Aesthetics of Persuasion

7/31/2019 Aesthetics of Persuasion

1/23

South Atlantic Quarterly109:4, Fall 2010

OI 10.1215/00382876-2010-015 2010 Duke University Press

Birgit Meyer

Aesthetics of Persuasion: Global Christianityand Pentecostalisms Sensational Forms

Aesthetics is born as a discourse of the body.

Terry Eagleton, The Ideology of the Aesthetic

By virtue o its foundational premise to goand make disciples of all nations, baptizing themin the name of the Father and of the Son andof the Holy Spirit, Christianity is a world reli-gion. This raises the question of what is newempirically and conceptuallyabout the notion

of global Christianity. This notion spotlights anew, distinct mode through which Christianitybecomes manifest in the world, which calls forspecial attention. Newhere refers both to currentempirical phenomenaemergent modes of reli-giosity that did not exist beforeand to theoreti-cal innovation, which has repercussions for pastand present conceptualizations. Thus, the frame-work of global Christianity allows us not onlyto grasp actual present-day transformations butalso to develop alternative approaches, throughwhich our understandings of Christianity as weknow it are altered.

As scholars have noted, Pentecostal/charis-matic churches are central to the globalization ofChristianity in our time, and in this sense, Pente-costalism provides, as Ruth Marshall writes, the


2/23

742 Birgit Meyer

contemporary archetype of Christianity as a community without an insti-tution, but a community of a new type, proper to the forms of diuse,individualized, and nonisomorphic forms of connectedness in our global-ized world. Actively endorsing global outreach, Pentecostal/charismaticchurches operate in, or at least aspire to, global networks that bring togetherborn-again Christians under the Holy Spirit, who is everywhere, not tiedto one privileged locality. A transposable message and portable prac-tices are vital to Pentecostalisms globalization project. The Holy Spiritpervades all human-made boundaries and yet is not an elusive, purely tran-scendental abstraction because it is held to operate from behind the surfaceof appearances, from which it aects the course of things in the material

world.The all-pervasive presence of the Holy Spirit goes along with the valua-

tion of the body as a vessel for divine power. The Holy Spirit is an experi-ential presence that invokes feelings. ne of the most salient features ofPentecostal/charismatic churches is their sensational appeal; they oftenoperate via music and powerful oratory, through which born-again Chris-tians are enabled to sense the presence of the Holy Spirit withand in theirbodies, wherever they are, and to act on such feelings. Sensationalmay well

be understood as both appealing to the senses andspectacular. Echoing thecurrent craving for sensations and experiences in the framework of reli-gion, Pentecostal/charismatic churches emphasize the importance of sens-ing the presence and power of the Holy Spirit directly and immediately. Asthe embodied presence of God, the Holy Spirit is a portable power source.Having such sensations of divine presence does not happen unexpect-edly but requires the existence of a particular shared religious aesthetic,through which the Holy Spirit becomes accessible and perceptible.

n the rst decade of the twenty-rst century, Pentecostal/charismaticchurches have received a great deal of attention from social scientists. nmuch of the current literature, the churches in this admittedly broad spec-trum are viewed through a Protestant lens. Such a perspective, indebtedto the work of Max Weber, has alerted scholars to the remarkable electiveanities between the spread of capitalism and Pentecostalisms appeal,as well as to the tendency to ssion into ever more independent organiza-tions, or to the iconoclastic attitude toward religious objects accentuatedin both Protestant and Pentecostal/charismatic churches, which decries

Catholicism and indigenous religious traditions as idol worship. How-ever, the analysis of Pentecostalism via Protestantism also creates a nar-


3/23

Aesthetics of Persuasion 743

rowed view, impeding a fuller understanding of the central tenets of Pente-costalism in our time, especially its sensational dimension. n addition,the lens itsel is problematic, privileging a particular view of Protestantismas a rational, disenchanting religion that transcends the body, the senses,and outward religious forms. t fails to account for some crucial aspects ofProtestantism.

My prime concern here is to develop some alternative concepts thatexpand our view of Pentecostalism as it is viewed through this Protestantlens. To do so, build on works that emphasize the materiality of reli-gionfor example, the value attributed to bodies, things, texts, and ges-tures, so as to make the divine tangible in the immanent. First, critically

discuss the severance of aesthetics and Protestantism, and the concomitantdismissal of form in the pathbreaking work of Max Weber. argue for theneed to recapture an understanding of religion as aesthetics, albeit takenin Aristotles broad sense ofaisthesis. then present the notion of the sensa-tional form, so as to grasp how the Holy Spirit operates according to Pente-costal understanding and experience, and to appreciate its material dimen-sion. Third, via the aesthetics of persuasion, seek to frame conceptually theinterface of religion, sensation, and politics in order to understand the

broader modalities o binding and the politics o belonging, paying atten-tion to Jacques Rancires distribution of the sensible. Taking Pentecos-talism as a prominent representative of global Christianity, seek not onlyto enhance our understanding o its particular sensational religiosity butalso to outline new directions for the broader study of Protestantism andChristianity in general, taking into account the importance of materiality.Global Christianity thus becomes a new framework that renders visiblehitherto overlooked aspects of Protestantism.

Religion and Aesthetics: Weber and Beyond

More than one hundred years after the publication ofThe Protestant Ethicand the Spirit of Capitalism, Max Webers work still leaves its mark on thestudy o both Protestantism and, more broadly, modern religion. Accord-ing to Weber, with its fundamental critique of Catholicism as falsely attrib-uting power to human-made sacraments and ritualsthe legacy of magicalreligiosityCalvinist Protestantism instigated the irreversible disen-

chantment of the world.While Webers work has proven fertile for research on religionfor


4/23

744 Birgit Meyer

instance, by calling for the discernment of elective anities between thespheres of religion and the marketit also has considerable limitations.My central argument here is that the marked sensational dimension ofPentecostalism calls us to revisit critically Webers distinction betweenmagical religiosity, which attributes power to religious acts, substances,and rituals, and rational salvation religions, which aim for pure, immedi-ate experience that occurs without xed religious rituals and forms. n sodoing, wish to complement the work of Matthew Engelke, Peter J. Pels,and Webb Keane on the genealogy of the current dematerialized under-standing of modern religion in general and Protestantism in particular.Whereas these authors have mainly concentrated on E. B. Tylors intel-

lectualist approach to religion (famously described as belie in spiritualbeings) and Saussurean structural linguistics that asserted the arbitrari-ness of the signier, as being formative for meaning-centered approachesin the study of religion, focus on Weber as another foundational authorwhose work underpins the Protestant lens.

Although the distinction between magical religiosity and salvation reli-gions informs The Protestant Ethic, it is more clearly expressed in WebersReligious Rejections of the World and Their Directions, in which he com-

pares dierent religious traditions attitudes to the world by examiningthem in a number of spheres economic, political, aesthetic, erotic, andintellectual. He posits an evolutionary scheme, according to which salva-tion religionsepitomized by Protestantismare on the highest level.f particular interest here is Webers section on aesthetics, in which headdresses the link between magical religiosity and art.

Mentioning key dimensions of religionartifacts, music, dance, build-ings, and so onWeber stresses the initial synthesis of religion and art, sug-gesting that the former was the cradle of the latter. This synthesis broughtabout the development of particular religious styles, which establishedtraditions that would convey particular magical religious eects. Weberregards this stereotyped religiosityits outward forms geared towardmagical ecacyas lower than the religiosity of salvation religions. Hecontrasts it with an alternative, higher religiosity that is severed from artthe religious ethic o brotherliness characteristic of salvation religions.Valuing religious bonds with fellow believers higher than blood ties andrevering faith more than earthly pleasures, this ethic endorses a distancing

attitude toward the world in general and art and aesthetics in particular


5/23


For the religious ethic o brotherliness, just as for a priori ethical rig-orism, art as a carrier of magical eects is not only devalued but evensuspect. The sublimation of the religious ethic and the quest for sal-vation, on the one hand, and the evolution of the inherent logic of art,on the other, have tended to form an increasingly tense relation. Allsublimated religions of salvation have focused on the meaning alone,not upon the form, of the things and actions relevant for salvation. Sal-vation religions have devalued form as contingent, as something creaturelyand distracting from meaning.

Weber seems to endorse the devaluation of form by salvation religions. His

rather dismissive stance on art and aesthetics, in contrast with his focuson meaning, is also expressed in his essay on the sociology of religion, inwhich he suggests a parallel between the religious devaluation of art and thedevaluation of magical, orgiastic, ecstatic, and ritual elements of religiosityin favor of ascetic and spiritual-mystic elements. He asserts that rationalreligions (by which he means Judaic rational reform movements, originalChristianity, and ascetic Protestantism) had in common the condemnationof uninhibited surrender to the distinctive form-producing values of art.This invokes a strong opposition between rational religiosity and matters

of the world, particularly the aesthetic, erotic, and political spheres. FromWebers stance, art appears as potentially blasphemous.

Weber submits that in practice the relation between art and religion couldbe restored. The renewed synthesis comes about when religions aspire tospread out The more they wished to be universalist mass religions andwere thus directed to emotional propaganda and mass appeals, the moresystematic were their alliances with art. Weber suggests here a tensionbetween universal outreach and the purity of the message. Even from the

perspective o his own model, which associates the evolution of religionwith its severance from aesthetics, this signals a paradox the incompati-bility of universal spread and religious rationality eliminates the ability ofsalvation religions to universalize. However, since universal outreach is acentral feature of Christianity and thus also of Protestantism (as witnessedin the nineteenth-century missionary project o bringing the Gospel to theheathens), one may wonder whether a dismissal of art (and thus of things,form, and style) would be possible. will return to this tension and the limi-

tation o Webers model in more detail.Let us start with how contemporary Pentecostalism challenges Webers


6/23

746 Birgit Meyer

contrast between art/aesthetics and rational salvation. n a compellingessay, Bernice Martin argues

t is obviously a salvation religion, patently and powerfully an ethico brotherhood, and so might be expected to veer towards the anti-art position. n the other hand, Webers characterization of the ele-ments of magical ecacy traditionally mediated through aestheticpractices employing music, gesture and dance also has persuasiveapplication in Pentecostal liturgical practices and charismatic perfor-mances, although the role Weber attributes to sacred buildings andartifacts is less obvious in the Pentecostal case. Further, Pentecos-

talism, the ospring of Methodism and its tradition of the warmedheart, clearly comes under Webers characterization of a universal-ist religion directed to mass appeal, which uses aesthetic media asvehicles of emotional propaganda.

Martin goes on to say that Pentecostalism embodies multiple paradoxesand does not t neatly into Webers model. Discussing Pentecostalismsembrace of modern communication technologies, its use of music, andthe style of worship in which the Gifts of the Spirit manifest themselves

in glossolalia, prophecy, healings and other charismata, Martin states thatthese practices are inescapably aesthetic modes o human action in thatthey have form as well asand, in an important sense, inextricable fromcontent and message. For this reason, Martins characterization of Pente-costalism as paradoxical stops short of a more fundamental critique ofWebers model, which she leaves more or less intact. As this model stillunderpins a great deal of work on modern religion, such a fundamentalcritique is o key importance. t forms an indispensable starting point for areconceptualization of aesthetics as intrinsic to modern religion, includingnot only Pentecostalism but also Protestantism. This endeavor involves twocentral, interrelated issues Webers narrow understanding of and dismis-sive attitude toward aesthetics, and the privileging of content and meaningabove form.

Regarding the rst issue, it is important to recall the evolution sketchedby Weber from a broad notion of aesthetics bound up with religion to a nar-row notion of aesthetics as located in the separate sphere of art, which is indisagreement with but may also be a replacement for religion. This is not

typical o Weber alone but echoes post-Enlightenment understandings ofaesthetics. n the aftermath of the proposition by eighteenth-century Ger-


7/23


man philosopher Alexander Baumgarten to establish aesthetica as a new sci-ence of sensuous knowing, the eld became a central theme for thinkersof the Enlightenment and beyond. Baumgarten advocated a broad under-standing of aesthetics in the sense of aisthesis, which refers to humanscapacity to perceive the world with their ve senses and to interpret itthrough these perceptions. This broad understanding was subsequentlynarrowed, and aesthetics became more or less conned to the autonomoussphere of art and the beautiful, which became the privileged realm for a dis-course on the body and sensation in modern society. Here it is important toinvoke mmanuel Kant, because his thinking still shapes the way in whichaesthetics is understood. Kant identied art as the domain for aesthetic

judgment. Deriving from the work of art itself, the appreciation o beautyrequires a disinterested beholder and yet depends on a feeling that is objec-tive by virtue o being shared by others. Understood in this sense, art andaesthetics become constitutive of the sensus communis aestheticus (aestheti-scher Gemeinsinn in the German original).

As Terry Eagleton explains, Kants understanding of aesthetics as expres-sive of our universal human faculty o judgment, which predisposes us tofeel the same, irrespective of our own subjective interests and decisions,

provided a new ideological paradigm for bourgeois society. Thus, artinvoked a new kind ofsensus communis distinct from, and a potential sub-stitute for, religion (as emphasized in romanticism). Art and religion, inthe sense of magical religiosity, have in common the mobilization of sen-sations and experiences that are located in the body and stand in contrastto rational thinking. n other words, modern discourses on aesthetics andreligion of the magical religiosity type are inscribed in the dualism o bodyand mind. Such discourses recognize the importance of sensations, yetview them as subordinate, if not inferior, to rational thinking. By includingaesthetics in this dualism, the broader meaning ofaisthesis as comprisingsensations andknowledge is lost. However, being born as a discourse ofthe body, aesthetics cannot fully be contained in the limited realm of thearts and the hierarchical mind-body dualism. Even though the narrowingof aesthetics cannot simply be undone by a wishful return to Aristotle, it isimportant to stress that there is something excessive about the body, sensa-tions, and experience that demands more encompassing approaches so asto move our thinking about aesthetics out of the mind-body straightjacket.

This was clearly not Webers concern, and it is symptomatic of a broaderProtestant attitude about religion. Webers dismissive attitude toward


8/23

748 Birgit Meyer

art and aesthetics resonates well with Protestant misgivings about the useof material forms in communicating with and about God. While Catholictheology acknowledges the role of aesthetics in enabling religious experi-ence (after all, sacraments require ritual forms, just as the presence of Godmaterializes via imagesa process theologically conceptualized as keno-sis), Protestant theology adopts a far more skeptical stance that makes itblind to its own aesthetics. f course, this is grounded in the much-invokediconoclasm of the Reformation that challenged the Catholic use o imagesas mediators between people and God. conoclasts argued against notjust the use of religious images but the clerics power claims that operatedthrough the images. Nonetheless, a radically iconoclastic stancereject-

ing images and aestheticshas serious shortcomings, because it misrec-ognizes the nature of Christianity as bridging a distance between peopleand God that requires images, or even that religion requires some kind ofbridging forms.

Here it is instructive to turn briey to the early-nineteenth-century Prot-estant theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher, known for his romanticist viewof religion as the feeling ofschlechthinnigen Abhngigkeitthat was distinctfromand could thus coexist with on a higher levelrational thinking.

Even though Schleiermacher regarded art and religion as two befriendedsouls, he strongly disliked aestheticism, which he associated with Catholi-cism. Aestheticism was problematic because it substituted true religionwith the worship of church art and thus endorsed the power of the church,not of God. This view is echoed by Weber, who was well read in Schleier-machers work. Yet, the dismissal of aestheticism did not resolve the prob-lem that God, even when regarded as beyond human understanding andthus not capable o being captured in ritual forms and images, needs to bepresent to believers in some way. This problem of presence does not justarise with the prominence of global Pentecostalism but is intrinsic to Prot-estantism. n this sense, the phenomenon of Pentecostalism, in whichaesthetics so obviously is an inescapably important resource, pushesthe lingering question of aesthetics and the feeling bodyand, as willexplain, of religious formsto the forefront.

Twentieth-century Calvinist theologian Karl Barth insisted that therelation between humans and God does not originate in human thinkingand actions but in the Holy Spirit alone. Thus, he rejected theologies that

gave room to human action in shaping the relation with God; in his viewthis would entail the worship o human-made forms that were mistaken


9/23


for God. As der ganz Andere, however, God resists human representation.Nonetheless, Barth struggled with the question o how to theologicallygrasp the beauty of God f we can and must say that God is beautiful, tosay this is to say how He enlightens and convinces and persuades us. It is todescribe not merely the naked fact of His revelation or its power, but the shape and

form in which it is a fact and is power. The notion o beauty put forward byBarth echoes Enlightenment views of aesthetics as concerned with beauty(e.g., Kant) but diers from these views in that it invokes a beauty relatednot to art but to God. As Richard Viladesau explains in Theological Aesthet-ics, in good Protestant tradition Barth was wary o lapsing into aestheti-cism, fearing that Gods beauty becomes the beauty of an idol. So there

is a tension in his theology between the recognition of the importance offormunderstood as that without which beauty cannot be conveyedandthe fear of falling into the worship o images.

Let us return to the privileging of content and meaning above form.Recall Webers statement about salvation religions as having devaluedform as contingent, as something creaturely and distracting from mean-ing. While this view may resonate with Protestant self-descriptions, Barthsuggested that even within Protestantism matters are more complicated.

After all, Barth recognized that shape and form are a necessary conditionin order for the reality and power of God to show. He even suggested thatform has a particular power of attraction, through which God enlightensand convinces and persuades us. ndeed, religious forms convey a particu-lar aesthetics of persuasion, through which a divine transcendental pres-ence is to be perceived as real and powerful.

n sum, while the antiaesthetic approach of Protestantism (and by impli-cation, the downplaying of form, things, and sensations) privileged byWeber resonates with Protestant theology and self-descriptions, his state-ment about the devaluation of form in salvation religions such as Protes-tantism should be regarded with skepticism. The devaluation, if not con-demnation, of form at the expense of pure meaning isas Pentecostalismreminds usempirically wrong. The contrast between religions (of themagical religiosity type) that are still indebted to the sphere of aestheticsand rational religions such as Protestantism conveys a deeply problematicunderstanding that has shaped not only current approaches to Protestant-ism but also, as Talal Asad and Webb Keane argue, the modern study of reli-

gion at large. n order to be present in the world, let alone to reach out,religion requires tangible, sensational forms. Therefore, one should ana-


10/23

750 Birgit Meyer

lyze religion as oering a particular aesthetics, provided we leave behindsuspicions as voiced by Webers model and ground our understanding ofaesthetics beyond the mind-body divide.

Moreover, the disregard of aesthetics and form, coupled with the mis-taken assumption that salvation religions leave aesthetics and form behind,occludes the possibility of a critique of aesthetics and the ways in whichreligious forms appeal and persuade. Webers view that aesthetics and artare called in to serve emotional propaganda and mass appeals on the partof religions with universal aspirations locks aesthetics into the sphere ofirrational feelings that are mobilized for questionable ends. Remainingwithin an intrareligious devaluation of religious forms and a rejection of

idol worship and blasphemy, this stance fails to acknowledge, and criti-cally engage with, the mobilization of sensational forms in the aesthetics ofpersuasion.

Sensational Forms

n the study of religion, form receives far too little attention and appre-ciation. Form is regarded as something that distracts from and is merely

a necessary vehicle of content. The downfall of form in Webers narrativeoccurs in favor of the appraisal of pure meaning and is ultimately the gene-sis of a more rational attitude that transcends feeling. But approaches thatstress the importance of feelings, following in the footsteps o WilliamJames, downplay form in favor of genuine experience. This stress on theexistence of primary, individual, authentic, and, in this sense, seeminglyunmediated religious feelings is misleading, because it neglects the role ofreligious organizations and institutions in providing forms through whichsuch feelings can occur repeatedly. Despite major dierences betweenWeber and James, both converge in devaluing form in favor of a religiositythat can do without, privileging meaning (for the former) or experience (forthe latter). Again, while this devaluation of form may resonate with inter-nal perspectivescertainly within Protestant theologyit is misleading ina theoretical sense.

ne of the main concerns in the study of Protestantism today shouldbe the reappraisal of form (and of related areas such as style) as centralto religious aesthetics. Therefore, have created the notion of sensational

form. The concept is based on my understanding of religion as a practice ofmediation between the levels o humans and God (or some transcendental


11/23


realm or force). The notion of mediation posits the existence of a distancebetween these levels that is bridged by sensational forms. do not useformin opposition to but as a necessary condition for expressing content andmeaning and ethical norms and values; form is also not a static containerbut a modality or device that allows for repeatedand in that sense, toinvoke Weber again, stereotypedaction.

Sensational forms are authorized modes for invoking and organizingaccess to the transcendental that shape both religious content (beliefs, doc-trines, sets of symbols) and norms. nvolving religious practitioners in par-ticular practices of worship and patterns of feeling, these forms play a cen-tral role in modulating practitioners as religious subjects. Thus, sensational

forms are part of a specic religious aesthetics, which governs a sensoryengagement o humans with the divine and each other and generates par-ticular sensibilities. Religions operate through historically generated sen-sational forms that are distinctive and induce repeatable patterns of feelingand action. Sensational forms emerge over time and are often subject tocontestation and even abandonment (as in the shift from image to text inthe Reformation). They are thus an excellent point of entry into processesof religious transformation. While religions mobilize numerous sensational

forms, certain ones achieve a special status that underpins a distinct reli-gious identity, such as icon veneration for the rthodox, Bible reading forCalvinists, or praise and worship and speaking in tongues for Pentecostals.

developed the idea of the sensational form through my research onPentecostalism in Ghana. n particular, was struck by the specic way inwhich the spiritual and the physical are related in Pentecostal religiosity.Evil spirits are held to work through bodies, food, gifts, or commodities,and the Holy Spirit is perceived as a force that intervenes and ghts evilpowers by, for example, making evil spirits leave the body of a possessedperson. Even though faith in God is often invoked, faith is not understoodas an inner, spiritual attitude that one can keep to onesel but in a far morematerial sense. Spoken of as a spiritual eye and spiritual hand, faith is adevice that assures born-again believers of Gods blessings. The concrete-ness of faith in the power of the Holy Spirit is also striking in regards tothe prosperity gospel, according to which wealth is a divine blessing forthe faithful born-again believer. This blessing is also revealed in the archi-tecture of Pentecostal churches (ideally, huge auditoriums), Pentecos-

tals presence in the media, or the lifestyles and looks of the pastors (poshcars, elegant clothes). Pentecostals misgivings regarding the worship of


12/23

752 Birgit Meyer

idols attributed to indigenous religious traditions and Catholicism are notbacked by a more broadly ascetic attitude that shuns the world (as Webermistakenly, as Campbell showedassumed with regard to the early Calvin-ists). There is a truly amazing Pentecostal material culture, includingarchitecture, dress styles, music, books, audiovisual material, and all kindsof signs of good life, that is to a strong degree in consonance with neolib-eral consumer capitalism, calling for in-depth scholarly analysis.

This brief sketch should suce to pinpoint that Pentecostal religiosityis not merely geared to a transcendental, basically unknowable force. Noris it purely materialistic and interested in outward matters. There is muchconcern with the stu of the physicalbodies, things, imageswhich is,

however, held to be imbued with and operated by either divine or demonicforces. Humans need to be active in order to be lled with and to feel theHoly Spirit, in order to develop the necessary sensibilities of the born-againbeliever, who sensesor sees, thanks to the spirit of discernmentlurk-ing dangers that are invisible to the naked eye. To be lled with the HolySpirit is a question of not just inner, contemplative spirituality but embody-ing divine power only those lled with the Holy Spirit are held to be notvulnerable to evil spirits and empowered to lead an overall happy, healthy,

and prosperous life. This implies that an approach that simply opposes thematerial and the spiritual, viewing the former as merely outward and thelatter as what religiosity should really be about, misses the central point ofPentecostal faithand indeed of Protestantism in general.

Considering sensational forms thus allows us to grasp exactly this con-uence of the physical and the spiritual, or transcendental. Studying Pente-costalism via sensational forms oers a new lens, through which dualismsof matter and spirit, form and content, body and mind, are rejoined undera broader understanding of aesthetics. Exploring Pentecostal religiosity viasensational forms allows us to move beyond Jamess approach of religiousexperience as primary; instead we can ask how authorized and shared reli-gious forms for experiencing the Holy Spirit make personal experiencespossible (and repeatable). From such a viewpoint, we can also acknowl-edge, contrary to Weber, that authorized religious forms are central to pro-cesses of meaning making and the shaping of the senses and bodies ofbelievers. Thus, once sensational forms are used as an empirical entry intothe study of Pentecostalism, it is possible to better understand both the

genesis and the appeal of Pentecostal religiosity.Let us briey explore the heuristic value of the notion of sensational form


13/23


by turning to the experience of the Holy Spirit. Pentecostal services, withtheir emphasis on praise and worship so as to call the Holy Spirit throughpowerful songs, oer a sensational form that seeks to involve believers insuch a way that they sense the presence of God in a seemingly immedi-ate manner and are amazed by His power. have witnessed many suchservices, in which the pastor and congregation sing and pray for the HolySpirit to come. After some time, the prayers become louder and louder, andmany start speaking in tongues. This is taken as a sign that the Holy Spiritis manifest. At a certain moment the pastor indicates the end of the praiseand worship session and may call on the Holy Spirit to heal the sick, protectthe vulnerable, and expel demonic spirits. The desire for such a direct and

portable link with the power of God via the Holy Spirit is what made, andstill makes, many people migrate to Pentecostal/charismatic churchesand to become born-again. Though in principle all born-again believers areable and entitled to embodythe Holy Spirit, charismatic pastors are primechannels for divine power. ndeed, this is what their charisma depends onand what draws people into their churches, hoping that they will also belled with the Holy Spirit permanently and receive protection against evilas well as showers of divine blessings.

f course, attending a church service is just one way in which born-againChristians devote time to praise and worship. Virtual services are oered bynumerous media programs on radio and television, in audiovisual materi-als, and on the Web. As the Holy Spirit does not enter and permanently stayin a person, Pentecostalism teaches a set of religious disciplines such asBible study, extensive fasting, and intense individual and collective prayerin so-called prayer cells so that believers can become strong in the spirit.Many Pentecostal pastors have written about how to receive and keep theHoly Spirit through continued and intense prayer. Advertisements for writ-ings by the famous Nigerian Pentecostal pastor Chris yakhilome, whoruns a huge church called Christ Embassy and a global media empire, spot-light how the Holy Spirit is perceived

Unlock the Power of the Holy Spirit within You!Dont Get Stuck in the Rut; Learn How to Make Your Faith Work!You and the Holy Spirit Can Make an Unbeatable Team That Willmpact Your World!

These slogans express well how the Holy Spirit is spoken about in a mun-dane language that stresses accessibility and action. The Holy Spirit is a


14/23

754 Birgit Meyer

powerful, portable, and concrete embodied presence, and there seems tobe little concern about the problem of a transcendence that eschews humanunderstanding and action (as we encountered regarding Barth). n thecontrary, each and every faithful believer needs to be active in order for theHoly Spirit to manifest itsel in his or her life, so as to reach a point of rever-sal when he or she feels seized by it. While reaching the state o beinglled with the Holy Spirit requires the internalization of shared techniquesof the body or disciplinesa process o becoming Gods subjects, as Mar-shall puts itthe ultimate conrmation o its presence occurs throughsensation. ndeed, invoked through shared religious sensational forms andconcomitant disciplines, sensation is the personal authoritative index for

the presence of the Holy Spirit.Analyzing personal and collective worship practices as sensational forms

allows us to foreground the concrete actions and devicesthe authorizedstructure of repetitionon which the manifestation of the Holy Spirit inborn-again believers depends. Though they are felt individually, religioussensations are socially produced, and their stereotyped repetition dependson the existence of formalized, authorized practices that frame individualreligious sensations and enable their reproducibility. That is why talk

about sensations in the double sense of persons having particular sensa-tions and the actual inducement of these sensations via sensational forms.

Aesthetics of Persuasion

Understanding religion as oering a particular aesthetics, which forms reli-gious subjects by tuning their senses and enabling modes of embodyingthe divine through sensational forms, brings together sensation and power.Aesthetics is not outside of power structures but enmeshed with them.Sensational forms induce techniques of the body that produce particularsensibilities. Religious sensational forms play a key part in the distributionof the sensible, that is, the system of self-evident facts of sense perceptionthat simultaneously discloses the existence of something in common andthe delimitations that dene the respective parts and positions within it.Understood as the system of a priori forms determining what presentsitself to sense experience, for Rancire aesthetics is not opposed to butis rather an inalienable part of politics. The a priori forms are notgiven, as

in Kants notion of the sensus communis but are subject to the power ofdis-tribution, which implies a process of en- and disabling sense impressions


15/23


and a tuning and streamlining of the senses. The point is that distributionimplies a political process of governing the very possibility of sensation.Here lies a major dierence with regard to phenomenological approaches,which tend to neglect that sensation itsel is not immediate but subject tosocial processes of forming.

While Rancire grants that aesthetics may be mobilized for demagogic,irrational mass politics (what Walter Benjamin calls the aestheticizationof politics), he insists that it would be mistaken to reduce aesthetics tothis negative use. Aesthetics may also be a site of potentiality and creation,located on the side of the invention of sensible forms and material struc-tures for a life to come and thus a resource for a critique of dominant

politics. Since humans are sentient beings, aesthetics is political and thusconstitutes specic orders of visibility and sense through which the politi-cal division into assigned roles and dened parts manifests itself.

Even though Rancire and others inspired by his work barely addressreligion, the connection of aesthetics and politics speaks to my project oftheorizing contemporary Pentecostalism. Recapturing aesthetics for thestudy of Pentecostalism and for religion in general will open up a newspace for thinking about religion, politics, and sensations. Rancires ideas

are important here, because they remove aesthetics and the senses fromthe depoliticized isolation in which they were placed by Enlightenmentthinkers and they spotlight the role of senses and sensibilities in organiz-ing what call aesthetic formations or Beth Hinderliters communities ofsense. Thus, the senses themselves are subject to modulation and tuningin the context of politico-religious regimes, yielding a particular experienceof the world that involves horizontal links between people on the level ofcommunity, as well as vertical links to some higher force. Far from beingconned to a mere personal, primary encounter, religious aesthetics thusauthorizes a particular distribution of the sensible that opens up a spacefor religious experience, yet excludesor even anesthetizesother possi-bilities. A focus on the authorized emphasis on certain sensations and theexclusion of othersthe distribution of alternative sensibles in a broadereldwould therefore be a fruitful starting point for a more sophisticatedcritique of aesthetics (and, by implication, of religion and politics) thatmoves beyond downright rejection or sublimation.

ts important to explore how a Pentecostal distribution of the sensible

relates tooverlaps with, enhances, diverts from, challenges, and contra-dictsalternative distributions, such as those launched by the nation-


16/23

756 Birgit Meyer

state. Following Rancire, in exploring this, it would be mistaken to reiter-ate conventional distinctions between religion and politics, as both haveaestheticsborn out of the discourse of the body, to invoke Eagleton oncemoreas a common ground. For instance, in the wake of the 2008 elec-tions in Ghana, there was considerable resonance between the way in whichPentecostal/charismatic churches dened the nation as a site of spiritualwar and the rhetorical strategies of the competing political parties, whichabsorbed some Pentecostal discourse, talking about politics in terms ofspiritual forces and celebrating vigilance and peacefulness as prime charac-teristics of citizens as, preferably, Pentecostal Christians. Ghanaian presi-dent John Atta Mills stresses that he has been elected by God and says that

he wishes Ghana to become one big prayer camp. This points toward anemergent political theology grounded in the Holy Spirit. However, as RuthMarshall argues with regard to Nigeria, this political theology is intrinsi-cally unstable because the central importance attributed to personal spiri-tual experience tends to work against the creation of stable forms of sover-eignty and community.

How can the appeal of Pentecostalisms sensational forms, which gov-ern a particular distribution of the sensible, be explored? Here the notion

of aesthetics of persuasion comes in. Aesthetics is part of lived religionon the level of everyday experiences, oering sensational forms that repeat-edly persuade people of the truth and reality of their sensations. t should benoted that persuasion does not imply a free subject yet to be persuaded.nstead, an aesthetics of persuasion itself works within religious structuresof repetition. Most of the people addressed by sensational forms are alreadyconstituted as particular religious subjects with certain desires and doubts.Thus, aesthetics of persuasion is intrinsic to sensational forms, whosepower convinces religious believers of the truthfulness of the connectionbetween them and God or the transcendental. n short, aesthetics of per-suasion is responsible for the truth eects of religion, for instance, byauthorizing the body as the harbinger of ultimate truth and authenticity.

Persuasion is based on classical views of rhetoric, in which it is analyzedas relational (as rhetoric is not just speaking but implies a linkage betweenspeaker and listeners) and as implying the coexistence of content and emo-tions, with style bringing together the what and the how. This can beconnected fruitfully to Aristotles understanding o humans as perceiv-

ing the world through aisthesis. Going beyond presenting pure knowledgealone, rhetoric implies the eective use of particular styles that appeal to


17/23


the senses and invoke emotions, thus doing the work of persuasion. Rheto-ric may well be expanded toward broader modes of expression than oratoryalone, including all kinds of sensational forms that seek to persuade.

Religion, then, is about the link between humans and the divine. norder for that link to be experienced as genuine, sensational forms mustbe persuasive. Even Barth, wary of aestheticization, acknowledged that Godpersuades human beings through shape and form. The importanceof diverse sensational forms is all the more obvious in the study of Pente-costalism, with its rich material culture and experiential modes of worship(being lled with the Holy Spirit). nce sensational forms are seen as indis-pensable for evoking and maintaining religious experience, it is clear that

the styles that are part of these forms need to be at the center of attention.A vignette can illustrate how persuasion features as a specic quality

of sensational forms. n August 2009, attended a service of the Light-house Chapel, a large Pentecostal denomination, in Accra. This denomi-nation owns an exceptionally large modern building (constructed in thestyle of the national university). Reminiscent of the grandeur of Catholiccathedrals, the building is a sensational form with its own aesthetics of per-suasion. The well-kept building with its many rows of seatsthe largest

in townthe huge stage in front from where the pastors and singers per-form, and the latest audiovisual equipment are testament to Pentecostal-isms success, shining on all visitors. During the service attended, thepastor preached about the problem o lacking the feeling of the Holy Spirit,which he likenedsomewhat tongue in cheekto the experience of a lackof (erotic) sensation in marriage s the feeling still there? Clearly, theneed for each and every believer to feel and be touched by the Holy Spiritwas stressed. Emphasizing the importance of powerful preaching, the pas-tor asked repeatedly, Do preach? which was answered with, Yes, youpreach, implying the recognition that he was not preaching articially buttruly speaking the word of God.

This arms, once again, the importance of feeling and the raising of sen-sibilities to the divine. Whats also at stake is the pastors ability to invokedivine presence in a manner that is recognized and persuasive. The consentdemanded from the participants to recognize the pastors power points toan aesthetics of persuasion that is geared toward making the presence ofthe Holy Spirit felt. This example shows that the aesthetics of persuasion

is an inalienable part of religion in general and is part of outreaching reli-gions such as Pentecostalism, with its globalizing agenda. Here the aes-


18/23

758 Birgit Meyer

thetics of persuasion is used to arm the link between humans and God,anchoring sensations in a credible cosmology.

Taking part in a Pentecostal distribution of the sensible, sensationalforms induce an aesthetics of persuasion that arms the Pentecostal viewof the world in the face of unavoidable doubt and skepticism, given experi-ences of misfortune, illness, and poverty. Even though the authoritativeindex for the presence of the Holy Spirit lies in personal sensation, it wouldbe wrong to regard Pentecostalism as purely individualistic. The personallink with the Holy Spirit oers individual mobility, yet it also emphasizesfeelings o belonging to a larger, even global born-again community ofbelievers. Certainly this is a community of a new kind, unlike the ordered

congregational structures that characterize historical mission churches, yetnonetheless binding believers via shared sensational forms that generatereminiscent of mile Durkheims analysis of the eects of participation inreligious ritualsfeelings of eervescence. The Pentecostal aesthetics ofpersuasion is thus mobilized to make new convertsthrough the stagingof miracles and other spectacular mass events, for example. n that sense,the Pentecostal aesthetics of persuasion operates within a larger politics ofbelonging, characterized by partly competing and partly overlapping de-

nitions of the sensible and modes of sensational appeal.

Epilogue

Christianity is a world religion by virtue o its foundational premise,grounded in the experience of Pentecost, which marked the replacementof Jesus by the Holy Spirit. Although the spread of Pentecostalism with itsemphasis on portability and mobility signals a new kind of religiosity, donot intend here to frame Pentecostalism as entirely distinct from otherbranches of Christianity. My concern is to recapture aesthetics for the studyof Pentecostalism in order to develop an alternative to the Protestant lens,which is often used to analyze Pentecostalism but which is blind to theimportance of sensation. More broadly, the study of Protestantism itselfsuers by not questioning Protestant self-descriptions that tend to stressan iconoclastic, antiaesthetic stance. This is deeply problematic, as therecannot be an antiaesthetic religion, notwithstanding assertions made froman internal religious perspective. Such assertions should not be taken for

granted, let alone elevated to the level of scholarly concepts. This then opensup a space for theorizing both Pentecostalism and global Christianity, past


19/23


and present. This allows us to challenge, for instance, some simplistic dis-tinctions between Catholicism, often understood in terms of magical reli-giosity and as indebted to things, and Protestantism, regarded as a modelsalvation religion and hence as rejecting aesthetics, form, and images.While such distinctions may be mobilized repeatedly in religious self-representations, as scholars we need to transcend such claims in favor ofa more balanced view that acknowledges aestheticsand materialityasbeing a fundamental part of Christianity and of religion in general.

Using the concepts of the sensational form and the aesthetics of per-suasion, have sought to open up alternative methods for theorizing andexploring global Christianity, especially Pentecostalism. Stressing the

importance of sensation and aesthetics, my concern has not been to cele-brate the feeling body as a portable site of truth and pleasurable immediateexperience but rather to show how the body and sensations are subject topowerful (competing) politico-religious formations. Aesthetics should notbe depoliticized or dismissed as inferior to rational thinking and formsof mobilization, but it should be taken as central to the formation of per-sonal and collective modes o being and belonging. This calls for a sophis-ticated analysis of what aesthetics does and does not render sensible, espe-

cially in the elds of religion and politics, by appealing to the body andinducing sensations. Emphasizing personal bodily sensation as the ulti-mate index for the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, Pentecostalismnot only epitomizes the centrality of the body as a harbinger of truth andidentity in our time, but its global popularity also emphasizes the neces-sity for scholars (and practitioners) in the elds of religion and politics tocome to terms with the body, sensations, and experience. Webers obser-vation that universal outreach and the reappraisal of art and aesthetics gotogethereven though he saw this as fallback into magical religiosityshould therefore be taken seriously global Christianity requires attentionto aesthetics, understood in the broad sense.

Notes

would like to thank Matthew Engelke and Joel Robbins for inviting me to be part of theexciting project of theorizing global Christianity, which allowed me to bring together variousthreads from my recent work. am most grateful to them, as well as to Michael Hardt, DavidMorgan, Mattijs van de Port, and Jojada Verrips, for careful, critical, and constructive com-

ments on earlier versions of this essay and to Marry Kooy for her practical assistance.1 Matthew 28:1920 (English Standard Version).2 Ruth Marshall, Political Spiritualities: The Pentecostal Revolution in Nigeria (Chicago Uni-


20/23

760 Birgit Meyer

versity of Chicago Press, 2009), 208. would like to stress that this essay does not aspireto give an overview on recent work on Pentecostalism and globalization. See also AndrDroogers, Globalisation and Pentecostal Success, in Between Babel and Pentecost: Trans-

national Pentecostalism in Latin America and Africa, ed. A. Corten and R. Marshall-Fratani(Bloomington ndiana University Press, 2001), 4161; and Joel Robbins, The Global-ization of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity, Annual Review of Anthropology33(2004) 11743.

3 Thomas J. Csordas, Transnational Transcendence: Essays on Religion and Globalization(Berkeley University of California Press, 2009), 45.

4 See David Martin, Tongues of Fire: The Explosion of Protestantism in Latin America (xfordBlackwell, 1990); Donald Miller and Tetsunao Yamamori, Global Pentecostalism: The NewFace of Christian Social Engagement(Berkeley University of California Press, 2007); andPeter L. Berger, Max Weber s Alive and Well, and Living in Guatemala The Protes-

tant Ethic Today (paper presented at the 100th anniversary conference celebrating MaxWebers The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Cornell University, thaca, NewYork, ctober 2004), available at www.economyandsociety.org/events/Berger_paper.pdf(accessed 30 April 2008).

5 Birgit Meyer, Pentecostalism and Neo-Liberal Capitalism Faith, Prosperity, and Visionin African Pentecostal-Charismatic Churches, Journal for the Study of Religion 20.2(2007) 528.

6 See, for example, Matthew Engelke, Material Religion, in The Cambridge Companion toReligious Studies, ed. Robert rsi (Cambridge Cambridge University Press, forthcom-ing); Webb Keane, Christian Moderns: Freedom and Fetish in the Mission Encounter(Berke-

ley University of California Press, 2007); David Morgan,The Sacred Gaze: Religious VisualCulture in Theory and Practice (Berkeley University of California Press, 2005); David Mor-gan, ed., Religion and Material Culture: The Matter of Belief (London Routledge, 2010);Peter J. Pels, The Modern Fear of Matter Reections on the Protestantism o VictorianScience, Material Religion 4.3 (2008) 26483; and Jeremy Stolow, Orthodox by Design:Judaism, Print Politics, and the ArtScroll Revolution (Berkeley University of CaliforniaPress, 2010).

7 Jacques Rancire, The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible , trans. GabrielRockhill (London Continuum, 2006).

8 See, for example, Cliord Geertzs denition of religion (Religion as a Cultural System,in The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays [New York Basic Books, 1973], 87125) thathas been paradigmatic until quite recently. For critiques, see Talal Asad, Genealogies ofReligion: Discipline and Power in Christianity and Islam(Baltimore Johns Hopkins Univer-sity Press, 1993); and Matthew Engelke and Matt Tomlinson, eds., The Limits of Meaning:Case Studies in the Anthropology of Christianity(New York Berghahn Books, 2007).

9 Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. and ed. Talcott Parsons(1905; New York Charles Scribners Sons, 1920).

10 Engelke, Material Religion; Pels, Modern Fear; and Keane, Christian Modern.11 E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. 2, Religion in Primitive Culture (1871; New York Harper

and Row, 1958), 8.12 Max Weber, Religious Rejections of the World and Their Directions, in From Max Weber:


21/23


Essays in Sociology, ed. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (1948; London Routledge andKegan Paul, 1970), 341.

13 bid.

14 bid.; my emphasis.15 Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, ed. Guenther Roth

and Claus Wittich (Berkeley University of California Press, 1978), 399634, 6089.16 bid., 610.17 Weber, Religious Rejections, 343. This suspicion with regard to the emotions and

aesthetic appeal was also echoed in Webers critique that modern men eschew moraljudgments, preferring judgments of taste (ibid., 342)an observation that, as BerniceMartin argues in discussing Webers take on aesthetics (The Aesthetics of Latin Ameri-can Pentecostalism The Sociology of Religion and the Problem o Taste, in MaterializingReligion: Expression, Performance, and Ritual, ed. Elizabeth Arweck and William Keenan

[Aldershot Ashgate, 2006], 140), pregures Jean Baudrillards analysis of modern con-sumer society.

18 Birgit Meyer,Translating the Devil: Religion and Modernity among the Ewe in Ghana (Edin-burgh Edinburgh University Press, 1999).

19 Martin, Aesthetics, 141.20 bid., 143.21 Birgit Meyer and Jojada Verrips, Aesthetics, in Key Words in Religion, Media, and Culture,

ed. David Morgan (London Routledge, 2008), 2224.22 Aisthesis designates our corporeal capability on the basis of a power given in our psyche

to perceive objects in the world via our ve dierent sensorial modes . . . and at the same

time a specic constellation of sensations as a whole. Understood in this way, aisthesisrefers to our total sensory experience of the world and our sensitive knowledge o itMeyer and Verrips, Aesthetics, 21.

23 mmanuel Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft(1790; Hamburg Felix Meiner, 2001).24 Terry Eagleton, The Ideology of the Aesthetic(xford Blackwell, 1990), 70101.25 bid., 13.26 Jojada Verrips, Aisthesis and An-aesthesia, Ethnologia Europaea 35.12 (2006) 2733;

and Meyer and Verrips, Aesthetics. See also Brent Plate, Walter Benjamin, Religion, andAesthetics: Rethinking Religion through the Arts (New York Routledge, 2005), 24.

27 Brent Plate, Walter Benjamin, Religion, and Aesthetics (London Routledge, 2005), 24.28 The opposition between art and religion that Weber invokes still informs the thinking

of many scholars in those elds up until our time. Scholars in the arts are eager to assertthe autonomy of art vis--vis religion; this shows today, for instance, in the rejection ofreligiously motivated charges o blasphemy. See James Elkins and David Morgan, eds.,Re-enchantment (The Art Seminar) (London Routledge, 2009).

29 While de facto iconoclasm was limited, its continuous invocation as Protestantisms markof distinction is telling for the antiaesthetic, antimaterial stance that is often espousedin Protestant self-representation theologians. At the same time, as David Morgan hasconvincingly shown, images have long had a place in Protestant worship. David Morgan,

Visual Piety: A History and Theory of Popular Religious Images (Berkeley University of Cali-fornia Press, 1998).


22/23

762 Birgit Meyer

30 Cited in Gerrit Jan Hoenderdaal, Religieuze Existentie en Aesthetische Aanschouwing(Religious Existence and Aesthetic Contemplation) (PhD diss., Utrecht University,1948), 81.

31 Matthew Engelke, A Problem of Presence: Beyond Scripture in an African Church(BerkeleyUniversity of California Press, 2007).

32 Martin, Aesthetics, 146.33 Barth quoted in Richard Viladesau, Theological Aesthetics: God in Imagination, Beauty, and

Art(New York xford University Press, 1999), 27; my emphasis.34 Just like Schleiermacher, from whose Romanticist emphasis on feeling, however, Barth

stood worlds apart.35 f course, as Viladesau also argues, aesthetics and form can be accommodated more

easily in Catholic theology which is less suspicious o human-made forms being doomedto become idolatric (for instance as developed by Hans Urs von Balthasar, which places

aesthetics in the context of the Platonic-Aristotelian metaphysical tradition of the analogyo being, see Viladesau, Theological Aesthetics, 30). This dierence between Catholic andProtestant approaches is still discernible in current theological work on aesthetics.

36 Asad, Geneaologies; and Keane, Christian Modern.37 William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1920; Harmondsworth Penguin,

1998).38 Birgit Meyer, Religious Sensations Why Media, Aesthetics and Power Matter in the

Study of Contemporary Religion (inaugural lecture, VU University, Amsterdam, cto-ber 6, 2006); Meyer and Verrips, Aesthetics; and Birgit Meyer, From magined Com-munities to Aesthetic Formations Religious Mediations, Sensational Forms and Styles

of Binding, in Aesthetic Formations: Media, Religion, and the Senses, ed. Birgit Meyer (NewYork Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 128.

39 Collin Campbell critiqued Webers limitation to one aspect of Protestant religiosityitswork ethics, stemming from despair about predestination theologyand his neglect ofthe sphere of emotions that became central to the formation of religious experience inRomanticism. Collin Campbell, The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism(xford Blackwell, 1987).

40 Morgan, Visual Piety.41 Marshall, Political Spiritualities, 210.42 Chris yakhilome, The Seven Spirits of God: Divine Secrets to the Miraculous (Chelmsford

LoveWorld Publications, 2006).43 Marshall, Political Spiritualities, 12829.44 See also R. Marie Grith, Born Again Bodies: Flesh and Spirit in American Christianity

(Berkeley University of California Press, 2004).45 Rancire, Politics, 12.46 bid., 13.47 All the same, Merleau-Pontys view that the sensible . . . is nothing other than a certain

way o being in the world . . . so that sensation is literally a form of communion (citedin Morgan, who adds that Merleau-Ponty explicitly alluded to the Christian sacrament

of the Eucharist [Religion and Material Culture, 10]), is intriguing in proposing a linkbetween sensation and communion.48 Rancire, Politics, 29.


23/23


49 See also Claire Colebrook (Agamben Aesthetics, Potentiality, and Life, South Atlan-tic Quarterly 107.1 (2008) 10720) on Agambens similar view of aesthetics. Exactlybecause, as stressed before, it is important to develop a critique of aesthetics, it would

be mistaken to reject aesthetics altogether, be it in conjunction with religion (as out-lined in section ), or politics. t is highly problematic to concede the terrain of the bodyand aesthetics to right-wing populism. See also Peter Geschiere, The Perils of Belonging:Autochthony, Citizenship, and Exclusion in Africa and Europe (Chicago University of Chi-cago Press, 2009).

50 Beth Hinderliter et al., eds., Communities of Sense: Rethinking Aesthetics and Politics (Dur-ham, NC Duke University Press, 2009), 1.

51 bid.; and Meyer, Aesthetic Formations.52 Here cannot go into the recent literature on political theologies that emerged partly

in response to the incapacity of secularization theory to explain the public presence and

appeal of religion today. While the bringing together of politics and religion in one frame-work is of central importance, miss a concern with sensationsand a broader under-standing of aesthetics in this literature.

53 Verrips, Anaesthesia; see also Susan Buck-Morss, Aesthetics and Anaesthetics WalterBenjamins Art Works Essay Reconsidered, October62 (1992) 341; and Jonathan Crary,Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle, and Modern Culture (Cambridge MT Press,2000).

54 Eagleton, Ideology of the Aesthetic, 13.55 Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, Saints, Ancestors, and Charismatics in African Politics

Media and Religion in Ghanas 2008 Democratic Elections (paper presented at Sensa-

tions Religious Mediations and the Formation of dentities, Accra, Ghana, August 1518,2009).

56 Marshall, Political Spiritualities, ch. 6.57 Mattijs van de Port, Visualizing the Sacred. Video Technology, Televisual Style and the

Religious magination in Bahian Candombl, American Ethnologist33.3 (2006) 44462.58 Limitations of space prevent me from delving deeper into Aristotelian rhetoric, Aristotle,

Art of Rhetoric, Loeb Classical Library No. 193, trans. G. H. Freese (London Heinemann,1926).

59 Barth quoted in Viladesau, Theological Aesthetics, 27.60 Meyer, Aesthetic Formations.

Documents

Aesthetics of Persuasion