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Transpositions is the official blog of the Institute for Theology, Imagination, and the Arts at the University of St Andrews. Featured Posts
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Theology
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Reviews: Signs of Grace and Sounding the Seasons
Posted on 17/05/2013 | No CommentsKristin Schwain. Signs of Grace: Religion and American Art in the Gilded Age. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008, xi + 172 pp., £22.75/$31.50 cloth. In this exploration of late nineteenth-century religious art in America, Kristin Schwain, Associate Professor of... -
Transformations and Turnarounds: The Role of the Arts in Human Flourishing
Posted on 08/05/2013 | 2 CommentsThe arts are transformative. For many people involved in exploring the intersection of theology and the arts, this is a fundamental axiom. It’s also a commonly held belief by the wider public. However, while there may be many good reasons... -
Gatekeepers and ‘Bad’ Church Art
Posted on 06/05/2013 | No CommentsEnlarge the place of your tent, and let the curtains of your habitations be stretched out; do not hold back; lengthen your cords and strengthen your stakes. (Isaiah 54:2) Church buildings can be places of comfort and hope; and as... -
Christian Life, Politics and an Audience’s Authority
Posted on 03/05/2013 | 4 CommentsSince last autumn’s Theatrical Theology conference at St Andrews, I’ve been mulling over Shannon Crago-Snell’s sophisticated and helpful reading of theatre as a metaphor for Christian life, specifically her refusal to assign particular roles to particular beings or groups –... -
‘Click to Insert Image’: PowerPoint & ‘Art’ in the Church
Posted on 01/05/2013 | 6 CommentsI’m not sure when the shift to using PowerPoint in the church happened. At some point, screens replaced paper, words replaced notes, and the orientation of the congregation was all in one direction – towards the projection. While some suggest... -
Making Room for Others: Creative Genius and Theology
Posted on 29/04/2013 | 11 CommentsThis post is long overdue, but I wanted to write it anyway. In a 2009 TED Talk titled “Your Elusive Creative Genius,” Elizabeth Gilbert of Eat, Pray, Love fame spoke about the need for a way of thinking about artistic creativity that... -
Reviews: Theological Aesthetics, Bridge to Wonder, and Arts of Wonder
Posted on 26/04/2013 | No CommentsRichard Viladesau. Theological Aesthetics: God in Imagination, Beauty, and Art. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999, xi + 294 pp. £17.99/$27.95 paper. A classic in the field, Viladesau’s Theological Aesthetics begins with the possibility of theological aesthetics, addressing approaches “from above” as well as “from...
![In a recent article titled How to Discourage Artists in the Church, Philip G. Ryken suggests that ‘[m]any Christian artists live between two strange worlds,’ caught between the oddities of the art world and the church world. Ryken writes about how...](http://www.transpositions.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/sun-36x36.jpg "The Cult, Fear, and Myth of the New: Three (conflicting) Narratives"){kind=small}
