March 2014
A History of Religion in 5 ½ Objects
by S. Brent Plate (Hamilton College)
“Religious history is incomplete if it ignores the sensing body, and the seemingly trivial things it confronts,” argues S. Brent Plate in this month’s Religion and Culture Web Forum. “Beginning with our incomplete half-body,” Plate discusses “five types of objects that humans have engaged and put to use in highly symbolic, sacred ways: stones, crosses, incense, drums, and bread.”
Read A History of Religion in 5 ½ Objects.
Read the invited responses by:
Lisa Bitel (University of Southern California); and
Jonathan H. Ebel (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign).
**Plate’s essay is adapted from his book, A History of Religion in 5 ½ Objects: Bringing the Spiritual to Its Senses, now available from Beacon Press.