Sacred Experience and Aesthetic Connections in Religious Festivals

A special issue of Religions (ISSN 2077-1444).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 November 2024) | Viewed by 1193

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Center for Religious Studies, Faculty of Theology, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago 8320000, Región Metropolitana, Chile
Interests: religious studies; theology of art; icon painting; Christian Eastern theology; Latin American popular religion

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Guest Editor Assistant
Research in Sociology of Religion (ISOR), Departament of Sociology, Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, Bellaterra, 09193 Barcelona, Spain
Interests: popular Christianity; ritual activities and festivals

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Guest Editor Assistant
Center for Jewish Studies, Faculty of Philosophy and Humanities, University of Chile, Santiago 8320000, Región Metropolitana, Chile
Interests: material religious studies; religious visual culture; religious uses of images; sacred objects in museums; art and the sacred; catholic holy cards; lived religion

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Studies on festivals have gained special relevance since the beginning of the 20th century. They are a fundamental form of social life, which has accompanied the development of culture since the very origins of humanity. On the other hand, the performative nature of a festival has been insistently underlined, which means that it is embodied and expressed through various forms of art (in a broad sense).

Within the different festive typologies that are currently recognized, the religious festival is identified as an archetype. We understand by religious festival that in which a sacred agency is manifested, which constitutes and unites the festive congregation, and which is materialized in various artistic devices such as images, music, dance, etc. In turn, throughout history, art has become an eminent way of expressing the experience of the sacred, an experience that we characterize as overflow or saturation of meaning, also characteristic elements of the festive event. Art and festival, to a certain extent, are two sides of the same coin.

This Special Issue aims to address the relationship between art and religious festivals. It seeks to analyze this relationship from the intersection between social sciences, arts, and humanities, paying special attention to the empirical dimension of the festive event and the material-sensory nature of the artistic expressions that constitute it. A special emphasis is placed in contexts where, contrary to all forecasts of secularization, the religious festival became a catalyst for modernization processes. Case studies, theoretical discussions, or historical reviews are proposed, without being exclusive, as research areas.

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 200–300 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to the Guest Editors, Dr. Federico Aguirre ([email protected]), © Dr. Wilson Muñoz ([email protected]), © Dr. Lily Jimenez ([email protected]) or to the Assistant Editor of Religions, Ms. Margaret Liu ([email protected]). Abstracts will be reviewed by the Guest Editors for the purposes of ensuring proper fit within the scope of the Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer review.

Deadline for abstract submission: 3 July 2024

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Federico Aguirre
Guest Editor

Wilson Muñoz
Lily Jimenez
Guest Editor Assistants

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Religions is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • art and the sacred
  • religious festivals
  • popular/lived religion
  • material religion studies
  • visual and performance studies

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

13 pages, 198 KiB  
Article
A Festival of Chariots: How Music and the Arts Take the Hindu Temple Experience to the Streets
by Sara Black Brown
Religions 2024, 15(12), 1456; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15121456 - 29 Nov 2024
Viewed by 547
Abstract
Among the most prominent Hindu festivals is the Rath Yatra, or Festival of Chariots, which is celebrated by parading three brightly decorated chariots containing statues of the deities Jagganath, Subhadra, and Balaram through the streets of a city on brilliantly decorated chariots. Rath [...] Read more.
Among the most prominent Hindu festivals is the Rath Yatra, or Festival of Chariots, which is celebrated by parading three brightly decorated chariots containing statues of the deities Jagganath, Subhadra, and Balaram through the streets of a city on brilliantly decorated chariots. Rath Yatra is celebrated throughout India and increasingly throughout the world through such efforts as the Festival of India sponsored by the International Society of Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), which stops in several prominent locations throughout North America. Within Krishna Consciousness, temple worship is an aesthetically vivid sensory experience in which the various art forms—music, dance, theater, and the visual arts—serve to attach the devotee’s senses to the Divine through worship practices, including darshan—the exchange of gazes, kirtan—the singing of sacred mantras, and lila—the re-creation of the pastimes of divine characters. The festival experience—and the Festival of Chariots in particular—can serve to bring the practices typically associated with temple worship to the public. This article draws on several Rath Yatra events, giving special attention to the annual Rath Yatra parade held in New York City, where devotees parade their deities down Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, and that held in Los Angeles on Venice Beach. These prominent American Rath Yatras serve as a study of the spiritual necessity of beauty and the spiritual necessity of joy, which are both addressed by the festival experience, as music and vivid visual imagery serve to transform urban space into sacred space by allowing bypassers as well as devotees to come into sensory contact with sacred imagery and sacred sound. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sacred Experience and Aesthetic Connections in Religious Festivals)
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