Sacred Objects in Secular Spaces
Sacred Objects in Secular Spaces

Author: Bruce M. Sullivan

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2015-10-22

Total Pages: 217

ISBN-13: 147259083X

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We have long recognized that many objects in museums were originally on display in temples, shrines, or monasteries, and were religiously significant to the communities that created and used them. How, though, are such objects to be understood, described, exhibited, and handled now that they are in museums? Are they still sacred objects, or formerly sacred objects that are now art objects, or are they simultaneously objects of religious and artistic significance, depending on who is viewing the object? These objects not only raise questions about their own identities, but also about the ways we understand the religious traditions in which these objects were created and which they represent in museums today. Bringing together religious studies scholars and museum curators, Sacred Objects in Secular Spaces is the first volume to focus on Asian religions in relation to these questions. The contributors analyze an array of issues related to the exhibition in museums of objects of religious significance from Hindu, Buddhist, and Sikh traditions. The “lives” of objects are considered, along with the categories of “sacred” and “profane”, “religious” and “secular”. As interest in material manifestations of religious ideas and practices continues to grow, Sacred Objects in Secular Spaces is a much-needed contribution to religious and Asian studies, anthropology of religion and museums studies.

Sacred Objects
Sacred Objects

Author: James Spens

Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform

Published: 2016-06-13

Total Pages: 164

ISBN-13: 9781534624108

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A discussion of sacred objects associated with the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the LDS church

Sacred Senses in Sacred Space
Sacred Senses in Sacred Space

Author: John Lawrence Darretta, Ph.D.

Publisher: Gatekeeper Press

Published: 2022-09-12

Total Pages: 114

ISBN-13: 1662932561

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Entering a church, our senses are sparked. We see candlelight, the colorful windows, and statues. We smell the faint burning wax and incense. We touch our foreheads with holy water and our knees to the floor. During Mass, we hear bells and the choir singing, and taste the sacrament. Some would say we are overwhelmed with physical objects but not spiritual essence. However, how does one know the spiritual essence if not through the physical objects? Knowledge comes through the senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. We achieve understanding and move further into spiritual awareness. Our senses communicate symbols that are physical signs of the abstract, the spiritual, and the metaphysical. SACRED SENSES IN SACRED SPACE contributes to a greater understanding and reverence for sacred objects as perceived through the senses designed for the layman rather than an academic study of the historical or liturgical origins of sacred objects and images. Sacred Senses guides the reader through a church on a meditative journey down the sanctuary’s central aisle. Along the way, it reveals what we see, hear, smell, taste, and touch, which moves us from the physical to the spiritual. It begins with an introductory chapter on using your senses and recognizing signs in a sacred space. The book is organized according to the five senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. Listed under each specific sense are various objects and practices that we experience in church with a page of description, definition, background, and meditative comments, and a scriptural reference. Each chapter showcases a relevant photograph and ends with a pertinent quote or poetic verse, so that the sacred objects are revealed and revered. Together, the pages quickly explain and show each object with its beauty, meaning, and purpose within the sacred space. Teaching the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults (RCIA) and Religious Education programs for adults and youths, I discovered students of the Catholic faith must know the truth about the “smells and bells” of the Catholic Church and their spiritual significance. Yet, I have known Catholics who do not fully understand why we have statues, fonts, tabernacle, ringing bells, burning candles, swirling incense, and more. Sacred Senses in Sacred Space is an excellent devotional and educational experience for use in RCIA and Religious Education programs, book clubs, and for inquisitive audiences.

Icon, Cult, and Context
Icon, Cult, and Context

Author: Maura K. Heyn

Publisher: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press

Published: 2016-12-31

Total Pages: 253

ISBN-13: 1938770595

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This festschrift honors UCLA professor emerita Susan Downey and her meticulous scholarship on religious architecture and imagery in the Roman/Hellenistic world. The iconography of gods and goddesses, the analysis of sacred imagery in the context of ancient cult practices, and the design and decoration of sacred spaces are the main themes of the book. Authors examine such subjects as painting from Dura-Europos, Hellenistic sculpture at Saqqara in Egypt, Roman cameo glass, Pompeian fresco, and aspects of Venus in portrait sculpture. The essays on Dura-Europos are especially valuable in light of the present turmoil in the region. Professor Downey's influence shines through in these discussions, which echo her mentorship of several generations of art history and archaeology students and recognize her scholarly achievements. The broad temporal and geographic parameters of the volume are expansive, and the juxtaposition of images and analyses leads to surprising new conclusions.

Objects in Motion
Objects in Motion

Author: Hallie G. Meredith

Publisher: British Archaeological Association

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 129

ISBN-13: 9781407308111

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This volume contains a series of papers that had their origins in a symposium convened whilst the editor was a Research Fellow at the Bard Graduate Center for Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture, New York in May 2008. Contents: Introduction (Hallie G. Meredith); Christianizing Constantine: Eusebius' Vita Constantini as a Late Antique Social Canvas (Hallie G. Meredith); The Portable Altar in Christian Tradition and Practice (Crispin Paine); Telling Jerusalem: Miracles and the Moveable Past in Late Antique Christianity (Georgia Frank); The Matter of Ivory and the Movement of Ideas: Thoughts on some Christian Diptychs of Late Antiquity (Anthony Cutler); The Art and Ritual of Manichaean Magic: Text, Object and Image from the Mediterranean to Central Asia (Matthew P. Canepa); The Narrative Fabric of the Genoese Pallio and the Silken Diplomacy of Michael VIII Palaiologos (Ida Toth); Conclusion (Henry Maguire).

Sacred Mobilities
Sacred Mobilities

Author: Dr Alan Terry

Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published: 2015-06-28

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 1472420098

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This collection draws on the Mobilities approach to look afresh at notions of the sacred where they intersect with people, objects and other things on the move. Consideration of a wide range of spiritual meanings and practices also sheds light on the motivations and experiences associated with particular mobilities. Drawing on rich, situated case studies, this multi-disciplinary collection discusses what mobility in the social sciences, arts and humanities can tell us about movements and journeys prompted by religious, more broadly ‘spiritual’ and 'secular-sacred' practices and priorities. Problematizing the fixity of sacred places and times as territorially and temporally bounded entities that exist in opposition to ‘profane’ everyday life, this collection looks at the intersection between the embodied-emotional-spiritual experience of places, travel, belief-practices and communities. It is this geographically-informed perspective on the interleaving of religious/ spiritual/ secular notions of the sacred with the material and more-than-representational attributes of associated mobilities and related practices which constitutes this volume’s original contribution to the field.

Religious Objects in Museums
Religious Objects in Museums

Author: Crispin Paine

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-05-14

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 1000184765

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In the past, museums often changed the meaning of icons or statues of deities from sacred to aesthetic, or used them to declare the superiority of Western society, or simply as cultural and historical evidence. The last generation has seen faith groups demanding to control 'their' objects, and curators recognising that objects can only be understood within their original religious context. In recent years there has been an explosion of interest in the role religion plays in museums, with major exhibitions highlighting the religious as well as the historical nature of objects.Using examples from all over the world, Religious Objects in Museums is the first book to examine how religious objects are transformed when they enter the museum, and how they affect curators and visitors. It examines the full range of meanings that religious objects may bear - as scientific specimen, sacred icon, work of art, or historical record. Showing how objects may be used to argue a point, tell a story or promote a cause, may be worshipped, ignored, or seen as dangerous or unlucky, this highly accessible book is an essential introduction to the subject.

Landscapes of the Secular
Landscapes of the Secular

Author: Nicolas Howe

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2016-09-05

Total Pages: 250

ISBN-13: 022637680X

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“What does it mean to see the American landscape in a secular way?” asks Nicolas Howe at the outset of this innovative, ambitious, and wide-ranging book. It’s a surprising question because of what it implies: we usually aren’t seeing American landscapes through a non-religious lens, but rather as inflected by complicated, little-examined concepts of the sacred. Fusing geography, legal scholarship, and religion in a potent analysis, Howe shows how seemingly routine questions about how to look at a sunrise or a plateau or how to assess what a mountain is both physically and ideologically, lead to complex arguments about the nature of religious experience and its implications for our lives as citizens. In American society—nominally secular but committed to permitting a diversity of religious beliefs and expressions—such questions become all the more fraught and can lead to difficult, often unsatisfying compromises regarding how to interpret and inhabit our public lands and spaces. A serious commitment to secularism, Howe shows, forces us to confront the profound challenges of true religious diversity in ways that often will have their ultimate expression in our built environment. This provocative exploration of some of the fundamental aspects of American life will help us see the land, law, and society anew.

Locating the Sacred
Locating the Sacred

Author: Claudia Moser

Publisher: Oxbow Books

Published: 2014-01-01

Total Pages: 197

ISBN-13: 1782976191

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Ritual happens in distinct places – in temples, in caves, along pilgrimage routes – and religious activities there incorporate a diverse set of objects such as holy water, cult statues, and sacred texts. Understanding religious ritual requires viewing it not as a disembodied event, but as emplaced, grounded in both built and natural surroundings, and integrated with its associated material objects. Here authors examine various religious practices in the Greco-Roman world and pilgrimage routes in contemporary Israel. Other contributions focus on the East, on domestic religion in prehistoric Taiwan, and the palimpsest of ritual activity in Buddhist China. One author considers not just ritual’s built and natural setting, but also the landscape of the human mind. By way of conclusion, many of the recurring issues concerning the material and topographic matrix of ritual practice are expanded upon in a final meditation on sacred space. The papers in this volume, with their disciplinary, geographic, and chronological diversity, will serve as a resource for theoretical approaches to the study of ritual practice that may have broad cross-cultural application and provide new insight into the relationship between ritual and place. The volume is based on a conference held at Brown University.