Plastic Art

 Religion is something that is a group phenomenon. We communicate our religious ideas through things in our world. Religion is a communal thing and thus we need a way to share it.

Christ depicted in Native American tradition

Religion seems to be something that comes about naturally in a group. However they way it evolves and grows and the way it is passed on seems to be a more involved process. Each individual will have ideas about what the religion should be like, or have ideas about what should be different here and there. These ideas without expression are nothing. Each person needs to express themself, and they do this through things. These "things" can be a wide variety of items that are tangible in this world. However, things by themselves are nothing. However, when you have ideas combined with things, you get art. And this is the foremost mode of expression in religion as it is legible to illiterate and creates most easily the "powerful, pervasive, and long lasting moods and motivations" needed to convey the religion's message and make it more desirable to pass down.

Some artwork is likely not accepted into the symbolic
vocabulary of most groups

But perhaps art is dangerous for religion. Art is the creative expression of individuals, and this individuality seems contradictory to the group aspect of religion. Art has many benefits for religion though as mentioned before, giving it emotional character and giving the illiterate something to read. Perhaps, although art is individual expression, many people make religious art, and the art that is agreed upon as embodying the religion's ideas becomes symbolic of the art. And anything that would not be acceptable to the group would likely not be added to the vocabulary of symbols. This would make sense because this is how the scripture (an art form in and of itself) is agreed upon. Many people had writings about the christian religion, and at some point hundreds of books of christian ideals and stories had to be sheared down to one big book (The Bible). Perhaps religious art works the same way. Though the art works is from the inspiration of an individual, it is agreed upon by the religious community.

Modern religious art

And one beautiful thing about art is that it has the ability to morph. As times change and culture advances and the old symbols/art does not seem relevant anymore, the art can morph to fit the times better. The ideas that people have are expressed differently from time to time and culture to culture. We often see this as Native Americans or Africans or Europeans display their jesus differently from each other, though they are all depicting the same person. And we see differences in art through time as we have gone from icons to paintings depicting stories to even modern art.


It is fascinating how art changes as time goes on and manages to stay relevant to both the religion and the social times. Art is an emotionally power, versatile and effective device that helps to keep religion alive. It helps keep a religion a communal phenomenon.