Beyond the Return of Religion: Art and the Postsecular explores the conceptual potential of the postsecular for investigations of (late) modern art and religion. Indicating a public co-existence and merging of religion and the secular, the postsecular is approached as an alternative to the return of religion narrative. Rather than framing artistic concerns with religion as a recurrence after temporary absence, Lieke Wijnia shows how the postsecular allows for seeing the interaction between art and religion as an enduring, albeit transforming relationship of mutual nature. Whereas secularization theories are intrinsically connected to modernity, the postsecular requires a pluralized perspective, covering the processes of secularization, diversification, and spiritualization. The postsecular reinforces the interconnectedness of these processes, which are, in turn, embodied in the concept’s interdisciplinary nature. While this book predominantly focuses on visual art and its institutional context of the museum, the postsecular has interdisciplinary relevance for broader artistic and academic disciplines.

In The Netherlands, the arts have gained a sacralized status, while religion is increasingly viewed through the lens of heritage. The dynamic resonance of sacred forms this results in, is exemplary for the postsecular. Exploring this resonance, this book offers a strong counterweight to the popular trope of the arts having replaced religion in secularized societies. Instead it approaches artistic performance, religion, and its heritage as mutually engaging sacred forms. Lieke Wijnia thoroughly connects theoretical perspectives on the sacred with ethnographic research at the annual festival Musica Sacra Maastricht. She explores the continued relevance of a broad conceptual approach to the sacred, as well as the practical side to negotiating the sacred at the festival. The resulting analyses shed new light on topics like musical performance as generator of the sacred, how art and heritage impact the continuity of religion in secularized societies, and the fragility of artistic performance in the contemporary fragmented framework of the sacred. This book offers an innovative and interdisciplinary interpretation of the continuing significant role of art and religion in postsecular societies.

Religion and Contemporary Art sets the theoretical frameworks and interpretive strategies for exploring the re-emergence of religion in the making, exhibiting, and discussion of contemporary art. Featuring essays from both established and emerging scholars, critics, and artists, the book reflects on what might be termed an "accord" between contemporary art and religion. It explores the common strategies contemporary artists employ in the interface between religion and contemporary art practice. It also includes case studies to provide more in-depth treatments of specific artists grappling with themes such as ritual, abstraction, mythology, the body, popular culture, science, liturgy, and social justice, among other themes. It is a must-read resource for working artists, critics, and scholars in this field, and an invitation to new voices "curious" about its promises and possibilities.

This volume examines the ways in which biblical tourism is enmeshed within the production and management of heritage, global contexts of marketing and publicity, accessibility of sacred sites and routes for multiple audiences, and the forging of connections between travel and social identity. By exploring issues such as devotional piety, religious pedagogy, and entertainment, an interdisciplinary collection of scholars traces how biblical tourism experiences are choreographed and consumed, and how these practices shape embodied and narrative performances of scripture. Contributors focus on four major questions: How have people used tourism to develop new, or renewed, relationships with the Bible? Historically, what role has the Bible played in the development of modern tourism? In the context of the tourist encounter, how have people mobilized the Bible as a social and expressive resource? And what forms of social exchange shape acts of biblical tourism, such as among pilgrims, or between people and landscapes? These questions are centered not only around authorized shrines and “Holy Places,” but also festivals, museums, theme parks, and heritage sites. This book aims to create a comparative and interdisciplinary dialogue around the dynamic relationship between biblical heritage claims and the practices and infrastructures of modern tourism.

Continental philosophy of religion has been dominated for two decades by 'postsecular' and 'postmodern' thought. This title questions what comes after the postsecular and the postmodern. It argues that philosophy of religion must either liberate itself from theological norms or mutate into a different practice of thinking.

Late-modern culture has been marred by reductionism, which shrinks and flattens our vision of ourselves and the world. Renowned theologian Jeremy Begbie believes that the arts by their nature push against reductionism, helping us understand and experience more deeply the infinite richness of God's love and of the world God has made. In Abundantly More, Begbie analyzes and critiques reductionism and its effects. He shows how the arts can resist reductive impulses by opening us up to an unlimited abundance of meaning. And he demonstrates how engaging the arts in light of a trinitarian imagination (which itself cuts against reductionism) generates a unique way of witnessing to and sharing in the life and purposes of God. Theologians, artists, and any who are interested in how these fields intersect will find rich resources here and discover the crucial role the arts can play in keeping our culture open to the possibility of God.

Educational Philosophy for a Post-secular Age reinterprets post-secular insights for educational theory by recognising that the persistence of religion in contemporary life raises new questions about the place of religion in education. Two common assumptions are critically examined: first, that the better educated a society becomes, the more secular it becomes, and second, that religion can and should be separated from public education. For too long, religion has had an uneasy relationship with education, being seen either as a foreign invader, a problem to be solved, or as a mechanism by which to reinforce particular religious, cultural or national identities. In order to move educational theory beyond the debates about indoctrination and competing rights between parents, children and nation states, the argument undercuts rationalist conceptions of religion and education that tend to frame the debates in terms of competing truth claims or worldviews. Drawing on a diverse range of theological, philosophical and educational sources, this book demonstrates the continuing significance of the Christian mystical tradition to educational theory. It proposes an exploration of democratic education that brings together two apparently irreconcilable poles: the meaning of religion in education and contemporary life, and the need for a deliberative democratic process that is fit for the post-secular age. It argues that religious literacy can be served by democratic encounters in public religious education. Educational Philosophy for a Post-secular Age will be of interest to researchers, academics and postgraduate students in the fields of the philosophy of education, philosophy of religion, education policy, politics, anthropology and cultural theory. It will particularly appeal to those, of both secular and religious persuasions, interested in the place of religion in education and public life.

What do we talk about when we talk about "religion"? Is it an array of empirical facts about historical human civilizations? Or is religion what is in essence unpredictable--perhaps the very emergence of the new? In what ways are the legacies of religion--its powers, words, things, and gestures--reconfiguring themselves as the elementary forms of life in the twenty-first century? Given the Latin roots of the word religion and its historical Christian uses, what sense, if any, does it make to talk about "religion" in other traditions? Where might we look for common elements that would enable us to do so? Has religion as an overarching concept lost all its currency, or does it ineluctably return--sometimes in unexpected ways--the moment we attempt to do without it? This book explores the difficulties and double binds that arise when we ask "What is religion?" Offering a marvelously rich and diverse array of perspectives, it begins the task of rethinking "religion" and "religious studies" in a contemporary world. Opening essays on the question "What is religion?" are followed by clusters exploring the relationships among religion, theology, and philosophy and the links between religion, politics, and law. Pedagogy is the focus of the following section. Religion is then examined in particular contexts, from classical times to the present Pentacostal revival, leading into an especially rich set of essays on religion, materiality, and mediatization. The final section grapples with the ever-changing forms that "religion" is taking, such as spirituality movements and responses to the ecological crisis. Featuring the work of leading scholars from a wide array of disciplines, traditions, and cultures, Religion: Beyond a Concept will help set the agenda for religious studies for years to come. It is the first of five volumes in a collection entitled The Future of the Religious Past, the fruit of a major international research initiative funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research.

This book explores how contemporary approaches to the meaning of time and history follow patterns that are simultaneously political and theological. Even after postsecular critiques of Christianity, religion, and secularity, many influential ways of dividing time and history continue to be formed by providential narratives that mediate between experience and expectation in movements from promise to fulfilment. In response to persistent theological influences within ostensibly secular ways of understanding time and history, Postsecular History revisits and revises the concept of periodization by tracing powerful efforts to divide time into past, present, and future, and by critiquing historical partitions between the Reformation and Enlightenment. Developing a postsecular critique of theopolitical periodization in six chapters, Postsecular History questions how relations of possession, novelty, freedom, and instrumentality implied in the prefix ‘post’ are reproduced in postsecular discourses and the field of political theology.

This book reflects the wide-spread belief that the twenty-first century is evolving in a significantly different way to the twentieth, which witnessed the advance of human rationality and technological progress, including urbanisation, and called into question the public and cultural significance of religion. In this century, by contrast, religion, faith communities and spiritual values have returned to the centre of public life, especially public policy, governance, and social identity. Rapidly diversifying urban locations are the best places to witness the emergence of new spaces in which religions and spiritual traditions are creating both new alliances but also bifurcations with secular sectors. Postsecular Cities examines how the built environment reflects these trends. Recognizing that the 'turn to the postsecular' is a contested and multifaceted trend, the authors offer a vigorous, open but structured dialogue between theory and practice, but even more excitingly, between the disciplines of human geography and theology. Both disciplines reflect on this powerful but enigmatic force shaping our urban humanity. This unique volume offers the first insight into these interdisciplinary and challenging debates.