What Religious Art Tells Us About the Evolution of Religion

The Japanese Sun Goddess, Amaterasu, emerging from the heavenly cave. A painting by Utagawa Kunisada. Source: public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

For thousands of years, human beings have rendered their sacred beliefs, myths, and deities within sculptures, paintings, literature, and song. Up until about 200 years ago, religious themes dominated art, including some of the earliest rock paintings (~25,000 BCE), the theriomorphic sculptures at Göbekli Tepe (9,500 BCE), the Egyptian Book of the Dead (1,550 BCE), the sonorous Hindu Rigveda (1,400 BCE), Homer’s Iliad (700 BCE), the Leshan Giant Buddha (803 CE), and Michelangelo’s painting in the Sistine Chapel (1512).

Although less conspicuous today, the protracted relationship between religion and art suggests that they either "co-evolved" and are two branches of the same behavior, or that religion “hijacked” art to extend its own appeal.

Did Religion and Art Evolve as a Single Behavior?

Beneath the surface, religion and art have much in common. Both are skillfully-crafted ideas that grab our attention, evoke emotion, represent hidden meanings, embellish reality, communicate the messages and beliefs of the artist or priest, and influence the imagination and behavior of other people in ways that appear to have been beneficial during human evolution (e.g., to prepare us for the unknown, to extend our imaginative reach, to reassure and comfort us, and to reinforce social norms and moral behavior).

Religious art may have reinforced belief in divine judgment and facilitated more cooperative and successful societies. Source: public domain (left) and Andrew Martin via Wikimedia Commons.

Some scholars have even suggested that art and religion evolved as a single behavior, only diverging recently into the forms we know today (Rennie, 2020). Indeed, religion has historically been a behavioral endeavor (e.g., worship, mass, ritual, divination, sacrifice, etc.), with the doctrinal beliefs of the Abrahamic religions being an outlier. It is easy to see the connection between religious behavior and theatric performance, although religious beliefs have a parallel in art theory/criticism, religious texts in literary fiction, and so on.

There are some differences. While art makes or does “beautiful” things (applying a broad definition of beauty), religion makes or does “sacred” things. In each case, these are “special” things that are skillfully-wrought, valuable, attention-grabbing, evocative, inspiring, embellished, and filled with messages (e.g., from an artist or priest). However, “sacred” things acknowledge some superempirical reality that appears to endow people with reassuring meaning, wisdom, and a pattern to reality: an invisible order to which people can align their actions.

Thus, art may become religion when a mutually reinforcing network of art objects (idols, texts, ritual performances, body art, costumes, hymns, dances, etc.) are grouped together in such a way that a meaningful pattern can be perceived, and such that their author, whose message we are supposed to understand and empathize with, may not be an artist or priest, but a god (or a god working through a priest; Rennie, 2020).

In this story, then, religion and art were either the same behavior, before slowly diverging over time, or religion was a younger brother of art, originating after a few augmentations to art during the course of human evolution. Given that some of the earliest rock art does not appear to be religious, the “younger brother” theory may be preferable.

Much of the earliest art is hand-prints or pictures of people and animals. Source: Andrew Hall via Wikimedia Commons.

Did Religion Hijack Art to Spread More Effectively? 

Religion and art may share no evolutionary “DNA” if the former parasitized the latter to extend its appeal. Several scholars have applied this argument to religion’s hijacking of other human traits. For example, even without religion, people naturally imagine beings and entities around every corner (because it is “better to be safe than sorry;” Guthrie, 1993), attend to novelty and unexpected things (PDF) in their environment, see minds as non-physical, mistakenly see design and purpose in their environment, engage in rituals to establish a sense of control (PDF), and have a difficult time imagining being dead.

Religions tap into these biases to extend their appeal by giving us novel gods, mindful statues, creation stories, intense rituals, and an afterlife, so it wouldn’t be a surprise if it also hijacked our natural attraction to art. However, if religion were already a form of art, none of these features would be too surprising. Art is already about design, performance, and the presentation of novel, imaginative, attention-grabbing worlds.

The Functions of Religious Art

Religious art serves at least three functions (Pongratz-Leisten & Sonik, 2015), each of which support the hijacking hypothesis.

1. It can embody a deity. Sculptures or idols are useful stand-ins for gods because they provide a material form to an invisible entity (pictures may also be used, such as in Hindu shrines). This material form provides believers with a more involved and natural experience when worshiping, praying, or communicating with the god. Aspects of the art may also be exaggerated to highlight the god’s role (e.g., large eyes to represent a watchful god), and these may become so recognizable that they become shorthand symbols (e.g., rays above a head/circle to represent a sun god).
2. It is instructional. Pictures and songs allow illiterate people to learn and understand various myths and ideas (e.g., a picture of Christ’s Resurrection or Anubis accepting a soul into the afterlife), and literate people to imagine them in new ways.
3. It stimulates devotional feeling. Art is an effective way to communicate the emotions attached to the myths and ideas it depicts and, thus, to stimulate an emotional reaction or “devotional feeling” in observers. This reaction may strengthen people’s beliefs in the myths and ideas or bring extra attention to them.

These functions help religions to convert and retain followers by providing a more involved, educational, and emotionally fulfilling experience. Thus, each function supports the view that religion parasitized art to extend its appeal. However, once more, the functions are also consistent with the hypothesis that religion and art co-evolved and, thus, naturally share the same functions.

Further study is necessary to resolve the “evolution vs. hijacking” debate. Such studies may be possible, given the lack of artistic license in religious art (gods must not be offended and believers must not be misled). This historic consistency gives researchers important information about how believers perceive their gods and how these perceptions evolve with time and circumstance.

There is much to be learned from depictions like these. From left to right: Chinnamasta from India, Baron Samedi from Haiti, and Anubis from Egypt. Source: public domain images and markbenecke via Wikimedia Commons.

What Can We Learn From Religious Art?

Analyses of religious art could help researchers to understand how religion evolved and what attracts people to it today. For example, it may be that gods look more anthropomorphic (like humans) today than in the past. Ancient gods were sometimes theriomorphic (like animals, e.g., Anubis), and a transition to anthropomorphic gods might be associated with an evolution toward religions that focus on morality, wisdom, prayer (i.e., communication), and other traits that are more intuitively human.

It may also be that today's gods look more benevolent and less punishing, which may be due to society becoming less dangerous. When bad things happen, people want (or blame) divine punishment. Thus, safer places and times should have fewer punishing gods.

Simple physical features may also be informative. For example, the objects that gods are holding (e.g., weapons), the emotions on their faces, and even the relative size of their eyes could tell us about whether gods from particular places and eras were more watchful, angry, or protective.

With these data, scientists could test whether particular types of gods are more common, necessary, attention-grabbing, memorable, and likely to be talked about, believed, and worshiped, informing theories about the evolution of religion.

Studies that systematically analyze the history of religious art can therefore help us to explain why religions “look the way they do” and, thus, which psychological theories are best able to resolve the mystery of religion’s origins.

References (some of these books can be found here)

1. Guthrie, S. (1993). Faces in the Clouds, New York : Oxford University Press.
2. Rennie, B. (2020). An ethology of religion and art: Belief as behavior. Routledge.
3. Pongratz-Leisten, B. & Sonik, K. (2015). The Materiality of Divine Agency, De Gruyter.