'Shaped By Beauty': Art, Religion, and Ethics in Conversation

A Two Day Conference on Music and Visual Art in Relationship with Theology, Philosophy, Religious Practice, Spirituality, and Ethics

“Art and morality are, with certain provisos…one. Their essence is the same. The essence of both of them is love”--Iris Murdoch



“….music, for Hildegard, was not the province of a gifted elite, but a thing quintessentially human; mankind was never meant to live without it….to make dangerous music was immoral; conversely, to be immoral was to be unmusical.”-- Barbara Newman



“Art enables us to find ourselves and to lose ourselves at the same time.”-- Thomas Merton

Throughout history, the power and rhetoric of image and sound together with their corresponding art forms, the visual arts and music, have coexisted with religion and ethics in relationships ranging from the harmonious to directly oppositional and confrontational. At their most synchronistic, religion and the arts have spurred the creation of some of the world’s greatest cultural treasures, among them Chartres Cathedral, Hagia Sophia, Bach’s Passion According to St. John, and African-American spirituals.  At their most oppositional, there have been iconoclastic crises, the suppression and vilification of artists, and in much of art in modern and contemporary times, a turn away from religion by the arts entirely.


Yet within this often uneasy frame, it is nonetheless human beings who make art; human beings who observe, listen, and respond to art; and human beings who, influenced by images and sounds,  shape their religious, spiritual, and ethical lives. Indeed, the arts possess the potential to open up transformative space for human beings, widening the lens of perception and shifting grounds of meaning that can prove to be fertile for the generation of new ideas as well as new practices for life. Such an interdependent and rich nexus of relationships calls out for meaningful understanding and interpretation from the arts themselves, as well as from the domains of religion, theology, philosophy and ethics.

Features of the conference will include an accompanying musical performance and possibly visual art exhibition. The purpose of the conference is to foster dialogue among disciplines concerning the human being and society in relationship with religion, the arts, and ethics.

Conference fee, including lunch and refreshments:

£60 for two days or £30 per day. 

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