Papers by Steven Felix-Jager
Pneuma, 2019
Methods within visual culture studies can reveal the aesthetic stimuli that shape the way a relig... more Methods within visual culture studies can reveal the aesthetic stimuli that shape the way a religious group pictures or visualizes existence. Studying the visual culture of a religious movement allows one to see what formational mechanisms already exist and how the stimuli implicitly or explicitly support the movement’s theological commitments. This article suggests an approach for understanding Pentecostalism anew in its own distinct theological and sociological terms by categorizing the contours of the religious visual cultures of global Pentecostalism. This article argues that theologies of abundance are largely at play in the visual cultures of global Pentecostalism, and this can be demonstrated by identifying the visual stimuli that form religious experience and shape the way Pentecostals around the world imagine, understand, and project reality.
Religion and the Arts, 2016
A trend in theological aesthetics is to advocate for a “creational aesthetic” when discussing the... more A trend in theological aesthetics is to advocate for a “creational aesthetic” when discussing the ontology and calling of the artist. In its essential form, a creational aesthetic affirms that artists honor the Creator God by creating art. In some way artists are functioning as God’s image when they make art. While this view is popular in the Christian engagement of the arts, it is uncertain if such an observation is the preeminent way of understanding the role of the artist. Can one be considered an artist if s/he is removed from the tactile process of making? In the contemporary art world, the role of the artist in visual art has come into question with a stronger emphasis on conceptuality, over and against construction. In this article I argue for an alternate way of understanding creational aesthetics that makes room for conceptuality in art.
Dance Research Journal, 2017
“Whatdo air, breath, andbreathinghave todowith black performance, with Blackpentecostal aesthetic... more “Whatdo air, breath, andbreathinghave todowith black performance, with Blackpentecostal aesthetics?” Ashon Crawley asks (33). Blackpentecostal Breath: The Aesthetics of Possibility, a lush meditation on black living, black precarity, and black aesthetics, provides an answer. Crawley focuses on Black Pentecostalism, a multiracial, multiclass, and multinational Christian sect, a strand of which congealed in Los Angeles, California, in 1906. However, as the author makes clear, this book is not a history of Pentecostalism. In making a distinction between belief and practice, Crawley traces a black aesthetic that crops up from this distinctly black pentecostal repertoire. Exaltations including shouting, noisemaking, whooping, and speaking in tongues are, he argues, collective, communal modes of black pneuma. They represent what Crawley calls “otherwise possibilities” that, by nature of their very constitution, challenge racialized knowledges and the violence inherent to such categorization. Crawley understands “otherwise” as copious and imaginative, as “a word that names plurality as its core operation, otherwise bespeaks the ongoingness of possibility, of things existing other than what is given, what is known, what is grasped” (24). Antiblackness depends on shortening, if not extinguishing, black breath, and Crawley pursues black lifeworlds that are insurgent precisely because they insist on black collective aliveness. “These choreographic, sonic, and visual aesthetic practices and sensual experiences” the author writes, “are not only important objects of study for those interested in alternative modes of social organization, but they also yield a general hermeneutics, a methodology for reading culture” (4). He continues: “What I am arguing throughout is that the disruptive capacities found in the otherwise world of Blackpentecostalism is but one example of how to produce a break with the known, the normative, the violent world of western thought and material condition” (4). Breath, although individualized, is a group activity, one inherently involved in a practice of sharing. Thus, breath is at once indexical of the violent strictures that bridle black life, even while it (a Blackpentecostal aesthetic) exceeds the boundaries of that violence. Black flesh is treated, he writes, as “discardable, as inherently violent and antagonistic, as necessarily in need of removal, remediation,” and yet black folks have always enacted performative modes, reliant on breathing, that refuse the indignity of this fact (1). Very early in the book Crawley argues that black social life is an abolitionist politics; from there on he shows us just how alive, effusive, and fleshy abolition can be. In chapter 1, “Breath,” Crawley outlines his black breath framework, turning his attention to Blackpentecostal women preachers and their “whooping” practices. By extending what he calls “blackness pneumatology,” Crawley argues “that Blackpentecostal whooping during preaching and praying responds to the eclipsing of black breath through aesthetic breathing” (27). In the second chapter, “Shouting,” the author offers “choreographic itinerary and protocol” to detail the intimacy between sound and movement within Blackpentecostal traditions. Shouting refuses the distinction between sound and dance; it thus demands a different interpretive framework through which to make sense of its particular efficacy. Chapter 3, “Noise,” takes on testimony and tarrying to show “how Blackpentecostal choreosonics manifest resistance that exists before and against the power and force of aversion” (144). In the fourth and final chapter, “Tongues,” Crawley writes about the relationship between flesh, breath, and “speaking in tongues.” Regarding the Fisk Jubilee Singers, Crawley considers “how knowledge is produced and transformed in the setting of the university, how these institutional settings often require a reduction of black sound, of blackness, of Blackpentecostal aesthetic practice” (29). It is the second chapter, “Shouting,” on which I would like to linger, since its resonances with and implications for dance studies abound. Here, the author considers Calvinist theology and Enlightenment philosophy to approach the spatial movements that contribute
PNEUMA, 2016
BOOK REVIEWS 959 Eidinow has successfully demonstrated that oracle-consultation and cursing can b... more BOOK REVIEWS 959 Eidinow has successfully demonstrated that oracle-consultation and cursing can bring us close to the lives of ordinary ancient Greeks from all strata of society. She has also clarified, against current scholarly views, the ancient attitude towards the supernatural. This is a wonderful book, well researched and well written.
Journal of Cultural and Religious Studies, 2016
Irish Theological Quarterly, 2014
The problem of beauty’s nature has been the subject of debate in the field of theological aesthet... more The problem of beauty’s nature has been the subject of debate in the field of theological aesthetics for many centuries. In general, the classical idea of objective beauty has been contrasted with the modernist assertion of beauty’s subjectivism. This article evaluates the nature of beauty in art so as to see what the Christian response to beauty ought to be. This is done first by analyzing the historical claims of beauty’s nature and by looking at various contemporary responses to beauty. Next, we assess the theological method of George Lindbeck, which allows one to see the objective reality of beauty once the subjective nature of the cultural-linguistic system is grasped.
Pentecostal Aesthetics, 2015
A common response to why a Christian creates art is because it is his or her duty to do so. The a... more A common response to why a Christian creates art is because it is his or her duty to do so. The artist was made an artist by God and thus must create art to fulfil his or her calling. This notion, however, implies a functional approach to the imago dei and does not display the inherent value of humanity or the art that humans create. The goal of this article is to view the imago dei in a different light so as to make space for the idea that God, creation, and art all bear inherent meaning. I will argue that humans are inherently relational and that the purest non-functional form of relationality is play. I will connect the idea that art is play with the themes of play theology to show that art is playful and Spirited collaboration between God and the artist.
Journal of Pentecostal Theology, 2014
This article attempts to define what an artist’s ‘interior promptings’ or inspirations are and to... more This article attempts to define what an artist’s ‘interior promptings’ or inspirations are and to understand the role of the Holy Spirit in artistic inspiration and discernment. In so doing, divine inspiration is defined broadly so as to make room for artistic inspiration. This article also considers how the Holy Spirit influences human imaginations through experience and how inspirations are derived from these experiences. Different ways to understand religious and cultural worldviews are also examined. The concept of ‘seeing’ is considered to understand the Pentecostal agenda as attempting to cause a transformative paradigm shift in a person’s worldview. Finally, this article engages in dialogue with Pentecostal theologian Amos Yong in order to look at spiritual discernment and answer the question, ‘Does the Holy Spirit inspire art in other religious or secular traditions?’
Quadrum, 2019
The themes of chaos and creation in Gen. 1-2:3 are not only alluded to in Revelation, but also pu... more The themes of chaos and creation in Gen. 1-2:3 are not only alluded to in Revelation, but also purposefully and systematically broken down by John through the Seven Trumpets (Rev. 8-11). While Genesis moves from chaos to orderly creation as a critique of Babylonian mythology, the author argues there is intertextual evidence that indicates John is moving from order back to chaos, from creation to "un-creation," through a series of events that unfurl the events of Gen. 1:2-3. This paper argues that there is intertextual evidence suggesting John used the days of creation typologically to un-create the world.
Pneuma, 2019
Methods within visual culture studies can reveal the aesthetic stimuli that shape the way a relig... more Methods within visual culture studies can reveal the aesthetic stimuli that shape the way a religious group pictures or visualizes existence. Studying the visual culture of a religious movement allows one to see what formational mechanisms already exist and how the stimuli implicitly or explicitly support the movement's theological commitments. This article suggests an approach for understanding Pentecostalism anew in its own distinct theological and sociological terms by categorizing the contours of the religious visual cultures of global Pentecostalism. This article argues that theologies of abundance are largely at play in the visual cultures of global Pentecostalism, and this can be demonstrated by identifying the visual stimuli that form religious experience and shape the way Pentecostals around the world imagine, understand, and project reality.
Religion and the Arts, 2016
A trend in theological aesthetics is to advocate for a " creational aesthetic " when discussing t... more A trend in theological aesthetics is to advocate for a " creational aesthetic " when discussing the ontology and calling of the artist. In its essential form, a creational aesthetic affirms that artists honor the Creator God by creating art. In some way artists are functioning as God's image when they make art. While this view is popular in the Christian engagement of the arts, it is uncertain if such an observation is the preem-inent way of understanding the role of the artist. Can one be considered an artist if s/he is removed from the tactile process of making? In the contemporary art world, the role of the artist in visual art has come into question with a stronger emphasis on conceptuality, over and against construction. In this article I argue for an alternate way of understanding creational aesthetics that makes room for conceptuality in art. Keywords creation aesthetics – conceptual art – doctrine of creation – contemporary art A trend in theological aesthetics is to advocate for a " creational aesthetic " when discussing the ontology and calling of the artist. In its essential form, a creational aesthetic affirms that artists honor the Creator God by creating art. In some way artists are functioning as God's image when they make art. While this view is popular in the Christian engagement of the arts, it is uncertain if such an observation is the preeminent way of understanding the role of the artist. Can one be considered an artist if s/he is removed from the tactile process of making? In the contemporary artworld, the role of the artist in visual art has come into question with a stronger emphasis on conceptuality
Cultural and Religious Studies, 2016
Where do we draw the line of divinely inspired visionary art, and Christian kitsch? Folk artists ... more Where do we draw the line of divinely inspired visionary art, and Christian kitsch? Folk artists such as the Rev. Howard Finster and Sister Gertrude Morgan straddled the fence of kitsch and visionary art because they created work that was blatantly polemical and didactic, yet lived lives that inspired thousands of people across the US. The so-called " Southern Folk Art " movement consists of self-taught artists from the American South who are self-trained and rely heavily on " visions " and " prophetic words " as the genesis of their art. This article contends that the art produced by folk artists is documentation of their visionary insights as opposed to detached works that are admired for aesthetic reasons. While folk art of the American South portrays the charismatic imagination with themes of eschatological community and the second coming, it is the " visionary artist " that is contemplated, rather than his or her bona fide message of redemption and recreation .
Journal of Pentecostal Theology , 2014
This article attempts to define what an artist's 'interior promptings' or inspirations are and to... more This article attempts to define what an artist's 'interior promptings' or inspirations are and to understand the role of the Holy Spirit in artistic inspiration and discernment. In so doing, divine inspiration is defined broadly so as to make room for artistic inspiration. This article also considers how the Holy Spirit influences human imaginations through experience and how inspirations are derived from these experiences. Different ways to understand religious and cultural worldviews are also examined.
Journal of the European Pentecostal Theological Association, 2013
A common response to why a Christian creates art is because it is his or her duty to do so. The a... more A common response to why a Christian creates art is because it is his or her duty to do so. The artist was made an artist by God and thus must create art to fulfil his or her calling. This notion, however, implies a functional approach to the imago dei and does not display the inherent value of humanity or the art that humans create. The goal of this article is to view the imago dei in a different light so as to make space for the idea that God, creation, and art all bear inherent meaning. I will argue that humans are inherently relational and that the purest non-functional form of relationality is play. I will connect the idea that art is play with the themes of play theology to show that art is playful and Spirited collaboration between God and the artist. God, humans, and art all have something in common: they are all meaningful in themselves. God is not worth more or less depending on what actions God takes. Neither are humans required to prove their own worthiness. Art, as Kant has taught us, is meaningful in itself—hence the popular mantra 'art for art's sake.' Nevertheless Christian artists often feel a dutiful directive to create art for the glory of God. In so doing the artist feels that he or she is carrying out God's call as an artist and acts according to the image of God substantiated within. The implication, however, is that the image of God is one of function and is contingent upon what the artist does. But if Christians are not called to create to fulfil some anthropological or missional purpose, then why are they called to create? I will critique the argument that creation should be understood as a divine mandate of being creative, or be tied to our understanding of the image of God, first by looking at various concepts of the image of God. We will examine two views of the image of God, namely, the functional and relational view. I will argue that the relational view is the one that best understands humans as being created without any particular utility, but rather to relate to God and to each other. This view liberates one's anthropology from any sort of functionality that might be attributed to humanity, which gives us grounding to reject the idea that art necessarily serves some dutiful function. I will argue that humanity's 1 Steven Felix-Jager is an adjunct professor at Southeastern University and PhD Cand. University of Wales (Glyndŵr), UK.
Irish Theological Quarterly , 2014
The problem of beauty's nature has been the subject of debate in the field of theological aesthet... more The problem of beauty's nature has been the subject of debate in the field of theological aesthetics for many centuries. In general, the classical idea of objective beauty has been contrasted with the modernist assertion of beauty's subjectivism. This article evaluates the nature of beauty in art so as to see what the Christian response to beauty ought to be. This is done first by analyzing the historical claims of beauty's nature and by looking at various contemporary responses to beauty. Next, we assess the theological method of George Lindbeck, which allows one to see the objective reality of beauty once the subjective nature of the cultural-linguistic system is grasped.
Book Reviews by Steven Felix-Jager
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Papers by Steven Felix-Jager
Book Reviews by Steven Felix-Jager