Material Religion Vol. 1

From Shinto temples to rosary beads, thangka paintings to missionary tracts, mass-produced posters to gravestones, religion is a material process. Charged with culturally-specific sacred meanings, religious objects have been used for purposes of worship, commemoration, art, and even subversion, and have been at the root of some of the world’s most hotly contested struggles.

Material Religion seeks to explore how religion happens in material culture – images, devotional and liturgical objects, architecture and sacred space, works of art and mass-produced artifacts. No less important than these material forms are the many different practices that put them to work. Ritual, communication, ceremony, instruction, meditation, propaganda, pilgrimage, display, magic, liturgy and interpretation constitute many of the practices whereby religious material culture constructs the worlds of belief.