Society for the Arts in Religious and Theological Studies

Wilson Yates is president emeritus of United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities as well as professor emeritus of religion, society and the arts. Ordained in the United Methodist Church, he holds dual standing in the United Church of Christ.

Janet R. Walton is Professor of Worship at Union Theological Seminary in New York, NY. Her research and teaching focus on ritual traditions and practices in religious communities, with particular interest in artistic dimensions, feminist perspectives, and commitments to justice.

Over the course of his professional career, James L. Waits has served as a minister, university administrator, executive of the principal association for theological education in North America, and President of The Fund for Theological Education, a national scholarship program for candidates for the ministry and doctoral teachers of theology.  He is an ordained minister of the Mississippi Conference of the United Methodist Church.

Kimberly Vrudny is an associate professor of systematic theology at the University of St. Thomas, in St. Paul, Minnesota, where she also serves as founding project director for HIV/AIDS initiatives through the University’s office of service learning. She is the author of Friars, Scribes, and Corpses: A Marian Confraternal Reading of The Mirror of Human Salvation (Leuven: Peeters, 2010).

Deborah Sokolove is the Director of the Henry Luce III Center for the Arts and Religion at Wesley Theological Seminary, where she also teaches courses in art and worship.

Maureen O'Connell is an Assistant Professor of Theology at Fordham University's Lincoln Center campus where she teaches undergraduates and graduate students in the areas of social ethics, political theology and theological aesthetics. She recently published Compassion: Loving our Neighbor in an Age of Globalization with Orbis Books.

Jamie Lara has degrees and interest in art, architecture, liturgics, and anthropology. His studies have focused on early Christianity, the Spanish Middle Ages, medieval theater, and the colonial era of Latin America.

Cindi Beth Johnson is director of community programming in the arts, religion and spirituality at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities.  She is an ordained minister in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.  She is a regular writer/compiler for "Behold:  Arts for the Church Year."

Robin Jensen, SARTS President, is the Luce Chancellor’s Professor of the History of Christian Art and Worship at Vanderbilt University, where she teaches courses in both the Department of the History of Art and the Divinity School. She is also the Director of the Luce Foundation-funded program Religion and the Arts in Contemporary Culture (at Vanderbilt Divinity School).

Deborah Haynes is a Professor of Art and Art History at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and former Chair of the department from 1998-2002. In 2003 she began planning and developing a new residential academic program in the visual and performing arts, which is now in its seventh year with over 300 students.

William Dyrness is Professor of Theology and Culture, Dean Emeritus and founding member of the Brehm Center for Worship Theology and the Arts, at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California.

Bill Cahoy is dean of the School of Theology at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota, a position he has held since 1999. He has been on the faculty at Saint John’s since 1990, teaching both graduate and undergraduate classes and has been involved in various aspects of the development of the Saint John’s Bible and related work in theology and art.

Mark Burrows joined the faculty of Andover Newton Theological School (Newton, MA) in 1993, where he is currently Professor of the History of Christianity and director of the Program in Worship, Theology, and the Arts. Author and editor of numerous books and more than fifty articles, Burrows’ writings explore a range of topics related to medieval mysticism, aesthetics, poetics, and contemporary culture.  He is a recent Henry Luce III Fellow in Theology (2007-8), during which time he completed work on a forthcoming book, Untamed Wisdom: Mystics and Poets in Search of God. Past president of the Society for the Study of Christian Spirituality (2003) and current poetry editor of Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality, Burrows is an oblate at Glastonbury Abbey in Hingham, MA, where he frequently teaches and leads retreats. In the spring of 2009, he co-founded an emergent worship gathering in Framingham called OpenSpirit (www.comeopenspirit.org).

Frank Burch Brown is the F. D. Kershner Prof. of Religion and the Arts at Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis as well as the Alexander Campbell Visiting Prof. of Religion and the Arts at the University of Chicago Divinity School. Professor Brown is author of five books, the most recent of which is entitled Inclusive Yet Discerning: Navigating Worship Artfully (Eerdmans, 2009).