The Art of the Sacred: An Introduction to the Aesthetics of Art and Belief

This book explores the relationship between religion and the visual arts--and vice versa--within Christianity and other major religious traditions. It identifies and describes the main historical, theological, sociological and aesthetic dimensions of "religious" art, with particular attention to "popular" as well as "high" culture, and within societies of the developing world. It also attempts to locate, and predict, the forms and functions of such art in a changing contemporary context of obligation, modernity, secularism and fundamentalism