Illuminate Conference

A number of tech critics have alluded to Mary Shelley's “Frankenstein,” drawing from it several narratives that offer caution for how human beings might navigate their relationship to science and technology. While technology was not a major theme for C.S. Lewis, he critiques modernism and its infatuation with progress in “The Abolition of Man” and “That Hideous Strength,” and in that critique, we can glean insights that speak to our current era.

-Laurie Stankavich, PhD, Southern Adventist University English professor

Dickinson's life and writings offer readers a way of seeing faith as a continuum of certainty and uncertainty, belief and skepticism. Her genius lies in the ability to use her uncertainty as a means to bolstering her faith, rather than eroding it. Dickinson's legacy continues today in the poetry of Franz Wright and Christian Wiman, two contemporary Christian poets whose work has been lauded by a secular audience but neglected by the majority of Christian culture.

-Daniel Gleason, PhD, Bryan College English professor

Narratives that tell the story of escapes from slavery to freedom are famous for their criticisms of pro-slavery Christianity, but they also include positive depictions of church gatherings, baptisms, Sunday schools, and fellowship meals. Such moments emerge in narratives of Olaudah Equiano, Frederick Douglass, and others to starkly contrast with the violence of enslavement and to theorize a world in which just and equal relationships are possible.

-Hannah Wakefield, PhD, UT-Chattanooga English professor

The topic of endings is often neglected in writing guides and magazines due to its difficulty. What makes a good ending, and how do you write one? How does the construction of an ending relate to the construction of a life? Drawing on Wendell Berry, George Eliot, Rudyard Kipling, and others, this session discusses the shaping of stories toward what Tolkien called "the good catastrophe."

-E. Lily Yu, author of “On Fragile Waves,” “Jewel Box,” and “Break, Blow, Burn, & Make”

This session will disillusion and armor artists for the realities of the publishing industry. Today, writers must deal with P&L statements, comps, and online and in-person mobs and harassment, among other challenges. How does the artist confront, accept, and move past these realities while maintaining integrity and holding on to what matters?

-E. Lily Yu, author of “On Fragile Waves,” “Jewel Box,” and “Break, Blow, Burn, & Make”

Illuminate guests share both original works and selections from their favorite writers. We’ll dim the lights if you’ll snap your fingers after each piece! Berets welcome, but not provided.

As our culture presses us towards the quick, the distracted, and the performative, we are often called nevertheless to go slowly, to pay attention, and to be sincere. It is a gift, then, that reading literary nonfiction—particularly slow, meditative literary nonfiction—is not just a great pleasure but also an excellent way to form in readers deeply counter-cultural values. Using the foundational metaphor of pilgrim, this workshop guides participants through selected readings from Dillard's work and asks participants to both consider and practice the habits being formed. Participants will leave the workshop with a framework for considering their identities as readers, a list of suggested future reading, and the experience of having spent time with the work of Annie Dillard and a few other like-minded authors.

-Sarah Huffines, EdD, Covent College English professor

After Francis of Assisi’s death in 1226, church leaders began writing books about his life. These “biographical” works often presented Francis as a supporter of whatever position the author held. As a result, there is a disconnect between the Francis of modernity—whose persona has been shaped by these writings—and the historical Francis. This session explores the dangers of recreating historical figures in our own images.

-Jackson Gravitt, MA, Bryan College theology professor

Author and educator Jonathan Rogers, PhD, hosts a popular podcast called “The Habit” where he has interviewed more than 300 writers about the writing process. For Illuminate, Rogers will do a live recording of “The Habit” (specific guest TBD). Explore previous episodes of “The Habit” online.

In the face of an ecologically and socially destructive consumer-industrial economy: does poetry matter? Novelist, poet, environmentalist, and farmer Wendell Berry is well known for his scathing critiques of the economy and corporate agriculture, as well as his support for local economies and ecologically sustainable agriculture. What is much less well known is his four decade long spiritual practice of writing poetry which brings together the practice of Sabbath rest, craft of poetry, affection for place, and concern for ecological health. This session examines select Berry works that consider a different rhythm and relationship within the created world.

-Joelle Hathaway, ThD, Bethany Seminary theology professor

This presentation shares insights from Austen’s childhood as the daughter of an Anglican rector and her growing sense of faith as a young author. Her life and writing illustrate how she understood Christianity to be integrated in how we act, speak, read, and write.

-Joyce McPherson, PhD, Covenant College adjunct professor and Jane Austen biographer

Romantic poet William Wordsworth expressed anxiety in his poetry that the soul—which he imagined as being created by God and residing in heaven until the moment of birth—loses its connection to God while confined in the physical world. The lack of kindness and compassion he observed in industrialized England and France seemed a direct consequence of people doing nothing to counter a gradual shuttering of their souls. Attendees will read Wordsworth’s poetry and grapple with how to pursue his call to resist a life that is “but a sleep and a forgetting” and instead to infuse our lives with wonder, spurred to “little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love.”

-Ashley Mulligan, PhD, and Chad Schrock, PhD, Lee University English professors

The Psalms capture the full spectrum of life, offering insight into every facet of the human journey. We’ll explore the various types of psalms, from lament to thanksgiving, and reflect on their relevance today. Participants engage in a psalm-writing exercise, creating their own expressions of faith and emotion.

-Richard Hickam, DWS, AdventHealth director of Music & the Arts

For those hoping to develop a new character, get to know an existing character more deeply, explore a portion of your own personal story, or even those needing to break through a wall of writer's block—this session is for you. We will learn a few quick tips on developing a character monologue and then try our hand at writing one before sharing with other session guests, as time allows.

-LaEsha Sanders, MFA, Southern Adventist University English professor

It’s easy to think of kids as “interruptions” to creative work; in reality, they provide some of our most meaningful inspiration. In your busiest seasons of life take hope: there are simple practices which can help limited writing time become more productive and sharpen your skills. The session also explores ways writers can hold one another accountable to developing their craft while remembering that publication cannot provide their ultimate identity or satisfaction—only Jesus can.

-Katherine Ladny Mitchell, published author and mother of five

For his podcast “The Deepest Cut,” music journalist Matt Conner has interviewed hundreds of artists about the movement from painful experiences to meaningful music. Over time, patterns have emerged from these heartfelt conversations. Conner will share clips from some of the more insightful and provocative interviews he’s done and discuss what we, as Christians and music lovers, can learn from the vulnerable stories of others. Explore previous episodes of “The Deepest Cut” online.

-Matt Conner, pastor turned writer/podcaster

Orchestral musicians are often deeply moved by the music they play. One piece that has moved session presenter Junius Johnson consistently across his 30+ year career is Beethoven’s 3rd Symphony. In this session, Johnson shares some of the ways that piece has taught him about the dynamics of grieving and how to listen to classical music more deeply and spiritually.

-Junius Johnson, PhD, author, educator, and musician

What happens when an amateur choir attempts Bach’s “Saint Matthew’s Passion”? How did a broken-down school bus turn into a celebration spot? Where, when, and how, in our atomized age, do we make space for shared time, music, and community?

-Maureen Swinger, Plough magazine senior editor; and Jason Swinger

Join DT Slouffman, director of content for “Good Faith,” as he conducts a live podcast interview with musician Matt Maher. Explore previous episodes of “Good Faith” online.

This session features “Scripture Hymnal,” a unique resource designed to help congregations sing the Word of God—memorably and beautifully. Through this innovative (and ancient) approach to worship, participants experience how music rooted in scripture can become a powerful vehicle for discipleship, spiritual renewal, and community formation.

-Randall Goodgame, musician

Matt Maher will perform a full concert to close out the Illuminate Arts + Faith Conference. A nine-time Grammy nominee and three-time Dove Award winner, Maher has written many popular songs,  such as “Lord, I Need You,” “Because He Lives,” “Hold Us Together,” and “Your Grace Is Enough.”

Best known for his work on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, Fred Rogers nevertheless considered himself primarily a musician and composer. He wrote every song that appeared on the program, and his compositional output also features nine operas. This session explores foundational principles of Rogers’ life, including music, silence, philosophy of education, cultivating individual and collaborative creative practice, and living a life of quiet faith.

-Theresa Chafin, PhD, University of Georgia adjunct professor

Enjoy an intimate performance and musical insights as three musicians take turns playing some of their favorite original works and sharing the stories behind the songs.

-Randall Goodgame, Chris Slaten (Son of Laughter), Rachel Wilhelm

Explore the origins of hip hop—including its connections to spirituals and gospel music—and how select artists in this genre use subversive joy, disquieting satire, and songs of anger and lament to prophetically challenge listeners toward a rethinking of the false narratives many have inherited. Learn how a more attentive and informed understanding of hip hop can usher us into a deeper sense of empathy.

-Mary McCampbell, PhD, author and educator

This session explores the idea of spiritual senses (Matthew 13, Mark 8) and sight beyond sight—a beautiful, God-given way in which we can engage the world that allows us to see what’s going on in harmony with the bigger picture. Specifically, music journalist Matt Conner will highlight how certain songs found in popular culture offer glimpses of eternal goodness and grace.

-Matt Conner, pastor turned writer/podcaster

Unlike any other genre you could name, folk songs are born, not made. They morph and re-shape over time; they are storytellers, history-holders, and change-makers. Follow the stories of songs written by folks like Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Odetta, Joni Mitchell, Simon & Garfunkel, and other bards who sing about real people—their real troubles, and the real ways they find to shoulder through together.

-Maureen Swinger, Plough magazine senior editor; and Jason Swinger

Is artificial intelligence off-limits to illustrators? Rhetoric around images made by algorithms is not particularly nuanced. The distance between those who see AI as a new tool that makes artistic creation easier and more accessible, and others who believe it to be a cancer that threatens the very soul of humanity, is razor thin. From ethics to ethos, this presentation considers if AI is a brand-new category of creation or simply the latest chapter in the cycle of skepticism and fear around emergent technology.

-John Hendrix, MFA, Washington University in Saint Louis art professor

For centuries, many Christian communities have held creativity at arm's length—suspicious of beauty as a gateway to vanity or viewing faith as purely propositional truth while creativity is seen as worldly and sensual. This is unbiblical. Scripture drips with poetry, and the God who spoke galaxies into existence also designed the iridescent throat of a hummingbird. Creativity isn't peripheral to Christian living—it's central to how we're made, bearing the image of a Creator God. Visual language can forge connections that words alone cannot reach, bypassing the superficial to resonate with the deeper spiritual self.

-Matt Brass, owner smokyoutfitters.com (handcrafted destination art)

Join author, playwright, and producer A. S. “Pete” Peterson for a screening of his short film adaptation of Wendell Berry’s "Sonata at Payne Hollow." Berry’s one-act play tells the story of the unconventional couple Harlan and Anna Hubbard, who chose to live simply and artfully on the banks of the Ohio River.

-Pete Peterson, Rabbit Room Press publisher

What do we do when confronted with the end? Three filmmakers working in animation, live action, and documentary have created works that sit with this question. One film traces a bond forged at a piano, another imagines humanity's final moments at a radio observatory, and a third bears witness to real stories of mortality and grace. After screening these short films, join directors Jesse Brass, Zach Gray, and Avery Kroll for an intimate conversation about the creative choices that brought these meditations to life. Discover why artists are often the first to help us see what we're afraid to look at, and why contemplating our fragility can paradoxically deepen our experience of connection and meaning.

-Jesse Brass, independent filmmaker; Zach Gray, MFA, Southern Adventist University art professor; and Avery Kroll, MFA

We often imagine historical photographs as mere exercises of factual record. Or, when looking at ethnographic or documentary photographs, we might assume that the photographer maintains all the power, often in problematic ways. However, what shifts when we consider the agency of the subject in the creation of a photographic image? Focusing on examples of early 20th-century portraits of the Crow people and images of the Japanese American internment, this session suggests alternative ways of understanding both historical images and our own contemporary practices of photography.

-Elissa Weichbrodt, PhD, Covenant College art professor

Documentary filmmaking is rarely a neutral act. The presence of the camera, the filmmaker's questions, and editing choices all shape the story that emerges. But here's the deeper truth: the filmmaker's active, humble listening births a creative partnership where the filmmaker's attentiveness helps the person being filmed see and articulate truths they may not have fully grasped. This session investigates what it means to listen so deeply that you become part of someone else's creative breakthrough—and how this mirrors the way the Spirit's presence in our lives invites us into our truest creative calling.

-Jesse Brass, independent filmmaker

For some, the story of friendship between C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien is a familiar tale, but a recent approach in graphic non-fiction sheds new light on their unique fellowship. While "comics" often carry a juvenile reputation, the medium has a surprising range of storytelling potential. What changes when scholarship and art collaborate beyond the page?

-John Hendrix, MFA, Washington University in Saint Louis art professor

In recent years, many have begun rediscovering the life and art of Lilias Trotter—a gifted Victorian painter who turned down a promising career and followed God’s call to North Africa. Her journals, parables, and luminous watercolors reveal a soul who learned to see the world with extraordinary clarity, compassion, and joy. In this talk—drawing from the forthcoming book “If Only We Could See” (April 2026)—attendees explore how cultivating an artist’s eye transforms not just what we create, but how we encounter God, love our neighbors, and participate in the redemption of all things. What might it look like to follow the Divine Artist in our own small corner of the world?

-Jennifer Trafton, author and educator

Blake’s unique relief etching process, also called “illuminated printing,” used chemicals to burn away surface materials, leaving the desired art (often a combination of text and image) exposed and ready for printing. This aggressive, and potentially dangerous, act of elimination is a striking metaphor for examining other aspects of Blake’s professional and personal life. His compulsive questioning about good versus evil is evidenced through an enduring creative legacy and complex theological positions that were deeply biblical but favored imagination—he had “visions” of angels and demons his entire life—over literal interpretations. Many of Blake’s contemporaries called him a madman; after this session, what will you call him?

-Giselle Hasel, MFA, Southern Adventist University art professor; Heather Hess, PhD, Covenant College English professor

Students will learn the basics of wheel throwing in an environment where they are free to fail—and to enjoy the process of learning from each failure. Turning theory into masterful practice will take the rest of our lives ... we have 90 minutes! Sessions cover the basics of centering and the theory behind how to efficiently move the clay into a desired form.

-Loren Howard, Southern Adventist University ceramics instructor

Makoto Fujimura writes about the idea of artists as a mearcstapa—a word which comes from Old English and appears in Beowulf—when individuals who live on the edges of their groups go in and out of them, often bringing news back to the tribe. Whatever your “tribe” is, it’s possible that the best way to love them is to find a place at the edge of the tribe and speak from there, not merely repeating their talking points, but bringing them news of larger realities.

-Jonathan Rogers, PhD, author and host of “The Habit” podcast

In this first of a two-part series, examine monsters as an expression of the deepest fears and desires of the Western world. Following Jeffrey Jerome Cohen's seven theses as a general framework, we'll discuss monsters as cultural bodies that police social boundaries and sometimes embody forbidden longings. Discover why certain monsters refuse to die as they reappear across multiple generations. Explore ways that the monstrous fundamentally transforms us. Build a vocabulary for your own culture’s take on strange and scary creatures before exploring differences in Eastern monster theory in Part Two.

-Rebecca Reynolds, MA, Oasis Family Media associate publisher

In this second of a two-part series, discover how Eastern philosophy has often approached monsters as teachers as well as threats. Explore six foundational principles that appear in many Eastern monster narratives, then meet Eiji Tsuburaya—the visionary who emerged from WWII's devastation to create Ultraman and healing kaiju. Learn how his revolutionary approach to monsters can offer profound insights for navigating our own chaotic times.

-Rebecca Reynolds, MA, Oasis Family Media associate publisher

In 1955, Francis Schaeffer and his wife opened up their home in Switzerland for visitors to sojourn in community while exploring spiritual questions. That sacrificial generosity lives on through L’Abri “homes” across the world, including the United States. Hosting such a community requires a heavy dose of hospitality; it’s about turning strangers into neighbors through acts as simple as a meal, a cup of tea, or even pulling weeds together in the garden. After more than 20 years working at L’Abri in England, Edith Dryden will share how, perhaps, the best definition of hospitality is efforting to discover something remarkable about every person’s life which can make God known in a way that no one else could do.

-Edith Dryden, MPhil

As we continue to grapple with the disenchanting legacy of modernism, many are awakening to the power of wonder. This is, in many ways, the special province of those who serve and worship the God of wonders; yet we have done very little work digging into the theological grounds and nature of wonder. This session will offer an exploration of the way the depths of God are revealed through wonder, and the power of wonder to lead our hearts back to their celestial home.

-Junius Johnson, PhD, author, educator, and musician

In “The Allegory of Love,” C.S. Lewis examines the idolatrous focus on romantic love as religion in Medieval and Renaissance texts. In this session, we discuss Lewis’ critique of toxic love in some of his own work and trace his argument through both literary history and contemporary popular culture, including Disney films and romantic comedies.

-Mary McCampbell, PhD, author and educator

Integrating arts into your worship community can be a challenge, but it’s a challenge worth pursuing because we connect deeply with God through beauty, and the arts—music, visual design, storytelling—help express truths that apologetics alone cannot. This panel discussion explores different approaches to arts advocacy in the church, whether the goal is to nurture creative culture by supporting and connecting parishioners in their individual artistic endeavors or to bring arts directly into the corporate worship experience. Come learn what’s working elsewhere and leave encouraged to try something new at your home church.

-Daniel Gamble and Tim Goldsmith (The Mission Chattanooga), Rachel Wilhelm (United Adoration), and Devon Howard (Collegedale Seventh-day Adventist Church)

Explore the dynamic and emerging field of arts in health, where creativity meets wellness. Discover the research suggesting how engaging in creative activities can foster mental, emotional, and physical well-being. This session includes an interactive storytelling exercise designed to spark imagination and highlight the healing power of creativity.

-Richard Hickam, DWS, AdventHealth director of Music & the Arts

Following Jesus begins with self-forgetfulness. In this session, we explore how parenting with silliness helps loosen the grip of self-consciousness in real time, gets beyond “resources,” and leads into a life of co-discipleship with our children.

-Randall Goodgame

Step into 1847 Copenhagen, where philosopher Søren Kierkegaard wrestles with identity, faith, and rebellion in the face of rising nationalism within the Danish church. This theatrical performance features an original one-act script written by Atlanta playwright Tim McIntosh and is performed by actors on a minimalist set.

-New Threads Theatre Company

Despite wildly different creative sources and inspirations–from the paintings of  North African missionary Lilias Trotter to the literary genius of George MacDonald, T. S. Eliot, and Charles Dickens–writers Jennifer Trafton and A. S. “Pete” Peterson look to the past to inform their creative work here and now, and to shape their vision of what is yet to come. How do we root our work in the artistic inheritance we’ve been given, including the creativity of the Divine Artist, while also planting seeds of truth, beauty, and wonder for the future?

-Pete Peterson, Rabbit Room Press publisher, and Jennifer Trafton, author and educator

Many Christian artists, writers, clergy, and scholars are interested in the generative intersection of faith, imagination, and the arts. This session considers the similarities and differences between various approaches to understanding those intersections, including Theopoetics, Theology and the Arts, and the adjacent field of Theological Aesthetics.

-Joelle Hathaway, ThD, Bethany Seminary theology professor

Many say lament is a dire need in the church, yet few actually implement it. Why is it so hard, and what does it require of us? Discover how the arts can help us understand and practice lament, and how that translates to integrating it devotionally and corporately for whole-life worship.

-Rachel Wilhelm, MWS, musician and United Adoration vice president