Church Beautiful
Sacred Art and Spiritual Healing
- Arts & Literature
- Publisher: Cascade Books (Wipf and Stock)
- Published: 2026
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Publisher's Description
In this modern world of technology, efficiency, and rationalism, why do people love Disneyland and dress up? Why do they relish pomp and ceremony? Why are they drawn to beautiful, old things like Gothic cathedrals, Baroque palaces, and mountaintop temples in the snow? Is it possible that they long for splendor and majesty just like their ancestors did, perhaps suffering from wounds that need healing through beauty? Church Beautiful: Sacred Art and Spiritual Healing argues that modern people have been spiritually wounded by the cultural divorce of religion and beauty. Art history shows that human nature is partly defined by its longing for the transcendent—and its creation of beautiful bridges toward the transcendent through architecture, fashion, liturgy, and art. How can people rediscover this lost part of their shared human identity? How can their ancestors teach them to heal through beauty?
Endorsements (2)
“We are a culture starved for enchantment—in a desperate search for the numinous—through theme parks, exotic travel, extreme sport and entertainment, and a hunger for ecstatic experiences. Dr. Katie Kresser’s new book Church Beautiful invites us to leave these mirage-like distractions and encounter afresh the holy—exploring the dance steps laid out for us in the riches of church tradition: art and architecture, ritual and worship, the invitation to God’s own banquet table. In a series of brilliant meditations on everything from masquerade and fashion to sacred space and ritual, Dr. Kresser expertly guides us into uncovering ‘the hint half guessed / the gift half understood [that] is Incarnation’—the gift bequeathed to us by our Christian forebears. And she pulls back the veil a little to reveal the surprise and shock of the sacred in contemporary art as well. Highest recommendation.”
“In this luminous book, Katie Kresser names the ache beneath our spiritual emptiness and offers beauty as both diagnosis and cure. With compassion and seasoned aesthetic insight, she deftly weaves cultural criticism and devotional theology into a compelling vision for souls wounded by the fractures of our age. This book boldly invites the church to inhabit the beauty of holiness in sensory and specific ways, making Jesus visible in every time and place.”
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