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This winter, the attention being paid to religion in art has reached unprecedented heights. In the Netherlands, two major exhibitions on the theme open in December, namely Sven Lütticken’s The Return of Religion and Other Myths at BAK in Utrecht and the Stedelijk Museum’s Heilig Vuur, held at the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam. Boris Groys’s and Peter Wiebel’s long-awaited Medium Religion opened at the Karlsruhe Centre for Contemporary Art (ZKM) in late November, and the Haus der Kunst in Munich is hosting the gigantic, encyclopaedic exhibition Traces du Sacré. And these examples by no means cover all of the contemporary art with religious overtones! The big question is how much this focus on religion actually interests artists. Most art does not seem to be very religious or spiritual. Most appears to be fuelled by a sociological interest in the phenomenon of religion, which has suddenly become an important factor in our society. Artists express surprise, if not outright criticism and concern, about this interest in religion, given the fact that it has become clear that art – at least the ‘free speech’ that art presumes to stand for – is usually the first victim of a religious society.Much of the art that touches on the subject of religion is rather blasphemous in character, if not openly iconoclastic, scorning all forms of spectacle. In the current exhibitions on the theme of religion, imagery is regularly blackballed, or the work alludes, with a touch of satanic delight, to the gradual extinguishing of visual spectacle. The rare individual who truly sees art as a vehicle in the search for something higher, the true believer – in the Netherlands, Gijs Frieling is a familiar example – tends to come across as naïve. It must be said, however, that religious artists can be increasingly pleased by a growing understanding in the art world, even if only because they can function as advisers for a subject that has for a long time not been common ground with art lovers. Jürgen Habermas seems to have had reason on his side when he claimed that we live in a post-secular society, in which, after being at one another’s throats for so many decades, believers and nonbelievers seem to be slowly but surely developing more understanding for one another’s standpoints. This includes Terry Eagleton, who, from a completely different perspective, can now count on growing sympathy for his nuanced vision of religion; specifically, the critical, social character of religious societies.A great deal still needs to be learned about religion, by both believers and nonbelievers. This SPECIAL offers only the first step in that direction.