Introduction: Revisiting Civil Religion from an Aesthetic Point of View

This special issue enquires into aesthetic ways of newly creating or re-shaping and re-presenting civil religion and its central characters, symbols, or figures. Normally, civil religion addresses value-orientation and social integration. In addition to these features, the papers make the aesthetic...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of religion in Europe
Main Author: Koch, Anne 1971- (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Brill 2017
In: Journal of religion in Europe
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B Civil religion / Esthetics of religion
RelBib Classification:AA Study of religion
AB Philosophy of religion; criticism of religion; atheism
AG Religious life; material religion
Further subjects:B Civil Religion aesthetics political religion pluralism normative orders
Online Access: Volltext (Verlag)
Rights Information:InC 1.0
Description
Summary:This special issue enquires into aesthetic ways of newly creating or re-shaping and re-presenting civil religion and its central characters, symbols, or figures. Normally, civil religion addresses value-orientation and social integration. In addition to these features, the papers make the aesthetic performance of civil religion the subject of discussion. The reason for taking this path is the altered aesthetic circumstances of highly mediatised and consumerist societies. Before this backdrop, images, literary figurations, movie sequences, and brands in media, public and national discourse are examined in various case studies from Italy, Finland, the uk, France, the former gdr, and Switzerland. At the same time, the negotiation and aesthetic plausibility of aesthetic styles, pragmatic power, and particular media logics are evaluated. The concept of civil religion deserves this closer re-definition also with respect to past and recent (post-)secularisation and non-religion discourses. Hopefully, this multi-layered analysis of aesthetics and aesthetic pragmatics of civil religion will shed some light on the persistent appropriateness of the ‘civil religion’ concept and its capacity to be introduced into various methodological contexts in combination with the aesthetic perspective.
ISSN:1874-8929
Contains:In: Journal of religion in Europe
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1163/18748929-01002001