{"id":184,"date":"2004-05-11T03:31:00","date_gmt":"2004-05-11T03:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=184"},"modified":"2004-05-11T03:31:00","modified_gmt":"2004-05-11T03:31:00","slug":"184","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=184","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Folk religion means ignoring the art critics<\/strong><\/p>\n

Robert Ellwood, one of my favorite and most-readable historians of religion, has a new book out, Cycles of Faith<\/em><\/a>, a sort of lifespan-development theory of how the major religions of the world grow, develop, and change.<\/p>\n

Christianity he places in the Folk Religion phase, when although still vibrant, the religion is no longer organically connected to the sources of political power and to “high culture” generally.<\/p>\n

Today, although plenty of third-rate and derivative art is produced and although such artists as the early twentieth-century symbolists have drawn from alternative esoteric strands of spirituality, art based on the dominant religious traditions that could be called original and distinguished is miniscule.”<\/p>\n

The 19th century, Ellwood notes, had its “revivals” — Gothic Revival, Byzantine Revival. But in the 20th century, “high culture” no longer depended much on religion for inspiration. Even church architecture, after a Modernist phase, seems to have drifted into lassitude. <\/p>\n

Into this atmosphere comes Image: A Journal of the Arts & Religion<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Image’s<\/em> manifesto: One of the legacies of the modern era has been the secularization of culture. For much of the twentieth century, the belief that God is dead, or at least inaccessible, has stripped a great deal of religious vision and wisdom from the modern imagination. Most of our leading critics and thinkers have been skeptical of, or indifferent to, artistic expressions of religious faith.<\/p>\n

A culture is governed by its reigning myths. However, in the latter days of the twentieth century, there is an uneasy sense that materialism cannot sustain or nourish our common life. Thankfully, religion and art have always shared the capacity to help us to renew our awareness of the ultimate questions: who we are, where we have come from, and where we are going.<\/em><\/p>\n

They are trying, but I think that Ellwood may be right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Folk religion means ignoring the art critics Robert Ellwood, one of my favorite and most-readable historians of religion, has a new book out, Cycles of Faith, a sort of lifespan-development theory of how the major religions of the world grow, develop, and change. Christianity he places in the Folk Religion phase, when although still vibrant, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xQTg-184","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2264,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2264","url_meta":{"origin":184,"position":0},"title":"The ‘Sickness’ of Monotheism","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 5, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Prompted to write on \"Muslim-Christian relations\" for the Washington Post's \"On Faith\" section, Jason Pitzl-Waters changed the terms of the usual interfaith conversation and \"spoke truth to power,\" thus: These events are the sad fruits of mixing raw social and political power with religions that operate on a exclusionary, one-true-path,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6142,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6142","url_meta":{"origin":184,"position":1},"title":"1971: Witches in Bellbottoms, Talking Heads","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 4, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Here is a 1971 documentary from the BBC that is supposed to be about witches. But at the time it was made, no one was making much effort to sort out the new Pagan Witches, anthropological and folkloric witches, and Satanic witches of the Church of Satan variety. So what\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8604,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8604","url_meta":{"origin":184,"position":2},"title":"No “Neos” Here, We’re “Ethnic”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 30, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"A letter from one of the leading Hellenic Pagan groups to the government of Lithuania supports a request by the Lithuanian Romuva for state recognition. Just as the Hellenic Ethnic Religion, Romuva is by no means a \u201cneo-pagan movement\u201d or a \u201cnew religious movement\u201d. It belongs to the category of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Greece\"","block_context":{"text":"Greece","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=greece"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Romuva_flag-200x300.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5001,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5001","url_meta":{"origin":184,"position":3},"title":"Critiquing “Double Belief” in Russian Paganism","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 9, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Consider this a follow-up to yesterday's post on Russian dream rituals, which linked to an article whose author totally accepted the idea of spiritual practices with\u00a0 \"very deep roots in pre-Christian culture.\" I had not realized this, but Routledge published a book critiquing the idea of \"double belief\"\u00a0 (dvoeverie) three\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Paganism\"","block_context":{"text":"Paganism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=paganism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13015,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=13015","url_meta":{"origin":184,"position":4},"title":"CFP: Design and the Occult","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 20, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"After my various posts on the Pagan-ish presentations by the House of Dior in particular (such as \"The Tarot of Dior\" and \"Dior Dresses the Fair Folk\" and \"I Want to Call Dior's Cruise Collection Pagan-ish Too\") Although study can be a expensive case for previous medicines, there are some\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/dior-2-300x157.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/dior-2-300x157.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/dior-2-300x157.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":6297,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6297","url_meta":{"origin":184,"position":5},"title":"Cross-Cultural Collection on Popular Religion Includes Paganism","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 25, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"The edited collection Religion, Tradition and the Popular examines \"experiences of spirituality in combination with commercialization and expressive performative practices as well as everyday politics of identity. Based on innovative theoretical reflections, the essays take into consideration what the transcultural negotiation of religion, tradition and the popular signifies in different\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Paganism\"","block_context":{"text":"Paganism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=paganism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.transcript-verlag.de\/media\/image\/thumbnail\/9783837626131_720x720.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}