The entanglements of religion and things

Abstract

This chapter explores several different dimensions or levels in the relationships between religion and the material world. At the first level the chapter discusses the human dependence on things in order to experience religion. Even in ascetic traditions and those that reject materialism, things have a way of seeping back in. At a second level there is the question of why human religiosity depends on material things? I answer this in relation to the idea that both human-thing entanglements and religions incorporate “the beyond” so that, at a third level matter allows a holding onto, a bringing of the beyond near. At a fourth and final level, all these levels of religion-thing dependency result in a human entrapment in thingness that has widespread implications beyond the sacred.