Sensual Religion; Religion and the Five Senses; Graham Harvey and Jessica Hughes, eds

Edited by

Graham Harvey [+–]

Open University

Graham Harvey is Emeritus Professor of Religious Studies at the Open University, UK. His research is concerned with the performance and rhetoric of identities among Jews, Pagans and indigenous peoples. He is particularly interested in the ‘new animism’, embracing relational and material approaches to interactions between humans and the larger than human world. His recent publications include The Handbook of Contemporary Animism(2013) and Food, Sex and Strangers: Understanding Religion as Everyday Life (2013).

Jessica Hughes [+–]

The Open University

Jessica Hughes is a Lecturer in Classical Studies at The Open University. She works on material religion, classical reception studies and the cultural history of the Italian region of Campania. She has recently published the monograph Votive Body Parts in Greek and Roman Religion (Cambridge University Press, 2017) and is currently researching material religion and cultural memory at the Catholic Shrine of the Blessed Virgin of the Rosary in Pompeii.

Sensual Religion demonstrates the value of paying attention to the senses and materials in lived religion and also leads the way for improved studies of religion as sensuality.

Each of the five senses – vision, hearing, taste, touch and smell – will be covered by two chapters, the first historical and the second contemporary. The historical discussions focus on the sensuality of religion in ancient Greece, Samaria, Rome and Byzantium — including reflections on their value for understanding other historical and contemporary contexts. Chapters with a contemporary focus engage with Chinese, African-Brazilian, Sikh, First Nations and Métis, and Spanish Catholic religious lives and activities. Beyond the rich case studies, each chapter offers perspectives and arguments about better ways of approaching lived, material and performative religion — or sensual religion. Historical and ethnographic critical and methodological expertise is presented in ways that will inspire and enable readers to apply, refine and improve on their practice of the study of religions. In particular, our intention is to foreground the senses and sensuality as a critical issue in understanding religion and to radically improve multi- and inter-disciplinary research and teaching about the lived realities of religious people in this sensual world.

Series: Religion and the Senses

Preliminaries

Series Foreword [+–] vii-ix

Graham Harvey FREE

Open University

Sensual Religion demonstrates the value of paying attention to the senses and materials in lived religion and also leads the way for improved studies of religion as sensuality. Each of the five senses – vision, hearing, taste, touch and smell – will be covered by two chapters, the first historical and the second contemporary. The historical discussions focus on the sensuality of religion in ancient Greece, Samaria, Rome and Byzantium — including reflections on their value for understanding other historical and contemporary contexts. Chapters with a contemporary focus engage with Chinese, African-Brazilian, Sikh, First Nations and Métis, and Spanish Catholic religious lives and activities. Beyond the rich case studies, each chapter offers perspectives and arguments about better ways of approaching lived, material and performative religion — or sensual religion. Historical and ethnographic critical and methodological expertise is presented in ways that will inspire and enable readers to apply, refine and improve on their practice of the study of religions. In particular, our intention is to foreground the senses and sensuality as a critical issue in understanding religion and to radically improve multi- and inter-disciplinary research and teaching about the lived realities of religious people in this sensual world.

List of Figures [+–] x

Graham Harvey FREE

Open University

Introduction

Introduction [+–] 1-16

Graham Harvey £17.50

Open University

Introducing Sensual Religion, this chapter not only summarises themes and issues discussed in the main chapters, but also aims to provoke discussion of relationships between religion and senses, emphasising the doing of religion in bodily and sensual activities. It uses some origins narratives to demonstrate the importance of sensual data in religious narratives and acts.

Smell

1. A Pleasing Odour for Yahweh: The Smell of Sacrifices on Mount Gerizim and in the Hebrew Bible [+–] 19-36

Anne Katrine de Hemmer Gudme £17.50

University of Oslo

Anne Katrine de Hemmer Gudme is Professor of Hebrew Bible at the University of Oslo.

Smell was an important factor in delineating sacred space in the ancient world and the sense of smell was crucial in meetings between the human and the divine (involving the “pleasing odour” of sacrifices and incense). This chapter traces the importance of smell, using the Yahweh temple on Mount Gerizim and the Hebrew Bible as case-studies.

2. Wafting Incense and Heavenly Foods: The Importance of Smell in Chinese Religion [+–] 37-60

Shawn Arthur £17.50

Wake Forest University

Shawn Arthur is an Assistant Professor in the Department of for the Study of Religions at Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC. His first book, Early Daoist Dietary Practices: Examining Ways to Health and Longevity (Lexington Books 2013), focuses on a fifth century Daoist text that contains recipes for achieving immortality. His current research focuses on contemporary popular religion in China and how lay practices and ideas can contribute to our understandings of ‘religion’ from non-official perspectives.

Burning incense and cooking foods often create the special atmosphere of Chinese religious sites and festivals. Indeed, the Chinese word for “worship” includes the order to light incense to the gods. This chapter analyzes how scents can heighten and shape people’s memories and emotions, as well fostering the “hot and lively” social aspects of China’s temples and religious festivals.

Taste

3. The Taste of Religion in the Roman World [+–] 63-83

Zena Kamash £17.50

Royal Holloway University of London

Zena Kamash is Lecturer in Roman Archaeology in the Department of Classics at Royal Holloway University of London. She has wide-ranging interests that include food, religion and memory in the Roman world with a particular focus on Roman Britain and the Roman Middle East. She has curated an exhibition on food in the Roman world at Corinium Museum (Cirencester, UK).

As well as providing an overview of taste and mainstream Roman religion through sacrifice and feasting, this chapter highlights some of the specific tastes, and possible menus, of Roman religion, drawing out how these differed from everyday life, and how these differed from god to god and from god to human.

4. Candomblé’s Eating Myths: Religion Stated in Food Language [+–] 84-106

Patricia Rodrigues de Souza £17.50

Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo, Brazil

Patricia Rodrigues de Souza has been a Chef de cuisine and is currently a PhD student in religious studies at the Pontifical University of São Paulo, Brazil. She has taught Brazilian cookery and lectured on food studies. Patricia has observed religions, specially Brazilian Candomblé, through the lenses of food practices and has published a book in which she compares religions in terms of food practices: (“Religion at the table: a sample of religions and their food practices”).

Every religion has its taste! In the African-Brazilian Candomblé (as in many other religions) foods are offered to the deities (orixás) following strict rules, and compose a language which connects humans and deities. This chapter discusses foods practices in Candomblé rituals, including those of the priestess/cook who prepares and presents the food.

Sight

5. Sight and the Byzantine Icon [+–] 109-130

Angeliki Lymberopoulou £17.50

The Open University

Angeliki Lymberopoulou is Senior Lecturer in Byzantine art and culture at The Open University. She is primarily interested in cross-cultural interaction between Byzantine East and Latin West as exemplified in the art of Crete during the island’s Venetian domination (1211-1669). Her research aims at revealing how the social and religious concerns of artists and patrons are reflected in the artistic production of the Cretan frescoes and icons and to what extent this production is indicative of and directly related to the trading industry in the island during this period.’

This chapter addresses the sense of sight through case studies drawn from Byzantine art, the art of Orthodox Christianity. Vision is central to Orthodox worship, facilitated by images known as icons. By enabling the visualization of the invisible divine, the importance of icons is paramount in enhancing the faithful’s religious experience.

6. ‘Seeing’ my Beloved: Darśan and the Sikhi Perspective [+–] 131-146

Opinderjit Kaur Takhar £17.50

University of Wolverhampton

Opinderjit Kaur Takhar is Associate Professor of Sikh Studies and the Director of the Centre for Sikh and Panjabi Studies at the University of Wolverhampton, UK. She has written numerous academic publications on the Sikhs, including her research in the Oxford Handbook on Sikh Studies (2014). Her publications and research on the Ravidassia community is recognised worldwide and she has presented her work in Universities across the world. She is an Editorial Board member of the peer reviewed journal Sikh Formations: Religion, Culture and Theory. Takhar is Associate Editor for a Special Issue of the peer reviewed journal Contemporary South Asia. Takhar was awarded a MBE in 2018 for her services to Higher Education and the community in Wolverhampton. She was given the award for ‘Inspirational Woman of the Year’ in February 2020 by Asian Today. She was awarded for her contribution to Sikh Studies at the Pride of India Awards, held in the House of Lords London in 2017.

This chapter focuses on the concept of darśan from a Sikh perspective by analysing teachings from the Guru Granth Sahib on the subject of ‘seeing’ the Divine. Sikhi (Sikh teachings) emphasises the Ultimate Divine as formless and experienced through the senses. Indeed, Sikhi refers to this experience as blissful union with one’s Beloved.

Hearing

7. Resounding Mysteries: Sound and Silence in the Eleusinian Soundscape [+–] 149-169

Georgia Petridou £17.50

University of Liverpool

Georgia Petridou is a Lecturer in Ancient Greek History at the University of Liverpool. She is the author of Divine Epiphany in Greek Literature and Culture (OUP 2015) and the co-editor of Homo Patiens: Approaches to the Patient in the Ancient World (with Chiara Thumiger, Brill 2016) and Beyond Priesthood. Religious Entrepreneurs and Innovators in the Imperial Era (with Richard Gordon and Jörg Rüpke, DeGruyter 2017). Her current research focuses on the intersections of ancient medicine and religion.

The ancient initiatory “mysteries” of Eleusis, Greece, are famed for silence. Perhaps uniquely, there is silence about what happened at the key revelatory moment of the rituals. But we are told that the rituals involved phases of loud noise and of silence. This chapter advances current debates about the Eleusinian mysteries and its variegated Soundscape.

8. North American Indigenous Song, the Sacred and the Senses [+–] 170-188

Byron Dueck £17.50

The Open University

Byron Dueck is Senior Lecturer in Ethnomusicology at the Open University. He is the author of Musical Intimacies and Indigenous Imaginaries: Aboriginal Music in Public Performance (Oxford University Press), and the co-editor, with Martin Clayton and Laura Leante, of Experience and Meaning in Musical Performance (Oxford University Press).

How does music shape the experience of the sacred? This chapter looks at two genres of North American Indigenous singing – drum song performed at powwows, and gospel singing associated with funerary wakes – in exploring how music mediates sacred presences and process.

Touch

9. The Texture of the Gift: Religious Touching in the Greco-Roman World [+–] 191-214

Jessica Hughes £17.50

The Open University

What did ancient religion feel like? This chapter explores different elements of tactile experience in Greco-Roman sanctuaries, focusing on a group of ‘confession stelai’ from Roman Asia Minor. Themes explored include the transgressive touching of ancient sacred objects by mortals, and the punitive touching of mortal bodies by the Greco-Roman gods.

10. Touching, Crafting, Knowing: Religious Artefacts and the Fetish within Animism [+–] 215-236

Amy Whitehead £17.50

Massey University

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Dr Amy Whitehead is a Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at Massey University in Aotearoa New Zealand with a background in the Study or Religions. She specialises in ritual, NRM’s, and the material and performance cultures of religions.

At the shrine of the Virgin of Alcala in Spain, touch is the medium through which Catholic Christians perform their devotion and maintain traditions. In moments of touch, the personhood of the Virgin emerges, and material objects (perhaps ‘fetishes’) are offered not only to the Virgin but also to critical exploration.

End Matter

Index [+–] 237-239

Graham Harvey FREE

Open University

Reviews

Overall, the ten chapters have shown very successfully with the ethnographic and historic details that “religion is sensual because it is corporeal and earthy” (p. vii) as outlined in the series foreword. Religion is what people do, what can be touched, tasted, smelled, seen and listened to. The chapters also demonstrated that senses do not work in separation but intertwined with each other. We can expect much from this series and its coming volumes.
British Association for the Study of Religions (BASR) Bulletin

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Books and Journals in Humanities, Social Science and Performing Arts

Sensual Religion

Religion and the Five Senses

Graham Harvey [+–]

Open University

Jessica Hughes [+–]

The Open University

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