A Beautiful Spirit
February 3, 2025
Dr. Brian Bantum and his students discuss art’s theological role
“Theology is a story that we tell. That doesn’t make it less true but, if we admit it’s a story, we begin to realize the creative possibilities for how we tell it.” When Dr. Brian Bantum discusses weaving art into theological education, his approach goes far beyond adding novels or poetry to the course syllabus. Garrett’s Neal F. and Isla A. Fisher Professor of Theology routinely incorporates artistic practice into the classroom, even replacing some tests and papers with projects that ask people to share their understanding of God through mediums beyond linear thought. “As Christian leaders, students’ work will constantly require them to creatively articulate who God is,” he says. “That demands we read the world and choose different forms of expression. Artistic process teaches close observation, then asks us to create something that participates in the life of God—nourishing ourselves and nurturing others.” This shift in content and pedagogy breathes new life into his classrooms and, students report, grants a richer understanding of God and one another.
Integrating art moves theology from a consumptive model that asks students to learn what they believe by regurgitating other theologians toward a process of revelation and discovery. “I was able to access parts of myself and feel connected to God in ways that I hadn’t before,” says MDiv student Emily DeLew. “It helped me journey from my more dogmatic past—questions of what is right and what is wrong—into a place where I’m receptive to the presence of God.” This change is part of what Dr. Bantum hopes art can awaken in students. “Insofar as theology is reflection on a God who becomes flesh, the arts help us to remember and understand how materiality functions,” he says. “What we know flows not from a kind of floating brain out into the world, but by an organic process through which we come to know, feel, and experience through the creation of things.” In this way, art isn’t just a pedagogical device—it gives students a more truthful epistemology. “It really is transformative,” agrees D’ana Downing MDiv ‘22, who took several classes with Dr. Bantum. “We entered into an intimate way of knowing who God is to us, but also knowing how we belong to each other.”
It’s fitting that Downing uses the word “intimate” when describing the gifts this pedagogy offers, because it’s a theme that recurs often when you speak with Dr. Bantum’s students. “Class was a soul-baring time,” says MDiv student Janson Steffan. “People shared things that were real and personal, and the whole class would thank them for being vulnerable enough to trust us with those disclosures. It was an amazing experience.” Classes often feature the creation of poetry, collage, watercolor and other physical expressions, which students are then invited to share. “Community is an essential part of living out our theologies,” Downing explains. “To collaborate and co-create with one another and the Creator—there’s an aspect of being deeply seen and deeply known that helps us come alive.”
Art also possesses a crucial ability to pull marginalized voices into the center of theological discourse. Dr. Bantum models this potential by including novels like The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison and The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri on the reading syllabus, but broader artistic integration also invites students to contest the way power shapes our theological boundaries. “’Sacred’ and ‘profane’ is almost always a question of power,” Dr. Bantum offers in example. “It asks who we say looks more like God, and who will be excluded from God’s image.” Instructing students to create their own theological art invites them to question messages they have received about how God moves through the world. “Something can be sacred but also be messy,” Downing says with a smile. “We had the opportunity to affirm an embodied theology, one that says ‘I am good, holy, and whole,’ that the Holy Spirit co-creates beside us as we bring something new into the world. From this discovery, we are untethered from harmful thoughts and things that never served us.”
While all of this may sound like an unorthodox way to guide theological inquiry, Dr. Bantum is quick to point out how art is already at the center of Christian life. “Even communion functions as an artistic reflection of who we are and who we might be,” he explains. “It’s a visual materialization that God wants to be with us, that we are good, and that God wants us to live. Every week we get to be part of that artistic practice.” Steffan, in turn, points out how art has helped him better understand long-cherished theological concepts like the ineffable nature of God. “There are things about God that you can’t explain with words. If it was as simple as that, then the box around God would get smaller and smaller,” he notes. “Each way we express ourselves offers another window into who God is, waiting for us to explore new dimensions of the divine.”
While Dr. Bantum is effusive about how this approach to theological education can benefit all learners, he’s careful to name that students are not evaluated by how “good” their art is in an aesthetic sense. “For example, the culminating project in one class has students create a systematic theology through the visual progression of five images. But what I’m most interested in evaluating is their thinking and process,” he says. “I help students see how, at the end of the day, art is the accumulation of small marks. Even for students who don’t see themselves as artists, it’s beautiful to watch them move from fear toward experiencing a part of themselves open through that process.” DeLew is one of those students. “I don’t consider myself creatively oriented. I can write really good emails and papers, not poetry,” she laughs. “At first making art was nerve wracking and felt foreign, especially since others in the class readily considered themselves artists. But the more I explored it, I felt something shift deep inside myself—a spiritual connection to the act of creation.”
This affinity for creation is at the heart of why Dr. Bantum carves for art such a central role: He believes it will better prepare students for careers in ministry. As the new faculty advisor for Garrett’s Master of Arts in Public Ministry, he’s attentive to how art can function as a prophetic proclamation of God’s will for the world. “Some of my frustration with academic theology—especially being a person who’s married to a pastor—is that we can’t just critique what others have done. We have to build something,” he says. “It’s not as though art doesn’t critique or isn’t in conversation with ideas and realities of the past, but it does all of those things by putting something on table, by making something new.”
Downing has already experienced the benefit to this approach in her work as Associate Chaplain & Associate Director of Religious and Spiritual Life at Northwestern University. “I’ve created something called the Middle Space where I’ve worked with students to create self-portraits and collages,” she says. “It’s awe inspiring to watch students find their voice, to say things about themselves that they were never able to say to their families of birth, and to create new circles of belonging.” Steffan similarly names how he’s been able to incorporate arts into his preaching, offering sermonic aids that help congregants who are visual processors connect to the text. DeLew, who plans to pursue chaplaincy after graduation, is excited for how she can use art to help patients express themselves. “It helps me be curious and compassionate about people’s varied life journeys,” she says. “It gives me a window into their experience of God, and how I can support that.”
The combination of all these factors—a deepened theological understanding, nurturing an intimate class environment, facilitating self-discovery, and developing practical skills for ministry—have only inspired Dr. Bantum to increase artistic expression’s central place in his classroom. But he also hopes it offers students an emotional connection to theological inquiry that the discipline too often lacks. “Theology ought to be beautiful,” he concludes with reverence. “I don’t necessarily mean beautiful as in something pretty. But it should cause us to pause, or perhaps give us a moment of joy or terror. Theology should be something that grasps us. If we’re not doing that, then I’m not sure we’re doing theology well.”