The Visual Culture of American Religions

Contemporary artists have often clashed with conservative American evangelicals in recent years, giving the impression that art and religion are fundamentally at odds.

Yet historically, artistic images have played a profound role in American religious life.

This superb collection of essays, with its unique collection of images, challenges the growing tension between religion and the arts by illustrating and investigating their long-standing and intriguing relationship from the early nineteenth century to the present day.

The essays explore such varied topics as Sioux Sun Dance artifacts and paintings, American Jewish New Year postcards, the New Mexican santo tradition, roadside shrines, images of journey in African American pictorial traditions, the public display of religion, and the religious use of nineteenth-century technologies of mass reproduction.