RELI 237: Religion and Art

RELI 237-DL1: Religion and Art
(Spring 2025)

Online

Section Information for Spring 2025

We may not realize it, but many forms of artistic expression – sculpture, murals, paintings, drama,
architecture, and even songs, film, and theater – convey religious ideas, or are deeply rooted in the
world’s religious traditions. And as we learn more about cultures around the world, a basic
understanding of their religious traditions, and their many modes of self-expression, is essential in
order to break down barriers of mistrust and misunderstanding. We need to more fully appreciate
the world’s spiritual traditions, and how each tradition creates what we in the West regard as works
of art.

For many religions, a specific aesthetic goal – the search for ‘Beauty,’ the ‘Sublime,’ etc. – lies at the
foundation of their experience of what is ‘holy,’ or ‘sacred.’ These goals, inherent in each spiritual
tradition, drive the intellectual and creative process of each community’s artists, as part of a
community’s efforts to create a heightened awareness of a realm beyond the senses. Meanwhile,
artists outside the tradition, indifferent to an art form’s religious roots, use elements of these
religious art forms to create their own, secularized, form of ‘Beauty’ and the ‘Sublime.

RELI 237.DL1 is an online asynchronous section.

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Course Information from the University Catalog

Credits: 3

The course examines both the way that religious stories, images, ideas, and values have influenced the production and experience of art, and how art has historically been a primary means to express religious thought, feeling, and meaning. Thus, this course will examine the arts across different religions. The course will also examine the extent to which the artistic experience may be thought of as a kind of "religious" experience, and how even civil art projects convey a kind of civic or national "religion." Offered by Religious Studies. Limited to three attempts.
Mason Core: Mason Core, Arts
Schedule Type: Lecture
Grading:
This course is graded on the Undergraduate Regular scale.

The University Catalog is the authoritative source for information on courses. The Schedule of Classes is the authoritative source for information on classes scheduled for this semester. See the Schedule for the most up-to-date information and see Patriot web to register for classes.