A History of Religion in 51/2 Objects: Bringing the Spiritual to Its Senses. Dieser Artikel ist nicht verfügbar.A History of Religion in 51/2 Objects: Bringing the Spiritual to Its Senses

A leading scholar explores the importance of physical objects and sensory experience in the practice of religion.

A History of Religion in 5½ Objects takes a fresh and much-needed approach to the study of that contentious yet vital area of human culture: religion. Arguing that religion must be understood in the first instance as deriving from rudimentary human experiences, from lived, embodied practices, SB Rodriguez-Plate asks us to put aside, for the moment, questions of belief and abstract ideas.

Instead, beginning with the desirous, incomplete human body, they ask us to focus on five ordinary objects—stones, incense, drums, crosses, and bread—with which we connect in our pursuit of religious meaning and fulfillment.

As they consider each of these objects, they explore how the world’s religious traditions have put each of them to different uses throughout the millennia. Religion, it turns out, has as much to do with our bodies as our beliefs. Maybe even more.

SB Rodriguez-Plate teaches religious studies at Hamilton College and is cofounder and managing editor of Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art, and Belief. Their writings have been published in the Washington Post, Huffington Post, Chronicle of Higher Education, Christian Century, and Religion Dispatches. Their books include Religion and Film: Cinema and the Re-Creation of the World and Blasphemy: Art that Offends.