The Department of Religion is displaying the religious material culture collection of Dr. James S. Bielo in the religion art gallery which is open Monday-Friday from 9 am - 4 pm on the Ground Floor of Peabody Hall. The show is called Secondhand Sacred. Bielo provides the following description of his collection:

What is “religion”? A powerful way to address this question is to begin with the lives of people. Everyday objects, mass-produced and singular, play an integral role in the religious worlds people make.

The objects on display here are the material vestiges of Christianity as lived in North America, sourced from secondhand venues such as eBay, estate sales, thrift shops, and antiques stores. These items challenge us to reckon with how people live religion with their bodies, with things, in places, and in relation to the bodies of others.

Some of these objects were designed for personal use, while others were designed to move through the world in more public ways. Many were made in factories, bought and sold, used, collected or given away. They were then disinherited, discarded or donated, transforming them into secondhand commodities. These items show how lived religious objects blur boundaries between commercial and sacred contexts, and between private and public spheres.

Artist Bio:
Dr. James S. Bielo is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

Bielo is an anthropologist of religion, with an ethnographic focus on Christianity in the United States. His research interests center on materiality and language as lived resources in religious life, and the intimate relations of religion and power.

Instagram: @sacredpicker