Art And Belief: Artists Engaged In Interreligious Dialogue (cross Cultural Theologies)

''Art and Belief'' explores communication between faiths through an examination of contemporary artistic practice. The book discusses how a range of artists formulate their worldview and what motivates them to engage in dialogue. These artists are engaged in a wide range of artistic forms and practice and come to dialogue from diverse religious positions. The aim of the book is to question the assumptions of interreligious dialogue as a largely intellectual exercise in defining the religious ""other"" and to explore dialogue as a manifestation of interpersonal ethics Creative Encounters explores the forms and functions of contemporary interreligious dialogue by focusing on artists who are active in this field across different art forms and different religious positions. It seeks to understand how artists formulate a dialogical worldview in a religiously plural and post-secular context and what motivates them to engage in dialogue. Traditional normative theories of interreligious dialogue are called into question. Critical attention is brought to the narrow focus on dialogue as a purely intellectual quest for making the religious other, as an abstract but coherent theological and historical entity, intelligible. A contrasting view of dialogue as a question of interpersonal ethics inspired primarily by the philosophy of Buber is introduced. The study is thoroughly empirical in scope, building on in-depth interviews with artists. The analytical approach is qualitative, resting on a hermeneutically inspired epistemology.