Our current issue opens with a special section titled “Word, Image, Sound,” edited by Matthew Engelke, which charts new directions in the study of religious life and experience. Each of the essays in this section move beyond considerations of doctrine and belief to build on a phenomenological appreciation of concrete practices and their social consequences as these impact the category of religion and the embodiment of religious life.
The section brings into focus religion's sensory domain, examining the power of sound, song, spoken word, image, and infrastructure to enhance and alter the affective register of religious practice and performance. The essays examine communities of Muslims—the pageantry of preaching in Egypt and the politics of loudspeakers in Senegal—and of Christians—plans for a “National House of Prayer” in Zambia, Pentecostalist singers' claims to be the “Rwandan voice,” and controversies over religious tracts in Myanmar—to demonstrate that religious belief cannot be disentangled from...
