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Scholar to discuss malls and religious violence
September 06, 2007
Religion professor Jon Pahl will visit PLU to discuss how shopping malls have become sites of religious violence on Monday, Sept. 17 at 7:30 p.m. in the Scandinavian Cultural Center.
His lecture is titled “The Desire to Acquire: Shopping Malls, Religious Violence and Actual Places of Grace.” It is the second annual David and Marilyn Knutson Lecture.
According to Pahl, shopping malls are sacred places in an American religion of the market. Malls, which are now found from Edmonton, Alberta to Sydney, Australia, operate as labyrinths of consumption and engines of American empire.
Through architecture and advertising, malls disorient visitors, and then reorient pilgrims to the acquisition of an enchanted commodity. This process of enchantment appears normal, even innocent. But in its banality it is revealed how malls narrow the scope of human desire and truncate imagination.
Terrorirst around the globe have no illusions about American innocence and increasingly target malls and other centers of trade for their attacks. Thus, malls have become sites of religious violence. According to Pahl, malls can be contrasted with actual places of grace, as revealed in the world’s religious traditions, and happiness that is not contained in a commodity produced by a corporation.
The lecture is based on Pahl’s book, “Shopping Malls and Other Sacred Spaces: Putting God in Place.”
Pahl is a professor of the history of Christianity at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, and a visiting professor of religion at Temple and Princeton universities.
According to Pahl, shopping malls are sacred places in an American religion of the market. Malls, which are now found from Edmonton, Alberta to Sydney, Australia, operate as labyrinths of consumption and engines of American empire.
Through architecture and advertising, malls disorient visitors, and then reorient pilgrims to the acquisition of an enchanted commodity. This process of enchantment appears normal, even innocent. But in its banality it is revealed how malls narrow the scope of human desire and truncate imagination.
Terrorirst around the globe have no illusions about American innocence and increasingly target malls and other centers of trade for their attacks. Thus, malls have become sites of religious violence. According to Pahl, malls can be contrasted with actual places of grace, as revealed in the world’s religious traditions, and happiness that is not contained in a commodity produced by a corporation.
The lecture is based on Pahl’s book, “Shopping Malls and Other Sacred Spaces: Putting God in Place.”
Pahl is a professor of the history of Christianity at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, and a visiting professor of religion at Temple and Princeton universities.