Abstract
“Art is dangerous. It is one of the attractions: when it ceases to be dangerous you don’t want it.” This quote, attributed to both the jazz musician Duke Ellington (1899-1974) and author Anthony Burgess (1917-1993), points out the relationship between art and social change. As such, this paper investigates the burgeoning relationship between visual art and religious innovation in Canadian Evangelical communities. We connect this experimentation with the arts to broader processes of religious “cosmopolitanization.” Thus, we will focus on what art is doing and has done to Evangelical communities and artists that have let art into their religious lives. This work is an extension of Robin Willey’s multi-sited ethnography that focused on Evangelical political practice, and makes use of an additional nine months of ethnographic observation and interviews in a large western Canadian city and Grand Rapids, MI.
Presenters
Robin WilleyAssociate Professor, Social Sciences, Concordia University of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada Carolyn Jervis
Director/Curator, Mitchell Art Gallery, MacEwan University, MacEwan University, Alberta, Canada
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
Religious Community and Socialization
KEYWORDS
Evangelicalism, Art, Cosmopolitanism, Ethnography
Digital Media
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