Graham Ward
‘Religion has become a special effect, inseparably bound to an entertainment value. It plays two mutually implicated roles in contemporary Western culture. On the one hand, as symbolic capital with a certain charismatic past, it can give places, goods, even people, a mystic charge. Those allured by this charge are not buying religion, they are not consuming the religious or being consumed by it; they are consuming the illusions or simulations of religion. On the other hand, these simulations of religion, religion as symbolic capital, are used as an aesthetic diversion from the profound uncertainties, insecurities and indeterminacies of postmodern living. The religious is used rhetorically in the creation of the illusions of transcendence, to help simulate euphoria in transporting events. Both cultural roles are different aspects of religion as fetish - caught up in the complex economies of displaced desire (sexual and consumerist); desire without a proper object.’
Graham Ward, True Religion (Malden 2003), p. 133
(Met dank aan Peter, die dit schitterende citaat linkte met mijn artikel over de Matthäus Passion - New Generation Remix.)
