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(an essay on something I've been thinking about lately)
INFPs don’t make very much money. A number of MBTI-And-Income surveys have us ranking dead last among the 16 types, this one from Business Insider has us ranking a bit higher, 4th from the bottom, but still low and also 4th from the bottom in job satisfaction. It seems safe to say we’re either at or near the economic floor, often mired in poverty and disliking our jobs.
Why is this so? Partially it’s because in my experience, INFPs are rarely materialistic, few of us are motivated by money, just as people who have no interest in chess don’t win chess tournaments. Even without a desire to be rich though, we should be capable of providing for a family and living comfortably, yet some of us aren’t making enough money to even do that.
I want to explain one cause of this that is rarely mentioned: to summarize, it has to do with an idea that exists inside religion, which proliferated in areas of Western Europe and then thrived upon arriving in America: the idea is iconoclasm.
Christianity traditionally has placed great importance on the veneration of Icons as a form of devotion. In the same way we kiss our loved ones, or photographs of them, Christians since the earliest times have kissed blessed illustrations of Jesus, the Virgin Mary, the Saints and the Angelic Powers. Icons are seen as “windows into another world”, transporting the viewer into another dimension with their sublime beauty, hence fulfilling the Lord’s Prayer: “on Earth as it is in Heaven.” Icons depict famous scenes from the history of the Faith for people’s education; on a personal level, Icons show Christians their Friends and Allies, letting them know that their presence is always, eternally, near.
Orthodox Icon of Creation
In the 8th century A.D., iconoclastic attitudes were growing among Christians. Some of them thought that these images were improper and deserving of destruction. In response, the Christian Church at the Second Council Of Nicea decreed that the creation and veneration of icons for Christian purposes is right, proper and holy. The Council was heavily inspired by the writings of Saint John Of Damascus, according to whom: “those who refuse to venerate an Icon also refuse to worship God's Son…anyone who seeks to destroy the Icons is the enemy of Christ and is the defender of the Devil and his demons.”
Iconography came under attack again with the rise of the Protestant Reformation in 16th century Western Europe. Under the influence of the Reformed Theology of John Calvin, a dour legalist if there ever was one, creation and veneration of icons was dismissed as “idolatry”, a violation of the Commandment against “graven images”, and the idea that the visual arts has no place in religion was promoted.
Calvinist converts in Geneva and elsewhere mobilized to put his beliefs into practice. Susan Hardman Moore says: "From the beginning, Protestant preaching had the potential to stir up iconoclasm. In Zurich, the severity of iconoclastic riots pressed the city council to set up an orderly process for the removal of images. Over a memorable fortnight in 1523, a team of carpenters, masons and painters, supervised by magistrates and ministers, stripped Zurich’s churches of statues and paintings, and whitewashed the walls. A Catholic passing through the town entered the Great Minster and found nothing inside: ‘it was hideous’.
It is often said that Reformed Protestantism saw a shift from the visual to the verbal. One writer has suggested ‘visual anorexia’ took hold in England from the 1580s...The English Geneva Bible of 1560 had a few woodcuts, and some maps; then there were only maps; the Authorized Version of 1611 had no pictures, apart from an exceptionally elaborate title-page in deference to its patron, James VI. A Bible with pictures, printed in Edinburgh to mark Charles I’s visit in 1633, caused a furore. Since producing new images for books carried high costs, perhaps the print trade found it a happy coincidence that pictures were less in demand.”
Looting Of The Churches Of Lyon By The Calvinists, painted by Antoine Caron, 1562.
As a result of this new wave of iconoclasm: “large scale works of Biblical art were no longer commissioned by Protestant church bodies. There was a huge reduction in the amount of religious art produced in Protestant countries. This fall in ecclesiastical patronage forced many Old Masters to diversify into secular types of art, such as history painting, portraiture, genre painting and still lifes.” Of course, secular art can exist with or without iconoclasm, so what would be more accurate is to claim that the market for illustrations experienced not so much diversification as it did profound shrinkage.
It makes sense that INFPs, often naturally talented as artists, highly valuing the aesthetic, fantastic and otherworldly aspects of existence, would be one of the most common MBTI types among iconographers, possibly the most common type of all. I can see much of the INFP low income trend originating with this Protestant iconoclasm. I don’t think it’s the sole contributor, far from it. I do think it’s one of the biggest contributors, though. I’d also suspect that witnessing the de-adorning and razing of so many Catholic parishes caused a decrease in the religiosity of INFPs, and probably ISFPs also.
Unfortunately for INFPs, the dominant influences that formed American culture starting in its colonial period were Calvinist. 19th century historian George Bancroft referred to John Calvin as “the virtual founder of America”. The New England Puritans and Congregationalists were Calvinists, as were a lot of other immigrant groups like the Dutch Reformed and the Scots-Irish Presbyterians. Calvinist sects founded many of America’s oldest colleges (Harvard, Yale, Princeton, William And Mary) and have produced roughly ¼ of America’s presidents. Even the democratic-republican structure of the American government owes much to the structure of Reformed Church government. Calvinism and the United States are so deeply synonymous that in Britain, the American Revolution of 1776 was sometimes referred to as “the Presbyterian Rebellion”. Hence, iconoclasm was front-and-center in America’s religious convictions for centuries, and supply and demand tells us that if demand is depressed, those who wish to supply will simply be out of luck. It’s safe to say the situation is similar in other countries where the assertions of the Reformation were highly accepted.
Some Christians still claim that the Reformation was right, that icons really are inherently detrimental and idolatrous. Considering that Jesus created an Icon of Himself during His earthly life, yet is repeatedly affirmed by the New Testament to be sinless, (Hebrews 4: 15, 1 Peter 2:22, 1 John 3: 5), how could the Reformers ever be right about that issue? They couldn’t be.
Reversing Iconoclasm is not as easy as simply avoiding Reformed Churches, however. Protestant churches inspired more by Martin Luther (Lutheran and Anglican) or John Wesley (roughly speaking, most non-denominational evangelical, Methodist, Baptist and Pentecostal) don’t share Calvin’s absolute condemnation of icons, but they’re still usually at least skeptical of them and their churches generally don’t contain any. Catholic Churches are doctrinally and historically pro-Icon but recently, possibly in response to Protestant peer pressure to “modernize” or “Americanize”, many have been purged of their Icons. Orthodox Churches remain staunchly and robustly pro-Icon but only about 0.5% of American Christians are Orthodox. Looming larger than anything however is the sharp decline in American religiosity in recent decades, particularly among Millennials and Gen Z. As a Millennial who was raised in highly contemporary churches and grew deeply disillusioned with them, I have a lot of sympathy with those who’ve fallen away from what “conventional” religion has come to consist of.
The Catholic author Hilaire Belloc wrote in “The Great Heresies” (1937): “It is often said that all heresies die. This may be true in the very long run but it is not necessarily true within any given period of time. There is not one man of a hundred in Geneva today who accepts Calvin's highly defined theology. The doctrine is dead; its effects on society survive.” German sociologist Max Weber famously pointed out that Calvin’s theology was what created the Protestant Work Ethic, which has resulted in the United States having some of the worst Work-Life Balance of any first-world nation. Calvinism has also frequently been hostile to monarchies, so America rejected that institution (Woodrow Wilson, who dragged America into the apocalyptic First World War to “make the world safe for democracy” was a Presbyterian). Whether we are Calvinists, Non-Calvinist Christians, members of Non-Christian religions or irreligious, we are all connected to one another by the impact the Reformation has had on our civilization. So then, might another of Calvin’s legacies be the “starving artist” trope? Are the artists starving because the Protestants have thrown them out of the church?
This 2011 article in the Baltimore Sun profiles the career of an iconographer. I suspect many here will find it interesting. It reads: “Only a handful of people practice iconography as a fulltime profession in the U.S.” A handful. In a nation of over 300 million people. However, the few that exist here certainly do get paid. One couple I know in real life, converts to Eastern Orthodoxy told me: “We have two custom-made icons in our house. They were expensive but it was worth every penny.”
What if it were more than a handful?
According to one census, there were roughly 400,000 churches in the United States in 2010. What if the vast majority of them affirmed Icon veneration as a proper form of worship? Even only considering the fiscal aspect, that’s thousands of people involved in illustrating Icons, thousands more involved in restoring Icons as time passes and decay increases, etc. The vast majority of Apostolic believers also have Icons in their homes, providing an additional outlet for this work to be carried out. Achieving this state of affairs would require a sea change definitely, but at the same time, it’s definitely possible to achieve; the picture of what it looks like is clear and beautiful.
Holy Virgin Cathedral in San Francisco, California
Sometimes in life, circumstances work against you. Circumstances can and do change though, and we can make them change. Things don’t have to be this way nor should we passively accept things being this way, they can improve greatly from what they are. I’m dismayed by some of the put-downs I see regarding INFPs, “the worst type to be”, “the most useless type”, etc. Sometimes INFPs themselves feel this way. To this I respond, let’s do everything we can to reverse iconoclasm and then see if people write us off like that. We live in the world John Calvin made...up until the point where we decide to create our own world and live in that one instead.
Obviously, much of this rests on the convictions of active religious believers, or at least openminded spiritual seekers. If what I’ve written here makes sense to you, especially if you’re already Christian or you’re in a Protestant area of the world, I’d strongly recommend investigating an Eastern Orthodox Church. They welcome the sincere and curious and their icons are superb. I’ve also noticed support coming from unexpected places. Camille Paglia, herself an agnostic-atheist, has described the art world as being in crisis, and unhesitatingly described the role of saving it, revitalizing it, as belonging to religion. She laments America’s status as a “practical, commercial nation where the arts have often been dismissed as wasteful, frivolous or unmanly”, and describes the society that forgets art as “at risk of losing its soul”. Is that what has already come to pass? Can that soul still be saved?
I wrote this essay hoping that I could provide a map detailing where we are, how we got there, and what we can do about it, to explain a career path that’s nearly unheard of in some areas, though I myself don’t intend to venture down it, I’m more musical and literary than illustrative. If this can save even one artist from starving though, if I can open up a new world to people, or a new way of seeing, writing this will have been worth it to me.
INFPs don’t make very much money. A number of MBTI-And-Income surveys have us ranking dead last among the 16 types, this one from Business Insider has us ranking a bit higher, 4th from the bottom, but still low and also 4th from the bottom in job satisfaction. It seems safe to say we’re either at or near the economic floor, often mired in poverty and disliking our jobs.
Why is this so? Partially it’s because in my experience, INFPs are rarely materialistic, few of us are motivated by money, just as people who have no interest in chess don’t win chess tournaments. Even without a desire to be rich though, we should be capable of providing for a family and living comfortably, yet some of us aren’t making enough money to even do that.
I want to explain one cause of this that is rarely mentioned: to summarize, it has to do with an idea that exists inside religion, which proliferated in areas of Western Europe and then thrived upon arriving in America: the idea is iconoclasm.
Christianity traditionally has placed great importance on the veneration of Icons as a form of devotion. In the same way we kiss our loved ones, or photographs of them, Christians since the earliest times have kissed blessed illustrations of Jesus, the Virgin Mary, the Saints and the Angelic Powers. Icons are seen as “windows into another world”, transporting the viewer into another dimension with their sublime beauty, hence fulfilling the Lord’s Prayer: “on Earth as it is in Heaven.” Icons depict famous scenes from the history of the Faith for people’s education; on a personal level, Icons show Christians their Friends and Allies, letting them know that their presence is always, eternally, near.

Orthodox Icon of Creation
In the 8th century A.D., iconoclastic attitudes were growing among Christians. Some of them thought that these images were improper and deserving of destruction. In response, the Christian Church at the Second Council Of Nicea decreed that the creation and veneration of icons for Christian purposes is right, proper and holy. The Council was heavily inspired by the writings of Saint John Of Damascus, according to whom: “those who refuse to venerate an Icon also refuse to worship God's Son…anyone who seeks to destroy the Icons is the enemy of Christ and is the defender of the Devil and his demons.”
Iconography came under attack again with the rise of the Protestant Reformation in 16th century Western Europe. Under the influence of the Reformed Theology of John Calvin, a dour legalist if there ever was one, creation and veneration of icons was dismissed as “idolatry”, a violation of the Commandment against “graven images”, and the idea that the visual arts has no place in religion was promoted.
Calvinist converts in Geneva and elsewhere mobilized to put his beliefs into practice. Susan Hardman Moore says: "From the beginning, Protestant preaching had the potential to stir up iconoclasm. In Zurich, the severity of iconoclastic riots pressed the city council to set up an orderly process for the removal of images. Over a memorable fortnight in 1523, a team of carpenters, masons and painters, supervised by magistrates and ministers, stripped Zurich’s churches of statues and paintings, and whitewashed the walls. A Catholic passing through the town entered the Great Minster and found nothing inside: ‘it was hideous’.
It is often said that Reformed Protestantism saw a shift from the visual to the verbal. One writer has suggested ‘visual anorexia’ took hold in England from the 1580s...The English Geneva Bible of 1560 had a few woodcuts, and some maps; then there were only maps; the Authorized Version of 1611 had no pictures, apart from an exceptionally elaborate title-page in deference to its patron, James VI. A Bible with pictures, printed in Edinburgh to mark Charles I’s visit in 1633, caused a furore. Since producing new images for books carried high costs, perhaps the print trade found it a happy coincidence that pictures were less in demand.”

Looting Of The Churches Of Lyon By The Calvinists, painted by Antoine Caron, 1562.
As a result of this new wave of iconoclasm: “large scale works of Biblical art were no longer commissioned by Protestant church bodies. There was a huge reduction in the amount of religious art produced in Protestant countries. This fall in ecclesiastical patronage forced many Old Masters to diversify into secular types of art, such as history painting, portraiture, genre painting and still lifes.” Of course, secular art can exist with or without iconoclasm, so what would be more accurate is to claim that the market for illustrations experienced not so much diversification as it did profound shrinkage.
It makes sense that INFPs, often naturally talented as artists, highly valuing the aesthetic, fantastic and otherworldly aspects of existence, would be one of the most common MBTI types among iconographers, possibly the most common type of all. I can see much of the INFP low income trend originating with this Protestant iconoclasm. I don’t think it’s the sole contributor, far from it. I do think it’s one of the biggest contributors, though. I’d also suspect that witnessing the de-adorning and razing of so many Catholic parishes caused a decrease in the religiosity of INFPs, and probably ISFPs also.
Unfortunately for INFPs, the dominant influences that formed American culture starting in its colonial period were Calvinist. 19th century historian George Bancroft referred to John Calvin as “the virtual founder of America”. The New England Puritans and Congregationalists were Calvinists, as were a lot of other immigrant groups like the Dutch Reformed and the Scots-Irish Presbyterians. Calvinist sects founded many of America’s oldest colleges (Harvard, Yale, Princeton, William And Mary) and have produced roughly ¼ of America’s presidents. Even the democratic-republican structure of the American government owes much to the structure of Reformed Church government. Calvinism and the United States are so deeply synonymous that in Britain, the American Revolution of 1776 was sometimes referred to as “the Presbyterian Rebellion”. Hence, iconoclasm was front-and-center in America’s religious convictions for centuries, and supply and demand tells us that if demand is depressed, those who wish to supply will simply be out of luck. It’s safe to say the situation is similar in other countries where the assertions of the Reformation were highly accepted.
Some Christians still claim that the Reformation was right, that icons really are inherently detrimental and idolatrous. Considering that Jesus created an Icon of Himself during His earthly life, yet is repeatedly affirmed by the New Testament to be sinless, (Hebrews 4: 15, 1 Peter 2:22, 1 John 3: 5), how could the Reformers ever be right about that issue? They couldn’t be.
Reversing Iconoclasm is not as easy as simply avoiding Reformed Churches, however. Protestant churches inspired more by Martin Luther (Lutheran and Anglican) or John Wesley (roughly speaking, most non-denominational evangelical, Methodist, Baptist and Pentecostal) don’t share Calvin’s absolute condemnation of icons, but they’re still usually at least skeptical of them and their churches generally don’t contain any. Catholic Churches are doctrinally and historically pro-Icon but recently, possibly in response to Protestant peer pressure to “modernize” or “Americanize”, many have been purged of their Icons. Orthodox Churches remain staunchly and robustly pro-Icon but only about 0.5% of American Christians are Orthodox. Looming larger than anything however is the sharp decline in American religiosity in recent decades, particularly among Millennials and Gen Z. As a Millennial who was raised in highly contemporary churches and grew deeply disillusioned with them, I have a lot of sympathy with those who’ve fallen away from what “conventional” religion has come to consist of.
The Catholic author Hilaire Belloc wrote in “The Great Heresies” (1937): “It is often said that all heresies die. This may be true in the very long run but it is not necessarily true within any given period of time. There is not one man of a hundred in Geneva today who accepts Calvin's highly defined theology. The doctrine is dead; its effects on society survive.” German sociologist Max Weber famously pointed out that Calvin’s theology was what created the Protestant Work Ethic, which has resulted in the United States having some of the worst Work-Life Balance of any first-world nation. Calvinism has also frequently been hostile to monarchies, so America rejected that institution (Woodrow Wilson, who dragged America into the apocalyptic First World War to “make the world safe for democracy” was a Presbyterian). Whether we are Calvinists, Non-Calvinist Christians, members of Non-Christian religions or irreligious, we are all connected to one another by the impact the Reformation has had on our civilization. So then, might another of Calvin’s legacies be the “starving artist” trope? Are the artists starving because the Protestants have thrown them out of the church?
This 2011 article in the Baltimore Sun profiles the career of an iconographer. I suspect many here will find it interesting. It reads: “Only a handful of people practice iconography as a fulltime profession in the U.S.” A handful. In a nation of over 300 million people. However, the few that exist here certainly do get paid. One couple I know in real life, converts to Eastern Orthodoxy told me: “We have two custom-made icons in our house. They were expensive but it was worth every penny.”
What if it were more than a handful?
According to one census, there were roughly 400,000 churches in the United States in 2010. What if the vast majority of them affirmed Icon veneration as a proper form of worship? Even only considering the fiscal aspect, that’s thousands of people involved in illustrating Icons, thousands more involved in restoring Icons as time passes and decay increases, etc. The vast majority of Apostolic believers also have Icons in their homes, providing an additional outlet for this work to be carried out. Achieving this state of affairs would require a sea change definitely, but at the same time, it’s definitely possible to achieve; the picture of what it looks like is clear and beautiful.
Holy Virgin Cathedral in San Francisco, California
Sometimes in life, circumstances work against you. Circumstances can and do change though, and we can make them change. Things don’t have to be this way nor should we passively accept things being this way, they can improve greatly from what they are. I’m dismayed by some of the put-downs I see regarding INFPs, “the worst type to be”, “the most useless type”, etc. Sometimes INFPs themselves feel this way. To this I respond, let’s do everything we can to reverse iconoclasm and then see if people write us off like that. We live in the world John Calvin made...up until the point where we decide to create our own world and live in that one instead.
Obviously, much of this rests on the convictions of active religious believers, or at least openminded spiritual seekers. If what I’ve written here makes sense to you, especially if you’re already Christian or you’re in a Protestant area of the world, I’d strongly recommend investigating an Eastern Orthodox Church. They welcome the sincere and curious and their icons are superb. I’ve also noticed support coming from unexpected places. Camille Paglia, herself an agnostic-atheist, has described the art world as being in crisis, and unhesitatingly described the role of saving it, revitalizing it, as belonging to religion. She laments America’s status as a “practical, commercial nation where the arts have often been dismissed as wasteful, frivolous or unmanly”, and describes the society that forgets art as “at risk of losing its soul”. Is that what has already come to pass? Can that soul still be saved?
I wrote this essay hoping that I could provide a map detailing where we are, how we got there, and what we can do about it, to explain a career path that’s nearly unheard of in some areas, though I myself don’t intend to venture down it, I’m more musical and literary than illustrative. If this can save even one artist from starving though, if I can open up a new world to people, or a new way of seeing, writing this will have been worth it to me.