Flower, soil, water, stone: Biblical landscape items and Protestant materiality

Abstract

Protestants mobilize objects such as 'Holy Land' flowers, Jordan River stones, vials of Dead Sea water, sand from Lake Tiberias, and Golgotha soil as potent metonymic resources, promising a kind of direct access to the scriptural past and its sacred stories. This article uses this case of biblical landscape items to reflect on the historic ambivalence that characterizes Protestant relations with religious materiality. Building on scholarship that has demonstrated the prolific role of religious materiality in Protestant ritual and everyday lifeworlds, the author extends this analysis by asking: under what conditions do Protestants experience materiality as untroubled and under what conditions is a more anxious disposition activated? To differentiate among conditions, the author proposes that it is helpful to conceptualize Protestant engagements with materiality vis-à-vis legitimized frames (e.g. pedagogy, devotion, evangelism, entertainment). Drawing together archival and ethnographic data, primarily among US Protestants, the article argues that when Protestants function within legitimized frames they are prone to embrace biblical landscape items, but when they find themselves out of frame, their engagement with this particular species of materiality becomes troubled.

"No Wonder That on This Spot God Spoke to Us": Intersection of Anglican Tourist-Pilgrims and Archaeology in British Mandate Palestine

“…113 Such sentiment emphasizes not only the appeal of tourism to create memories but also represents how the movement of British tourists to Palestine was instrumental in the movement of ideas about and religious souvenirs from Palestine. 114 The relationship between British tourists and Palestine was one underpinned by and enabled by the colonialism of the British Mandate, and the connection of British tourists to Palestine should be seen as part of a general appropriation of Palestine's past as part of British cultural heritage. The increasing movement of British tourists into Palestine epitomizes the wider colonial occupation of Palestine by the Mandate.…”

“…64 Therefore, alongside the archaeological imagination and kairos we can consider aspects of religious materiality, akin to the Protestant materiality explored by James Bielo, as related to Holy Land souvenirs, which seemingly offered direct access to the biblical past by way of their material links to the Holy Land. 65 The appeal of archaeological tourism in Palestine lay in a potent combination of "kairotic" connection and religious materiality, experienced via the landscape and material remains of the past.…”

Retrieved Altar Cross of the Luther Church Helsinki

“…However, over recent decades, scholars have pointed out that Protestant engagement with materiality is, in fact, far from unambiguous but rather somewhat ambivalent (Bielo 2018). These scholars assert that Protestantism can no longer uncritically be labelled as iconophobic or anti-material.…”

Viral Devotionality and Christian Solidarity in/beyond Borneo

“…When smartphones and Facebook became incorporated into everyday village life, my acquaintances extended their Christian praxis online, adapting quickly to the wider global Christian social media‐scape's prevailing terms and conventions. Today, with both churches and individual congregants active on Facebook, social media interactions form a ‘legitimized frame’ (Bielo 2018:371) of Christian interaction and experience for Bidayuhs—no less valid or meaningful than their fleshly equivalents.…”