Taken from the Merriam-Webster’s Encyclopedia of World Religions

Here is a dose of daily religion from A to Z.

Today’s religious topic is as follows:

“Art and Religion”, one of the best tools with which to examine and discover the similarities and differences of WORLD RELIGIONS. By making concrete some of the cognitive dimensions of a religion, art also allows for the study of the tradition’s structure. But the significance of religious art is not merely tied to the religious ideas contained in such art—the extent of artistic representations in a specific tradition also allows for the understanding of the significance of political, economic, and craft constraints on a religion in a particular historical period.

Art obviously expresses, “rationalizes,” the central conceptions of a religion. It encompasses the structure of a religion from its cosmological myths to representations of doctrine and ritual practice. But religious art does not always act in concert with theology. It must be remembered that cathedrals, Hindu temples, and the Taj Mahal were not built in a day and presuppose a vast network of interrelated political, economic, and social relations that must all be taken into account in any understanding of a particular artistic tradition.

Scholars have often focused on a specific symbol or element in religious art, reading the work as if it were a code in which a particular representation always and invariably has the same specific meaning, regardless of the period or context.It is often stated, for example, that a Hindu temple always faces East, and the direction East is then interpreted as a reference to the rising sun and the powers of nature. This focus, however, usually distorts the meaning of both the work of art and the religious tradition in which it was executed; i.e. the symbol’s meaning is constituted by its position with respect to other symbols in the same cultural system. Symbols in themselves lack meaning. In the above example, the geographic representation East bears cosmological significance in that it is the abode of the gods in HINDUISM. Its opposite is the West, the domain of the anti-gods and darkness. Moreover, East/West is opposite North/South, which is the domain of human beings and the ancestors. The Hindu temple facing East is thus a complex microcosm framed by the four huge temple gates found in most South Indian temples.

For general discussion of principles of artistic representation, see ICONOGRAPHY; SYMBOL. For surveys of traditional categories of art, see SACRED ARCHITECTURE and MUSIC AN RELIGION. The art of particular religious traditions is treated in the following articles: AFRICAN RELIGIONS, ART OF; JUDAISM, ART OF; CHRISTIANITY, ART OF; BUDDHISM, ART OF.

The distinctive purpose of art, so we have argued throughout this study, is culture, the enrichment of the spirit.

(Comeback on 1/17/15 and continue to learn about religion. Tomorrow you’ll read and learn more about “Artemis “.

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