Religion and the Work of Art
Edited by
Bryan S. Rennie [+–]
Westminster College, Pennsylvania
Bryan S. Rennie (Ph.D., The University of Edinburgh, 1991) taught from 1992 until 2021 at Westminster College, Pennsylvania, where he held the Vira I. Heinz Chair of Religion for 15 years and chaired the department of Religion, History, Philosophy, and Classics for eight years. He has worked extensively on Mircea Eliade, publishing one monograph (Reconstructing Eliade, SUNY Press, 1996) and three edited volumes. He has been keynote speaker at the Korean Association for the History of Religion and the Association for the Study of Eastern Christianity. He received the Mircea Eliade Centennial Medal from Traian Băsescu, the President of Romania, in 2006, and the Hereditary Imperial Medal from H.I.H., The Grand Duchess Maria of Russia in 2014. He was Vice President and Program Chair of the North American Association for the Study of Religion from 2006 to 2009. His volume on religion and art, The Ethology of Religion and Art: Belief as Behavior, was published by Routledge in 2020.
In the afterword to Religion and Contemporary Art: A Curious Accord (edited by Ronald Bernier and Rachel Hostetter Smith, Routledge, 2023), S. Brent Rodriguez-Plate insists that “to understand the religiousness of art, the artwork is often much less important than the work of art”, specifying that, while “artwork” is a noun, in “the work of art,” the term “work” is verbal (424). There is a tendency endemic in art history and the study of art and religion to remain on the level of content, of analysis of the artwork itself, rather than of its effects.
Religion and the Work of Art employs the word “work” in its specifically verbal sense. The volume seeks to investigate what art does and how it works, specifically in respect of religions. While consideration and analysis of artworks themselves is necessary, the further consideration of the work of art is the principle focus of this volume. “Art” is intended in its widest possible sense including conceptual, performative, literary, plastic, audible, and visual arts. Considerations from perspectives as wide-ranging as neuroscience and cognitive science to paleoanthropology and philosophy will be included, as will articles on the work of art in specific faith traditions.
