Sally M. Promey - Böcker

A revelatory critique of public display in the United States.  In Religion in Plain View, Sally M. Promey analyzes religion’s visible saturation of American public space and the histories that shaped this exhibitionary aesthetics. In street art, vehicle décor, signs, monuments, architecture, zoning policy, and more, Promey exposes American display’s merger of evangelicalism, capitalism, and imperialism. From this convergence, display materializes a distinctly American drive to advertise, claim territory, invalidate competitors, and fabricate a tractable national heritage. Charting this aesthetics’ strategic work as a Protestant technology of White nation formation, Religion in Plain View offers a dynamic critique of the ways public display perpetuates deeply ingrained assumptions about the proper shape of life and land in the United States.

Religious liberalism in America has often been equated with an ecumenical Protestant establishment. By contrast, American Religious Liberalism draws attention to the broad diversity of liberal cultures that shapes America's religious movements. The essays gathered here push beyond familiar tropes and boundaries to interrogate religious liberalism's dense cultural leanings by looking at spirituality in the arts, the politics and piety of religious cosmopolitanism, and the interaction between liberal religion and liberal secularism. Readers will find a kaleidoscopic view of many of the progressive strands of America's religious past and present in this richly provocative volume.

"Promey's book is a penetrating analysis of Shaker art. . . . The book is a gem, a true advance in Shaker studies, art history, religious history, and cultural history. Highly recommended." —Choice" . . . a very intelligent and articulate . . . treatment of a stunning set of message-images." —Art Bulletin"This book is a pleasure to look at and to read." —Religious Studies Review"[A] fascinating investigation into another world. The Shaker spirit drawings . . . offer clues into a remarkable moment of American life, as well as an opportunity to rethink just how the visual arts, religious revitalizations, and social memory relate to one another. . . . [A] model study: clear, absorbing, and significant." —Neil Harris, author of The Artist in American Society"Sally Promey's inquiry . . . critically engages current issues in the study of visual culture: what do images do; how do they work; what needs do they fulfill; just what is their 'power'? Her compelling case study joins fundamental concerns of art historians with those of students of religion and history . . . By means of an exacting examination of Shaker drawings as the site of both expectation and encounter, Promey successfully situates these Spiritual Spectacles at the meeting point of the 'inner' and the 'outer' eye." —Linda Seidel, author of Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait: Stories of an Icon"Promey has brought to her work an excellent sensitivity to the religious issues involved, keen sight and powers of observation, and a very creative interpretive framework." —Stephen J. Stein, author of The Shaker Experience in America