Download Free Religious Aesthetics Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online Religious Aesthetics and write the review.

In this groundbreaking work, Brown shows how aesthetics, no less than ethics, can play a central role in the study of religion and in the practice of theology. "An important book, wide ranging, often very witty . . . showing an impressive grasp of the current state of aesthetics and possible new directions".--Nick McAdoo, British Journal of Aesthetics.
This volume is the first English language presentation of the innovative approaches developed in the aesthetics of religion. The chapters present diverse material and detailed analysis on descriptive, methodological and theoretical concepts that together explore the potential of an aesthetic approach for investigating religion as a sensory and mediated practice. In dialogue with, yet different from, other major movements in the field (material culture, anthropology of the senses, for instance), it is the specific intent of this approach to create a framework for understanding the interplay between sensory, cognitive and socio-cultural aspects of world-construction. The volume demonstrates that aesthetics, as a theory of sensory knowledge, offers an elaborate repertoire of concepts that can help to understand religious traditions. These approaches take into account contemporary developments in scientific theories of perception, neuro-aesthetics and cultural studies, highlighting the socio-cultural and political context informing how humans perceive themselves and the world around them. Developing since the 1990s, the aesthetic approach has responded to debates in the study of religion, in particular striving to overcome biased categories that confined religion either to texts and abstract beliefs, or to an indisputable sui generis mode of experience. This volume documents what has been achieved to date, its significance for the study of religion and for interdisciplinary scholarship.
A great deal of attention has been given to the sociopolitical and theological importance of Black Religion. However, of less academic concern up to this point is the aesthetic qualities that define much of what is said and done within the context of Black Religion. Recognizing the centrality of the black body for black religious thought and life, this book proposes a conversation concerning various dimensions of the aesthetic considerations and qualities of Black Religion as found in various parts of the world, including the the Americas, the Caribbean, Africa, and Europe. In this respect, Black Religion is simply meant to connote the religious orientations and arrangements of people of African descent across the globe.
"Rabbi Cowen's creative engagement with these contemporary artists reveals how spirituality can enhance the power of the visual image, the emotional persuasiveness of the literary text, and the neurological impact of music ..." - Mel Alexenberg, formerly Professor of Art at Columbia University In the realm of contemporary aesthetic high culture, there are many painters, writers and composers of great talent, but few with deep religious knowledge and belief. In the realm of faith, there are many with deep belief and religious knowledge, but very few with developed great artistic talent. Is there some way of making good the absent but essential combination of artistic prowess and religious depth required to produce great religious artworks in the various artistic media? In response to this question, this book addresses the theory and practice of engaging significant artists – not necessarily religiously learned or committed – to draw forth from them genuinely religious high art. After exploring the concept of the religious artwork, it documents three religious-creative encounters through which important religious artworks emerged, in the realms of painting, literature and music. It concludes with thoughts on the methodology and kinds of successful engagements between religion and aesthetics – with broader implications for education to religious art.
What is the future of liberation thought in the Americas? In this groundbreaking work, Christopher D. Tirres takes up this question by looking at the methodological connections between two quintessentially American traditions: liberation theology and pragmatism. He explains how pragmatism lends philosophical clarity and depth to some of liberation theology's core ideas and assumptions. Liberation theology in turn offers pragmatism a more nuanced and sympathetic approach to religious faith, especially its social and pedagogical dimensions. Ultimately, Tirres crafts a philosophical foundation that ensures the continued relevance of liberation thought in today's world. Keeping true to the method of pragmatism, the book begins inductively with a set of actual experiences-- the Good Friday liturgies at the San Fernando Cathedral in San Antonio, Texas-- and provides a compelling description of the way these performative rituals integrate the aesthetic and ethical dimensions of faith. Subsequent chapters probe this integration deductively at three levels of theoretical analysis: experience/metaphysics, sociality, and pedagogy. As Tirres shows, the aesthetic and ethical dimensions of faith emerge in different yet related ways at all three levels. He argues that utilizing the categories of the aesthetic and ethical enables a richer understanding of the dynamic relationship between faith and politics. This book builds new bridges between a number of discourses and key figures, and will be of interest to all who are interested in the liberatory potential of engaged faith praxis, especially when it is expressed in the form of religious ritual.
Religion and cinema share a capacity for world making, ritualizing, mythologizing, and creating sacred time and space. Through cinematography, mise-en-scène, editing, and other production activities, film takes the world “out there” and refashions it. Religion achieves similar ends by setting apart particular objects and periods of time, telling stories, and gathering people together for communal actions and concentrated focus. The result of both cinema and religious practice is a re-created world: a world of fantasy, a world of ideology, a world we long to live in, or a world we wish to avoid at all costs. Religion and Film introduces readers to both religious studies and film studies by focusing on the formal similarities between cinema and religious practices and on the ways they each re-create the world. Explorations of film show how the cinematic experience relies on similar aesthetic devices on which religious rituals have long relied: sight, sound, the taste of food, the body, and communal experience. Meanwhile, a deeper understanding of the aesthetic nature of religious rituals can alter our understanding of film production. Utilizing terminology and theoretical insights from the study of religion as well as the study of film, Religion and Film shows that by paying attention to the ways films are constructed, we can shed new light on the ways religious myths and rituals are constructed and vice versa. This thoroughly revised and expanded new edition is designed to appeal to the needs of courses in religion as well as film departments. In addition to two new chapters, this edition has been restructured into three distinct sections that offer students and instructors theories and methods for thinking about cinema in ways that more fully connect film studies with religious studies.
While interest in the relationship between theology and the arts is on the rise, there are very few resources for students and teachers, let alone a comprehensive text on the subject. This book fills that lacuna by providing an anthology of readings on theological aesthetics drawn from the first century to the present. A superb sourcebook, Theological Aesthetics brings together original texts that are relevant and timely to scholars today. Editor Gesa Elsbeth Thiessen has taken a careful, inclusive approach to the book, including articles and extracts that are diverse and ecumenical as well as representative of gender and ethnicity. The book is organized chronologically, and each historical period begins with commentary by Thiessen that sets the selections in context. These engaging readings range broadly over themes at the intersection of religion and the arts, including beauty and revelation, the vision of God, artistic and divine creation, God as artist, images of God, the interplay of the senses and the intellect, human imagination, mystical writings, meanings of signs and symbols, worship, liturgy, doxology, the relationship of word and image, icons and iconoclasm, the role of the arts in twentieth-century theology, and much more.
This book explores the role of aesthetic experience in our perception and understanding of the holy. Richard Viladesau's goal is to articulate a theology of revelation, examined in relation to three principal dimensions of the aesthetic realm: feeling and imagination; beauty (or taste); and the arts. After briefly considering ways in which theology itself can be imaginative or beautiful, Viladesau concentrates on the theological significance of aesthetic data provided by each of the three major spheres of aesthetic perception and response. Throughout the work, the underlying question is how each of these spheres serves as a source (however ambiguous) of revelation. Although he frames much of his argument in terms of Catholic theology--from the Church Fathers to Karl Rahner, Hans urs von Balthasar, Bernard Lonergan, and David Tracy--Viladesau also makes extensive use of ideas from the Protestant theologian of the arts Gerardus van der Leeuw, and draws insights from such diverse thinkers as Hans Goerg Gadamer, Wolfhart Pannenberg, and Iris Murdoch. His analysis is enlivened by the artistic examples he selects: the music of Mozart as contemplated by Karl Barth, Schoenbergs opera Moses und Aron, the sculptures of Chartres Cathedral, poems by Rilke and Michelangelo, and many others. What emerges from this study is what Viladeseau terms a transcendental theology of aesthetics. In Thomistic terms, he finds that beauty is not only a perfection but a transcendental. That is, any instance of beauty, rightly perceived and rightly understood, can be seen to imply divinely beautiful things as well. In other words, Viladesau argues, God is the absolute and necessary condition for the possibility of beauty.
To really understand God, you have to understand atheism. Atheism and Christianity are often placed at polar opposite ends of a spectrum, forever in stark conflict with each other. In The Aesthetics of Atheism, Kutter Callaway and Barry Taylor propose a radical alternative: atheism and theism need each other. In fact, atheism offers profound and necessary theological insights into the heart of Christianity itself. To get at these truths, Callaway and Taylor dive into the aesthetic dimensions of atheism, using everything from Stranger Things to Damien Hirst's controversial sculptures to the music of David Bowie, Nick Cave, and Leonard Cohen. This journey through contemporary culture and its imagination offers readers a deeper understanding of theology, culture, and how to engage faith in a chaotic and complex world where God is present in the most unexpected place: atheism.
In this broad historical and critical overview based on a lifetime of scholarship, James Alfred Martin, Jr., examines the development of the concepts of beauty and holiness as employed in theories of aesthetics and of religion. The injunction in the Book of Psalms to "worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness" addressed a tradition that has comprehended holiness primarily in terms of ethical righteousness--a conception that has strongly influenced Western understandings of religion. As the author points out, however, the Greek forbears of Western thought, as well as many Eastern traditions, were and are more broadly concerned with the pursuit of beauty, truth, and goodness as ideals of human excellence, that is, with the "holiness of beauty." In this work Martin describes a philosophical stance that should prove to be most productive for the dialogue between aesthetics and religion. Beginning with the treatment of beauty and holiness in Hebrew, Greek, and classical Christian thought, the author traces the emergence of modern theories of aesthetics and religion in the Enlightenment. He then outlines the role of aesthetics in the theories of religion proposed by Otto, Eliade, van der Leeuw, and Tillich, in the cultural anthropology of Geertz, and in the thought of Santayana, Dewey, Whitehead, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein. In a global context Martin explores the relation of aesthetic theory to religious thought in the traditions of India, China, and Japan and concludes with reflections on the viability of modern aesthetic and religious theory in the light of contemporary cultural and methodological pluralism. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.