Materializing Religion Expression, Performance and Ritual Theology and Religion in Interdisciplinary Perspective Series in Association with the BSA Sociology of Religion Study Group Series

The material symbol has become central to understanding religion in late modernity. Overtly theological approaches use words to express the values and faith of a religion, but leave out the 'incarnation' of religion in the behavioural, performative, or audio-visual form. This book explores the lived experience of religion through its material expressions, demonstrating how religion and spirituality are given form and are thus far from being detached or ethereal. Cutting across cultures, senses, disciplines and faiths, the contributors register the variety in which religions and religious groups express the sacred and numinous. Including chapters on music, architecture, festivals, ritual, artifacts, dance, dress and magic, this book offers an invaluable resource to students of sociology and anthropology of religion, art, culture, history, liturgy, theories of late modern culture, and religious studies.

Contents: Foreword; Introduction: material varieties of religious expression, William J.F. Keenan and Elisabeth Arweck; Sacred landscapes, redundant chapels and carpet warehouses: the religious heritage of South West Wales, Paul Chambers; The shape of faith or the architectural forms of the religious life, Simon Coleman and Peter Collins; Wrapped attention: revelation and concealment in non-conformism, Peter Collins and Pink Dandelion; Festivity and the sacred: the symbolic universe in the festival of the 'Fallas' of Saint Joseph (València, Spain), Xavier Costa; From the 'upper room' to the 'Christian centre': changes in the use of sacred space and artefacts in a Pentecostal assembly, Malcolm Gold; From imitation to modification and creation: religious dance in contemporary Germany, Helga Barbara Gundlach; Magical ritual in modern pagan witchcraft, Melissa Harrington; Sacre Bleu: faith, fashion and freedom: Marist foundation garments 1817-62, William J.F. Keenan; The aesthetics of Latin American Pentecostalism: the sociology of religion and the problem of taste, Bernice Martin; The sociology of religion and Handel's reception, David Martin; Tibetan religious expression and identity: transformations in exile, Eve Mullen; Materializing magical power: imagination, agency and intent in feminist witches' rituals, Kathryn Rountree; The Modern Pietà: gendered embodiment and the religious imaginary by the side of the dying, Terhi Utriainen; Appropriation of sacredness at Fátima in Portugal, Ali Murat Yel; Index.