In 2020, The Henry Luce III Center for the Arts and Religion received a major grant from the Templeton Religion Trust under its Art Seeking Understanding initiative. Our project, “The Art of Discernment,” sought to shine a light on how arts-based learning nurtures, disrupts, or otherwise transforms the ways that theology students understand and articulate their sense of calling as spiritual leaders.

With partners from Duke University and the University of Maine, our team developed an innovative research program designed to uncover the aesthetic dimensions of spiritual discernment. We worked with students across multiple sites to complete surveys, interviews, and memoirs about their experiences with the arts in theological formation. Analyzing this data allowed us to identify the myriad benefits of arts-based training in seminaries and divinity schools.

In addition to generating fresh insights into the intersections of art and spiritual discernment, our team facilitated a series of robust conversations with the directors of leadings seminary- and divinity school-based arts programs, laying the foundation for a future network that will strengthen the field of theology and the arts for many years to come.