Q: Do Catholics and Protestants in particular have a corner on the market, or are other non-Christian faiths moving in the same direction?

Well, certainly because of the whole concept of the incarnation you have the notion of Jesus as the God Incarnate, the God that dwells among us. And so already, theologically, you have the idea that something can be embodied in something else. Some religions, for instance Catholics, have a strong concept of the Eucharist, which is sacred and material. But even Protestant traditions ... historically they've always had images and pictures in homes, in meeting halls, in other places that are not quite so easily controlled by the clergy. A lot of it has to do with where laypeople are able to express their faith, sometimes in contesting the clergy or going against the formal religion.

Many organizations have followed trends that really got started in the 19th century. What you see are certain patterns or models which are created in one religious group and then picked up and developed in another. For instance, in Islam you'll have catalogues of action figures, dolls that are dressed to represent not Muhammad, obviously, but modestly dressed men and women. [Religious groups] look at each others' companies now and borrow back and forth. You'll see the same babies' puzzles in Arabic letters and in Hebrew letters and in English script. There's a lot of sharing these days.

Q: And there is a real grassroots aspect to this?

There is, and it's a very creative aspect; it's a way that laypeople can express their commitments, their faith in colorful and diverse ways. Many Mexican Americans, for instance, will have beautiful home altars with statues of the saints, but then they'll also have pictures of their children and grandchildren and maybe trinkets that they bought at a fair, or some needlework that someone did. Even things that are not religious are put on the altar as a way of saying, "These are important things; these connect our everyday life with our religious life."

Q: What does the explosion of all this stuff say about the practice of religion in contemporary America?

Americans like stuff. American like to have signs of abundance, they like to have homes that are colorful and diverse and keep you looking around. They like things that change. They like things that are new and different. They're not shy about their religion like Europeans, who are sometimes a little reluctant to be quite so bold in stating their religious commitments. There's a comfortable feeling that Americans have about the material world and objects in general. They give them as gifts, they give them as party favors. And also many groups in the United States have parallel religious cultures that try to rival secular and commercial culture -- "Jesus Christ, he's the real thing," for example. They parody trademarks or slogans that companies have.

Q: What about people who dismiss these things as superficial and not truly spiritual?

You really have to talk to the individual people who are using [these objects]. In general, people who purchase religious objects and put things in their homes -- these are things which are meaningful to them. They're either trying to socialize their children or witness to their faith. They're trying to have a memory of a special religious event. Sometimes elites perhaps overestimate the importance of words and underestimate the importance of images and the sensual world -- touching something, feeling something, smelling something. Religion is all about the senses. It is a multisensory activity, not merely an intellectual activity. But on the other hand, there is a long history in the United States of religious leaders asking the people sitting in the pews to simplify their lives, to focus on more important things, not to spend thousands of dollars on funerals, for instance. That was a problem in the 19th century.

Q: So material religion isn't anything new.

No, it's very, very old. Different groups use it at different times. For instance, relics from the Middle Ages were fought over; they were traded between various people. There were rivalries. Catholics would go on pilgrimages to visit relics; they would be buried next to them. It was an important part of their spiritual life. You have the shroud of Turin and various things in the cathedrals of Europe and even in families -- small reliquaries, for example, that hold something that touched a relic from American-born Mother Elizabeth Ann Seton, who is now a saint. Catholics might have that in their homes. You have all sorts of smaller things for the family that would duplicate larger, more famous important objects that are in a church -- smaller statues, reliquaries, candlestick holders.

Protestants, of course, have kinds of relics, too. They'll have a rock that a famous preacher sat on when he preached. Or they'll have a museum that everybody goes to in order to see a cloth that belonged to someone. People would have large, very emotional, romantic photographs or etchings or engravings or lithographs in their homes. Oftentimes they would come from reproduced pictures or paintings from the Middle Ages and they would have beautiful wooden frames -- "Ecce Homo," for example, the suffering Christ, to remember the Passion, to remember Jesus, and to make sure the family knew that. It was a sign of wealth, a sign of elegance.

Q: Talk about some of the objects in your collection.

I bought a plastic statue of the Virgin Mary that has water in it from Lourdes. Many pilgrims would go to Lourdes and that would be one of the main things they would do -- purchase a statue. The little cap opens up; the crown comes off. Just tourists would buy it for fun as well. It really depends on the individual. It's very inexpensive; it's something people who aren't wealthy can buy. Big groups of pilgrims who see [Lourdes] as a spiritual pilgrimage would bring back water and then pour the water out in little bits and give it to their friends so that they would be able to share the experience. Sometimes women and men would use the water in healing. They would think if you rubbed it on your body or drank it that it might have special powers just like the powers at Lourdes. What you get in something like this is the larger Lourdes experience shrunk down into something smaller that you can carry back to your home, just like having a small copy of a big statue from a church to put on a home altar.

Some things are just novelties -- the infamous stocking-stuffers everyone is always trying to find. You have singing Christmas nuns that you can put on your fingers ... and that bring back funny memories. These are a commercial product that is marketed and sold purely for profit. The goal of little finger puppets is to make money.

The comb that says "Christ died for us" is very inexpensive, so everyone can afford to buy it. You could use it as a little party favor. You could give it as an award for a child, for instance, who recited Bible verses. We could have a similar saying in Latin on a beautiful embroidered vestment, and everyone would think that was just wonderful and beautiful and artistic. But if it's in English and on a comb, some people think that's profaning very serious sentiments. But for many religious people, what it's doing is saying religion is part of everyday life, Jesus is part of everyday life. If you use a comb, it's a good thing. The sentiment is good, and so why not put it together? It's not art; it's a religious reminder. It's something that is available and inexpensive and easy to move around.

There's an amazing variety of religious objects. People are very, very creative. But some objects are determined by religious conventions and religious authorities. A rosary has to look a certain way in order to be considered a rosary by the Catholic Church. There's a whole tradition about how it's set up, how many beads, what you say on the beads, what you meditate on, how to deal with it if it breaks, whether or not you can get certain blessings from it. So you say certain prayers. If it's not blessed, you don't get the indulgences. It has a long, complicated history based on Catholic authority. Madonna might wear the rosary or people might take the cross off it, but then it loses its connection to a Catholic structure, and it becomes a different kind of object.

Objects, like all religion, are very malleable. You can create them and re-create them and shape them into different kinds of things, but at some point they lose their connection to the tradition itself, and people no longer recognize them.