The Forge of Vision: A Visual History of Modern Christianity

by David Morgan

Overview

Religions teach their adherents how to see and feel at the same time; learning to see is not a disembodied process but one hammered from the forge of human need, social relations, and material practice. David Morgan argues that the history of religions may therefore be studied through the lens of their salient visual themes. The Forge of Vision tells the history of Christianity from the sixteenth century through the present by selecting the visual themes of faith that have profoundly influenced its development. After exploring how distinctive Catholic and Protestant visual cultures emerged in the early modern period, Morgan examines a variety of Christian visual practices, ranging from the imagination, visions of nationhood, the likeness of Jesus, the material life of words, and the role of modern art as a spiritual quest, to the importance of images for education, devotion, worship, and domestic life. An insightful, informed presentation of how Christianity has shaped and continues to shape the modern world, this work is a must-read for scholars and students across fields of religious studies, history, and art history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520286955
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	10/20/2015
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	407
Product dimensions:	7.20(w) x 10.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

David Morgan is Professor of Religious Studies at Duke University, with a secondary appointment in the Department of Art, Art History, and Visual Studies. He is the author of The Embodied Eye: Religious Visual Culture and the Social Life of Feeling and The Sacred Gaze: Religious Visual Culture in Theory and Practice, and coeditor of the journal Material Religion.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction

PART I. WORD AND IMAGE
1. The Shape of the Holy
2. The Visible Word

PART II. THE TRAFFIC OF IMAGES
3. Religion as Sacred Economy
4. The Agency of Words
5. Christianity and Nationhood
6. The Likeness of Jesus
7. Modern Art and Christianity

Conclusion
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

Morgan creates...a clearing, some common, albeit untroubled territory, from which new, and potentially sympathetic conversations might occur between the contemporary church and a contemporary world that is, in everyday life at least, increasingly organized and identified around visual and imaginative practices and protocols.

Art & Christianity

"After [this book], it seems difficult to imagine a holistic teaching of modern art without a thorough involvement of the ways Christianity contributed to the development of modern ideas of art and its viewers."

Christian Scholars' Review

Morgan shows that the very conception of modern art is contingent upon ideas of imagination and self that were developed by Roman Catholic and Protestant sacred economies....After [reading this book], it seems difficult to imagine a holistic teaching of modern art without a thorough involvement of the ways Christianity contributed to the development of modern ideas of art and its viewers.

Christian Scholars Review

"An elegantly expressive work, richly illustrated and rhetorically euphonious."

Images at Work

Morgan has been one of the most important pioneers in exploring the visual world of religion—particularly that of American Christianity—and The Forge of Vision might be regarded as summa Morganensis.

Church History

"David Morgan's impressive new book navigates a much contested terrain."

Art and Christianity