Pilgrim's Progress

This paper argues that John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, and his critique of the European society of the 17th century, was one of the first tracks of the European enlightenment as it champions religious freedom, the utility of reason and the power of choice over the determinism and authoritarianism of his time.

This article examines the anonymous nineteenth century Russian work, The Way of the Pilgrim, and John Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" and looks at the ways in which each author appeals to the Bible as authority, whilst at the same time allowing space for other interpretive authorities, thus enabling the Bible to be internalised as the Word of God in particular lives.

This Catalogue is published in conjunction with the exhibition “Buddhist Art o f India” held at the Korea Foundation Cultural Center in Seoul from 18th January to 28th February, 2006. The exhibition is organized jointly by the Korea Foundation in collaboration with the National Museum, New Delhi under the aegis of Cultural Exchange Program.

In C.S. Lewis' The Pilgrim's Regress (1933), he portrays a number of religious teachers or stewards, who advocate a variety of paths to the Landlord (God). This article examines the cases made by the diverse stewards in this allegory inspired by John Bunyan's classic work.

'Puritans,' says J I Packer, 'saw themselves as God’s pilgrims, travelling home, God’s warriors, battling against the world, the flesh, and the devil, and God’s servants, under orders to do all the good they could as they went along.'

In this first compilation of St. Antholin’s Lectures 1991-2000 we are brought face to face with those heroes of the past and are encouraged to apply their godly wisdom in our own day.

This compilation includes lectures from
J I Packer - A Man For All Ministries: Richard Baxter 1615-1691
Geoffrey Cox - The Rediscovery and Renewal of the Local Church: The Puritan Vision
Alister McGrath - Evangelical Spirituality: Past Glories, Present Hopes, Future Possibilities
Gavin McGrath - ‘But We Preach Christ Crucified’: The Cross of Christ in the pastoral theology of John Owen 1616-1683
Peter Jensen - Using the Shield of Faith: Puritan Attitudes to Combat with Satan
J I Packer - An Anglican to Remember - William Perkins: Puritan Popularizer
Bruce Winter - Pilgrim’s Progress and Contemporary Evangelical Piety
Peter Adam - A Church ‘Halfly Reformed’: The Puritan Dilemma
J I Packer - The Pilgrim’s Principles: John Bunyan Revisited
Ashley Null - Conversion to Communion: Thomas Cranmer on a Favourite Theme

Edited with an introduction by Lee Gatiss

The Moving Panorama of Pilgrim’s Progress is an extraordinary 8-foot by 800-foot painting that was created in 1851 and thought lost for a full century. Rediscovered in 1996 and fully restored in 2012, it illustrates John Bunyan’s iconic book The Pilgrim’s Progress—first published in 1678 and in print continuously since then—a heart-stopping allegory of trial and faith in which the hero, Christian, battles giants, monsters, tricksters, and his own weaknesses to reach the Celestial City. Moving panoramas were a mid-nineteenth-century precursor to the motion picture, massive canvases that were scrolled across a stage and accompanied by a lecturer and music. One of only a handful that survive today, the Moving Panorama of Pilgrim’s Progress was one of the most popular and important moving panoramas of its day, with designs by rising luminaries of the Hudson River School of American landscape painting: Frederic Edwin Church, Jasper Cropsey, Daniel Huntington, and others. Scholars and fans of theater and film, panoramas, American art, religious studies, literature, and The Pilgrim’s Progress itself will value this beautifully illustrated volume.

Bunyan's Pilgrim, an engraving first published 1853,  took 5 years to engrave, based on Hammatt Billings sketches of the same.  Produced only in Black and white, with some copies tinted with colour wash. Some of the art critics at the time had given the engraving very negative reviews, although the print was popular with the public at the time.  My aim was to find if it was possible to improve the engraving by colorizing using various software (2020)  The picture has a lot going for it, in spite of the critics, for sure I understand what they are saying ...Hopefully colorizing with today's technology will show this forgotten masterpiece in the way it should be. The paper based on a blog post gives a short history and explanation.  https://iparanastudio.blogspot.com/2020/09/bunyans-pilgrim.html

Despite the Talbot Wilson notebook’s central importance to Whitman scholarship, scholars have long neglected the person for whom the volume is named. Landscape painter and Brooklynite Jesse Talbot was one of Whitman’s closest companions in the years he was conceptualizing what would become Leaves of Grass. Whitman wrote about and promoted Talbot’s paintings in at least six newspaper and journal articles in the 1850s, and he also owned one: Christian at the Cross, a scene from The Pilgrim’s Progress, a version of which was recently rediscovered in a private American collection.
My paper will outline how Talbot began his career as a leader in New York religious organizations and then, in mid-life, became an acclaimed painter of overtly and implicitly allegorical American landscapes, catching the attention of the young Whitman. As a journalist, Whitman himself was a kind of evangelist for a specific vision of American arts and culture, journeying toward the democratic vista first fully articulated in Leaves of Grass. My paper argues that the personal and professional relationship between Talbot and Whitman was crucial for this transition and that the theme of pilgrimage, as explored by Talbot, resonates in Whitman’s writings—that, in fact, both artists, in different media, used related imagery and punning motifs in the defining works that came out of their New York years. My paper draws on new primary evidence about Talbot and Whitman’s promotion of him to demonstrate how Whitman’s critical response to Talbot’s work shaped both men’s careers—for better and for worse.