Background

How do religious and cultural sensibilities influence attitudes towards congregational involvement in the arts? Although religion’s role in constructing symbolic boundaries influences adherents’ behaviors both inside and outside of sacred spaces, a predominant focus on economic and cultural factors in the scholarship on cultural tastes and practices has tended to relegate religion to a marginal position in the literature. Theories of class-based cultural tastes and omnivorousness have only rarely been applied to the study of religion and even less so to the intersection between tastes or practices and the sacredness of congregational contexts.

Purpose

This study aims to bridge the gap between the sociology of religion and of culture by showing how considerations about congregational spaces present a complex set of boundaries for practitioners when it comes to the arts, such that acceptance or rejection of the latter is conditioned by the form it takes. The study also examines the extent to which the inclusionary effects of cultural omnivorousness, by volume and composition, apply to attitudes about these sacred spaces.

Methods

This study uses data from the Arts and Religion Survey to run logistic regressions on attitudes towards a range of forms of congregational participation in the arts.

Results

The results show that religious conservatism and such attitudes are not intrinsically opposed. Instead, conservatism is consistently negatively related only when artistic inclusion does not have well-defined symbolic boundaries (i.e., is culturally atypical). Cultural omnivorousness also has varied effects. Omnivorousness by volume but not by composition predicts openness to congregational involvement in the arts, albeit only for well-defined and recognizable artistic forms.

Conclusions and Implications

It is cultural atypicality (rather than variety) that is antithetical to conservative conceptions of the sacred. Moreover, because religious conservatism offers specifically religious understandings of legitimacy for sacred spaces, omnivorousness by composition, which deals in matters of (cultural) legitimacy, has little to offer, and it is only omnivorousness by volume that extends its inclusivity to attitudes about congregational involvement in the arts. The study concludes with a discussion of data limitations and recommendations for further research.

中文翻译：

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神圣空间中的艺术：宗教保守主义和文化杂食性如何影响关于会众参与艺术的态度

背景

宗教和文化敏感性如何影响对会众参与艺术的态度？尽管宗教在构建象征性边界方面的作用会影响信徒在神圣空间内外的行为，但在文化品味和实践的学术研究中，对经济和文化因素的主要关注倾向于将宗教置于文学中的边缘位置。基于阶级的文化品味和杂食性理论很少应用于宗教研究，更不用说品味或实践与会众环境的神圣性之间的交叉点。

目的

本研究旨在弥合宗教社会学与文化社会学之间的鸿沟，展示对会众空间的考虑如何为艺术从业者提供一套复杂的界限，从而接受或拒绝后者取决于形式它需要。该研究还检查了文化杂食性的包容性影响在多大程度上适用于对这些神圣空间的态度。

方法

本研究使用来自艺术和宗教调查的数据，对对各种形式的会众参与艺术的态度进行逻辑回归。

结果

结果表明，宗教保守主义和这种态度并没有本质上的对立。相反，只有当艺术包容没有明确定义的符号边界（即在文化上是非典型的）时，保守主义才会始终呈负相关。文化杂食性也有不同的影响。数量上的杂食性而不是构成上的杂食性预示着对会众参与艺术的开放性，尽管仅限于明确定义和可识别的艺术形式。

结论和意义

与保守的神圣概念相对立的是文化的非典型性（而不是多样性）。此外，由于宗教保守主义提供了对神圣空间合法性的特定宗教理解，因此处理（文化）合法性问题的组合杂食性几乎没有提供，只有数量上的杂食性将其包容性扩展到关于会众参与的态度在艺术方面。该研究最后讨论了数据限制和进一步研究的建议。