IMAGINATIONAND THE STUDY OF RELIGION

IMAGINATION

IS A FACULTY

UNIQUE TO HUMANS

•We can imagine the past

•We can imagine the future

•We can imagine other places

•We can imagine ourselves in other situations

•We can imagine ourselves in other peoples’ shoes (empathy)

•We can imagine places, realities and beings that we have never physically seen

Imagination in our lives

•Our consciousness is always a combination of direct experience and imagination

•It would be impossible for us to live without relying on our imagination

•At every moment, we have limited information about the people and situations we face; we always “fill the gaps” by using our imagination

Imagination is a creative activity

All of our GOALS and PLANS are based on imagining a reality that does not exist, and acting to turn the imagination into reality: a new invention, a work of art, an architectural design, an urban plan, a scientific experiment, a political revolution, a novel, a military campaign, a career path...

IMAGINATION/FILM/ RELIGION

•In this course, we will use several films

•Not only documentary films about religious traditions, but well-known feature films.

•These films have implicit spiritual or religious themes

•In some ways, film can be considered to be a “religious” activity in contemporary culture

Film and religion both “imagine” and “create” worlds

S. Brent Plate, Religion and Film: Cinema and the Re-Creation of the World. London: Wallflower, 2008, p. 1

“The attraction and even promise of the cinema is the way films offer glimpses into other worlds, even if for only ninety minutes at a time.”

“We watch, hoping to escape the world we live in, to find utopian projections for improving our world or to heed prophetic warnings for what our world might look like if we do not change our ways.”

“In the theatre we live in one world while viewing another, catching a glimpse of “what if”?”

“Religion and film are akin. They both function by recreating the known world and then presenting that alternative version of the world to their viewers/worshippers. Religions and films each create alternative worlds using the raw materials of space and time and elements, bending each of them in new ways and forcing them to fit particular standards and desires.”

Film does this through camera angles and movements, framing devices, lighting, costume, acting, editing and other aspects of production. Religions achieve this through setting apart particular objects and periods of time and deeming them ‘sacred,’ through attention to specially charged objects (symbols), through the telling of stories (myths) and by gathering people together to focus on some particular event (ritual).

The result of both religion and film is a re-created world: a world of recreation, a world of fantasy, a world of ideology, a world we may long to live in or a world we wish to avoid at all costs. As an alternative world is presented at the altar and on the screen, that projected world is connected to the world of the everyday, and boundaries, to a degree, become crossable.” (p. 2-3).

Rituals and myths are intertwined, setting their participants within a world that is simultaneously here and now, just as it is part of an enduring history that fosters identity and belonging. … myths and rituals operate like films: they utilise techniques of framing, thus including some themes, objects and events, while excluding others; and they serve to focus the adherent’s attention in ways that invite humans in to the ritualized world in order to become participants.

Through the very technology of film, a new world is assembled – through the camera lens and in the editing room – and then projected onscreen. Viewers see the world, but see it in entirely new ways because everyday perceptions of space and time are altered. Such time and space travel are not foreign to the procedures of religious worldmaking… through the re-creation of time and space, we have a world, created anew.” (Plate, p. 10-11).

Religion is an imaginative

activity• Imagining a spiritual reality

• Imagining life after death

• Imagining the spiritual and moral implications of our behaviour

• Imagining ideal forms of community

• Imagining the purpose and meaning of human life

• Imagining the ultimate origin and destiny of the universe

Religion is a creative activity

Unlike film, religion is not a 90-minute break from ordinary life -- rather, it involves engaging in this imaginative activity in our life, and bringing that imagination into reality -- creating our own life and our world.

A POINTLESS ISSUE:

•BELIEF vs NON-BELIEF

•DIVIDING THE WORLD INTO TWO OPPOSING GROUPS

•REFUSAL TO IMAGINE, TO HAVE ANY “BELIEF”?

•REFUSAL TO IMAGINE ANYTHING OTHER THAN ONE’S OWN FIXED IMAGINATION OR “BELIEF”?

A BETTER SET OF QUESTIONS

•How can we learn to imagine different worlds?

•How can we understand (and imagine!) other peoples’ spiritual imaginations?

•What is the relationship between our imagined worlds and the practical world we live in?

•How do the two worlds adjust to each other through reflection and experience?

•What are the implications and consequences of different types of spiritual (and material) imagination?

•What type of spiritual imagination can help us live a better life and build a better world?