Author Description
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.
Menrva's Summary
THE THESIS
This book investigates how engagement with the arts functions as a catalyst for the transformation or dissolution of conservative Evangelical religious identities. Philip S. Francis, a scholar of religion, utilizes qualitative data gathered from 82 individuals to map the psychological and spiritual shifts triggered by aesthetic experiences. By analyzing personal memoirs and interview transcripts, the author argues that art acts as a mechanism for defamiliarization, allowing subjects to re-evaluate rigid theological frameworks through exposure to secular or challenging creative works.
THE SCOPE MAP
What You Will Find
- Qualitative analysis of 82 individual accounts of religious identity shifts.
- Examination of specific artistic mediums, including literature and visual arts, as agents of change.
- A framework for understanding art as a surrogate for traditional religious transcendence.
Scope Limits
- The study is primarily focused on the experiences of individuals within the North American Evangelical tradition.
- The text does not provide a comprehensive history of art and religion, focusing instead on the specific intersection of individual identity and aesthetic reception.
THE AUTHORITY PERSPECTIVE
Scholars and readers note that this text provides a nuanced look at the intersection of aesthetic experience and theological deconstruction. Experts highlight the work as a valuable contribution to the sociology of religion for its focus on the subjective, lived experience of the modern believer.
Page Count:
240
Publication Date:
2017-01-01
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
ISBN-10:
019027977X
ISBN-13:
9780190279776
Religion
Evangelicalism
Sociology of Religion
Art History
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