{"id":12302,"date":"2021-12-14T10:11:36","date_gmt":"2021-12-14T15:11:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/?p=12302"},"modified":"2021-12-14T10:11:40","modified_gmt":"2021-12-14T15:11:40","slug":"reimagining-religious-imagination","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2021\/12\/14\/reimagining-religious-imagination\/","title":{"rendered":"Reimagining religious imagination"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Wouter Hanegraaff has proposed<\/a> that we rethink the study of religion as the study of “imaginative formations.” Much of my research has focused on something like that, or at least on the creative role of imagination in mediating the ways people come to live in the world, shape that world, and contest it among each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My recent review essay on the “religious imagination” covers several books that help us think through the relationships between religious creativity, imagination, and what Jacques Ranciere has called the “distribution of the sensible.” The books include T. M. Luhrmann’s How God Becomes Real: Kindling the Presence of Invisible Others<\/em>; Jeffrey Kripal’s The Flip: Epiphanies of Mind and the Future of Knowledge<\/em> and Secret Body: Erotic and Esoteric Currents in the History of Religion<\/em>; Jennifer Gosetti-Ferencei’s The Life of Imagination: Revealing and Making the World<\/em>; David Morgan’s Images at Work: The Material Culture of Enchantment<\/em>; Mary-Jane Rubenstein’s Pantheologies: Gods, Worlds, Monsters<\/em>; and Jack Miles’s Religion As We Know It: An Origin Story<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can read a pre-publication version of my paper here<\/a>, or find the whole issue of this journal — a special issue<\/a> of the Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture<\/em> on the “‘spiritualization’ of ecology” — at the journal’s web site<\/a>. (The journal is paywalled by its publisher, so if you’re at an academic institution that doesn’t subscribe to it, you can urge your library to do that. Full disclosure: I’m an associate editor of the journal.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

\u201cWith all the trends that mark the current study of religion\u2014postsecularism, decolonization, the affective and sensorial turns, \u2018lived\u2019 and \u2018everyday religion\u2019, queer theory, and all manner of new materialisms and ontological entanglements\u2014one thing (or two) that can hardly remain untouched is the way in which religion is imagined, <\/em>and the way in which imagination is itself taken to be a central feature of religion.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Read Reimagining Religious Imagination, in Theory and in Practice<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Wouter Hanegraaff has proposed that we rethink the study of religion as the study of “imaginative formations.” Much of my research has focused on something like that, or at least on the creative role of imagination in mediating the ways people come to live in the world, shape that world, and contest it among each […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[688977,691847],"tags":[692713,247,692708,354,692711,692712,628342,417,692707,692710,4481,692709,692714],"class_list":["post-12302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geo_philosophy","category-religion-spirituality","tag-cognitive-theory","tag-image","tag-imaginal","tag-imagination","tag-jeffrey-kripal","tag-philosophy-of-imagination","tag-philosophy-of-religion","tag-religion","tag-religious-imagination","tag-t-m-luhrmann","tag-visual-culture","tag-visual-theory","tag-wouter-hanegraaff"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-3cq","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":12606,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2022\/06\/24\/ways-to-inhabit-the-world\/","url_meta":{"origin":12302,"position":0},"title":"Ways to inhabit the world","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"June 24, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"The following post elaborates on some comments I made this week at the Ritual Creativity conference at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. Deep thanks to conference organizers Katri Ratia and Fran\u00e7ois Gauthier for inviting me to what turned out to be an immensely rewarding event, and to my co-panelists Graham\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Eco-theory"","block_context":{"text":"Eco-theory","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/ecophilosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1028,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2009\/02\/11\/imagination-contemporary-theory\/","url_meta":{"origin":12302,"position":1},"title":"imagination & contemporary theory","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"February 11, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"This is a summary I provided to a grad student who was starting to get into this area. It\u2019s very introductory and far from complete in its coverage, but since there\u2019s so little out there on this topic, I thought it would be useful to post it. It's also a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophy"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/geo_philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":14459,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2026\/04\/14\/situating-the-new-lives-of-images\/","url_meta":{"origin":12302,"position":2},"title":"Situating “The New Lives of Images”","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"April 14, 2026","format":false,"excerpt":"While Stanford University Press has made the first chapter of The New Lives of Images available to readers on the book's web site, what it hasn't made available is the Preface, which lays out the problem the book is intended to address, as well as the book's relationship to the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Eco-theory"","block_context":{"text":"Eco-theory","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/ecophilosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2026\/04\/image.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2026\/04\/image.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2026\/04\/image.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2026\/04\/image.png?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1012,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2008\/12\/14\/immanence-transcendence-religion-imagination-politics\/","url_meta":{"origin":12302,"position":3},"title":"immanence, transcendence, religion, imagination, politics","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"December 14, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"On the surface, \"immanence\" would appear to favor certain religiosities (paganisms, pantheisms, animisms, earth spiritualities) over others (transcendentalist monotheisms, rigid dualisms, Buddhist \"extinctionism,\" et al). But its resonance works within traditions as well: towards panentheistic strains of Christianity, where the Christ is seen as in-dwelling, where Easter is the rebirth\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Eco-theory"","block_context":{"text":"Eco-theory","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/ecophilosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":14049,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2025\/04\/17\/forthcoming-books\/","url_meta":{"origin":12302,"position":4},"title":"Forthcoming books","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"April 17, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm happy to share the news that both The New Lives of Images and Terra Invicta are now available for pre-order. The New Lives of Images: Digital Ecologies and Anthropocene Imaginaries in More-than-Human Worlds is a theoretically and empirically rich study of images, imagination, and the digital. It's the fourth\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Eco-culture"","block_context":{"text":"Eco-culture","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/ecoculture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5725,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2012\/03\/30\/nature-the-popular-imagination-redux\/","url_meta":{"origin":12302,"position":5},"title":"Nature & the Popular Imagination (redux)","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"March 30, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"We're getting some good submissions, but there's room for more. The deadline for proposals has been extended to May 1. I'm sharing the call for papers again here... The International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture (ISSRNC) is pleased to announce its next conference in Malibu, California\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Academe"","block_context":{"text":"Academe","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/academe\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12302"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12321,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12302\/revisions\/12321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}