On March 2 and 3, the international conference Deconstructing Idolatry - organized by Dr. Beniamino Fortis - will be held in Graz.
Idolatry, as a human attitude, can take on different meanings, depending on the context it appears in as well as the perspective it is considered from. In dealing with this broad topic, the conference adopts two different but complementary approaches, each pursued in a dedicated section.
The first group of papers addresses the literal sense of idolatry, that is, the worship of alien deities and/or cult images condemned in the Old Testament – and in Judaism in general.
In the second section, the notion of idolatry is instead understood in its figurative sense. Here the focus is set on modern, secular, demythologized forms of worship, directed to what can be called ‘idols of thought’ – such as dogmas, prejudices, ideologies, etc.
International scholars will show that idolatry is not just a thing of the past, as idolatrous dynamics are still at work in contemporary culture.