The Denton Conferences on Implicit Religion

Papers 2008

• Rina Arya — The Religious Dimensions of Retail Therapy

In this paper I will investigate the religious dimensions of retail therapy. Retail therapy is constituted by a series of actions that categorises the behaviours of consumers who consciously or subconsciously instigate a correlation between (temporary) fulfilment and the activity of compulsive shopping. The behaviours exemplified can conceivably be described as religious, in a Durkheimian sense.

A parallel can be set up between retail therapy and the structure of religion. The etymological root of ‘religion’ comes from the stem, leig, where re-ligare means to bind together what has fallen apart. The act of binding fragments together has both teleological and eschatological ramifications–the fragments are made whole, they are salved. This mythology of sparagmos (dismemberment) underpins a number of religious traditions, such as the Greek narrative of the Bacchus, the Christian narrative of the Crucifixion, and the fragmentation of the goddess Kali in the Hindu tradition. The oscillation between wounding/fragmentation and healing/wholeness can be applied to the psychology of retail therapy.

In the process of compulsive buying the commodity is set apart and revered. It acquires a special status that can be discussed using religious discourse (through deployment of such terms as ‘sacred’ and ‘profane’) and within the language of advertising and economics, by examining the relationship between the commodity and the brand, as mediated by the relationship between ‘use value’ and ‘exchange value’.

In conclusion, I will suggest that the ritualised behaviours that inform the praxis of retail therapy demonstrate the expression of the sacred in a post-Christian age, where the experience of the sacred may be in the here-and-now but is not salvific. In fact, it is invariably fragmented and perpetuates a sense of lack.

• Mike Collins — Sport & Faith: new initiatives at the University of Gloucestershire

Post-industrial and secularisation forces, and aging and dwindling of congregations, have led to a great diminution of involvement of churches in sport compared to the turn of the 20^th century: many professional soccer clubs were started by or in association with churches. But revival of interest can be attested to by organisations like youth for Christ and Christians in Sport. This paper will describe the genesis, rationale and content of initiatives at the University of Gloucestershire to support volunteers and professionals working in youth and community development spheres using sport, via a new Cert HE/Dip HE/MA strand in Sport and Christian Outreach of teaching focussed initially on working with Christian groups; but there will be need to work with other faiths too in temples, mosques, synagogues and gurdwaras, as soon as possible. There is also a need for better support for the growing number of sports chaplains, especially with the forthcoming London Olympics.

A case study of “Psalms” (a sport-based outreach project in Gloucestershire) will be described.

But, despite the Blair government wanting action in community cohesion, inclusion, and regeneration by faith communities and evidence that this has social capital benefits, there is huge ignorance about the scale and nature of involvement of any of them, even mainstream Christian denominations. The new Society and Religion research programme 2007-12, of the Arts & Humanities and Economic and Social Research Councils, mentions culture but not sport. There is a substantial research agenda to map the scale and nature of this involvement, to understand what sports participation via faith organisations means to individuals compared to that via schools, clubs or public and commercial facilities; and to see how partnerships can work effectively between faith and public or voluntary groups in sports development.

• Gil Dekel — The Sense of Beauty: visualising poetic experiences through film-making

Although Visionary poets are argued to speak from a subjective imaginative state, my research indicates that this state does not rely on imagination, but on objective observation. By detaching themselves from judgmental relation to life, the poet moves towards a ‘gentle’ listening, where the environment is ‘experienced’ as opposed to ‘noticed’. Experiencing allows the poet to ‘open up’ to the beauty that seems to underlie every single thing around us. The poet’s Sense of Beauty is then charged with growing emotional intensity that it overflows in the form of composing words or images, for others to share and memorize.

To understand the significance of poetic senses one needs to learn to see words from a different perspective: not from that of a reader or analyst, but from that of an experiential observer. Drawing on my own reflections as a researcher and a poet, I create short films that visualise inner poetic experiences. The films act as case study, combining a ‘diary style’ documentation of experiences with critical analysis.

This will be discussed in my presentation, and will be exemplified in two short films.

• Leslie Francis, Mandy Robbins & Emry Williams — Implicit religion and the Church Times readership: a survey among 10,000 churchgoing clergy and laity

The Church Times Survey was included in two editions of the Church Times during 2001. From an estimated circulation of 40,000 copies, around 10,000 completed questionnaires were returned. These data have been published to profile the tensions evident in the Church of England in the book Fragmented Faith, and to provide detailed analysis of divergent views on some of the controversial issues demanding debate (and resolution) in the Anglican Communion, including the Episcopal ordination of women and the level of homonegativity. Although the survey deliberately included issues relevant to the discussion of implicit religion and alternative spiritualities, these data have not previously been analysed and published. The data demonstrate commitment to implicit religious believing among this central core of belonging, believing and practising Anglicans, but the commitment varies according to age, sex and churchmanship.

• Roger Grainger — Prospero’s Island

Prospero’s Island, in Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’ is presented to us as an example of focused spirituality, the location of a spiritual presence. Our experiencing of natural environments suggests that it is possible for the physical to ‘unlock’ the spiritual by remaining uncompromisingly itself and resisting our attempts to reduce it to be part of ourselves. In this way landscape acts as a metaphor of relationship which is perceived as authentically personal; it makes us aware of the other as the other, a spiritual insight in itself. Spiritual perhaps – but implicitly religious. Prospero’s island reveals spiritual awareness in an implicitly religious form through its effect upon people’s lives, their attitudes towards living with themselves and one another. If the intensity of our engagement with things human is a hallmark of implicit religion, powerful evidence of religious conversion is to be found on Prospero’s island where the location itself has become a crucible of commitment, a milieu for focused self discovery and an integrating presence.

• Rennie Greenfield — The Celluloid Camp-fire: implicit religion and film

While the last fifteen years have seen a wealth of scholarship into the overt portrayal of institutional religions in the cinema, almost nothing has been written about the potential of the film medium itself to produce an experience that is implicitly religious. Cinema theatres constitute a sacred space in which films like American Beauty and Pan’s Labyrinth, in both substance and function, offer secular and religious audiences alike a symbolic narrative that can provide models of our lived experience and models for future behaviour. I argue that film both fulfils Clifford Geertz’s definition of religion as a cultural system and also all of Ninian Smart’s dimensions of the sacred. My paper illustrates the homologies between the artistic modes of communication found in traditional religious institutions and those found in the cinema.

• Ted Harrison — Hiding the Explicit: inter-faith dialogue as implicit religion

Interfaith dialogue tends to be most encouraged by the ‘liberals’ within the various faith groups. Yet from an analysis of the core texts of the 3 Abrahamic faiths it can be argued that it is the fundamentalists who have most in common. They share, and emphasise, an image of a God capable of anger and vengeance. This image is one with which the liberals feel uncomfortable and in order to sustain their inter-faith conversations feel obliged to underplay. This paper will explore whether the only way to sustain peaceful interaction between Christianity, Judaism and Islam is, in effect, to obscure this part of the explicit; and will ask whether, in doing so, the process of interfaith dialogue demonstrates another (implicit or covert) religion.

• Mandy Robbins, Emyr Williams, Leslie Francis & Jenny Annis — Implicit Religion and Cathedral Visitors: an empirical study among visitors to St David’s Cathedral

A series of recent studies have begun to listen to the experiences and expectations of visitors to churches in general and to cathedrals in particular. One research tradition has drawn attention to the different worldviews of religious pilgrims and of secular tourists. Another research tradition has drawn attention to the relevance of psychological type theory for exploring individual differences in visitor appreciation. Building on these two traditions the present study set out to characterise the explicit religious believing and the implicit religious questioning of visitors to St Davids Cathedral in West Wales. In so doing, the study is informed by Bailey’s notion of implicit religion and by Heelas and Woodhead’s notion of spiritual revolution as experienced in Kendal. Data provided by nearly 3,000 visitors enable clear differentiation to be made between several distinct groups of visitors, including the Christian pilgrims, the new age seekers, and the implicitly religious.

• Linda Rudge — Temporal Voices, Spiritual Themes: the relationship between popular music and secular rituals

This session will explore the idea that contemporary identities in secularised societies are formed through the powerful and almost omnipresent forces of mass communication media – specifically, for the purposes of this paper, through popular music. Exploring the comment of the acclaimed and controversial playwright, Dennis Potter, that ‘cheap songs so-called do have something of the Psalms of David about them’ this paper will juxtapose some of the themes and poetry in the psalms of traditional religions, with the themes and poetry apparent in implicit religion and in the spiritualities of contemporary society in the UK. This juxtaposition will be presented through a small selection of the ‘cheap songs’ of the last fifty years, and will be linked to the theme of the conference through a reflection on the musical experiences (aural and oral) that provide rituals for a secularised age.

• Israel Selvanayagam

Transcendence, Infinite Realiity, Supreme Reality, Sacred Being, Highest Truth, the Absolute and the Supreme, are some of the terms used to indicate the One or that which is Transcendent and Ultimate. When human beings as personal beings imagine the supreme reality and seek meaning and a final goal, are such impersonal and abstract realities adequate? There are religious traditions such as Buddhism and Yoga which appear to be atheistic but could not but incorporate the God factor at least in certain schools of thought. Vedantic Approaches to God alone provide insightful arguments for understanding the nature and neccessity of God. This paper will use the major theistic religious traditions to identify the struggle to conceptualise a limitless being with a limited human perception, thereby extolling divine revelation and devotional surrender.

• Kevin Sharpe & Leslie van Gelder — The Implicit Religion underlying Interpretations of European Prehistoric Art
• Tania ap Siôn, Caroline Windsor & Leslie Francis — Implicit Religion and British Freemasonry: an empirical enquiry among Anglican clergy

Freemasonry is variously characterised as a ‘secret society’ or as a ‘society with secrets’. The rituals, the teachings, the ethical concerns and the brotherly fellowship seem to some to mimic the characteristics of formal explicit religious groups and yet the movement itself would claim not to be a religious group in the traditional meaning of that term. Many mainline churches, however, perceive freemasonry as inimical to their faith. The Roman Catholic Church and the Methodist Church have ruled strongly against freemasonry and the Anglican Church continues to debate the issue. Yet public display demonstrates Masonic services held in Anglican churches and Anglican clergy holding high ranking office in the brotherhood. So what do Anglican clergy today make of the Craft? Is freemasonry seen as an explicitly religious rival to the churches themselves or as an implicitly religious movement consistent with the broader sympathies of the Christian tradition? Answers to these questions are provided by the analysis of the replies of 518 Anglican clergy to a largely qualitative survey.

• Richard Smith — The Root of Religiosity, Explicit & Implicit according to the Apostle Paul in Romans chapter 1

In the book of Romans, chapter 1, Paul declares God’s covenant lawsuit with mankind and the necessity for the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Basic to his argument is that humans are the imago Dei and stand in direct relation and accountability to God by means of revelation and creation. Humans are homo adorans in constant search for transcendence, identity, orientation, and meaning. Humans are homo religiosus, intrinsically and incurably religious. However, Paul argues that humans do not worship God as God, as revealed. They suppress and exchange the truth, which explains the plurality and diversity of religion, explicit and implicit.

• Rupert Till — Hollowing out of the Symbol: popular iconography and the artist currently known as Prince

Prince is an artist who is drenched in popular music traditions, especially those from the African American tradition. He is also heavily influenced by African American religious traditions and integrates performative elements from the sacred into his work. He uses popular iconography to present himself as an icon of consumer culture, as a deified ‘rock god’ worshipped by his fans, and as a preacher leading his audience like a congregation. He mixes spirituality and sexuality freely, and deals with issues of ecstasy and liberation, a transgressional approach that draws both controversy and public interest. This paper takes the performance by Prince of the song 'Let's Go Crazy' at the beginning of the film Purple Rain as a case study. It looks at the traditions that inform Prince’s work and at the role of the pop star as an icon within contemporary culture, an icon that contains a physicality and sexuality not present in contemporary western religious traditions. It discusses to what extent popular musical culture has taken the place of religious practice within contemporary western culture, and the implications that this has. The paper investigates Prince’s character and mediapheme development, his manipulation of the star system, and how he uses popular iconography to blur the distinctions between spirituality and sexuality, the idealised performer and the real world, the sacred and the secular, and the human and the divine.

• Andrew Wender — Helping Students See what Ordinarily Remains Hidden: how implicit religion can enrich teaching
• Emyr Williams, Leslie Francis, Mandy Robbins & Ursula Billington — Implicit Religion and British Paganism: an empirical survey conducted during a pagan festival

British paganism is a movement growing in public visibility and apparently in active membership. The beliefs, rituals and fellowship seem to have much in common with the structure of classical religion as expressed in Britain as well as with the more broadly based emerging spiritualities characteristic of the ‘spiritual revolution’. One recognised way of testing the continuity and discontinuity of emerging spiritualities with classical religion is through examination of the location they occupy within the psychological space defined by personality theories. In order to locate British Paganism within the context of this analytic framework a sample of 75 individuals attending a pagan festival were invited to complete three psychological measures: the newly developed Williams-Billington Scale of Attitude toward Paganism (modelled on Francis’ established family of instruments), the Revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire and the Francis Psychological Type Scales. The data suggest that British paganism functions somewhat differently from other religious traditions.