ABSTRACT
Religious faith manifests itself in an infinite variety of material forms. Without their material expressions, religions float in theological ether, and spiritualities enter the void, lifeless and deracinated. The human mind and hand, be they refined and delicate or rude and horny, are turned doggedly down the generations to the creation of countless material modes of expressing religious sensibility, identity and belonging. When dealing with the things of the spirit, matter matters inordinately. The particular ambivalences of the material order in relation to the ‘immaterial’ world – concealment-revelation, barrier-breach, adornment-defacement, profanationconsecration – play out in every area of religious expression. Truly, with the tenebrous mirror of material reality ever before our gaze, we see things spiritual and eternal ‘through a glass darkly’ (1 Cor. 13:12).
