Periodically over a decade (2008–2018), artist and visual social historian Nicola Green was invited to witness intimate meetings between prominent spiritual leaders as well as a range of interfaith conferences. She sketched, took photographs, and made copious notes. The first fruits of this project were mounted as a 2018 exhibition called Encounters at St. Martin-in-the-Fields, London. Its Light Series included twelve life-size images of leaders she had met, silk-screened and painted on transparent plastic (Perspex), somewhat evocative of stained glass. Her Encounter Series was composed of thirty-one portraits, all missing their faces. The shape was there, drawn in shades of brown, but the features of the portraits consisted of dress, hair, and religious symbols—backgrounded by colorful patterns that aligned with particular cultures or traditions.
The book is not an exhibition catalogue, but rather a thoughtful collection of essays that explores how art may help us navigate our religiously plural world. It is punctuated by Green's work, with a pair of Encounter portraits separating the essays, and pages littered with sketches, photos, and pieces of her Perspex figures.
The essay by William J. Danaher Jr. provides rich, imaginative readings of Green's photographs that might otherwise seem unremarkable—illuminating what art can reveal as we meet across religious difference. Chloë Reddaway's delightful curation of historical Christian portraits makes them engaging conversation partners and helps to imbue the face/less with meaning. Along with Dua Abbas’ insightful reflection on human figures in Islamic art, and our interconnected traditions of image-making and image-breaking, these articles make the book a valuable resource for art history and appreciation, with a unique interfaith lens.
Art is an undertheorized and underutilized medium in interreligious engagement. It can, as Skinder Hundal asserts in a concluding essay, help people to unlearn and reimagine, to risk complexity and leave their comfort zones. Although this book offers some interesting discussion, I do not think it can serve as the missing keystone. The subjects of Green's work present an “old-school” image of interfaith dialogue, as if unaware of developments in the field over the last fifty years.
One symptom is that almost all of the figures are men. Green laments this fact, and there is an essay by Maryanne Saunders that reflects on the ways women are often set “outside of the frame” in sacred texts and traditions. The image helped to concretize a concern that had been percolating since I opened the book. Patriarchy is real, but the visibility of women also depends on where you point your camera. The vast majority of world-changing interreligious work is not done by popes, chief rabbis, and dalai lamas.
We meet religious difference in families, schools, media, congregations, and communities, as well as in public discourse, public policy, public services, and public spaces. There are enormous numbers of individuals and groups working through dialogue, study, spiritual encounter, integrative learning, community organizing, advocacy, the arts, and more. The work is intersectional and interdisciplinary, and must make room for secular lifestances, the spiritual but not religious, multiple religious belonging, indigenous traditions, pagans, and a host of historically marginalized populations. Blocking out the faces of the great men of the world religions is not sufficient to paint all these people into the picture.
Yet Green is sincere in her desire to foster interfaith understanding, and Rosen has crafted a beautiful book to magnify the power of her artistic contribution. Rosen and Ben Quash provide a useful, concise history of interreligious engagement, including some of its premodern precedents. Ibrahim Mogra and David Ford offer personal testimonies on modes of interreligious engagement that have been transformative for them. Other essays explore the value of interfaith dialogue, the nature of empathy and conflict, and the implications of radical otherness. Together they fashion a collaborative vision of how art can play a role in building bridges over difference.
Given the cost of the volume, it seems best suited as a library acquisition, where all may peruse its engaging aesthetic and thought-provoking essays.
