Luminous: Conversations On Sacred Arts

Nun Katherine Weston, an Orthodox Christian monastic, is a pastoral counselor and trauma specialist in private practice. For some 15 years, she has been addressing topics central to the basic human experience, integrating an Orthodox Christian worldview with perspectives from current psychotherapies. In addition to racial identities, topics have included loneliness, shame, anger, anxiety, attachment dynamics, and racial reconciliation.

Matt Hinton, documentary filmmaker, rock guitarist, and burrito legend — for all these contributions, each so excellent, the world is a better place with him in it. Join us in our conversation about art, sacredness, and his films.

Victoria Emily Jones graduated from UNC–Chapel Hill in 2010 with a BA in journalism and English literature and a minor in music, and she has done some postgraduate coursework in worship and the arts at Regent College in Vancouver. Now she works as an editorial freelancer and pursues independent research on Christianity and the arts, with a special interest in visual art that engages with biblical narratives, especially from the twentieth century onward and/or from non-Western cultures.

Victoria serves on the board of the Eliot Society, an Annapolis-based nonprofit that promotes spiritual formation through the arts, and as curator for The Daily Prayer Project, which publishes cross-cultural liturgies, music, and art for the Christian year. She is a member of Christians in the Visual Arts (CIVA) and a contributor to the Visual Commentary on Scripture. From 2015 to 2022 she served as assistant editor of ArtWay, a Netherlands-based web publication that encourages Christian engagement with historical and contemporary art; she continues to write “visual meditations” for the site (see list below).

Based on the work she had done through her blog The Jesus Question (the precursor to Art & Theology), Victoria was selected in 2016 to participate with a small group of scholars and artists in the two-week Calvin College seminar “Bodies of Christ: Visualizing Jesus Then and Now,” led by Ed Blum, coauthor of The Color of Christ. Racialized representations of Christ remains one of her ongoing topics of inquiry.

Victoria also leads the Art and Theology blog (https://artandtheology.org/) and is active on social media (Instagram) at: @art_and_theology

On this special episode of Luminous, our previous guests suggested for us their chosen musical selections that evoke the sacredness of the season. The result is a beautiful and diverse, and often surprising playlist of Christmas music. Our gift to you.

Andrew Gould’s designs for churches and other buildings, as well as for furnishings within churches, are exquisitely beautiful. But they are more than that. His vision of sacred art and architecture sets the bar very high—heavenly-high—which is exactly where he thinks it should be.

A world-renowned artist and great pedagogue, Bruce Herman speaks eloquently about what art is and what it means to him, notably at this time in his life: newly retired, and with a surprising loss of hearing.

A legend in the word of Christian Contemporary Music, John Michael Talbot’s songs have been the soundtrack for the spiritual life of more than a generation of the faithful. Moving increasingly into a quieter, cloistered life, he reflects with clarity, insight, and delight, on his work and on the sacred arts.

Artist-theologian Julian Davis Reid has performed and spoken worldwide, and has released albums both solo and with his band, the Ju Ju Exchange. Having worked with Chance the Rapper, Jennifer Hudson, Peter CottonTale, and Derrick Hodge, he brings his music and life to the service of the Church, and of people seeking rest among the noise.