Theology and the Arts

To rethink, through and with the help of the arts, practical theology, practicing theology, theology as practice, or praxis, and to show that practical theology is an art, a cognitive, emotional, aesthetic, and ethic enterprise—that is the goal of this book, the result of a collaboration spanning continents, generations, and theological disciplines. Ruth Illman, director of the Donner Institute in Turku, Finland, and W. Alan Smith, professor of religion at Florida Southern College, United States, develop here, in discussion with feminist, postmodern, liberation, and dialogue theologies and philosophies, a practical theology of the arts as committed to dialogue, intersubjectivity, respect of the other in their otherness, and to the belief that truth and meaning emerge from the dynamic interaction between theory and (artistic and social) practice. The volume is divided into two parts; in the first, the authors develop their claims about a practical theology of the arts in a systematic fashion. In the second, they present seven studies, or “études,” as they call them, of specific projects or artworks as “examples of what a practical theology of the arts looks like when it is actually being ‘practiced’” (11). The concluding chapter revisits the claims and key themes of the first part and evaluates their validity on the background of the results of the seven case studies.

Aesthetics · Art · Epistemology · Faith · Intersubjectivity · Meaning (existential) · Postmodernism · Praxis · Social science · Sociology · The arts · Theology · Visual arts · Christian Theology and Mission · Pentecostalism and Christianity Studies · Philosophy · Religion, Ecology, and Ethics