Over the last five hundred years, religion in the Western world has undergone radical changes, transitioning from the perceived monopoly of Christianity to incorporate the philosophies and practices of Judaism, Islam, and other faiths, as well as non-religious worldviews. These newer perspectives have enlivened historic traditions and have cultivated new modes of artistic expression in surprising and unprecedented ways, including artistic endeavors characterized as secular in motivation and audience. Rather than diminishing the role of the sacred in the arts, these transformative socio-economic and political influences-such as secularization, democratization, globalization, and technology-have combined with expanding geographic borders and personal motivations of ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and race to cultivate new ways of celebrating and critiquing religious belief, practices, imagery, and identity. The Oxford Encyclopedia of Religion and the Arts in the West: Renaissance to the Present undertakes the challenge of summarizing and analyzing the major themes, religious traditions, and trends in a field that has become emblematic of the ongoing shift in religious studies toward multi-disciplinary scholarship. Part of the online Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion, this collection includes over 90 in-depth articles exploring the intersections of religion and art, from early Renaissance painting, sculpture, performance art, and architecture in the West, to the artistic interpretations of the upheaval of the 20th century, to modern digital media and interfaith sacred spaces within the expanding geographical and ethnic borders of the Western world. Incorporating studies of theology and religious practice with critical theory and material and visual culture, the Encyclopedia aims to both provide an authoritative reference work and to set the stage for future research.
