The Great Victorian Sacrilege: Preachers, Politics And the Passion , 1879-1884 [Paperback]

What happens when freedom of artistic expression offends freedom of religion? A great controversy arose when America's first professional Passion play, staged in San Francisco in 1879, was pronounced a sacrilege by Protestant ministers (Salmi Morse's play, The Passion, was in reality a pious description of the Gospel story). This work shows that Morse and his play were victims of the Protestant church's struggle to maintain power during the late 1800s, a time when America was changing into a more urban nation. This saga of a society's attempt to control immoral art by government intervention is also a disconcerting look at how easily artistic freedom can be sacrificed on the altar of political expediency.