More than ever before, scholars recognize that nearly every form of religion or spirituality has a vital connection with art. World religions, from Hinduism to The Eastern Orthodox Church, have a long and rich relationship with an array of artistic traditions. In recent decades, the academic study of religion and the arts has burgeoned. Yet a broad and serious consideration of the topic has yet to reach readers. The first comprehensive book of its kind, The Oxford Handbook of Religion and the Arts provides expert guidance to artistry and aesthetic theory in religion. Edited by Frank Burch Brown, the Handbook brings together an international team of leading scholars to present an interdisciplinary volume of nearly forty original essays. Readers are presented the main topics, issues, methods, and resources for the study of religious and theological aesthetics. The essays give light to the dynamic interaction of world religions and art making. The volume ranges from antiquity to present day to examine idolatry, aesthetics in liturgy, and the role of art in popular religion. Ranging from music and poetry to architecture and film, the Handbook crosses the boundaries of different faiths and art forms to survey established and pioneering voices within the field. An authoritative text for scholars and students, The Oxford Handbook of Religion and the Arts will remain an invaluable resource for years to come.

Christians frequently come into conflict with themselves and others over such matters as music, popular culture, and worship style. Yet they usually lack any theology of art or taste adequate to deal with aesthetic disputes. In this provocative book, Frank Burch Brown offers a constructive, 'ecumenical' approach to artistic taste and aesthetic judgment--a non-elitist but discriminating theological aesthetics that has 'teeth but no fangs'.

While grounded in history and theory, this book takes up such practical questions as: How can one religious community accommodate a variety of artistic tastes? What good or harm can be done by importing music that is worldly in origin into a house of worship? How can the exercise of taste in the making of art be a viable (and sometimes advanced) spiritual discipline? In exploring the complex relation between taste, religious imagination, and faith, Brown offers a new perspective on what it means to be spiritual, religious, and indeed Christian.

Many modes of religious expression and experience have a markedly aesthetic component, even though aesthetic delight itself often appears to be free of moral or religious interests. In this ground-breaking work, Frank Burch Brown shows how aesthetics, no less than ethics, can play a central role in the study of religion and in the practice of theology.

This study provides one indication that as aesthetics begins to be reconcieved, which is starting to happen on many fronts, it can play a more significant role both in philosophy and in religious reflection.

Nearly every form of religion or spirituality has a vital connection with art. Religions across the world, from Hinduism and Buddhism to Eastern Orthodox Christianity, have been involved over the centuries with a rich array of artistic traditions, both sacred and secular. In its uniquely multi-dimensional consideration of the topic, The Oxford Handbook of Religion and the Arts provides expert guidance to artistry and aesthetic theory in religion. The Handbook offers nearly forty original essays by an international team of leading scholars on the main topics, issues, methods, and resources for the study of religious and theological aesthetics. The volume ranges from antiquity to the present day to examine religious and artistic imagination, fears of idolatry, aesthetics in worship, and the role of art in social transformation and in popular religion-covering a full array of forms of media, from music and poetry to architecture and film. An authoritative text for scholars and students, The Oxford Handbook of Religion and the Arts will remain an invaluable resource for years to come.

The proper role of art in worship and spirituality is a topic of lively debate. There is a wide range of opinion, for example, concerning what types of artistic productions are appropriate for inclusion in a Christian worship service, or whether certain popular Christain images should be deplored as "kitch". Brown addresses both practical and theoretical questions regarding Christian taste: What is the relation between church and the rest of culture? What is wrong (or right) with importing into a house of worship various kinds of music and media that are worldly in origin? By exploring the complex relation between taste, religious imagination, and faith, Brown hopes ultimately to offer a new perspective on what it means to be spiritual, religious, and indeed Christian.

Worshiping communities today have access to more arts and styles from more times and places than ever before. In this volume Frank Burch Brown explores how Christians can navigate this increasingly diverse world of worship. / Brown combines an abiding admiration of classical idioms with an appreciation of new possibilities for the arts in worship. Interacting with a wide range of religious thinkers and leaders -- from Augustine and John Calvin to Rick Warren, Marcus Borg, and the Pope -- he addresses questions concerning "good" art and "good" music for worship. / A lively and thought-provoking book, Inclusive yet Discerning is permeated by Brown's wide-ranging knowledge and deep love of the arts and his desire to articulate a theological aesthetic that, as he says, "will have teeth but not fangs."

Brown proposes a theory of poetic metaphor that attempts to account for literature's complex role in the discovery and creation of significant patterns within both language and life. He shows that while poetic and conceptual modes of discover are different, they are nevertheless mutually interdependent. In particular, Brown offers a new view of the way in which theological and metaphysical concepts grow out of, and are transfigured by, metaphoric expression. This view is expressed in a detailed and original analysis of the structure and dynamics of T.S. Eliot's "Four Quartets" that lies at the heart of the study.
Originally published in 1983.
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