Religion and Public Space
Religion and Public Space
For over thirty years my research work at The Provincial Museum of Alberta has focused on the religious life through field studies delving into the shape and meaning of religious tradition in Western Canada and elsewhere. This has provided an ideal place in which to think about tradition and modernity and to consider religion and public space, for public museums in liberal democratic societies are living laboratories of this issue and they are often contested spaces. Exhibitions and other forms of publication sponsored by publicly funded museums are a lighting rod for a wide range of concerns, many of which hinge on how we understand the purpose of public space and what is legitimate and useful for consideration in that space. The politics of culture dominates the discussion in the decision-making process in museums.
The politics of the control of public space dominates the discussion within cultural communities when they, for one reason or another, begin to ask why some of what the community treasures in its self-understanding is excluded from consideration. Why are the interpretive projects in which the community participates so often hijacked by professionals who, having used their friendship and field research work to acquire knowledge and materials about the community, suddenly turn their backs and censor matters of the cultus at the heart of the very culture the professionals say they want to illuminate for the public?
David Goa focuses on deepening the capacity of the faithful to think through the gifts of their traditions: the spiritual life, the theological traditions and our responsibility to the public world. Supporters help him continue to do this important work.
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