Brehm Center

Director William Dyrness
Beginning with his doctoral work in the 1970’s Bill Dyrness has committed to the integration of theology and the visual arts throughout his career. His doctoral dissertation on Georges Rouault, written at the University of Strasbourg (France), was published in 1971 “Rouault: A Vision of Suffering and Salvation” (Eerdmans Publishing Company). While a missionary in the Philippines (1974-1982) and a professor and president at New College Berkeley (1982-1990) he taught and wrote mostly in broader areas of culture and missions. Since completing ten years as Dean of the School of Theology at Fuller (1990-2000) he has been able to devote more time to study and teach in his first love: theology and the visual arts, in the context of the Brehm Center. This has been, he reports, like a long term dream come true!

While serving on the board of Christians in the Visual Arts (civa.org) he completed his introduction to the arts in 2001, published by Baker as “Visual Faith: Art, Theology and Worship in Dialogue”. In 2004 he published the results of more than a decade of research on why the reformed tradition had not understood or welcomed the visual arts, a question that he had posed to himself since graduate school days. This work appeared in 2004 as “Reformed Theology and Visual Culture: The Protestant Imagination from Calvin to Edwards” (Cambridge University Press).

That year the Brehm Center received its first grant from the Henry Luce Foundation, which enabled Bill, and a half dozen student researchers to explore the use of art and the visual in a sample of ten Southern California Churches. The results of this three year research project was published in 2008 under the title “Senses of the Soul: Art and the Visual in Christian Worship” (Cascade Books). Involvement in this research and with his colleagues at Brehm, stimulated him to attempt an introduction to worship that made a place for the visual arts, this was published in 2009: “A Primer on Christian Worship” (Eerdmans Publishing Company).

A second grant from the Luce Foundation, received in 2008, has allowed Bill and 8 student researchers to extend the previous study into Buddhist and Muslim communities. The 80 interviews in five Muslim and Buddhist sites will be completed in the spring of 2010, and a book comprising the findings, and comparing them with the Christian study, will be published in the following year.

Bill’s teaching includes a yearly core Brehm Course on “Theology, Art and Worship”, graduate seminars on “Theology and Culture” (Spring 2010) and Dante’s “Divine Comedy” (to be offered again in the winter of 2011), and, periodically, “Art and Theology in Medieval Italy” taught in Orvieto (next in June 2010).

In the summer of 2010 Bill’s new book “Poetic Theology: God and the Poetics of Everyday Life” will be published by Eerdmans. This book focuses on the creative practices of everyday life, and argues that the projects by which people seek to make a beautiful life are sites where God is present and active (see an excerpt on the website).