Sacred Visual Ethnography<\/p>\n
David Morgan is a Professor of Religious Studies with a secondary appointment in the Department of Art, Art History, and Visual Studies at Duke. He has published several books and dozens of essays on the history of religious visual culture, on art history and critical theory, and on religion and media.[1]<\/a> With such a background, from my na\u00efve posture, I was initially suspect of this reading, for concern of the lack of value it could contribute to \u201cLeadership and Global Perspectives.\u201d After all, art is art, but leadership \u2026 well … everything rises and falls on leadership \u2026 not art. \u00a0This book however, remaining par for the course of this course, has contributed much to open my eyes and most importantly my leadership thought and the depth to which I live, see, and comprehend culture through the icons, images, symbols and art of a society.<\/p>\n Morgan in his book \u201cSacred Gaze: Religious Visual Culture In Theory and Practice\u201d defines his title as follows:<\/p>\n \u201cSacred gaze is a term that designates the particular\u00a0configuration of ideas, attitudes, and customs that informs a religious act of seeing as it occurs within a given cultural and \u00a0\u00a0 historical setting. A sacred gaze is the manner in which a \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 way of seeing invests an image, a viewer, or an act of \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 viewing with spiritual significance.\u201d[2]<\/a><\/p>\n I was particularly captured by the second sentence and the thought of how we \u201cinvest\u201d images into a memory-building, moment-capturing, and future-casting database. Morgan goes on to explain \u201csacred gaze\u201d \u201cencompasses the image, the viewer, and the act of viewing, establishing a broader framework for the understanding of how images operate.\u201d[3]<\/a><\/p>\n As a read and began to understand Morgan\u2019s concept and depth of thought provoked, I couldn\u2019t help but think of the ethnography and especially visual ethnography and loved how Morgan framed an ultimate end for an ethnographic journey on the sacred, spiritual and religious framework and influence.<\/p>\n In chapter seven entitled, \u201cNational Icons: Bibles, Flags, and Jesus in American Civil Religion,\u201d Morgan focuses on this framework and influence in the shaping \u201cAmerica.\u201d Morgan points out the process of \u201cnation-shaping\u201d that occurs through what he describes as, \u201cApologists of modern nationhood are often fond of regarding their nations as expressions of divine will, natural law, or the destiny of a particular people.\u201d[4]<\/a> It is these \u201cdivine wills,\u201d \u201cnatural laws\u201d and imagined \u201cdestinies\u201d that are used to create, form, and sculpt a culture and society of a people becoming. Morgan writes,<\/p>\n \u201cAmerican civil religion, especially after the Civil War, that \u00a0 stressed the importance of ritualized formation provided by \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 public ceremony, holiday commemoration, and the public \u00a0\u00a0 schools as the crucial moments for the public making of a \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 loyal citizenry. Anything less that vigilance in this matter \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 neglected virtue and spawned vice, which inevitably \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 produced moral degeneration followed by the decay of \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 institutions and the rise of social disorder.\u201d[5]<\/a><\/p>\n Who knew that visual culture, religious visual culture, had such ultimate power in nation-shaping? For me it is easy to see the visual culture as a result of history and a memory aid, but to have my eyes opened to the reality of the forward thinking, leading, shaping, manipulating of individuals and societies \u2026 suddenly art just isn\u2019t art \u2026 and leadership isn\u2019t something separate that everything real actually rises and falls on, but art (visual culture) and its understanding is leadership and a perspective needed\u00a0for individuals and societies in our world.<\/p>\n [1]<\/a> David Morgan, \u201cDepartment of Religious Studies,\u201d Duke University, accessed November 3, 2015, http:\/\/religiousstudies.duke.edu\/people?Gurl=&Uil=11110&subpage=profile<\/a>.<\/p>\n [2]<\/a> David Morgan, The Sacred Gaze: Religious Visual Culture in Theory and Practice<\/em> (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005), 3.<\/p>\n [3]<\/a> David Morgan, The Sacred Gaze: Religious Visual Culture in Theory and Practice<\/em> (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005), 5.<\/p>\n