When Art Disrupts Religion

The stories gathered in these pages lay bare the power of the arts to unsettle and rework deeply ingrained religious beliefs and practices. This book grounds its narrative in the accounts of 82 Evangelicals who underwent a sea-change of religious identity through the intervention of the arts. "There never would have been an undoing of my conservative Evangelical worldview" confides one young man, "without my encounter with the transcendent work of Mark Rothko on that rainy afternoon in London's Tate Modern." "The characters in The Brothers Karamazov began to feel like family to me," reports another individual, "and the doubts of Ivan Karamazov slowly saturated my soul." As their stories unfold, the subjects of the study describe the arts as sources of, by turns, "defamiliarization," "comfort in uncertainty," "a stand-in for faith" and a "surrogate transcendence." Drawing on memoirs, interviews, and field notes, Philip Salim Franics explores the complex interrelationship of religion and art in the modern West, and offers an important new resource for on-going debates about the role of the arts in education and social life.

The stories gathered in these pages lay bare the power of the arts to unsettle and rework deeply ingrained religious beliefs and practices. This book grounds its narrative in the accounts of 82 Evangelicals who underwent a sea-change of religious identity through the intervention of the arts. "There never would have been an undoing of my conservative Evangelical worldview" confides one young man, "without my encounter with the transcendent work of Mark Rothko on that rainy afternoon in London's Tate Modern." "The characters in The Brothers Karamazov began to feel like family to me," reports another individual, "and the doubts of Ivan Karamazov slowly saturated my soul." As their stories unfold, the subjects of the study describe the arts as sources of, by turns, "defamiliarization," "comfort in uncertainty," "a stand-in for faith" and a "surrogate transcendence." Drawing on memoirs, interviews, and field notes, Philip Salim Franics explores the complex interrelationship of religion and art in the modern West, and offers an important new resource for on-going debates about the role of the arts in education and social life.

Ours is an age of offense, a time of reactionary shock--always received, never given. Ours is an age that has forgone cultural narratives, a time of individualism--wherein personal identities trump the collective spirit. Ours is an age of failing earth, a time of ecological collapse--yet the consumption of global capitalism continues to run amok. But don't fear. You have the correct worldview, the best solutions. It's not your fault these things are happening. It's the president's, the immigrant's, and the Islamicist's. Or perhaps It's the socialist's, the tree hugger's, and the baby killer's. But it's not your fault. Never yours. For the world exists as you see it--in an echo chamber lined with golden pixels. Do I still have your attention? Then join me. Within the covers of Narrativizing Theories, I dive into ambiguity and aesthetics to depict how clashing worldviews exist side by side yet remain mutually incompatible. I examine how cultures distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable beliefs, embodiments, and identities. And I outline an aesthetic theory of ambiguity that highlights--through the twists and turns of literature--the provisionality of knowledge and the narrativization of reality.

He favors the use of a broad range of analytic tools drawn from multiple disciplines and approaches to the study of religion.) The five chapters of this book describe the central concepts and arguments now advancing the study of religious practice. Chapter 1, entitled "Theories", discusses the theoretical contributions associated with the aforementioned shift in religious studies to the investigation of religious practice. Chapter 2, "Situations", discusses how religious activities and experiences are shaped by the physical and temporal spaces in which social action occurs. Chapter 3, "Intentions", takes on an important topic that has proven difficult to study from a social science perspective. "Feelings" are the focus of Chapter 4, and the role of "Bodies" is addressed in Chapter 5. .

A comparative introduction for students on the national laws governing religion in Europe, this book examines national laws, particularly as they affect the attitudes of states towards religion, religious freedom and discrimination, and the legal position and autonomy of religious organizations.

This book analyzes the role that the physical body plays in foundational Mormon doctrine, and claims that such an analysis reveals a model of empathy that has significant implications for the field of Mormon aesthetics. This volume achieves three main goals: It elucidates the Mormonism's relationship with the body, it illuminates Mormonism’s traditional approaches to understanding and appreciating art, and it suggests that the body as Mormonism conceives of it allows for the employment of an aesthetic framework rooted in bodily empathy rather than traditional Christian or Mormon moral values per se. In support of this argument, several chapters of the book apply Mormonism’s theology of the body to paintings and poems by contemporary Mormon artists and writers. An examination of those works reveals that the seeds of a new Mormon aesthetic are germinating, but have yet to significantly shift traditional Mormon thought regarding the role and function of art.

The Handbook of Leaving Religion introduces a neglected field of research with the aim to outline previous and contemporary research, and suggest how the topic of leaving religion should be studied in the future. The handbook consists of three sections: 1) Major debates about leaving religion; 2) Case studies and empirical insights; and 3) Theoretical and methodological approaches. Section one provides the reader with an introduction to key terms, historical developments, major controversies and significant cases. Section two includes case studies that illustrate various processes of leaving religion from different perspectives, and each chapter provides new empirical insights. Section three discusses, presents and encourages new approaches to the study of leaving religion.