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In scholarship on religion and religious art, the term aniconism describes the absence of a figural representation of a deity (whether anthropomorphic or theriomorphic), primarily in the context of ritual veneration of one deity or more, but also within a visual tradition more broadly. Aniconic worship may take on a variety of forms, including veneration centered around a standing stone, open fire, vacant space, or no independent physical focal point at all. In religious art and visual culture, aniconism may also be manifested in a range of ways, such as adherence to the usage of ornament, calligraphy, or geometric forms. Although it is often treated as synonymous with iconoclasm, the word aniconism does not refer to the destruction of religious images. It may be adopted without an articulated reason or coherent doctrine, or it may be connected with an explicit theology. Worship of deities without figural representations has been widely attested for millennia in both polytheistic traditions (Greco-Roman, Phoenician) and monotheistic ones (Jewish, Islamic). The concept of aniconism, however, is modern. It was introduced by Johannes Adolph Overbeck (1826–1895) for the particular purpose of describing the presumed earliest phases in the development of Greek religion, which were construed as imageless. In the 20th century, aniconism has come to describe the absence of the figural image of a deity in worship and has been applied more broadly to certain artistic traditions such as early Buddhist, Islamic, and Jewish art. Since the manifestations of aniconism differ widely, it is vitally important to apply the concept contextually, with clear criteria for what is considered aniconic within a particular framework. Among the religions in the West from the Renaissance to the present, aniconism is notable in its emergence in certain strands of Protestantism, particularly in Calvinist houses of worship. Worship with no figural image is also often linked with primeval religions and is seen either negatively, as the practice of a less advanced culture, or positively, as a marker of higher spirituality. Claims of a complete absence of imagery and figural art in various religious traditions (e.g., Jewish, Islamic) have often been disproven, as further examination of those traditions has revealed the occurrence of figuration alongside some form of aniconism. The wide range of forms of aniconism and its coexistence with semi-figural and fully figural forms in worship and within broader visual traditions suggest that the concept is best applied through a nuanced approach which considers the nature and frequency of its occurrence rather than seeing it as an absolute negation of the figural image.

Processional performances, including parading activities and the ritual procession of holy objects and images, have long been a part of religious practice. Informed by a cultural prejudice that viewed such public forms of religious display as outdated survivals from archaic religious traditions, early scholarly analysis focused on questions of origin rather than interpretation. Only recently have scholars from a variety of disciplinary perspectives—including religious studies, history, anthropology, and sociology—begun to examine such behaviors as expressions of “lived religion” rather than expressions of a “pagan” past. Only with the rise of the phenomenological method in the mid-twentieth century, best represented in the work of Mircea Eliade and his disciples and critics, did the question of the space in which such activities took place develop as a category for investigation and analysis. Eliade’s concept of “sacred” and “profane space,” while significantly criticized in recent decades, raised important concerns regarding the way in which religions created, recognized, and moved through space as a category of human meaning. To Eliade’s contrast between the sacred and profane, recent scholars of American religion have added to their examination of space the oppositions of public and private, religious and secular, although understanding these terms (as well as sacred and profane) as dialectical rather than dichotomous. As public events that take place in religiously neutral space (the street), religious parades and processions raise questions about the phenomenological concept of the sacred center, or even the pilgrim’s goal of the “center out there,” because they represent a moving and ephemeral focus of sacred power. Participants may don special clothing, carry flags and banners, utilize sound (especially music), and transport sacred images and objects as they move from place to place. By visually, aurally, and spatially transgressing various boundaries, whether physical or symbolic, these ritual performances can “reterritorialize” social hierarchies and geographical identities. The “spatial turn” in religion combines insights drawn from cultural geography, the anthropology of space, and philosophical concepts in order to suggest new analytical and methodological approaches in the study of American religion generally, and religious parades and processions specifically.