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.

"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.

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.

Christians frequently come into conflict with themselves and others over such matters as music, popular culture, and worship style. Yet they usually lack any theology of art or taste adequate to deal with aesthetic disputes. In this provocative book, Frank Burch Brown offers a constructive, "ecumenical" approach to artistic taste and aesthetic judgment--a non-elitist but discriminating theological aesthetics that has "teeth but no fangs." While grounded in history and theory, this book takes up such practical questions as: How can one religious community accommodate a variety of artistic tastes? What good or harm can be done by importing music that is worldly in origin into a house of worship? How can the exercise of taste in the making of art be a viable (and sometimes advanced) spiritual discipline? In exploring the complex relation between taste, religious imagination, and faith, Brown offers a new perspective on what it means to be spiritual, religious, and indeed Christian.

'Aesthetics' and 'theological aesthetics' usually imply a focus on questions about the arts and how faith or religion relates to the arts; only the final pages of this work take up that problem. The central theme of this book is that of beauty. Farley employs a new typology of western texts on beauty and a theological analysis of the image of God and redemption to counter the centuries-long tendency to ignore or marginalize beauty and the aesthetic as part of the life of faith. Studying the interpretation of beauty in ancient Greece, eighteenth-century England, the work of Jonathan Edwards, and nineteenth and twentieth-century philosophies of human self-transcendence, the author explores whether Christian existence, the life of faith, and the ethical exclude or require an aesthetic dimension in the sense of beauty. The work will be of particular interest to those interested in Christian theology, ethics, and religion and the arts.

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.

In this book, Richard Viladesau contrues Christian theology as a "theological aesthetics." He examines Christian revelation and its rational presuppositions in relationship to three interconnected meanings of the "aesthetic" in modern thought: human cognition as feeling and imagination; the realm of the beautiful; and the arts. In each area, examples from the arts are correlated with classical and contemporary theological themes.

Can contemporary art say anything about spirituality? John Updike calls modern art "a religion assembled from the fragments of our daily life," but does that mean that contemporary art is spiritual? What might it mean to say that the art you make expresses your spiritual belief? On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art explores the curious disconnection between spirituality and current art. This book will enable you to walk into a museum and talk about the spirituality that is or is not visible in the art you see.

Annotation This is a book that looks at contemporary challenges to studying and writing in religion, rethinking the discipline in a way that takes seriously both the aesthetic dimensions and its need for scientific discipline. Gold pursues a new line of thought about the art of religion, arguing for something he calls interpretive writing.