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BOOKS

Some general books on the topic include Max Harris, Theater and Incarnation (1990); Shimon Levy, Theatre and Holy Script (1999); Todd Johnson and Dale Savidge, Performing the Sacred: Theology and Theatre in Dialogue (2009); and Kevin Wetmore Jr., ed., Catholic Theatre and Drama (2010).

Read about drama and the early church in Christine Schnusenberg, The Relationship Between the Church and the Theatre (1988, 2017) and Blake Leyerle, Theatrical Shows and Ascetic Lives (2001), as well as some books below discussing liturgy and opposition to theatrical pursuits. 

The field of medieval drama and the church is a large one. Start off with Rosemary Woolf, The English Mystery Plays (1972); David Bevington, Medieval Drama (1975); Martin Stevens, Four Middle English Mystery Cycles (1987); Donnalee Dox, The Idea of the Theater in Latin Christian Thought (2004); Margaret Rogerson, ed., The York Mystery Plays: Performance in the City (2011); Wim Hüsken and Peter Happé, eds., Staging Scripture: Biblical Drama, 1350–1600 (2016); John Harris, Medieval Theatre in Context (2016); Charlotte Steenbrugge, Drama and Sermon in Late Medieval England (2017); Julie Paulson, Theater of the World: Selfhood in the English Morality Play (2019); and Jody Enders, ed., A Cultural History of Theatre in the Middle Ages (2019).

The same goes for early modern drama. A few books to begin with are David Bevington, From Mankinde to Marlowe (1962); John Cox, Seeming Knowledge: Shakespeare and Skeptical Faith (2007); R. Chris Hassel Jr., Faith and Folly in Shakespeare’s Romantic Comedies (2011); Louise M. Burkhart, ed., Aztecs on Stage: Religious Theater in Colonial Mexico (2011); Jane Hwang Degenhardt and Elizabeth Williamson, eds., Religion and Drama in Early Modern England (2011); Kurt A. Schreyer, Shakespeare’s Medieval Craft (2014); Hannibal Hamlin, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Religion (2019); and Michael Collins and Michael Scott, eds., Christian Shakespeare: Question Mark (2022).

Learn more about how Christians have critiqued theater in Margot Heinemann, Puritanism and Theatre (1980); Colin Rice, Ungodly Delights (1997); Claudia Durst Johnson, Church and Stage (2007); Jennifer Woodruff Tait, The Poisoned Chalice (2011); Katrin Beushausen, Theatre and the English Public from Reformation to Revolution (2018); and James Papandrea, A Week in the Life of Rome (2019).

Some books treating the relationship of theater to preaching and worship include O. B. Hardison Jr., Christian Rite and Christian Drama in the Middle Ages (1965); Harry Stout, The Divine Dramatist (1991); Edith Blumhofer, Aimee Semple McPherson: Everybody’s Sister (1993); Jeanne Halgren Kilde, When Church Became Theatre (2005); Roger Grainger, The Drama of the Rite (2008); Kelly Iverson, Performing Early Christian Literature (2021); and Abram Book, “Uncle Bud” Robinson (2025). 

Learn more about the theatrical pursuits and impact of George MacDonald in William Raeper, George MacDonald (1987); Trevor A. Hart and Steven R. Guthrie, eds., Faithful Performances (2007); and Alison Searle, The Eyes of Your Heart (2008); and of Charles Dickens in Paul Davis, The Lives and Times of Ebenezer Scrooge (1990) and Les Standiford, The Man Who Invented Christmas (2011). Read about pageants in David Glassberg, American Historical Pageantry (1990) and Angela Bartie et al., Restaging the Past (2020).

There are many books on Christians and modern drama. Some places to start are Kay Baxter, Contemporary Theatre and Christian Faith (1965); William Spanos, The Christian Tradition in Modern British Verse Drama (1967); Gregory Coleman, We’re Heaven Bound! (1994); Yolanda Broyles-González, El Teatro Campesino (1994); Jorge A. Huerta, Chicano Drama (2000); Katie Normington, Modern Mysteries: Contemporary Productions of Medieval English Cycle Dramas (2007); Craig R. Prentiss, Staging Faith: Religion and African American Theater from the Harlem Renaissance to World War II (2013); Wallace Best, Langston’s Salvation (2017); Elizabeth Schafer, Theatre and Christianity (2019); and Robert Botello, We Dance for the Virgen (2022).

Finally, read more about (and by) the women playwrights in our gallery in Dorothy L. Sayers, The Man Born to be King: A Play-Cycle on the Life of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ (1943, 1990); Nancy Cotton, Women Playwrights in England, c. 1363–1750 (1980); Audrey Ekdahl Davidson, ed., The “Ordo Virtutum” of Hildegard of Bingen (1992); Peter Dronke, ed., Nine Medieval Latin Plays (1993); Barry Weller and Margaret Ferguson, eds., The Tragedy of Mariam . . . With the Lady Falkland: Her Life (1994); Jane Spencer, Aphra Behn’s Afterlife (2000); Patricia Francis Cholakian and Rouben Cholakian, Marguerite de Navarre (2005); Derek Hughes and Janet Todd, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Aphra Behn (2005); and Anna More, ed., Sor Juana Inés de La Cruz: Selected Works (2016). 

VIDEOS FROM VISION VIDEO

Relevant videos include Biblical Theater; The Gospel of John; C. S. Lewis Onstage: The Most Reluctant Convert; Genesis with Max McLean; Mark’s Gospel On Stage with Max MacLean; Scrooge; and the eight biblical dramas produced by Sight and Sound. Some of these titles are only available for purchase (both DVDs and digital download) at Vision Video; you may access more content by streaming on Redeem TV. 

PAST CH ISSUES

Related past issues of Christian History can be read online; some hard copies are still available for purchase.

37 – Worship in the Early Church

49 – Everyday Faith in the Middle Ages

75 – G. K. Chesterton

78 – J. R. R. Tolkien

86 – George MacDonald

89 – English Puritans

103 – Christmas

113 – Seven Literary Sages

147 – Everyday Life in the Early Church

Guide – The History of Worship from Constantine to the Middle Ages

WEBSITES 

You will find helpful primary sources at the Ancient History Sourcebook and Medieval Sourcebook as well as the Christian Classics Ethereal Library. The “Fathers” collection at New Advent has documents from early church critics of the theater, as does The Tertullian Project. Gutenberg.org has many nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century authors including MacDonald, Dickens, and Chesterton. The Society of G. K. Chesterton also has many of Chesterton’s works excerpted, plus helpful commentary.

Standard EBooks is a newer but promising source for public domain texts (Hrotsvitha’s plays are here, for instance), and the University of Michigan Digital Collections is another good place to look—James Buckley and William Prynne both can be found here. God’s Trombones can be seen with its original art at Documenting the American South. 

There are many, many Shakespeare sites with full text and/or commentary. Three good ones are Internet Shakespeare, Open Source Shakespeare, and the Folger Library. The special issue of An Unexpected Journal on Shakespeare (2022, vol. 5 no. 4) edited by Joe Ricke and Sarah Waters is online.

Redress of the Past website is an interactive map of pageants in Britain along with blogposts, a database of 600+ pageants, downloadable books, and documentary films. Find El Teatro Campesino here and Fellowship of the Performing Arts at FPAtheatre.com. Finally, you may enjoy a YouTube lecture survey of the entire history of Christians and the theater delivered in May 2024 by Crystal Downing, recently retired codirector of the Wade Center at Wheaton College. CH 

By The editors and contributors

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