The Bread her Work Consecrates: rethinking art and religious experience through sacramental theology

Art and religion are often compared on the grounds that there is an alignment between feelings of aesthetic rapture and religious experience. For many, the intense emotion we sometimes feel when experiencing art allows for an analogy to religious experience. Given this comparison, several scholars have suggested that artistic rapture might be a site for religious experience. Such arguments admit several important questions about this often-made comparison: Are there sufficient grounds for an analogy between aesthetic and religious rapture? Can the feeling-content of such experiences actually lead to knowledge of a corresponding spiritual reality, such as God? And, ultimately, what is the best way to understand the relationship between art and religious experience? This essay responds to these questions. The first section examines the comparison between artistic rapture and religious feeling. The second section then considers the epistemological claim that religious feelings can lead to knowledge of the divine, urging caution with such arguments. Nonetheless, I still contend that there is a profound relationship between art and religious experience. The third section pursues this through sacramental theology, conceptualising art as a site for encounter with the created world and a way of discerning and responding to the gift of creation.