S2 E03 • Jonathan A. Anderson: The Invisibility of Religion in Contemporary Art

In this episode David Trigg speaks to Jonathan A. Anderson to discuss his new book The Invisibility of Religion in Contemporary Art (University of Notre Dame Press, 2025), which challenges the notion that religion is irrelevant to modern and contemporary art. 

Jonathan is the Eugene and Jan Peterson associate professor of Theology and the Arts at Regents College in Vancouver and his scholarship explores the interrelations of art history, theology and religious studies, with a particular focus on modern and contemporary art.

In his book, Jonathan calls for the histories of art “to be reread and rewritten in ways that understand religion and theology more seriously,” and encourages new ways of thinking and writing about artists whose works are more theologically complicated than has previously been recognised. 

Jonathan is the author of Modern Art and the Life of a Culture: The Religious Impulses of Modernism (with William Dyrness, 2016), and many articles and book chapters on related topics, including “Modern Art” in The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion (2021). 

Trained as an artist, art critic, and theologian, Jonathan has a PhD from King’s College London and an MFA from California State University Long Beach. Prior to his chair at Regent College, he was the postdoctoral associate of theology and the visual arts at Duke University (Durham, NC) and an associate professor of art at Biola University (La Mirada, CA).

To learn more about Jonathan A. Anderson, visit his website and follow @jonathan.a.anderson on Instagram.

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 1:04 From the studio to the writing desk
• 7:26 Researching and writing the book
• 10:09 In what ways has religion been invisible in contemporary art?
• 25:57 The new visibility of religion in contemporary art
• 35:02 Kris Martin's Altar
• 54:04 Four Interpretive Horizons
• 1:08:09 Hopes for future scholarship
• 1:14:53 Advice for the next generation of scholars
• 1:18:44 Outro