Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Categories
Religion & beliefs

A HISTORY OF RELIGION IN 5 12 OBJECTS

Brent Plate

Bringing the Spiritual to Its Senses

A History of Religion in 5 1/2 Objects tells the story of the human half-body, such as we are, and some of the objects that we encounter in our quest for religiously meaningful, fulfilling lives. Investigating some of the most primary objects of religious experience, it aims to bring religion to its senses.

Almost two-and-a-half millennia ago, the philosopher Plato wrote a work known as the Symposium. In the midst of the convivial conversations within Plato's story, Aristophanes stands up and presents what is perhaps the first artistic, amorous exploration of the "1/2." The ancient playwright waxes mythological as he tells a somewhat comic tale of human origins: The first creatures were different from us, doubled in form from our present appearances; they had spherical bodies, with four hands, four feet, one head with two faces, and two sets of genitals. Because of their multiple hands and feet they could move quite quickly, and as such made a cartwheeled attack on the gods, sending shock waves through the heavenly realms. Instead of killing the human creatures in retribution, the great Zeus decided to split them all in half so that they would be "diminished in strength and increased in numbers." The result is the human body we each have today, living our lives as incomplete creatures, always looking for our other half. A History of Religion in 5 1/2 Objects tells the story of the human half-body, such as we are, and some of the objects that we encounter in our quest for religiously meaningful, fulfilling lives. Investigating some of the most primary objects of religious experience, it aims to bring religion to its senses. With solid scholarly research expressed in clear prose, this book demonstrates how religion emerges from sensual engagements between the human body (the 1/2) and particular objects of the physical world (the 5). To do so, the book discusses five types of objects that humans have engaged and put to use in highly symbolic, sacred ways: stones, crosses, incense, drums, and bread. Each object relates to one of the five human senses. S. Brent Plate is currently Visiting Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Hamilton College, New York. In 2002 he co-founded the journal Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art, and Belief, and has been its Managing Editor ever since. He is also Senior Editor for the Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and the Arts, an Area Editor for the Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception (Berlin: de Gruyters), the Chair of the American Academy of Religion Jury for the Award in Religion and the Arts, and currently serves on AAR steering committee for a program unit in "Religion, Film, and Visual Culture."

Available products
Book Published 2014-03-01 by Beacon Press

Comments

Contemporary debates concerning belief tend to focus on conflicting ideas at the expense of the practical ways religious traditions are actually lived by billions around the world. A History of Religion in 51⁄2 Objects bucks this trend by grounding its lofty and contentious subject in the sounds, smells, textures, and tastes through which faith has always been experienced. With wit and verve, S. Brent Plate’s groundbreaking history suggests that understanding religion begins not with our souls, but with our bodies.

Brent Plate has unspooled a deeply compelling, remarkably capacious lyric mediation on the primacy of our human connection to the world. This global survey deftly braids a rich consideration of five ubiquitous objects of faith and art with small experiences from our modern daily lives in an effort to reawaken us to our essential physical being and to resanctify that which has come to appear mundane. Rather than framing religion as an escape from this world, Plate argues for a ‘soul craft’ grounded in the fundamental and ongoing need to rebind our ideas and our language to our bodies as we rebind our bodies to the body of world.

Brent Plate’s A History of Religion in 51⁄2 Objects is a treasure. A book written by a scholar of religion that confuses as it clarifies, obscures as it illuminates, and challenges as it reassures; it takes an innovative approach to thinking about religion, feeling it in our lives, and highlighting its downright sensational aspects as a material, and spiritual, reality. A great joy to read.

The well-written and accessible text surprises and intrigues…this is an elegant and sensitive book. Highly recommended to general readers open to a different perspective on religious practice.

A deft, delightful incantation in praise of religion’s sensual grounding in the elemental things of earth, Plate’s work restores the link between the spiritual and material throughout the world’s religious traditions. Traversing the contemporary and the ancient, the local and the global, this book carries the reader home to the body, the senses, and the soul. Plate’s elegant and insightful prose illuminates the creative human activities that make religion ordinary, ubiquitous, and powerfully important. A joy to read, one lingers in this book’s scent long after turning the last page.