Are Icons Dead?

Roger Scruton doesn't think so:

[M]uch of what disturbs people in our image-saturated culture is what disturbed the theologians of Islam: namely, that the "graven image," which begins as a representation, soon becomes a substitute. And substitutes corrupt the feelings that they invite, in the way that idols corrupt worship … Sacred things create bridges across generations: they tell us that the dead and the unborn are present among us, and that their "real presence" lives in each of us, and each of us in it. The decline of religion has deprived us of sacred things. But it has not deprived us of the need for them.