Originally published as On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art (New York: Routledge, 2004).

See note to chapter 1.

Chapter 5 is "Rehema's Story Explained." This and the next four chapters in the book explain the five stories given in the previous chapter. I have uploaded two of them here.

Rehema--her pseudonym--was a "new age" artist, who made very personal objects of devotion, including versions of the Venus of Willendorf in beads, and an artwork involving her mammogram. "New age" art--the proper term is NRM, "new religious movement"--is one of the most consistently marginalized forms of contemporary art. It engages what is perceived to be idiosyncratic, syncretic, and often largely private practices and beliefs, and it can seem to be an appropriation of the superficial forms of contemporary art for very different purposes. This chapter is about NRM practices, and their exclusion from the art world.