Art – Religion -- The Interfaces of Art and Religion

Scholars discuss the Western understanding of secularization and define the relationship between art and religion as distinct from "political religion"
How can we talk about secularization in cultural studies when traditional religious concepts currently regain relevance in some parts of the world as part of modernization? Religious fundamentalist lifeworlds and institutions challenge the commonly established notion of a linear process of secularization and, in consequence, also call into question Western concepts of the relationship between “art” and “religion.” These were the issues discussed in the workshop entitled “The Interfaces of Art and Religion,” organized by the Center for Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies on 10 June 2008.



The issues were discussed in the context of both ‘high’ culture and its interaction with popular culture. "Today, modernization can no longer be simply described as a process of secularization, increased rationality, or even emancipation," Heinrich Detering, Professor of German, argues. In consequence, he continues, the Western European concept of secularization has to be comprehensively revised with reference to the role of religions. Hence, an appropriate terminological definition was central to the interdisciplinary workshop, including the distinction between the interfaces of art and religion from forms of "political religion" as well as possible analogous developments in religious cultures other than those with a Judeo-Christian heritage. The aim of the workshop - a follow-up meeting to an interdisciplinary conference at the Center for Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies last year - was to define the subject area more precisely and thereby establish a future research focus at the Lichtenberg-Kolleg.
Keynote speaker Hans Rudolf Vaget, Emeritus Professor of German Literatures at Smith College (Northampton, USA), gave a public talk on "Fool's Gold: Art and Religion in Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Travels."