The main argument put forward in this article is that, while both religion and secularity cannot be but material, it is important to acknowledge the materiality of secularity for two reasons. One, doing so allows the resort to materiality to be criticized and transcended as part of a politics of ousting manifestations of religions perceived as Other from a dominant perspective (as is the case with views of Islam in Western societies). Second, it allows a gap to be recognized between drawing a boundary between the religious and non-religious in the name of secularity on an abstract level of analysis, and the actual ways in which secularity contains material religious forms (such as defunct Christian buildings and discarded artefacts, or a missionary collection of indigenous spiritual artefacts kept in an ethnological museum) in ways that keep the religious alive and affective. New conceptual and methodological possibilities arise from taking the materiality of secularity seriously.

Contributing to current efforts to grapple with museums' colonial legacies, this article takes the question of evidence as an entry point to unlock the multi‐layered make‐up of African spiritual artifacts in missionary collections. Focussing on Dutch and German missionary collections of legbawo and dzokawo from the Ewe region in Ghana and Togo, we analyze how such artifacts were subjected to “practices of evidencing” by multiple parties over a span of 120 years. These collections enshrine coexisting, clashing ways of evidencing: multiple possibilities of knowing (about) the items, their trajectories, and their relations with humans and other‐than‐human beings. Next to analyzing the missionary and museal frames imposed on these artifacts, we investigate contemporary Ewe religious practitioners' ritual technologies of knowing about the presence, identities, and wishes of spirits as alternative modes of evidencing unseen presences. Pluralizing evidencing, we argue, offers opportunities for decolonial critique and rethinking established museum and research frameworks.

Christian missionary collections have contributed much to the development of the exhibitionary complex, but have received significantly less notice than imperial states using violence to acquire collections, and subsequent demands for restitution. This introductory essay argues that researching missionary collecting and exhibiting requires a broad approach to the materiality of collections, to recognize the multilayered biographies of artifacts, the coeval relations between missionaries and (future) converts in the mission field, as well as how archives and collections form part of technologies of empire. This "unpacking" leads to a recognition, firstly, of the salient position of religion in those processes of collecting and exhibiting; secondly, the realization that converting people was accompanied by multitemporal and multidirectional processes of converting goods; and thirdly, that despite public assertions of Christian iconoclasm, these conversions always also included turning artifacts into desecrated, secular, or even commercial goods. We conclude by arguing that these processes, including their potential reversal, need to be taken into account when considering the future of these collections.

Entwicklungen in religionswissenschaftlichen Studien in den letzten 20 Jahren zeigen drei wichtige Begriffe, die für eine Neukonfiguration von Studien über Religion von zentraler Bedeutung sind: Transformation, Materialität und Mediation. Die Säkularisierungstheorie zeigte auf, dass Religion in ständiger Transformation in mehrere Richtungen zu sein scheint. Wichtig ist, dass Untersuchungen von Transformationen von Religion (und was wir damit meinen) stets eine historische Perspektive beinhalten. Studien, die sich mit der Transformation von Religion beschäftigen, müssen nicht nur das Neue oder gar das Zukünftige in den Blick nehmen, sondern auch den Einfluss und die Prägung durch das Vergangene. Dies hängt auch wesentlich mit der Frage nach der Definition und ganz allgemein nach der Definierbarkeit von Religion zusammen. Zudem stellt sich aber auch die Frage nach dem Verhältnis von Medien und Religion, namentlich nach der Beziehung zwischen diesen Begriffen, die weitaus komplizierter als die anfängliche, etwas technische Idee einer „Begegnung“ ist. Medien dürfen nicht länger als entgegengesetzt, sondern sollten als untrennbar mit Religion zusammengedacht werden, basierend auf einem Verständnis von Religion als Vermittlung (mediation). Das Hauptanliegen des Beitrags ist es aufzuzeigen, warum ein Fokus auf Vermittlung als materieller Prozess von zentraler Bedeutung ist, um Transformationen von Religion sowohl empirisch als auch konzeptionell zu erfassen.

An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

"Hans Belting (1935–2023): Images Beyond “The Era of Art”." Material Religion, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print), p. 2

An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Why is it rewarding to analyse religion from a material angle and which future research directions emerge? This chapter firstly conceptualizes materiality in dialogue with incentives offered by new materialism and, secondly, assesses which forms of material religion have so far received too little attention. Thirdly, inspired by Feuerbach’s gastro-philosophy, I argue that food is an existential material form through which humans are enveloped into a grounded exchange with the world. Finally, introducing a collection of “hungry” legba-figures in the Übersee-Museum Bremen, Germany, I call attention to feeding spirits as a prime religious practice. Religion should be rethought from the stomach.

An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.