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As an evangelical preacher, the Rev. Bruce Marcey belongs to a sermon-centered spiritual tradition that took root nearly 500 years ago with the Bible, the pulpit, and the elimination of all distractions—including art.

Imagine how shocked his forebears might be to see what Marcey does with visual images each week at Warehouse 242, the loft-style church in Charlotte, North Carolina, where he serves as lead pastor. In his view, no worship service is complete until the congregation has pondered not just the Word proclaimed but also the Word illustrated through a homegrown photograph, painting, or film clip.

"We believe the Reformers missed something big," says Marcey, a doctoral candidate in visual rhetoric at Regent University in Virginia Beach, Va. "When we limit the gospel message to the written and spoken text, we short-circuit it. We truncate it … The soul is moved by more things than the word."

Marcey's church is not alone. Across the nation, visual images are fast becoming a part of religious life for millions of Reformed Protestant Christians whose tradition has for centuries regarded pictures with great suspicion. Wariness of the image's power to become an idol, or otherwise deceive a lost soul, has largely given way to confidence in the power of images to reach souls for the good.

Claiming lineage in the Reformed tradition means tracing a spiritual ancestry through John Calvin, the 16th century Geneva theologian whose Institutes of the Christian Religion has endured for centuries as a guiding vision for a church purified Protestant-style. Through the centuries, splinter groups have made Reformed Protestantism into a vast tent with such American incarnations as Presbyterians, Baptists, Congregationalists and many non-denominational evangelicals.

Examples of a growing confidence in images span the spectrum of Reformed religious life.

• In the seminary: at Andover Newton Theological School, which trains future Reformed pastors in Newton, Mass., enrollment in the Worship, Theology and the Arts specialization track has jumped from five in 1999 to 46 in 2004.
• In the overseas mission field: Reformed Protestants and others who once relied on translated Bibles to convert indigenous peoples now routinely introduce Christianity through the "Jesus" film, which has so far seen translation into 858 languages.
• In small group ministries: the video-based Alpha Course has attracted more than one million North Americans over the past 10 years and is currently offered in more than 5,000 church and home settings, including some Reformed congregations.

Reformed Christians are examining what it means for them to seek God apart from the spoken and written word of Scripture. Answers vary, especially since the craze has touched both conservative evangelicals and liberal mainliners, who sometimes have different agendas for the use of images. But on at least one point, there is agreement: a longstanding hallmark of Reformed tradition is disappearing.

"Generally speaking, there has been a visual impoverishment of architecture and in terms of design across the Protestant spectrum in North America," said Quentin Schultze, professor of communication at Calvin College and author of High-Tech Worship? Using Presentational Technologies Wisely. "Now we're seeing a widespread acceptance of the visual in worship across the Protestant landscape … and the idea of an austere, pew-lined, wooden-floor sanctuary is disappearing."

In Calvin's day, Reformers invoked the second commandment's prohibition on graven images as they stormed Roman Catholic churches, smashed statues, and whitewashed the fine art on the walls. Among their concerns at the time, according to Schultze, was to thwart a widespread tendency to regard such images as idols or agents of supernatural force.

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December (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48