When Art Disrupts Religion: Aesthetic Experience and the Evangelical Mind

by Philip S. Francis, Randall Balmer (Foreword by)

Overview

The stories gathered in these pages lay bare the power of the arts to unsettle and rework deeply ingrained religious beliefs and practices. This book grounds its narrative in the accounts of 82 Evangelicals who underwent a sea-change of religious identity through the intervention of the arts. "There never would have been an undoing of my conservative Evangelical worldview" confides one young man, "without my encounter with the transcendent work of Mark Rothko on that rainy afternoon in London's Tate Modern." "The characters in The Brothers Karamazov began to feel like family to me," reports another individual, "and the doubts of Ivan Karamazov slowly saturated my soul." As their stories unfold, the subjects of the study describe the arts as sources of, by turns, "defamiliarization," "comfort in uncertainty," "a stand-in for faith" and a "surrogate transcendence." Drawing on memoirs, interviews, and field notes, Philip Salim Franics explores the complex interrelationship of religion and art in the modern West, and offers an important new resource for on-going debates about the role of the arts in education and social life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780190279769
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	03/01/2017
Pages:	232
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Philip S. Francis is currently Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Manhattan College and Melon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania Humanities Forum. His research explores the shifting interrelationship of religion, art, and sexuality in the modern West.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Foreword
Acknowledgments

Introduction: Supple Mediums

Chapter 1. Field Sites
Chapter 2. A Dusty Answer Gets the Soul
Chapter 3. A Hand Outstretched in Darkness
Chapter 4. A Momentary Fulcrum
Chapter 5. Hymns to the God I No Longer Believe In

Conclusion: Displaced Transcendence
Afterword: Transitional Surfaces
References
Index

Editorial Reviews

"Francis' study engages profoundly with the question of how religious communities (and not only 'fundamentalists') preserve their identities, how challenging it can be to move away from these inherited patterns of life, and how multidimensional and complex may be the role of arts and other humanities on this journey. And, although written in the American evangelical context, Francis' study offers a challenge to all denominational institutions and theological schools whose role is to preserve and shape their own denominational identity." — Helle Liht, European Baptist Federation, Journal of European Baptist Studies

"Offers valuable insights and a rich selection of moving personal narratives about the fraught relationship between the church world and the art world" — David Hoekema, Christian Century

"Francis' fascinating work offered me new ways to remember and reframe my own art education within an Evangelical college. As an artist and Evangelical, I found the book an encouraging reminder of art's power to disrupt and reorient people's lives. The text is an enjoyable read and may be especially appealing to those interested in the arts, aesthetic experience, conversions, fundamentalism, and higher education."—Ryan Stander, Horizons: The Journal of the College Theology Society

"[I]n the age of Roy Moore and Donald Trump...Francis's text provides a timely and rigorous exploration of the benefits of escaping absolute certainty, a clear divide between those who have welcomed Jesus into their lives and those that haven't, an all-or-nothing commitment to evangelical Christian ontology, and an over-evaluation of a mythical past of truer faith. This text would work well in an advanced undergraduate seminar, offering students insightful and approachable accounts of an enormous body of social theory, while also encouraging them to think about their own various crises of faith, or moments of questioning perhaps inspired by the college experience itself. Similar to My Utmost, When Art Disrupts Religion offers new ways of thinking about conversion beyond common narratives of 'rupture' offered by converts—to or from Christianity—themselves."—Elayne Oliphant, Reading Religion

"Can art save a life? In myriad still, small ways this book answers, yes. By presenting the stories of young people at crucial times in their lives, Philip Salim Francis creatively shows how aesthetic experiences have worked to unsettle rigid fundamentalist Christian outlooks, opening up to greater dialogues on what art might do in relation to religion. Francis makes a compelling contribution to religious studies, but also the humanities on a larger scale."—S. Brent Plate, author of A History of Religion in 5½ Objects: Bringing the Spiritual to Its Senses

"Evangelical Christianity is a religion that presses its adherents to understand themselves in testimonial narratives that run from ignorance to dramatic illumination, a trajectory toward realization not of the self alone, but the self-configured in a relationship with its deity. The self can come to long for another story, which some Evangelicals find in an explosive encounter with art. In a searching ethnography and deeply rooted reflection, Philip Salim Francis shows how that second story sometimes turns sharply from the tribal life of Evangelicalism, taking a path unveiled by a devotional yet daring engagement with beauty."—David Morgan, Duke University

"Neither a chart-filled book of 'conversion' data nor an apologia for those turning away from Evangelical Christianity, Philip Salim Francis offers us a series of rarely asked questions about religion and the arts in light of the personal journey toward self-identity. Highly recommended for those seeking out the inter-relationships between self-awareness, religious identity, spirituality, and the arts."—Diane Apostolos-Cappadona, Georgetown University

From the Publisher