What hath Jerusalem to do with Paris, or Carthage with Milan? Dr. Robert Covolo—Director of the Center for Pastoral Residents at Christ Church Sierra Madre, former scholar at the Visual Faith Institute of Art and Architecture and faculty at the Torrey Honors Institute—joins Matt, Derek, and Alastair to discuss his latest work, Fashion Theology, where he gives an account of the dynamic relationship between theology and fashion through the rich history of Christian thought as well as recent political, social, aesthetic, literary, and performance theory.
Timestamps:
What hath Jerusalem to do with Paris, or Carthage with Milan? [0:00 – 7:32]
The relationship between democracy and fashion [7:32 – 12:12]
Have modern democratic norms allowed for real creativity, or have they stifled it? [12:12 – 16:15]
Fashion as a realm of meaning-making [16:15 – 20:11]
How we use fashion to individuate ourselves within our preferred subcultures [20:11 – 27:40]
The way in which clothing gives us insight into what the human person is [27:40 – 32:07]
Theological aesthetics and fashion [32:07 – 35:43]
How do we relate the political reality of how clothes are made with the surface reality of how they appear? [35:43 – 41:34]
How should Christians dress? [41:34 – 50:14]
Resources mentioned:
Amazon link: Fashion Theology
Quote: Slavoj Žižek, Living in the End Times
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Finally, as always, follow Derek, Andrew, and Alastair for more tweet-sized brilliance. Thanks to Timothy Motte for his sound editing work. And thanks to The Joy Eternal for lending us their music, which everybody should download out of gratitude for their kindness.
This was a great discussion about the book and fashion and theology but I will disagree with you when you say that if you aren’t working in fashion then you aren’t obligated to fight against the injustices to the way fashion is created. At the end of the day we are all consumers of fashion and where and how we spend our money matters. The issues behind the way clothing is made and consumed are both a human rights issue and an environmental issue and they are not to be ignored by those who follow Christ’s teachings to take care of the poor and weakest in our society. Our planet’s animal and plant life and human lives are exploited daily by the current practices in the fashion industry and it is every person’s duty to see that things are changed. To sit back and not be a part of the change, we are not taking the side of the victims, we are siding with the people who are exploiting our planet’s resources and it’s people.