Eugene and Jan Peterson Associate Professor of Theology and the Arts Jonathan Anderson has been sharing his thoughts on the theological imagination with students and fellow educators from across North America this fall. On October 29, he delivered a featured guest lecture as part of the Yale Institute of Sacred Music’s Fall 2025 Colloquium series. On November 1, he presented one of three plenary addresses at this year’s Lilly Network National Conference.
The Lilly Network of Church-Related Colleges and Universities, which includes around one hundred member institutions across the United States, “seeks to strengthen the quality and shape the character of church-related institutions of higher learning in the twenty-first century.” Its 2025 national conference focused on the Christian imagination in higher education, discussing students’ experience of the arts and ways in which the arts challenge scholars and teachers to think more holistically about the role of education in students’ lives and the pursuit of the common good. Jonathan’s lecture, titled “Theological Imagination: A Meditation on ‘Visual Theology’ in the Search for Wisdom,” spoke not only to questions about the role of Christian imagination, but also to an awareness of the increasing prominence of visual arts and media in students’ lives—one of the themes that prompted the selection of this year’s topic.
The Regent community is delighted to see Jonathan contributing to these vital conversations, continuing Regent’s long history of deep engagement with theology and the arts in academia and beyond. Jonathan’s most recent book, The Invisibility of Religion in Contemporary Art (University of Notre Dame Press) was published earlier this year (read an excerpt on The Regent Vine). You can hear more from Jonathan in his Winter 2026 courses: The Christian Imagination and Theology in the History of Art.
