Despite laws and statutes to the contrary, religious drama proliferated at the turn of the century. In 1901, when  "blasphemy" laws dating back to the Reformation still prohibited stage representations of God,William Poel produced a revival of the medieval morality play Everyman in England. Because the play was written in 1495 before the "blasphemy" laws were established, authorities allowed the production. (Potter). Conditions were similar in America.  Statues such as Pennsylavania's  Act of April 11, 1911 which forbid the production of "sacreligious plays" as determined by the Board of Censors, excluded many Bible plays from the stage (Glaymen 13).  Still, bibliographies date the publication of religious drama in America as early as 1871 with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Christus and i1887 with Mrs. A. J. Moses' Esther. Instructional books such as Rita Benton's  Bible Play Workshop in 1923 attest to the production of religious plays in church and educational settings.  Meanwhile, the 1924 formation of the Committee on Religious Drama of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, and the 1927 Longmans, Green and Company/Drama League of America 's play contest included the category  "Non-sectarian Bible Play," reveal a substantial movement in religious drama in the twentieth century. This movement is closely related to the independent theatre movement of the early century when small community and "little theatres" began to challenge the mainstay of commercial theatre. These theatres such as the Little Theatre in Chicago ,where Florence Kiper Frank premiered her relgious play Jaelin 1914, were dedicated to experiementing with new dramatic forms and encouraging new playwrights.  These new dramatic forms included the twentieth century religious play. 

Criteria set by contests and searches such those by the Drama League of America and the Committee on Religious Drama, provide a framework for defining religious drama at the turn-of-the-century.  As the American and Eurpoean theatrical movements broadened their scope from the commercial to the "community" or "little " theatre, a new class of playwrights emerged.  These  playwrights were a mixture of both emerging promising lay playwrights and those with good intentions, but little skill. This resulted in the need for contests such as the Leagues' to find and publish the "gold amongst...much dross."  The Committee on Religious Drama experienced similar concerns in their search for publishable religious plays stating, 
 

We present our selections with difidence, for we are conscious of many weakenesses and frequent failings to attain a high standard of art.  We have considered scores of manuscripts written by devout and sincere persons who had something to say and wanted to say it in dramatic form althogh they were evidently entirely unaquainted with the simplest requirements of stage production.  Most of such plays were guiltless of any plot or characterization or emotional content....depend for their interest upon some miracle or magic....and the dearth of religious plays of ethical and social import is nothing short of amazing" (Religious Plays 1924, vii).

First, it must have a thought--a real idea--something whose production makes the play worthwhile; seond, it must be properly expressed according to the accepted canons of dramatic art; third, it must so influence thse acting it, that its effects will move them to good; four, it must be true to life....Merely to deal with Bible materials does not make a religious play, nor does the form which it possesses, or its language" (Carrots May Be Golden, ix).

The Drama League's criterion that a religious play be "true to life" reflects religious drama's participation in the modern theatrical school of Realism.  While many styles dominated the Modern period including Realism, Naturalism, Symbolism, Expressionism and Functionalism, religious playwrights wrote primarily in the styles of Romantic , Historical and Poetic Realism and Poetic Drama.  Realism was a major movement in theatre which rejected the idealization of the human condition in previous movements such as Romanticism and Melodrama.  The Enlightenment of the seventeenth-eighteenth centuries and the Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth-nineteenth centuries had instilled a sense of scientific objectivity in American and European culture.  This objectivity made its way to the stage with Realism.   Realism strove to portray everyday life though "direct observation."   As the field of psychoanalysis came to popularize the idea that a person was the sum of heredity and environmenal influences, attention to environmental detail on the stage also flourished. The result was drama which, through detailed scrutiny, examined the individual's relationship to modern society.

In terms of religious drama, characters began to be portrayed in a more humanistic, versus divine, vein  Emphasis was placed on the biblical character's everyday  life and how "ordinary" conditions effected the psychology and moral outcome of the "extraordinary" situations in  which the characters  were found.  Typically, this resulted in plays with proper names for titles such as Miriam-Sister of Moses, Lydia--Seller of Purple, Pharoah’s Daughter, Peter the Jailer,and Stephen—the First Christian Martyr.  These titles reflected both an emphasis on the individual and their role in society. The conflicts in which these primary characters were engaged often related to social problems of the modern age.  For instance, it is not surprising that religious dramas written by women during the Suffrage movement included  Esther, Jael, and Judith plays, all women who figured predominantly in political conquests within biblical scripture.  In this way, religious dramatists revealed the relevance of scripture to the modern human struggle.

Although religious playwrights in the early century strove for objective realism, many of their dramas were prone to "Romantic Realism" defined in the textCentury of Innovation: A History of European and American Theatre and Drama Since 1870 as dramas in which "idealized subjects are mounted in extremely detailed and historically accurate settings and costumes" (8).  Reverence for scriptural characters , a desire to offer up biblical heroes and heroines, and "blasphemy" laws which still loomed over biblical drama, ofen impeded truely objective studies of the lives of morally ambiguous characters such as King David.  While Historical Realism was embraced by religious playwrights, reverential and moralistic treatment of religious characters was still common.

While at times resembling Romantic Realism, Historical Realism was the primary aim of religious plays in the Modern period.   This style strove to accurately recreate Bible stories in an historical context. Prominent female religious playwrights Rita Benton and Dorothy Sayers reflected this aim in their philosophies through the statements" History plays...afford bright way-stations, colorful pictures of certain times and places which may serve as pegs on which later may be hung the fabric of history...the value of a Bible play lies in its connection with reality, truth.  These stories are stories of real struggles...they are permeated with truth, " and " our Life of Christ should depict, primarily, not so much the eternal sacrifice, as the 'one oblation of Himself once offered'; that is, it should be handled, not liturgically or symbolically, but realistically and historically: 'this thing actually happened''' (Bible PlayWorkshop, 14-16) (The Man Born to Be King, 1).  The playwright's assertion that religious plays were connected to reality and truth and "actually happened" was especially significant during the Modern movement.  During the period of two world wars, the American Depression, the Halocaust, and the atomic bomb, the artistic tempermant toward religion grew apathetic. Many dramatists withdrew from both Realism and religion and rallied around Nietzschean philosophy that "God is dead."   Playwrights such as  Bertolt Brecht argued that religion was an outdated myth, disconnected from the modern human condition. Religious playwrights counter-argued with a renewed commitment toward producing plays that depicted the historical truth of biblical scripture and the timelessness of its characters in the universal human struggle. 

The Historical Realism of religious dramas in the first half of the twentieth century, however, is not to be confused with biblical literalism.  While some Christians held biblical stories as "sacrosanct" and not to to be "interpreted" or "added to," the religious dramatist was confronted with the challenge to "supply obvious gaps in the narrative." The religious dramatist accomplished this by illuminating "Historical Realism" and "historical truth"  through "Poetic Realism" and "poetic truth."  Poetic Realism was pioneered by dramatists Otto Ludwig, Friederich Hebbel, and the Young Germany dramatists Karl Gutzkow and Gustav Freytag (Bethold, 561). Poetic Realism strove to imitate life "only insofar as life was artistically significant and appeared to possess intrinsic value....to discover positive values in everyday life." (Poetic Realism, britannica.com/e/article?eu=109142&tocid=61394). Friederich Hebbel treated religious topics through this philosophy in his biblically-inspired plays Judith and Herodes und Mariamne.  This movement influenced religious playwrights such as Rita Benton who quoted Freytag in Bible Play Workshop stating, "Poetic truth is imparted to material taken from real life by its being raised above its casual connections and receiving a universally understood meaning and significance" (17). Benton sought to retell the "universally understood truth" of the biblical story or that element of the biblical reality that was "artistically significant" and had "intrinsic value."  Although she was determined to tell the biblical story in its historical context, she could through justification of "poetic truth," take certain liberties in framing the "truth" to make it meaningful for her modern audience. Benton wrote: "This to me, is the chief value of Bible plays for us to day.  it is because almost every Bible story may be raised above its casual connection with old-time Children of Isreal and have vital meaning for us to day.  Perhaps of all the old tales have such significance; it may be because they have lived" (16).  For Benton, and her contemporaries in religious drama, "Poetic Realism" was to take something which "had lived" and make them live again for modern audiences. Religious dramatists chose to re-tell Bible stories in their historical framework, but to flesh out exposition, context and character's emotions and feelings by taking dramatic liberties.  These "poetic" fabrications of the biblical texts, the details of the story which were added or expounded upon, articulated the "truths" a particular scripture had for a modern audience.

Poetic Realism was often fused with poetic drama, as was the case for most religious plays.  Religious dramatists, although focused on humanistic interpretations of the scripture, preserved a sense of the sacred through a commitment to a poetic idiom.  The dialogue of religious plays maintained the language of the King James Bible and the Jacobean cadences of medieval plays.  While most plays were biblical, even those set in the twentieth century, such as Rita Bentons Carrots May Be Golden,maintained the formal language of "thee," "thy" and "thou."  Although audiences were accepting of  poetic liberties taken in terms of story, they were less open to liberties taken with the language of the Authorized Version of scripture.  Dorothy Sayers found this to be the case when she dared to "tear off the disguise of the Jacobean idiom...and...translate it into its current English counterpart" (The Man Born to Be King, 7). Upon depicting military police speaking in American slang, tax collectors in Cockney, and Jesus Christ in standard British, the broadcast of Sayer's radio play titled The Man Born to Be Kingwas highly contested. After many protests and the examination of Sayer's scripts by the Central Reigious Advisory Committee, Sayers radio play on the  life of Christ eventually aired to an audience of over 2 million listeners. Dorothy's artisitc liberties in terms of language would change the direction of modern religious drama.  Although her technique was to "keep the ancient setting, and to give the modern equivalent of the contemporary speech and manners," but not to do "the Gospel in a modern setting," Sayers' contemporzing of language in religious plays would eventually lead to dramatic contemporizations of the Gospel. After Sayers' work and into the Contemporary period, religious dramatists would begin give credence to the Drama Leagues' statement that "merely to deal with Bible materials does not make a religious play, nor does the form which it possesses, or its language." Up until Sayers however, religious dramatic material of the Modern period did in fact seem to define itself through the dramatization of biblical narrative in a historical, realistic and poetic form. 

Religious drama of the first-half of the twentieth century reveals a great effort by religious playwright's to engage in a broader theatrical movement.  As the independent theatre movement gave rise to emerging dramatic forms and artists, female religious playwrights participated both within their faith communities and on a professional and secular level. While much of the literary community during this period used the theatre to reveal the godlessness of society, religious playwrights used similar techniques to bring faith back into the community with living representations of God's presence in the lives of common humanistic characters. After centuries of absence, the resurgence of religious drama in England and America would begin, perhaps just in time, to challenge others in the theatrical community who would assert that "God is dead."