I’d like to start a conversation about how we can experience ethics and community values through biblical art – I’m going to jot down a few lines here as often as I get a chance, and I’d really like your response. So much of our western ethics and morals derives from our Jewish and Christian religious life – even for those of us who consider themselves entirely secular rather than religious. About a year and a half ago I was invited to give a talk at Duke Divinity School about experiencing Judaism through visual art by a fascinating scholar, Jeremy Begbie, who splits his time between Duke and the University of Cambridge. Jeremy, who is a pianist as well as a theologian, is interested in how spirituality can be experienced in a very immediate, personal way through the arts – in his case music, in my case visual art. A session at the Society for Biblical Literature conference in Baltimore in late November has been organized around my work and that of one Christian artist -- were going to talk about expressing emotion in biblical art. I think the importance of this conversation is increasingly important. Just a month ago, at the beginning of October, the Pew Research Foundation published a study on Judaism in America, part of a much larger study, the “U.S. Religious Landscape Survey.” (religions.pewforum.org/reports). The overall findings won’t surprise anyone – that American society is rapidly secularizing. Unsurprisingly, I’ve paid most attention to the Pew study of Judaism in America. There, the message is that as greater proportions of the Jewish community drop religious intellectual identification, they also fall away from Jewish community identification. One can of course say that it’s just fine that our society is loosening its relationship with religion…we have science, we have other means (all too often things like bars and gyms) of building our personal communities. Now, I’m just as securely planted in the secular, scientific world as in my religious community, and I too spend an hour almost every day but Shabbat in my gym, but I worry that we lose an anchor for our relationships, our daily life, our whole moral and ethical approach to the world when we lose track of our religious identities. Biblical art, that roots the stories of our peoples’ founding, challenges and beliefs, in serious historical inquiry AND emotionally expressive visuals, has a role to play in helping us express our own spiritual thoughts, in helping us find the meaning in our lives…in a way that no gym or bar can. Tell me a little bit about your own relationship to religion? Do you identify as religious or secular? How do you experience your spirituality? What kind of religious community (if any) are you involved in, and what does it mean to you? I always ask the couples I work with on their Jewish marriage contracts how they relate to Judaism, and I’d love to hear how you experience your own religious feelings. So, drop me a message!
Posted on: Wed, 30 Oct 2013 16:36:22 +0000
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