second World War. Dave applies the law to support people who have been damaged by the Windrush Scandal and uses the arts to raise awareness of their struggle for justice.

The play is at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this summer. For booking details see  Uplift | Theatre | Edinburgh Festival Fringe (edfringe.com).

I first met Dave through Jamaican Spiritual, an exhibition held at St Stephen Walbrook which was made up of painting,sculpture and photography highlighting the strong spiritual nature of Jamaica and it’s people. Dave has also contributed to several HeartEdge events, see here, here, and here.

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Dave Neita - The Beauty And Utility Of Poetry.

Art and faith: Decades of engagement - 1950s

This is Part 7 in a series of posts which aim to demonstrate the breadth of engagement there has been between the Arts and religion within the modern period and into our contemporary experience. The idea is to provide a brief introduction to the artists and initiatives that were prominent in each decade to enable further research. Inevitably, these lists will be partial as there is much that I don’t know and the lists reflect my interests and biases. As such, the primary, but not exclusive, focus is on artists that have engaged with the Christian tradition.

The introduction and the remainder of the series can be found at: Introduction, 1880s, 1890s, 1900s, 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s.

• Evelyn Waugh’s Helena (1950), Giovanni Guareschi’s Little World of Don Camillo (1950), Nikos Kazantzakis’ Captain Michalis (1950) and The Last Temptation of Christ (1955), C.S. Lewis’ Narnia series (1950 – 1956), Julien Green’s Moïra (1950) and The Transgressor (1958), Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair (1951), Jack Clemo’s The Clay Verge (1951), Heinrich Böll’s And where were you, Adam? (1951), And Never Said a Word (1953), The Bread of Those Early Years (1955), and Billiards at Half-past Nine (1959), David Jones’ The Anathemata (1952), Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood (1952), Elisabeth Langgässer’s The Quest (1953), J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (1954), R.S. Thomas’ Song at the Year's Turning : Poems, 1942-1954 (1955), Muriel Spark’s The Comforters (1957), Brainard Cheney’s This Is Adam (1958), Geoffrey Hill’s For The Unfallen (1959), Walter M. Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowtiz (1959), Morris West’s The Devil’s Advocate (1959), and Shūsaku Endō’s Wonderful Fool (1959) are published.
• In 1950, black gospel features at Carnegie Hall when Joe Bostic produces the Negro Gospel and Religious Music Festival. He repeats it the next year with an expanded list of performing artists, and in 1959 moves to Madison Square Garden.
• In 1950, Hank Williams begins recording as "Luke the Drifter" for his religious-themed recordings, many of which are recitations rather than singing. Fearful that disc jockeys and jukebox operators would hesitate to accept these recordings, Williams uses this alias to avoid hurting the marketability of his name. Most of the material is written by Williams himself, in some cases with the help of Fred Rose and his son Wesley. The songs depict Luke the Drifter traveling from place to place, narrating stories of different characters and philosophizing about life.
• In 1950, Francis Poulenc composes his Stabat Mater in memory of the painter Christian Bérard. The work is premiered the following year.
• Between 1950 and 1951, the Holy Trinity mural project at the Episcopal Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in Port-au-Prince, Haiti is finished. The project is directed by Selden Rodman and includes work by Philomé Obin, Rigaud Benoit, Castera Bazile, Gabriel Lévèque and Wilson Bigaudalso.
• Nicholas Mosley meets and is influenced by Father Raymond Raynes, superior of the Anglican Community of the Resurrection (1950), and edits the theological magazine Prism from 1958.
• The Chapelle du Saint-Marie du Rosaire in Vence is completed by Henri Matisse in 1951.
• An annual exhibition Salon Art Sacré is founded by Marie-Alain Couturier, Pie-Raymond Régamey and Joseph Pichard in 1951.
• In 1951, in preparation for the unveiling of Christ of St John of the Cross, Salvador Dalí writes his Mystical Manifesto.
• In 1951, 'The Baptism of Christ' by Hans Feibusch is commissioned for Chichester Cathedral.
• The Blake Prize for Religious Art is launched in Australia in 1951.
• In 1952, François Mauriac wins the Nobel Prize "for the deep spiritual insight and the artistic intensity with which he has in his novels penetrated the drama of human life".
• In 1952, the East Window created by Evie Hone for Eton College Chapel is installed.
• In 1952, Albert Gleizes is commissioned to create a fresco on the theme of The Eucharist for a new Jesuit chapel at Les Fontaines, Chantilly.
• In 1952 Cerf publish Pie-Raymond Régamey's Religious Art in the Twentieth Century.
• ‘Modern Sacred Art’ by Joseph Pichard is published by Arthaud editions in 1953.
• Jubilee, a widely acclaimed Catholic literary magazine published between 1953 and 1967, is founded by Ed Rice, and co-edited by Robert Lax and Thomas Merton with the mission to “produce a Catholic literary magazine that would act as a forum for addressing issues confronting the contemporary church.”
• Alfred Noyes gives an account of his conversion in his autobiography, Two Worlds for Memory (1953).
• In 1953 Andre Girard completes his commission, awarded by Clare Boothe Luce, for the decoration of St. Ann Chapel in Palo Alto. Girard develops the technique, which he calls ‘painting on light’, of painting directly on film. These films focus exclusively on religious themes and include the Sermon on the Mount recounted in Matthew’s Gospel, the Passion and Resurrection of Christ, and the life of the Patriarch Abraham. In 1959, Girard’s films are initially presented through national broadcasts and later at congregational viewings.
• In 1953, Francis Poulenc begins writing the opera Dialogues des Carmélites, based on an unfilmed screenplay by Georges Bernanos. The text, based on a short story by Gertrud von Le Fort, depicts the Martyrs of Compiègne, nuns guillotined during the French Revolution for their religious beliefs. The opera is first given in January 1957 at La Scala in Italian translation.
• Completion in 1954 of the Chapel of Notre Dame du Haut by Le Corbusier.
• In 1954, Galerie nächst St. Stephan in Vienna is founded by Monseigneur Otto Mauer. There, he creates a platform for artists like Herbert Boeckl, Wolfgang Hollegha, Josef Mikl, Markus Prachensky, and Arnulf Rainer to exchange ideas about art.
• From 1954 onwards musicians such as James Brown, James Booker, Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, and Jackie Wilson help create soul music by bringing gospel inspired harmonies and traditions from rhythm and blues.
• Biblical themes and religious figures inspired Martha Graham: Seraphic Dialogue (1955; Joan of Arc), Embattled Garden (1958; referring to the Garden of Eden), and Legend of Judith (1962) and abstractions such as Diversion of Angels (1948) or Acrobats of God (1960).
• Completion of commissions in 1955 for Sacré Cœur d'Audincourt, with stained glass by Fernand Léger, mosaic and stained glass by Jean Bazaine, and stained glass (crypt) by Jean Le Moal.
• Canticum Sacrum (1955) by Igor Stravinsky is the first piece to contain a movement entirely based on a tone row. Stravinsky then expands his use of dodecaphony in works such as Threni (1958) and A Sermon, a Narrative and a Prayer (1961), which are based on biblical texts, and The Flood (1962), which mixes brief biblical texts from the Book of Genesis with passages from the York and Chester Mystery Plays.
• In 1955, Joseph Pichard founds the review Art Chrétien.
• In 1955, W.H. Auden completes Horae Canonicae. This sequence of poems is published in The Shield of Achilles (1955).
• In 1956, Édition Labergerie publish the Jerusalem Bible with more than a thousand of Endre Bálint's illustrations.
• In 1956, at the height of Kenya's Mau Mau war of independence, a young African Christian artist by the name of Rekyaelimoo (Elimo) Njau is commissioned to paint scenes from the life of Jesus in a church being built as a memorial to Christians who had died in the conflict.
• Eric Smith wins The Blake Prise in 1956 for The Scourged Christ, in 1958 for The Moment Christ Died and 1959 for Christ Is Risen.
• In April 1956 Colin McCahon becomes Keeper and Deputy Director of the Auckland City Art Gallery. McCahon assists in the professionalisation of the gallery and the first exhibitions and publications to record a New Zealand art history.
• In 1956, Jim and Helen Ede move into Kettle’s Yard and begin keeping ‘open house’. Among the artists with whom they correspond and whose work they collect are William Congdon, David Jones, and Richard Pousette-Dart.
• In 1956 Alec Guinness enters the Roman Catholic church following experiences while filming a film adaptation of G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown detective stories in France and the recovery from polio of his son Matthew. As a result, Guinness began to study Catholicism, had long talks with a Catholic priest, went on retreat at a Trappist abbey, and even attended Mass with Grace Kelly while he was working on a film in Los Angeles.
• In 1956 Jean Cocteau finishes his first church murals for the Chapelle Saint-Pierre in Villefranche-Sur-Mer. Murals followed at Notre Dame de France, London, in 1958 and for the church of Saint Blaise-des-Simples in Milly-la-Forêt, 1959.
• The Judson Gallery is instituted by Dr. Howard Moody when he arrives at Judson Memorial Church in 1956. The early work of artists such as Claes Oldenburg, Allan Kaprow, Tom Wesselman and Jim Dine sets the tone for theatre and dance at Judson. Other artists include Robert Rauschenberg, Yoko Ono, and Red Grooms. The gallery is home to several Happenings, presenting the first Happening in New York in 1958 created by Allan Kaprow.
• "Million Dollar Quartet" is a recording of an impromptu jam session involving Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley made on December 4, 1956, at the Sun Record Studios in Memphis, Tennessee. The ‘Million Dollar Quartet’ draw on a shared background of Spirituals, Gospel, the charismata of Southern Pentecostalism.
• In 1957, Caroline Gordon publishes How to Read a Novel.
• In 1957, Daniel Berrigan wins the Lamont Prize for his book of poems, Time Without Number.
• In 1957, Ernesto Cardenal enters Gethsemani Abbey and is a novice there under Thomas Merton until he leaves in 1959 to return to Latin America.
• In 1957, Sister Gertrude Morgan hears a voice telling her she is the Bride of Christ, following this revelation she adopts her sanctified outfit and begins painting and drawing.
• In 1959, Dominique and John de Menil provide funding for a programme in art and art history at the University of St Thomas, a small Catholic liberal arts college in Houston, Texas. They provide resources for an art library, art collection and an exhibitions budget.
• In 1959, the Louvin Brothers release the album ‘Satan is Real’. The review in AllMusic states: "You don't need to share the Louvin Brothers' spiritual beliefs to be moved by the grace, beauty and lack of pretension of this music; Satan Is Real is music crafted by true believers sharing their faith, and its power goes beyond Christian doctrine into something at once deeply personal and truly universal, and the result is the Louvin Brothers' masterpiece."
• In 1959, Frank and Dorothy Getlein publish Christianity in Art.
• A poem and book based on Salvador Dalí’s painting, The Virgin of Port Lligat by Fray Angelico Chavez is selected as one of the best books of 1959 by the Catholic Library Association.
• In 1959, the theologian Paul Tillich gives a lecture at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in which he states that “an apple of Cezanne has more presence of ultimate reality than a picture of Jesus by Hoffman.”
• In 1959, Pablo Picasso completes his paintings for the Temple of Peace chapel in Vallauris.
• In 1959, Jean Anouilh’s Becket is performed.
• In 1959, FN Souza paints Crucifixion (now in the Tate).
• In 1959, after a trip to Cambodia, William Congdon returns to Assisi where he is received into the Roman Catholic faith at the Pro Civitate Christiana.

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Million Dollar Quartet - Just A Little Talk With Jesus.

Art and faith: Decades of engagement - 1940s

This is Part 6 in a series of posts which aim to demonstrate the breadth of engagement there has been between the Arts and religion within the modern period and into our contemporary experience. The idea is to provide a brief introduction to the artists and initiatives that were prominent in each decade to enable further research. Inevitably, these lists will be partial as there is much that I don’t know and the lists reflect my interests and biases. As such, the primary, but not exclusive, focus is on artists that have engaged with the Christian tradition.

The introduction and the remainder of the series can be found at: Introduction, 1880s, 1890s, 1900s, 1910s, 1920s, 1930s.

• From 1940-42, T.S. Eliot publishes Four Quartets. He is awarded the Nobel Prize in 1948.
• W.H. Auden returns to the Anglican Church in 1940 after seven years of thought about the moral content of Christianity, about what it means to love—or not to love—one's neighbour as oneself.
• In 1941, Dorothy L. Sayers’ The Man Born To Be King is broadcast on the BBC. The Mind of the Maker, which explores the analogy between a human creator and the doctrine of the Trinity in creation, is published.
• Murals are commissioned in 1941 from Duncan Grant, Vanessa and Quentin Bell for St Michael & All Angels Berwick representing a fulfilment of George Bell’s vision to be a catalyst for promoting the relationship between the Arts and the Church.
• In 1941, Sándor Nagy completes frescos in Pesterzsébet St. Elisabeth Church.
• Dominique and John de Menil meet regularly with Marie-Alain Couturier in New York from 1941 until his return to France after the War.
• Olivier Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du temps (Quartet for the End of Time) is first performed in January 1941 to an audience of prisoners and prison guards, with the composer playing a poorly maintained upright piano in freezing conditions. The title's "end of time" alludes to the Apocalypse.
• Simone Weil writes her Letter to a Religious to Marie-Alain Couturier at the suggestion of Jacques Maritain in 1942 when both Weil and Couturier are in the United States.
• In 1943, David Gascoyne publishes Poems 1937-1942 with illustrations by Graham Sutherland. In these mystical poems Gascoyne writes as an agonized Christian seeker desperate for a transcendent realm beyond the mortal world. Sutherland and Francis Bacon, friends at that time, work on crucifixion-inspired images which drew on photos of the recently liberated Nazi death camps and took inspiration from T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and Picasso’s crucifixion drawings. Sutherland paints a Crucifixion for St Matthew’s Northampton (1946) and Bacon, Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (1944).
• In 1943, José Clemente Orozco paints Cristo destruye su cruz.
• In 1943, the artist Colin McCahon and poet James K. Baxter first meet in Brighton, New Zealand.
• Albert Gleizes writes Spirituality, Rhythm, Form at the end of 1943 for a special edition of the Lyon-based journal, Confluences, devoted to 'Les Problèmes de la Peinture'. A Benedictine monk, Dom Angelico Surchamp, still at the time only a novice, came on the strength of Spirituality, Rhythm, Form to study with Gleizes. In 1951, the publishing house Zodiaque was established by Surchamp at his monastery, l'Abbaye de Ste Marie de la Pierre-qui-Vire, becoming well known for its large and impressive collection of books on Romanesque art.
• On a three-day retreat in 1943 with the writer Camille Bourniquel, Alfred Manessier experiences a profound religious conversion at the abbey of Notre Dame de la Trappe de Soligny (Orne).
• In 1944 André Girard has the first of several solo shows featuring his religious work at New York’s Bignou Gallery. In 1948 Girard is commissioned by Saint Vincent Archabbey to execute a triptych depicting St. Bernard of Clairvaux for the Archabbey’s crypt. In 1949 he visits Blessed Sacrament Church at Stowe to install his paintings of the Way of the Cross and offers to decorate the entire church, painting 36 windows plus large-scaled murals on the outer walls of the church.
• Henry Moore's 'Madonna and Child' sculpture (1944) and Graham Sutherland's 'Crucifixion' (1946) are unveiled at St Matthew’s Northampton. 'Litany and Anthem for St Matthew's Day' is commissioned from W.H Auden (1945) and 'The Outer Planet' from Norman Nicholson (1949).
• Max Jacob is arrested by the Gestapo in France in 1944 and dies at the Drancy internment camp en route to Auschwitz. Meditations Religieuses a volume of the artist’s devotional writings from the time of the Nazi Occupation is published posthumously.
• In 1944, the poet Kathleen Raine converts to Catholicism.
• The literary and arts review Orígenes is founded in 1944 by José Lezama Lima and José Rodríguez Feo.
• In 1944, Thomas Merton publishes his first poetry collection and, in 1948, The Seven Storey Mountain. He writes his first letters to Evelyn Waugh, who was editing The Seven Storey Mountain. Until his death in 1968, Merton corresponded with writers around the world, developing an ever-widening circle of friends including Czeslaw Milosz, Henry Miller, Walker Percy, Boris Pasternak, and others.
• In 1944, Religious Art Today and An Exhibition of Religious Art Today at the Dayton Museum of Art in Ohio and the Institute of Modern Art in Boston respectively features contemporary American and European painters known for their interpretations of biblical themes.
• Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s 1945 hit ‘Strange Things Happening Every Day’ is the first gospel record to cross over, hitting no. 2 on the Billboard "race records" chart, the term then used for what later became the R&B chart, in April 1945. The recording has been cited as a precursor of rock and roll and has been called the first rock and roll record.
• Bill Monroe, with his band the Blue Grass Boys, creates the bluegrass music genre. The classic lineup of the band comes together with the addition of Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs in December 1945. Gospel-themed numbers are credited to the "Blue Grass Quartet", which featured four-part vocal arrangements accompanied solely by mandolin and guitar – Monroe's usual practice when performing "sacred" songs. Monroe's performing career spans 69 years as a singer, instrumentalist, composer and bandleader.
• In 1945, Romare Bearden exhibits his Passion series at G Place in Washington D.C.
• In 1945, Arthur Boyd paints The Mockers and The Mourners.
• In 1945, E. Martin Browne takes over the 150-seater Mercury Theatre, Notting Hill Gate, and devotes it for the next three years to the production of modern verse plays, with first productions of plays by Christopher Fry, Ronald Duncan, Norman Nicholson and Anne Ridler, all directed by Browne himself.
• In 1946, Hans Feibusch’s Mural Painting is published.
• Nikos Kazantzakis writes Zorba the Greek (1946) and Christ Recrucified (1948).
• In 1946, The Dixie Hummingbirds sign a record deal with Apollo Records, a growing New York based label. Apollo Records also sign Mahalia Jackson. Groups such as the Dixie Hummingbirds, Pilgrim Travelers, Soul Stirrers, Swan Silvertones, Sensational Nightingales and Five Blind Boys of Mississippi introduce more stylistic freedom to the close harmonies of jubilee style Black Gospel.
• Nationwide recognition comes for Mahalia Jackson in 1947 with the release of "Move On Up a Little Higher", selling two million copies and hitting the number two spot on Billboard charts, both firsts for gospel music.
• In 1947, Arnold Schoenberg writes his memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, A Survivor from Warsaw.
• In 1947, Alfred Manessier receives a visit from Georges Rouault, who advised him to take up stained-glass design. Stained glass windows created by Manessier in 1948 for the church of Sainte-Agathe des Bréseux are the first non-figurative designs to be incorporated in an ancient building.
• On November 24, 1947, Caroline Gordon converts to Catholicism. Gordon is a friend and mentor to Brainard Cheney, Flannery O’Connor and Walker Percy. Influenced by Gordon, the Cheney’s also convert to Catholicism. Gordon introduces the Cheney’s to Flannery O'Connor, with whom they became close friends.
• In 1947 Sadao Watanabe wins the first prize from the Japan Folk Art Museum; and the Kokugokai Prize in 1948.
• In 1948, Jacques Le Chevallier organizes the Centre d’Art sacré in collaboration with Maurice Rocher.
• In 1949, Pál C. Molnár creates a winged altar in the parish church of the Inner City in Pest, Hungary.
• Completion of commissioning in 1949 for Notre-Dame de Toute Grâce du Plateau d'Assy, bringing together works by Braque, Matisse, Bonnard, Lurçat, Rouault, Léger, Bazaine, Chagall, Berçot, Briançon, Richier. Subsequently, Germaine Richier’s Crucifix was removed from the church and an instruction on sacred art issued by the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office in 1952 was the beginning of two year initiative by the Vatican which severely constrained the modernizing programme of the French Dominicans and represented a victory for the traditionalists within the Church.
• In 1949 Salvador Dalí creates the first version of The Madonna of Port Lligat. He presents it to Pope Pius XII in an audience for approval, which is granted. Dalí creates a second painting in 1950 with the same title and themes.
• Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory (1940), The Ministry of Fear (1943) and The Heart of the Matter (1948), Francois Mauriac’s A Woman of the Pharisees (1941), Norman Nicholson’s An Anthology of Religious Verse Designed for the Times (1942), George Bernanos’ Monsieur Quine (1943), C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters (1942) and The Great Divorce (1945), Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited (1945), Jack Clemo’s Wilding Graft (1948), Heinrich Böll’s The Train was on Time (1949) are published.

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Sister Rosetta Tharpe - This Train.

Art and faith: Decades of engagement - 1930s

This is Part 6 in a series of posts which aim to demonstrate the breadth of engagement there has been between the Arts and religion within the modern period and into our contemporary experience. The idea is to provide a brief introduction to the artists and initiatives that were prominent in each decade to enable further research. Inevitably, these lists will be partial as there is much that I don’t know and the lists reflect my interests and biases. As such, the primary, but not exclusive, focus is on artists that have engaged with the Christian tradition.

The introduction and the remainder of the series can be found at: Introduction, 1880s, 1890s, 1900s, 1910s, 1920s.

• Theatrical Experimentation and Spiritual Renewal go hand in hand between the Wars following the establishment of the Canterbury Festival. In 1930, E. Martin Browne is appointed by George Bell, Bishop of Chichester, to be director of religious drama for the diocese. The Religious Drama Society is formed. Browne organises a pageant, The Rock, for which T.S. Eliot writes a series of choruses.
• In 1930, Thomas A. Dorsey, the "Father of Gospel Music", becomes the music director at Pilgrim Baptist Church in Chicago. The church is credited as the birthplace of gospel music in the 1930s. Albertina Walker, Mahalia Jackson, Aretha Franklin, Sallie Martin, James Cleveland, The Staples Singers, and The Edwin Hawkins Singers are among those who sing at the church.
• The Symphony of Psalms is a choral symphony in three movements composed by Igor Stravinsky in 1930 during his neoclassical period. The work was commissioned by Serge Koussevitzky to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
• Pablo Picasso paints a Crucifixion (1930) and creates a series of crucifixion drawings (1932) inspired by Matthias Grünewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece in Colmar. The drawings are published in the surrealist magazine Minotaure.
• Along with The Tragic Sense of Life, Miguel de Unamuno's long-form essay La agonía del cristianismo (The Agony of Christianity, 1931) and his novella San Manuel Bueno, mártir (Saint Emmanuel the Good, Martyr, 1930) are all included on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum.
• In June 1931, F.T. Marinetti publishes the 'Manifesto of Futurist Sacred Art' on the occasion of the International Exhibition of Modern Christian Sacred Art in Padua, which had a Futurist section of twenty-two works by thirteen artists. The publication of this Manifesto led to a censure from Pope Pius XI in a speech given in October 1932 at the inauguration of a new Vatican Art Gallery. The rationalist design by Alberto Sartoris (who had strong links to the Futurists) for Notre-Dame du Bon Conseil in the Swiss Alps at Lourtier also created a scandal in the Swiss press in the same year.
• In 1931 Otto van Rees creates paintings for the niches and the dome of the Pieta Chapel in the Church of Our Lady of the Rosary, Amsterdam.
• L’Arche collaborate at the Pavillon des Missions Catholiques for the Colonial Exhibition in 1931.
• In 1932, Maire-Alain Couturier paints frescoes for the private chapel in Santa Sabina (Rome) of the Master General.
• Built in 1932, Notre-Dame du Bon Conseil, Lourtier, is located high in the Swiss Alps, and has been called the "forgotten church of Futurism". Designed by Alberto Sartoris, it was the first church built to a rationalist design. It originally incorporated work by the Futurist artist Fillia, and still contains impressive stained glass by Albert Gaeng, an artist from the Saint Luc Group.
• In 1932, a large group of Protestant agitators break into St Hilary’s church in Cornwall and remove or destroy many of the fittings and furnishings, including works by the Newlyn School of Artists.
• In 1932, Sándor Nagy completes frescos in the Chapel of the Maglódi Hospital, Budapest.
• In 1932, Photius Kontoglou begins his fresco painting career by painting, with his pupils Tsarochis and Nikos Engonopoulos, his newly built house in Patisia, Athens.
• In 1932, Chen Yuandu receives baptism and joined the Catholic Church, taking the name of Luke.
• In 1932, Thomas A. Dorsey co-founds the Gospel Choral Union of Chicago – eventually renamed the National Convention of Gospel Choirs and Choruses (NCGCC) - a convention where musicians can learn gospel blues. His wife Nettie dies in childbirth at the same time, then 24 hours later, their son. His grief prompts him to write one of his most famous and enduring compositions, ‘Take My Hand, Precious Lord’.
• Arnold Schoenberg writes his Moses Und Aron (1932). The opera thematically and musically contrasts Moses and Aaron, the Revelation versus the Golden Calf.
• In 1933, Thomas A. Dorsey directs a 600-person chorus at the second meeting of the NCGCC, which now boasts 3,500 members in 24 states.
• In 1933, the Inklings, including C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, begin meeting in Oxford. Charles Williams joins them in 1939.
• Alfred Noyes sets out the intellectual steps by which he was led from agnosticism to the Catholic faith in The Unknown God (1934), a widely read work of Christian apologetics which has been described as "the spiritual biography of a generation."
• In 1933, Maurice Morel organizes and participates in the First Exhibition of Modern Religious Art at the Lucy Krogh Gallery, an event that would be repeated in this gallery for several years in a row. The exhibition includes works by Pablo Picasso, Andre Derain, Tsuguhara Foujita, and Georges Rouault, who will become Morel's lifelong friend and supporter.
• From 1934, Joseph Pichard organizes, with the help of the General Office of Religious Art, a major exhibition at the Hôtel de Rohan in Paris, made up of 35 rooms. exhibition and more than 3,000 works.
• In 1934, Evie Hone joins An Túr Gloine, a stained glass workshop set up by Sarah Purser, and produces her first public stained glass work for Saint Naithi’s Church in Dundrum, County Durham.
• In 1935, Joseph Pichard, with L. Salavin and G. Mollard, creates the review L'Art sacré, which in 1937 is taken over by the publishing house of Cerf and its direction given to two Dominicans: Pie-Raymond Régamey and Marie-Alain Couturier.
• T.S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral is performed at the Canterbury Festival in 1935 with E. Martin Browne as director and Robert Speaight as Becket. The play is then taken to London, where it runs for almost a year and establishes Browne as the leading director of the "poetic drama" movement.
• In 1936, Georges Desvallières’ pre-war dream of painting the Glorious Virgins comes true. Sainte Vierge Reine des anges (Virgin Mary Queen of the Angels), a masterpiece that was originally in the Poor Clares’ Convent in Mazamet, now adorns the Benedictine Monastery of Abu Gosh in Israel.
• In 1936, through attending meetings of the Thomist Study Circle organised by Jacques Maritain, Dominique de Menil meets Marie-Alain Couturier. Couturier's ideas and contacts give significant shape to the arts patronage of John and Dominique de Menil. 
• In 1936, Marie-Alain Couturier and Pie-Raymond Régamey become the chief editors of L'Art Sacré. They continue in this role until 1954.
• The decoration of the church of Notre-Dame-des-Alpes was put out to tender in July 1936 with the panel assessing responses including the philosopher Jacques Maritain, the Catholic art critic Maurice Brillant and the director of the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Geneva, Adrien Bovy. Three artists from the Society of St Luke were selected; François Baud for sculptures, Alexandre Cingria for stained glass and Paul Monnier for the sanctuary mural. Other artists used included Paul Bony, Constant Demaison and Jean Hebert-Stevens. The church has rightly been described as an essential stage in understanding the revival of sacred art in the twentieth century but is overshadowed by the fame and significance of the nearby church at Assy.
• Modern Religious Art by Chanoine G. Arnaud d'Agnel is published in 1936.
• Francis Poulenc begins writing choral music in 1936 producing among other works his religious work Litanies à la Vierge Noire, for female or children's voices and organ.
• RCA Victor sign the Monroe Brothers to a recording contract in 1936. They score an immediate hit single with the gospel song "What Would You Give in Exchange For Your Soul?" and go on to record 60 tracks for Victor's Bluebird label between 1936 and 1938.
• In 1937, Emil Nolde’s The Life of Christ is prominently displayed in the Nazi organized ‘Degenerate Art’ exhibition.
• In 1937, the Catholic Art Association is founded by Sister Esther Newport as an organisation of artists, art educators, and others interested in Catholic art and its philosophy.
• The Pontifical Catholic Pavilion, created in 1937 for the International Exhibition of Arts and Techniques in Modern Life, brings together, alongside many French artists and craftspeople, a large international contribution (27 countries present a “national” chapel) from which Alexandre Cingria and José-Maria Sert emerge as being of particular note.
• In 1937, sculptor William Edmondson has a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the first such show given to an African American by this institution. 
• In 1938, at the instigation of Mgr. Costantini, the Art Department of Furen [Fu Jen] Catholic University in Beijing, led by Luke Chen Yuandu, organizes and conducts a series of itinerary exhibitions in Budapest, Vienna and the Vatican.
• In 1938, Daniel Johnson Fleming publishes Each with His Own Brush: Contemporary Christian Art in Asia and Africa, the first attempt to bring together pictures of Christian paintings from outside Europe.
• In 1938, Horace Pippin paints Christ (Crowned with Thorns), the first of ten paintings exploring biblical subject matter and spiritual themes.
• Sister Rosetta Tharpe pushes spiritual music into the mainstream and helps pioneer the rise of pop-gospel, beginning in 1938 with the recording ‘Rock Me’ and with her 1939 hit ‘This Train’.
• The Cyrene Mission becomes famous for its localised art of Christian content which was developed first in the classrooms and then extended to decorate the chapel. Edward “Ned” Paterson, a pioneering art teacher, founds the Cyrene School near Bulawayo in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), where he moves to in 1939. The school focuses on practical and agricultural education and is the first African school in Rhodesia to have art classes. Some of Rhodesia’s first professional African artists emerge from Cyrene, including Sam Songo, Lazarus Khumalo, and Kingsley Sambo.
• In 1939, Edwin Muir has a religious experience in St Andrews and from then onwards thinks of himself as Christian, seeing Christianity being as revolutionary as socialism.
• In March 1939, E. Martin Browne directs T.S. Eliot's second play, The Family Reunion, in London and in the same year he launches a touring company, the "Pilgrim Players", whose programme was dominated by the plays of Eliot and, to a lesser degree, of James Bridie (O. H. Mavor), the Scottish dramatist.
• Maurice Denis’ History of religious art is published in 1939.
• The 1939 publication of Passion, a book of woodcuts, engravings and color etchings makes George Rouault's work more accessible.
• In 1939, Maire-Alain Couturier is asked to assist in commissioning for Notre-Dame de Toute Grace du Plateau d'Assy.
• Painted between 1939 and 1940, William H. Johnson's Jesus and the Three Marys marks the beginning of Johnson's five-year period of engagement with biblical subjects.
• Jacques Maritain’s Religion et Culture (1930), T.S. Eliot’s Ash Wednesday (1930) and Burnt Norton (1936), Charles Williams’ War in Heaven (1930), Many Dimensions (1930), The Place of the Lion (1931), The Greater Trumps (1932), Shadows of Ecstasy (1933), and Descent into Hell (1937), Miquel de Unamuno’s Saint Emmanuel the Good, Martyr (1930), Francois Mauriac’s Ce qui était perdu (1930), Le Nœud de vipères (1932), Le Mystère Frontenac (1933), La Fin de la nuit (1935), Les Anges noirs (1936), and Les Chemins de la mer (1939), C.S. Lewis’ Pilgrim's Regress (1933) and Out of the Silent Planet (1938), Dorothy L. Sayers’ The Nine Tailors (1934) and Gaudy Night (1935), Georges Bernanos’ Diary of a Country Priest (1936) and Mouchette (1937), David Jones’ In Parenthesis (1937), John Gray’s Park (1932), Jerzy Andrzejewski's 'Mode of the Heart' (1938), Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock (1938) and The Confidential Agent (1939), and JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit (1937) are published.
• James Bridie’s Tobias and the Angel (1930) and Jonah and the Whale (1932), T.S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral (1935) and Family Reunion (1939), Charles Williams’ Thomas Cranmer of Canterbury (1936), Christopher Fry’s The Boy with a Cart (1938), and Dorothy L Sayers’ The Zeal of Thy House (1937) are performed.

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Bill Fay - Countless Branches.