Title: Christianity and the limits of materiality /
Authors: Opas, Minna,; Haapalainen, Anna
Year: 2017
Subjects: Material culture Religious aspects Christianity; Christianity and culture.; Materialism Religious aspects Christianity
Abstract: Despite the fact that Christianity is understood to be thoroughly intertwined with matter, objects, and things, Christians struggle to cope with this materiality in their daily lives. This volume argues that the ambivalent relationships many Christians have with materiality is a driving force that contributes to the way people in different Christian traditions and in different parts of the world understand and live out their religion. By placing the questions of limits and boundary-work to the fore, the volume addresses the question of exactly how Christianity takes place materially, addressing a gap in studies to date. Christianity and the Limits of Materiality presents ground-breaking research on the frameworks and contexts in relation to and within which Christian logics of materiality operate. The volume places the negotiations at the limits of materiality within the larger framework of Christian identities and politics of belonging. The chapters discuss case studies from North and South America, Europe, and Africa, and demonstrate that the limits preoccupying Christians delimit their lives but also enable many things. Ultimately, Christianity and the Limits of Materiality demonstrates that it is at the interfaces of materiality and the transcendent that Christians create and legitimise their religion.
Contents: Part 1. Doubting. Spirit media and the specter of the fake / Marleen de Witte -- Organiz faith in Amazonia: de-indexification, doubt, and Christian corporeality / Minna Opas -- Things not for themselves: idolatry and consecration in Orthodox Ethiopia / Tom Boylston -- Part 2. Sufficing. The Bible in the digital age: negotiating the limits of "Bibleness" of different Bible media / Katja Rakow -- The plausibility of immersion: limits and creativity in materializing the Bible / James S. Bielo -- Humanizing the Bible: limits of materiality in a passion play / Anna Haapalainen -- The death and rebirth of a crucifix: materiality and the sacred in Andean vernacular Catholicism / Diego Alonso Huerta -- Part 3. Unbinding. Proving the inner word: (de)materializing the spirit in Radical Pietism / Elisa Heinämäki -- The return of the unclean spirit: collapse and relapse in the Baptist rehab ministry / Igor Mikeshin -- Mimesis and mediation in the Semana Santa processions of Granada / Sari Kuuva.