Summary: In this paper it will be argued that taking modern notions of communication and aesthetics as points of departure in understanding religion risks obfuscating both religion and the place of aesthetics and communication in religion. In order to avoid this risk one may start with Régis Debray’s distinction between knowledge that is transported from this time to the future time – transmission – and information that is transported from this place to another place – communication. All transmission involves some communication, but communication as such does not ensure transmission, which is central to religion. A second step to avoid the abovementioned risk may be to consider the nature and central role of liturgy in religious practice. Religious liturgy may be defined as the structuring of time and consciousness for the believer, particularly through the way religious space is set up and how the body of the believer is situated within this space. This consideration will be supplemented by examples from Soto Zen-Buddhism. A third step may be to briefly consider what has been historically at work in the modern phenomenon of separating communication and aesthetics from liturgy in religious practice. In Western modernity this can be traced back to the appearance in the twelfth century of what Ivan Illich calls the ‘bookish object’ and the nearly simultaneous adoption of clocks in European monasteries. These historical developments were fatal for the hitherto intimate bond between religious time, space and liturgy. Lastly, it may be that only by according religious liturgy its centrality in religious practice – which must not be confused with the modernist notion of religious experience – that the role of communication and aesthetics in religion is illuminated.
