Material Religion in Modern Britain: The Spirit of Things

ISBN-13: 9781137540553 / Angielski / Twarda / 2015 / 240 str.

Timothy Willem Jones; Lucinda Matthews-Jones

Opis

A growing awareness of religious plurality and religious conflict in contemporary society has led to a search for new ways to understand religious change beyond traditional subjects of British ecclesiology. Narratives of the gradual decline of Christianity dominate this field; yet many scholars now concede that Britain's religious landscape was more varied and rich than these narratives would suggest. Material Religion in Modern Britain responds to this challenge by bringing emerging scholarship on material culture to bear on studies of religion and spirituality. The collection is the first to apply this suite of analytical methods to the traditional subjects of British religious studies and the full spectrum of religious denominations, sects, and movements that constituted Britain's multi-faith landscape in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The book reveals how, across this religious spectrum, objects were, and continue to be, used in the performance and production of religious faith and subjectivity. In doing so it expands our understanding of the persistence of religious belief and culture in a secularising, secularized, and post-secular society.

Recenzje

'Material Religion in Modern Britain makes an important contribution to the history of British religion, breaking new ground in its focus upon material culture as a means by which to understand the tensions and complexities of the modern spiritual landscape. This is a very well-crafted and insightful collection of essays which will certainly deepen our understanding of the influence of material culture upon modern religious beliefs and practices.' - Sue Morgan, University of Chichester, UK

Spis treści

Introduction: Materiality and Religious History; Lucinda Matthews-Jones and Timothy Willem Jones
Part I: Material Sectarianism
1. Objects of Transcendence: Scots-Presbyterianism and an Anthropology of Things; Joe Webster
2. The Material and Visual Culture of the Construction of Irish Catholic Identity:
Saint Colman ' 's Cathedral, Queenstown, County Cork; Ann Wilson
3. Sanctifying the Street: Urban Space, Material Christianity and the G. F. Watts Mosaic in London, 1883 to the Present Day; Lucinda Matthews-Jones
Part II: Material Religion, Sex and Gender
4. Fashioning Church Interiors: The Importance of Female Amateur Designers; Jim Cheshire
5. Sounds Taken as Wonders: Revivalist Politics as Religious Experience in Early Twentieth-Century Britain; Jacqui de Vries
6. Early Victorian Moral Anxiety and the Queer Legacy of the Eighteenth-Century Gothic Revival; Dominic Janes
Part III: Material Religion in Postsecular Britain
7. Interfaith Home Decorating: An Exploration of Religiosity and Home Artefacts within British Interfaith Hybrid Coupledom; Candace Hoffman-Hussain
8. Skin as Spiritual Script: Tibetan Buddhism, Tattoos and the West; Jill Sudbury
9. An Ancient Modernity: Ikons and the Re-emergence of Orthodox Britain; Timothy Carroll
10. An English Shade of Animism: Contemporary Statue Devotion and the Glastonbury Goddess Temple; Amy Whitehead

O autorze

Joe Webster, Downing College, University of Cambridge, UK Ann Wilson, Cork Institute of Technology, Ireland Timothy Carroll, University College London, UK Jim Cheshire, University of Lincoln, UK Kate Jordan, University College London, UK Dominic Janes, Birkbeck, University of London, UK James G. Mansell, University of Nottingham, UK John Harvey, Aberystwyth University, UK Jill Sudbury, University of Oxford, UK Amy Whitehead, University of Wales Trinity Saint David, UK Candace Hoffman-Hussain, Lancaster University, UK Richard Irvine, University of Cambridge, UK Crispin Paine, University College London, UK Jacqueline R. deVries, Augsburg College, USA