“Material Religion” as Subject and Manifesto in Social Studies on Christianity: A Review of Minna Opas, Anna Haapalainen (eds.), Christianity and the Limits of Materiality. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017, XV+274 pp. (Bloomsbury Studies in Material Religion, 1)

Abstract

The reviewed collection of articles constitutes a continuation of an academic discussion of material religion. On the basis of research in different cultures, the authors try to show the way Christians conceptualise, negotiate, contest and challenge questions of material aspects of religious life. They interpret materiality not merely and solely in a narrow sense, i.e. as specific ritual objects (candles, icons, altars, statues, and so on), but as a set of historically and culturally specific relationships between material and immaterial / spiritual in a certain religious tradition. The criticism of the review mainly focuses on the disbalance between ‘theory’ and ‘practice’ in the material religion studies presented in this collection. In some articles, the ethnographic component often appears to be in the shadow of ambitious and recurring methodological manifests.