Art Based Research in Theology surfaces new knowledge that discursive reasoning alone cannot access. Through woodcuts, collage, and William Blake's Book of Thel, this panel will explore new theological knowledge on the topic of Religious Freedom accessed through the creation of visual art. Icons of Resistance: The Freedom of Embodied Prayer will share woodcuts. Imitatio Mary: The Ascetic Resistance of Jesus' Mama will share a collage. An Analytical View on William Blake's The Book of Thel will examine ideas William Blake surfaced through creating his paintings and poetry in The Book of Thel. Participants will have an opportunity to view art-work for ten minutes before the presenters share what they learned through their creations.
This presentation examines a series of woodcut prints depicting religious leaders who fought for freedom in their communities, including Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King Jr., Óscar Romero, Gustavo Gutiérrez, and Judy Heumann. Drawing on Alejandro García-Rivera’s theology of community-oriented beauty and justice, Karl Barth’s theology of prayer, and the icon tradition, this study explores the body’s religious freedom to pray through creative action. Just as these leaders embodied their prayers in the struggle for justice, artists engage their whole selves in the act of creating. Through the physical motions of making, artists reflect deeply on their materials and subject matter, expressing their lament, hope, protest, and joy. When rooted in their communities, their work becomes a reflection on and a prayer for communal flourishing. In this way, artistic practice is a lived prayer—an embodied response of hope and a witness to change.
This paper examines William Blake's innovative synthesis of visual and textual elements in Plate 2 of "The Book of Thel" (1789) to illuminate his theological-artistic vision. Through analysis of the plate's compositional strategies and variations across different copies, the research reveals how Blake's integration of image and text transcends conventional boundaries between material and spiritual expression. The Thel-Lily dialogue serves as a pivotal moment where the apparent binary of innocence and experience dissolves into a nuanced spiritual dialectic. By positioning Thel in a liminal space between states of consciousness, Blake creates a theological framework where childlike wonder coexists with profound understanding. The paper contributes to religious aesthetics discourse by demonstrating how Blake's visual-textual synthesis challenges traditional theological distinctions between spirit and matter, offering new pathways for understanding the interplay between divine revelation and human perception.
Mary, Mother of Jesus was selected and has since been honored as an exemplar worth imitating for generations to come. Some of the early Christian writers even viewed her as an ascetic role model, one whose commitment and discipline to the call of the angel would go on to justify the establishment of Christian and “pagan” cults, religious denominations and ceremonies to be celebrated throughout the year. These moves toward asceticism were a calling to resist and thus restore the social dynamics of the time. Therefore, this paper analyzes the research that inspired the mixed-media collage visual art piece Imitatio Mary. It uses Black feminist and womanist thought as its primary interpretive lens for contemporary settings to address how the life of Mary, Mother of Jesus, draws attention to class oppression, yet also the resiliency and value of oppressed beings.