Literature as Sacred Text Exploring the Intersection of Religion and Contemporary Spectral Fiction

Описание: In recent decades, scholars have challenged traditional ideas of what constitutes a sacred text. This is particularly evident in the spiritual sensibility emerging in contemporary spectral literature, which intersects with and broadens religious discourse by disrupting traditional narratives and presenting a syncretism of postsecular ideas around the self, spirit, and the Divine.

In this presentation at the University of Birmingham Conference in Theological and Religious Studies, Dr Karen Frances McCarthy explores what determines sacredness in a text.

The goal of the conference is to showcase the robust research in theology and religious studies taking place in the College of Arts and Law, including interdisciplinary explorations of the intersections between religion and other fields such as philosophy, history, sociology, politics, jurisprudence, psychology, economics, environmental studies, Al and information technology.

Dr McCarthy’s presentation engages with religious studies by drawing on novels, including Mitch Albom's The Five People You Meet in Heaven (2003) and George Saunders’s Lincoln in the Bardo (2017), to examine how fiction can be considered a sacred text that responds to spiritual hunger in twenty-first-century society. It explores how, with increasing numbers of people seeking deeper meaning beyond strictly theological narratives, fiction as sacred text can offer alternative perspectives on what informs the religious and spiritual experience.