Eleventh International Conference on Religion & Spirituality in Society

Abstract

While many religious groups are compelled by faith to engage in political issues, policy and scholarly literature frequently portray religious diversity as a problem to be managed. Democratic and religiously diverse secular societies must grapple with the question, ‘what role can/should religion play in shaping policy?’ In response, this paper leverages a case study of Timothy Schmalz’ sculpture, Homeless Jesus, to investigate how religious institutions use publicly placed religious art to engage in political discussions about issues, such as homelessness. This sculpture is of Jesus, identifiable by the wounds on his feet, sleeping on a street bench, wrapped in a blanket. With a large international and mass media presence, this public art piece is an evocative symbol that presents a Christian argument about the nature of and right responses to homelessness. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 5 leaders in Christian institutions with a Homeless Jesus replication, 110 online news articles that reference it, and photos in 8 locations, this research employed iconography to identify this sculpture’s culturally-shared meanings and a thematic analysis to determine how Christian institutions may use it. Findings indicate that art may present an avenue for contributing religious ideas to political dialogues in a manner that is accessible and acceptable for a religiously diverse and/or secular society. This research contributes to discussions of Jürgen Habermas’ concept of ‘institutional translation proviso’, which presents the logic that religious arguments with political relevance should be ‘translated’ into a universally accessible language at the formal levels of a democratic state.