Religion and Creativity

Dear Colleagues,

“Creativity”, although a recent term, has become ubiquitous across the humanities. It is an indicator of inventive potential in individuals and is a contested term in the psychological and philosophical domains. Scholars of religion, however, have been more wary than most in deploying it as a paradigm through which to investigate the sacred and the spiritual. For this Special Issue, we invite you to consider ways in which this concept can be deployed in our analysis of faith systems and the cultures that surround them. This can include a study on the creative mechanisms built into religious systems. These mechanisms exist but can be seen as a site of threat and danger. This may be due to a tradition being challenged through processes of highly speculative theological thinking, or creativity within esoteric dimensions of religious systems disrupting, and sometimes splitting or upending, accepted traditions. For this Special Issue, we also call for a consideration of the manner in which religious systems inspire creative action and control the interplay between creative processes and tradition. This area of activity can quickly lead to contention and accusations of innovation, sacrilege, and blasphemy—areas that, under the paradigm of creativity, also fall under the scope of this Special Issue.

Research Areas:

This Special Issue is inspired by recent philosophical discourse on creativity among scholars including Peter Sloterdijk, Slavoj Zizek, Byung Chul-Han, and Bruno Latour. In their works, we can see examples of creativity and innovation being used as paths towards speaking of the sacred and transformative in Modernity and within the secular milieu. Within this context lies the Guest Editors’ ongoing interest in the interplay between religion and the development of culture (and its potential threats to tradition).   

Expected Impact:

Since Gramham Wallas's The Art of Thought (1926), the concept of "creativity" has become increasingly ubiquitous in the domains of business, art, literature, and educational innovation. More recently, philosophers and psychologists from Sloterdijk to Stiegler and Peterson have sought to explain creativity as a measure and mechanism of innovation and change. The extensive use of this term, however, is less prevalent in the analysis of religion. This is in part due to an imagined and projected ideal that religions are sites of slow-changing tradition and remain wary of all types of innovation. This Special Issue will disrupt these ideals by calling for scholarly explorations of religions as sites of innovation, adaption, and change. We suggest that this be achieved by applying the paradigm of creativity to the study of religion and of sacred things. In this way, this Special Issue will have a field-expanding impact. It will provide space for academics to experiment with this new paradigm and with methodologies of innovation. It will encourage scholars to examine the dynamism of religious systems and how these systems creatively react to the challenge of new stimuli and changing times through the ways in which they confront art, popular culture, new technologies, or new processes of worship and belief. Through this impact, we expect this Special Issue to disrupt the religions-as-tradition ideal and introduce a new way of considering how change in religious systems can be examined. Thus, this Special Issue will not expand an extant theme in the study of religion but instead aim toward a new paradigm. In this way, we hope that this Special Issue will have a significant impact in this field.

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 these to the Guest Editor (christopher.hartney@sydney.edu.au) or the Religions Editorial Office (religions@mdpi.com). Abstracts will be reviewed by the Guest Editor for the purposes of ensuring proper fit within the scope of this Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer review.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Christopher Hartney
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

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.

• creativity
• sacred creativity
• play
• invention
• innovation
• blasphemy