his event is centred on hope, renewal, and revival. It is an interdisciplinary conference designed to bring together academics, artists, and scholars working in art history, literature, aesthetics, religious and church history, philosophy, and theology. We seek to encourage comparative conversations that examine art, architecture, and the religious imagination in order to understand the intrinsic value of beauty to the Christian faith and its rich material culture. Where Part One focused on visions of fractured faith, Part Two is a restorative companion piece. We ask how Christianity has used beauty as a form of reinvigoration and transformation during times of social upheaval, a theme exemplified by the Archbishop’s Palace and its role within key moments of the Reformation.
Firstly, we invite papers on aspects of visual art and architecture of the long nineteenth century that demonstrate the importance of Christian aesthetics, and Christian visual and material culture, during periods of revival and change. How have artists, patrons, and churches responded to times of crisis? When and how do formal philosophies of beauty, and engagement with early Christian ideas, correlate with spiritual growth and cultural transformation in the long nineteenth century or today? How has beauty been consciously used within art and architecture to reawaken and reaffirm Christian truth in the near past? How has the Church actively translated ideas of beauty into the wider world, and what social values and behaviours flow from the concept of beauty as found within its art and architecture?
Secondly, we invite papers that demonstrate what can be learned from historical examples of beauty as a source of reconciliation and revival. Can a reacquaintance with philosophies of beauty, classical or otherwise, become a way of reinvigorating society today? What art is important for churches and public spaces today? What aspects of beauty are necessary to revive and renew public spaces and places of worship? What aesthetic qualities belong in new commissions? How might engagement with beauty of the past reignite beauty within the public and private religious imagination today?
This conference seeks to invite re-engagement with the idea and philosophy of beauty in all its aesthetic forms, in order that we may better understand and better preserve the beauty found within Christian material culture, particularly in Britain. We welcome papers that address the aesthetic, spiritual and theological aspects of these issues.
Time Period of Interest: the long nineteenth century, and / or present-day reflections on that timeframe.
Possible proposals might include, but are not limited to, considerations of the following:
- Artisans and Architecture: architectural innovations within the surge of church building (e.g. the Gothic Revival, A.W. N. Pugin, William Butterfield, Philip Webb); denominational imperatives of the patrons of religious, civic, and private buildings in towns and cities (e.g. Christian Socialists); masonry carvings of botanicals, saints, icons, and biblical hermeneutics; the renewed respect given to artisans such as the stonemason (per Thomas Hardy, John Ruskin, and projects such as the Oxford Natural History Museum); revival of skilled craftsmanship and handiwork (e.g. Working Men’s College) and renewed mastery of dying arts; artisanship as redemption (e.g. Elizabeth Fry, the Rajah Quilt)
- Charity and Social Change: efforts to improve the religious imagination through public art (e.g. the National Gallery, the Free Society of Artists); improving the physical, working, and environmental conditions of the poor, social outcasts, artisans and workers, the elderly, and children (e.g. Dickens, Gaskell); village and neighbourhood societies, fundraising, and charity schools (e.g. Charterhouse); architectural designs for prisons, workhouses, sanatoriums, and hospitals as theological imperatives; journalistic, literary and artistic evocations of such institutions as St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, the Foundling Hospital, the Magdalene Hospital, the Coal Smoke Abatement Society
- Commissions and Collections: commissions of church decoration such as stained glass, sculptures, paintings, books; changing theological and aesthetic emphasis in vestment styles (Gothic, eucharistic, liturgical colours, chasubles, clerical dress, and the rediscovery and Gothic revival of opus anglicanum); changes in scriptural subjects as found within church art and commissions; the role and influence of church artists; the resurgence of religious subjects within exhibitions (e.g. the Royal Academy); attitudes toward church collections, displays, and loans (both within and outside the Church)
- Heritage, Conservation, and Preservation: changing attitudes toward material culture; the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, the National Trust, National Churches Trust, Open Spaces Society; Stonehenge, Hadrian’s Wall, Chester Cathedral, Southwell, and many other ancient and medieval sites; artistic and literary representations of churches and church history (Hablot Knight Browne (‘Phiz’), John Constable, Thomas Hardy, Nikolaus Pevsner, Anthony Trollope, J.M.W. Turner); considerations of the twenty-first century charities Save the Parishes and Friends of Friendless Churches, and the growing appetite to preserve rural and disused churches as a national good
- Miracles, Messengers, and Ministry: representations of miracles (Canterbury Cathedral’s ‘Miracle Windows’, the Holy Hand of St. Edmund Arrowsmith, Lourdes); images of messengers, and the myriad of angels; saints and canonization (e.g. the Venerable Bede); spreading the word of God (e.g. the Bible Society, the Salvation Army) and the image of Christ (e.g. the international tour of William Holman Hunt’s The Light of the World, James Tissot’s Bible illustrations); missionaries (John and Charles Wesley, David Livingstone, William Carey, Hudson Taylor, Amy Carmichael); the spiritual power of places such as Reading Abbey and Evesham Abbey; ideas of metaphysics and the cosmos
- Monasteries and Convents: monasteries, such as Pugin’s Mount St. Bernard’s Abbey, designed as part of a mission to revive the religious experience and promote social ideals of contemplation, prayer, refuge, and sanctuary; public spaces and design with numinous or spiritual overtones; monasteries as portrayed within art and literature (challenges to Gothic excess and anti-Catholic sentiment and reception of corresponding high aesthetics); representations of convents as mysterious and mystical or mythical female enclosures; visual and literary representations of spiritual choices and female piety (Guinevere, Puseyite Nuns, Mary Francis Cusack, Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale)
- Nature and the Grand Designer: nature and spiritual health (as found in the work of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth); the preservation of the natural world (e.g. public parks and spaces, Octavia Hill, and the Bermondsey Beautifcation Committee); characterizations of genius loci; religious retreats and spiritual revelations within the natural world (e.g. the Lake District, the Peak District, the Welsh Valleys); spiritual restoration and spa towns (Bath, Harrogate, Cheltenham); naturalism and theophany in landscape painting (e.g. paintings by John Brett, William James Stillman), studies of ecology and botany (e.g. Beatrix Potter, Anne Pratt, and Marianne North)
- Photography and Place: recreating or reviving ideas of faith and the religious imagination of the past via photography; tableaux, portraiture, landscapes and travel imagery related to Christian history, the Bible as mythology and theology; archaeological, architectural, and botanical photography; photography as record keeping and religious memorial (e.g. baptismal, wedding, and death portraits) in the work of William Henry Fox Talbot, Roger Fenton, Eadweard Muybridge, Julia Margaret Cameron, Anna Atkins, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, Lady Clementina Hawarden; nation and community in photography (e.g. military portraits, images of ceremony, pageantry, and place)
- Play and the Imagination: theories of play as beautiful, uplifting, improving (including moral philosophy, Muscular Christianity, the Young Men’s Christian Association, representations of the body in sports); imaginative play as a form of engaging with God’s action within the world; religious literary, artistic, theatrical, and musical invention as efforts to beautify everyday life (T.S. Eliot, Dorothy L. Sayers, Christopher Fry); humour, wit, and delight as aspects of human flourishing; the psychology and ethics of play within imagination and belief; visual play and the concept of time (e.g. Augustine’s distentio animi and the concept of the soul, as found within later art and literature)
Please email your 250-word abstract and your C.V. to conference@visualtheology.org.uk by 11th January, 2026. Successful applicants will be notified by February, and conference proceedings will be announced shortly thereafter. Papers should be 20 minutes long. Please note, we are Visual Theology; given this, captioned images are an expected component of all presentations. Those working within literary, historical, or philosophical disciplines (etc.) are requested to please include some visual analysis to anchor their readings to their theses (though we do not expect everyone to speak as art historians). Please note that applications are accepted on the premise that speakers have sufficient funding to cover all of their own travel and accommodation costs, as well as the conference registration fees (which will be published in due course). Speakers are expected to attend in person; attendance is necessary if presenters wish to be considered for publication. We look forward to welcoming you and hearing your research.
Visual Theology is a symposia for conferences, publications, and art commissions that explore the relationship between the spiritual imagination and visual culture. Through academic and creative events, VT explores the rich tapestry of both historical and contemporary religious imagery and architecture in Europe and beyond. Embracing an interdisciplinary approach, VT encourages dynamic conversations between academic specialists, curators, theologians, professional artists, and church leaders. Exploring the value of religious imagery, particularly its place and function in the twenty-first century, VT seeks to encourage new forms of critical dialogue with a compassionate and objective eye, rather than a doctrinaire approach. VT’s central tenet is to ask how sacred art and ideas of the numinous can play a transformative role in public discourse, public spaces, and public architecture. This is a conversation for those with or without faith.
For a list of our keynote speakers is available here.
Created 18 November 2025
Last modified 24 November 2025