Maxwell Institute Podcast #167: Do You Prefer Religious Art to be Pretty or Powerful? Featuring Anthony Sweat

Rosalynde Welch: Hello, and welcome to the Maxwell Institute Podcast! Where we seek out faith-illuminating scholarship. I’m Rosalynde Welch, Associate Director at the Institute. This season we’re exploring “The Questions We Should Be Asking.” Thanks for joining us! … President Nelson recently taught as we seek to be disciples of Jesus Christ, our efforts to hear him need to be ever more intentional. It takes conscious and consistent effort to fill our daily lives with His words, His teachings, His truths. The prophet has asked us how we hear Him, but have you thought about how you see Him? Do you bring pictures or other artistic representations of Christ into your spiritual life? For today’s episode, I interview Dr. Anthony Sweat, an oil painter himself, and a professor of church history and doctrine at BYU. Dr. Sweat has though a lot about art and faith in his creative and his scholarly pursuits. We discussed a fascinating article he co-authored analyzing Latter-day Saints' preference for pictures of Christ praying in Gethsemane over Christ on the cross. We talk about why this might be the case. Why we should make a point to include the crucifixion in spiritual reflection and how to incorporate art more deliberately into our faith lives. Instead of asking, what picture would look best above the couch, Anthony challenged me to ask, what am I seeking from art and do my artistic choices lead me to Christ? It’s not always about what looks prettiest. It can be hard to view the death of the Savior, but the experience can draw us to him. Join us, and see what you think. Good morning, Anthony Sweat, and welcome to the Maxwell Institute Podcast!

Anthony Sweat: Thank you, Rosalynde. So happy to be with you and to talk with you on this.

Welch: So today we are talking about faith and art, in particular visual art, but I think all different kinds of art are connected to the ideas that we'll be discussing. We are going to talk about the role of artistic expression in defining our faith community, in expressing our culture, and I think most importantly in leading us to a spiritual connection through the Holy Ghost with God.

Sweat: Wonderful! This is fun!

Welch: Yeah, I mean, what better, what better topic, right?

Sweat: Yeah!

Welch: You shared with me a really interesting article. It's titled, Latter-day Saints and Images of Christ's Crucifixion. It was published in BYU Studies Quarterly in 2021, and it was written by yourself and co-authors John Hilton and Josh Stratford. So in it, you look at Latter-day Saints' preference for paintings of Christ in Gethsemane or Christ on Calvary. And you had some really interesting research methods and some really interesting findings that we'll dig into in just a minute. But first, I thought we could set the stage by talking a little bit about the role of religious art, right, paintings and other forms of artistic expression that... invoke themes of the life of Christ or scripture stories or our walk as disciples of Christ. What is the role of religious art in our personal religious experience and also in our collective religious experience as a church?

Sweat: Yeah, what a great first question to look at. My reason for caring about this is my bachelor's degree is in fine art, so I'm a painter. And then my PhD is in curriculum and instruction. So I'm really interested in these questions because, not only as an artist myself, but also because as a teacher, which is my primary role, art has been (it's not only), but it's often a form of teaching. And so art is curriculum, art is instruction. And that is a lot of how it's been used in the history of Christianity in particular. And just a nod to all my other fellow artists in different genres out there, I'm a painter, so visual art, so I'll probably lean toward that because that's my forte, but I give a nod to music and film and dance and all the other expressions of art. They serve similar functions. Art really, it shapes us, it changes us. It informs us, it unites us, it can divide us. So it does a lot of things. I've long been interested in this as a teacher and as a researcher. The article we'll talk about today is about crucifixion imagery, but I've also researched this with first vision imagery in the church and also imagery about the Book of Mormon translation. These are all different subjects I've researched and published on. So how it informs us is it informs us. Mostly in the church we have used our art didactically, a fancy word that I know most of you listeners know, but if they don't, it means to instruct or to teach. We also use art decoratively that I'll talk about, but art really did develop in Christianity because people either didn't have access to the Bible or they couldn't read the Bible. And so art became a primary way in chapels to cathedrals and other religious buildings to teach and to instruct. And our church has largely adopted that same approach with art, is to use it didactically. But it does a lot more. I just wrote these words down as we were thinking about this, art can be decorative, which, and I'm not gonna promote or criticize any of these, but just think about how you use art. Is art decorative? Is it filling a wall space and adding a feeling or an ambiance? Art can be communicative, meaning it's trying to say something and the artist is trying to say something or we wanted to say something to the viewer. Art can be reflective. By reflective, I mean not just pensive, but by reflective, it reflects what we value. It reflects what we care about. And without tangentially(ing) too much. The first vision is a great example of that. There is very little art of the first vision in the first century of the church. For two reasons, primarily number one, we don't have a lot of great trained artists in the church. Most people don't realize that we don't develop a corpus of artists until really the later 1800s. But number two, we don't really start emphasizing the first vision until the later 1800s and the early 1900s. And then you start to see in the early 1900s art about the First Vision. So art's reflective. It reflects what we care about and our values and norms. But art can also be transformative, meaning art reflects culture, but art can also change culture. Art helps us to make steps forward. It helps us to see the unseen. It gives us visual vistas of, like, “Oh, I had not considered that.” And art is a great medium for that. And then last, I'm going to paraphrase Brian Krzysztof. Art can be inquisitive. I was in a discussion with Brian one time and he in essence said, I'm not going to get his words exactly right, but I love the sentiment. I hope it reflects it right. Art isn't always meant to be certain or to answer questions. Art is also meant to help us ask questions and help us to explore possibilities without being definitive. So it can do a lot of things for us. And maybe as I went through those, you know, decorative, communicative, reflective, transformative, inquisitive. It's fun to ask yourself, how am I using art personally? And maybe as a people institutionally, which we don't really control, but as a people collectively or culturally, how are we using it?

Welch: Yeah, so we can walk into a Latter-day Saint chapel, not the sanctuary itself, not the chapel itself, where we partake of the Lord's Supper and the... the sacrament, but our halls and our classrooms, we can see the visual images that line those hallways and we can learn something about Latter-day Saint religious culture from what we see there because those paintings reflect who we are as a people and the shape of our faith and the themes that are most important to us. And at the same time, as we walked through those hallways, we are shaped by that art. And so we are shaped as a community and we're kind of taught, this is important. These are the moments in Christ's life that we should pay attention to, or these are the moments in church history that are really meaningful. So we're taught by the art that we experience there.

Sweat: Yeah, very well said. And it's good to reflect on these things, to be conscious observers of them. Even-I recently just got back from Rome. Rome, one of the centers of art and Christianity. And it was fascinating to me to go into the stake center there right by the temple. I believe it's a stake center, but we have a chapel right by our Rome temple. And you have all this beautiful art in the temple. You have all this beautiful art in the visitor center. You have art in the hallways, but then you walk into our sacrament chapel where we partake of our ordinances, and there's no art. It's very iconoclastic. It wasn't necessarily always that way. In some of our early chapels, we had beautiful stained glass images of the first vision and other scenes. But it's interesting to say, okay, why is there this conscious decision that within the sanctuary, so to speak, of our chapel, we don't have any visual imagery, but in our hallways and classrooms we do. I don't know the answer to that, but it's good to even notice things like that about our visual culture as a people.

Rosalynde: Yeah, I think that's right. And we could look back at the, you mentioned iconoclasm, right? And there's an historical story about the Protestant Reformation and their complaint against the abundance of imagery in Catholic cathedrals in a sense that we need to get back to something that's a bit more pure, not appeal to the emotions and the aesthetic senses, but instead simply appeal to a spiritual sense. And there's something to be said for that. At the same time though, I am one who grew up worshiping in a Latter-day Saint chapel that was built in the 1920s, I believe, in Los Angeles. And it had a beautiful stained glass window behind the pulpit with a picture of Christ standing at a door knocking. The door has no handle. So it's referring to a scripture in Revelation saying, you know, Christ stands and knocks, opened the door to him, and he will come into you. And as I think about how it might've informed my own moral development growing up there, worshiping week after week in that space with that image there, I think, I can't say that it really taught me something in terms of like a truth that I could speak, but I think it gave me an experience. It gave me an experience of Christ being present in all aspects of our worship. As I partake of the sacrament, Christ was present. As I listened to my brothers and sisters instructing me, Christ was present. So I think that in addition to, or as an aspect of its didactic function, art also has an experiential effect on us. It can give us an experience precisely by appealing to our senses and by our sense of beauty and pleasure. I'm always struck by Lehi's dream where he goes toward the fruit and the fruit appeals to his senses. It is beautiful and it is resplendent and it tastes good and it stimulates his desire and that desire for the fruit then leads him, trains his desire to God. And I think that art can do that same thing with us, it can stimulate our aesthetic desire and then train that desire towards God in Christ. Have you experienced that as well?

Sweat: I love how you just said that. That was beautifully said. And one of the reasons why it can't do that is because we're visual people. I'm not a neuroscientist, but the basic summary is you use a lot more of your brain to process visual information than you do even auditory or tactile information. And so this is why art is so powerful to us as a people and why we need to be conscious about how we personally Employ its power. So yeah, I mean, of course it's done the same for me over and over and over again. I like to say that my first prophets were painters. And by prophets, I mean little “p” not capital “P” holding the keys of the kingdom but little “p” in the sense of teachers or ones who showed me Jesus. I Learned the life and teachings of Jesus Christ from painters. I learned about the restoration from painters. You know, Minerva Tykert and Del Parson and Greg Olsen, but of course, Harry Anderson and these other, just, even C.C.A. Christiansen. C.C.A. Christiansen is one of our Danish artists who really becomes the first person to say, we have a generation of Saints here in Utah who were born and don't understand our Persecu-tive history as we're being persecuted during this polygamy era. Was when he's painting primarily and he says, “I want to undertake to paint our early history.” I had C.C.A. Christiansen's book of his paintings on our little end table as a kid and I learned the early history of the church from C.C.A Christiansen. So Yeah, I mean art is powerful. It's so powerful and maybe even one other story is maybe, as we start to move into maybe talking about the crucifixion, it's so powerful that I remember looking at Harry Anderson's painting of the crucifixion. And Harry Anderson's this phenomenal artist that the church employed to do a lot of our imagery in the 60s, 70s. A lot of people don't realize by the way that we didn't even really have our own artists we could turn to. Other than Freeberg, and Teichert wasn't overly popular at the time, but we turned to outside artists. Those who are listening, it's largely within your lifetime that we have developed a corpus of true Latter-day Saint centric art from people who would identify as Latter-day Saint artists. But back to your question, I remember looking at Harry Anderson's painting of the crucifixion and wondering why it was that they nailed Jesus to the cross, but they didn't nail the thieves to the cross. If you remember that image, it shows the thieves to the side and they're tied with ropes. Now, I don't know why Harry Anderson made that choice. I wouldn't presume to speak for him, but that influenced me. I grew up thinking that only Jesus had ever been nailed to a cross. I didn't know that was a common form of crucifixion for all people who received a death penalty by the Romans in the first century, Judea there. So, and I had to unlearn that, so to speak, from the art. So. Art's powerful. It introduces us, it informs us, it can also misinform us if we're not careful, and misdirect us if we're not conscious about it.

Welch: Well, that is a great segue into talking about this study that you performed. So you had observed a kind of disconnect between the way that Latter-day Saint prophets talked about Christ's atonement on the one hand, and on the other hand, the kind of artwork that we saw depicting the atonement. Tell us a little bit more about what prompted this paper and what were the questions that you set out to answer in this study?

Sweat: In this study that I published with Josh Stratford and John Hilton was the lead author on it. John's done a lot of great research and publications on Christ's crucifixion, scripturally, doctrinally, historically. To answer your question, the disconnect, you know, this is, I'm just going to read right from, from our paper is that both the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, heavily emphasize the salvific importance of Christ's crucifixion relative to his suffering in Gethsemane. More than 50 passages of scripture speak of Christ dying for our sins. whereas only two passages speak of Christ's suffering for our sins in Gethsemane. All church presidents have made more statements regarding Christ dying for our sins on the cross than they have made about Christ suffering for our sins and Gethsemane. So there's some of the scriptural and prophetic history. The question was, is that reflected in our artwork? That's what drove us. So, you know, the questions we wanted to look at was, if you put up an image of Gethsemane and an image of Calvary, the garden and the cross, what image will Latter-day Saints –and we're using BYU samples here, they're large samples of 700, 800, 900 different students at a time. Which image would they choose and why? And if you compared that to a Protestant sample, what image would they choose and why? So that was one of the questions we wanted to look at. We also wanted to look at what images of Gethsemane and Calvary look like in our chapels? How is that represented? And then the third was how has it been represented in our church magazines and periodicals? So we did a survey of all of those as well. Isn't that fun?

Welch: And yes, I mean, what you found is striking and fascinating. So tell us what you found about BYU students in their preferences for images that they would want to display in their home.

Anthony Sweat: Yeah, one of the first things that drove this was we just said it did a basic survey and we asked them this question. Where did Christ atone for our sins? Now as a listener ask yourself that question and obviously we've primed and already influenced you, but just when you ask it blankly, where did Christ atone for our sins? This was a free response question. And I mean, interestingly about this 55% wrote Gethsemane on their own. 42% wrote Gethsemane and Calvary, and 3% wrote additional answers such as, like, “on Earth.” So it's interesting though that the majority said Gethsemane. We also asked them, where would you say the atonement mostly took place in Gethsemane or Calvary? 88% of the students said Gethsemane. And that's a really interesting finding. And only 12% selected Calvary. And as we said, art reflects values. It reflects cultural values. So it wasn't a surprise to us when we did this study about which art they chose. And to try to help mitigate the bias, we tried to do something. that we felt was beneficial. We chose three artists who had both painted Gethsemane and Calvary. So we chose Harry Anderson, we chose Karl Block, and we chose Kirk Richards. So three different styles of art, and we gave the students, so six images, and we said, if you had to pick one of these six images, which one did you pick? That way we're trying to mitigate a little bit for style questions. So the answers were 41% chose Gethsemane by Harry Anderson. 29% chose Gethsemane by Carl Block. 25% chose Gethsemane by Kirk Richards. You don't need to be a mathematician, add that up. That's almost the whole majority of the population there. Only 2% chose a crucifixion image by Kirk Richards. Less than 1% chose the crucifixion image by Karl Block. And less than a half of 1% chose the crucifixion by Harry Anderson. In other words, 97% of our students free-selected an image of Gethsemane. What do you make of that, Rosalynde?

Welch: It's a striking, even overwhelming response, isn't it? So what did you find then in meeting houses when you turned your attention to the art that we find in Latter-day Saint meeting houses?

Sweat: Yeah, we did it through social media. We did a survey where we reached out. We ended up getting 151 total people who responded and did a survey. Obviously we did not travel around all 151 chapels, five of them international, by the way. But that 151, so it's a convenient sample, which those… that… no statistics are some bias there, but just so you know, that came through from 25 different states. 42 of the chapels were from Utah, but there was a number of different states of those. And the answer, we have them survey three questions. Number one, does your chapel have a picture of Jesus in it? Number two, does it have a picture of Gethsemane in it? Number three, does it have a picture of the crucifixion in it? And of those, the great news is... 100% of our chapels have a picture of Jesus in it. That's wonderful. That’s great. Good to know. And about half of our chapels had a picture of Gethsemane in them. And just being the teacher in me, for those that are listening, take a guess how many of the 151 chapels had a picture of the crucifixion in it? Well, the answer is 3%. So again, very low. And one of them was an institute building that doubled as a chapel. So very, very low percentage that had an image of the crucifixion. The difficulty of that is twofold. Number one, even if we want to hang images of the crucifixion in our chapels, if you were a church leader who got to make a decision of, “Hey, we're redoing the imagery in our chapel! Pick from this approved catalog.” There are no approved images of crucifixion artwork in our catalogs right now. Now, I'm really sensitive about this and I wanna say it this way: I don't think it's my position to try to tell those who make those decisions what to do. And that's their stewardship, that's their responsibility. My job is to research it and look into it and ask questions, “Why?” and maybe get us to think about it. And I don't control the church's artwork selection committee, but maybe this information can be useful to those who do make those decisions. I do control the artwork I put up in my own home, by the way, my own personal sanctuary. And so, yes, I do have images of the crucifixion in my home, and I'm grateful for those. So,. I just want to make that comment there that I'm not here to criticize. I'm just here to point out the reality of the challenge of it. That even if we wanted to, I'm not sure we can.

Welch: That's clear throughout the piece, that you're not throwing anybody under the bus here at all. And we all operate under certain constraints, and we all have our reasons for what we do. Nevertheless, you have really successfully, I think, brought, shined a light on something that is really surprising to me, and I think to lots of members, which is that pictures of Christ's crucifixion are so rare in our meeting houses.

Sweat: Yeah, and if you process that, the difficulty that maybe I do want to bring attention to is, number one, when we're working with our Christian friends of other faiths, and the crucifixion is so central, that they're not seeing that represented visually in our institutional places. And number two, since art influences us, and what we think and what we know. The difficulty is if we want our people to place a value on the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, it's hard for them to assume, almost by visual osmosis, the importance of that, if there's no imagery that reflects it around them anymore.

Welch: Yeah, that's such an important point. And it leads on to the third aspect of your study, which is the way that we are influenced by images in periodicals, in print publications. So maybe just briefly tell us what you found in general from this extensive review that you did of Latter-day Saint periodicals.

Sweat: Yeah, we looked at all the imagery in the Millennial Star, the Improvement Era, and the Enzyme, which are the main three magazines. And the short of the Millennial Star and the Improvement Era is we don't use a lot of visuals in there, number one. Number two, there's not a lot of imagery of either the Crucifixion or Gethsemane in either of those. They're fairly balanced in the Millennial Star. The Improvement Era leans a little heavier towards Gethsemane, but there's just not a lot of imagery, so it's a small sample size. The bigger sample size is in the Ensign, which again, our visual cannon explodes at the same time that the Ensign comes about, which is from 1971 to the year 2020 is when the Ensign ended. In the Ensign, we found 100 representations of Christ's crucifixion, which is wonderful between 1971 and 2020. But interestingly, when you compare 100 of those, in comparison, there were 215 published images of Gethsemane. So we're still twice as often showing images of Gethsemane. as we are the crucifixion. And what's even more interesting about that is between 1971 and 1990, the images are balanced. They're roughly equal of how many images of the crucifixion and Gethsemane were showing. It's not until the 2000s that things massively changed. Between 2000 and 2020, there were 154 images of Gethsemane compared to 46 images of the crucifixion. And so what's important to see about that is this is a recent shift, both visually and even in general conference. I don't have all the numbers in front of me, but if you look at Gethsemane in general conference, you know, it was mentioned like one or two times, two words per million. Between 1850 to 1900 from like 1900 to 1930 is mentioned like five times per million. Between 1940 to 1970 it was, like, eight times per million or 10. And then cutting to the chase, suddenly in 1980, we're talking about it 30 times per million. And in the year 2000, we jumped to 50 times per million, 60 times per million in the 2010s. In other words, we're talking about this a hundred times more (Gethsemane) than we used to in the past. So, again, that's reflected in the artwork that we end up publishing between 2000 and 2020.

Welch: That is really fascinating and of course it begs the question why? What is driving this? You don't really have an answer to that in this paper and I don't know that anybody has an answer to that. It does strike me that -and tell me if you agree with this- when I think about Gethsemane versus Calvary, oftentimes I picture Christ in the garden praying and I think of him there bearing my emotional burdens, bearing my spiritual agonies, bearing the relational and mental health burdens that we carry. Whereas on Calvary, I tend to think about it in, he was giving up his life so that we could be resurrected and there was a sort of more physical dimension to it there. I wonder whether over the last several decades, we've as a church, we've turned our attention to the way that Christ can succor us in mental health struggles, in emotional struggles, in relationship struggles, and maybe that shifts our focus more then, to Gethsemane.

Sweat: That is a very insightful perspective. I don't know, I don't have data on that, but that seems like it could have a potential. You know, we have shifted toward that. It's interesting to me, there was even, I was just sent an article, I don't know when this came out, but it's an article from the church that says, “Learn how Christ's sacrifice in Gethsemane can help you overcome feelings of loneliness.” So that's the subject of the article. And so maybe there's something to that, that Gethsemane appeals to our mental and emotional struggles. And maybe we're not focusing as much on being redeemed from sin as before. That'd be a fun study to look into. You just got your study design or your thesis to explore right there.

Welch: I've got my next article on tap now.

I was really struck by what Anthony said about how often our favorite stories are strongly influenced by the visual art we’ve seen. He pointed out that there are relatively few visual images of the Lamanite woman Abish, a scriptural hero who plays a pivotal role in the foundation of Lamanite Christianity. And she’s not often included in our pantheon of Book of Mormon Greats. I wanted to remind listeners of the visual art resources available in The Book of Mormon Art Catalog. A project that the Maxwell Institute sponsors. It’s easy to find! Just go to bookofmormonartcatalog.org. It hosts thousands of visual images of the Book of Mormon from artists of all kinds and places. In all different media and all different subjects. The curator of the catalog, Jenny Champoux has actively sought out under-represented images from the Book of Mormon. In Fact, the Maxwell Institute just sponsored a student art contest to generate even more of this kind of art. You can search the catalog by all sorts of keywords to find any image you might need for teaching, scholarship, or just for personal spiritual reflection. And you’ll be glad to know that there are 30 amazing representations of Abish available in the catalog. Let’s get back to my interview with Dr. Sweat!

Welch: Let's talk about sort of the scriptural and teaching foundation because Latter-day Saints in some ways they come, their art preference is honestly reflecting their understanding of the atonement in some ways, right? That there genuinely was something of great importance that occurred in Gethsemane. And of course in Restoration Scripture we have two very striking and beautiful references to Gethsemane. King Benjamin talks about in Mosiah 3, he talks about Christ suffering hunger and thirst and fatigue beyond what any man could suffer even to the point of blood coming from every pore. And then in D&C 19, again, we have Christ in his own voice this time describing to us the agonies that he experienced there. And again, he brings up this very striking image of blood coming from every pore. As Latter-day Saints, how do we tend to think about what's happening in Gethsemane and what's happening in Calvary as kind of integrated parts of the atonement? Again, this is just your impressions. You're not speaking here about what is orthodox or what is not, but what has been your experience as a teacher of Latter-day Saints students?

Sweat: I'm grateful that you mentioned both those powerful scriptures. One thing since in this discussion, we've swung heavily towards crucifixion discussions. It's really important to understand that we are unique, doctrinally, in our emphasis on Gethsemane, in that we do feel like Gethsemane is part of his divine suffering for sin, and to recompense or rectify part of the fall of Adam and Eve. And so that's unique to us. I don't wanna paint the rest of the billions of Christians and all the diversity of faiths monolithically here, but most of them don't seem to view Gethsemane that same way. They view it as Christ's suffering or preparation, knowing the weight of what's about to happen, but they don't view it the same way that we do that it's part of his divine suffering for his atonement. That's unique to us. We need to be careful that we don't, as pendulums shift and swing, that we don't swing it too far away from that unique and cherished doctrine that I do think our scriptures support. At the same time, I do think it's important that we don't have the doctrinal misnomer that Christ suffered for my sins in Gethsemane and then he died for me on Calvary. In other words, if I wanted to be redeemed from sin, that's Gethsemane. If I want to resurrect, that's Calvary. That is not our doctrine. Our scriptures don't support that. The teachings of prophets don't support that. So I do think that's important, even though I'm not here to speak as an official representative or orthodoxy for the church. It does seem that the church's orthodox position would say that, like, we do believe in the salvific nature of both of them for sin. You know, Bruce R. McConkey has a few statements where he says that the same suffering that he experienced in Gethsemane was repeated on the cross. Whether you do or don't subscribe to that, it's important, I do think that doctrinally that we don't relegate them or bifurcate them. As this was one here, this was the other there.

Welch: So part of our Latter-day Saints’ preference or supposed seeming preference for Gethsemane imagery over Calvary imagery might reflect indeed a kind of doctrinal understanding that maybe could use a bit of guidance back towards the cross. But I think some of it also is simply that images of Christ on the cross are hard to look at. We say, yes, I know Christ died for me on the cross and I value that, but do I have to look at it? It makes me uncomfortable. It makes me sad. It creates these negative feelings in me. How do you respond to that? Do we lose something when we're not willing to view the cross?

Sweat: If I could key off the data that we do have from these BYU students, and again, these are younger students, you can't extrapolate this data onto the whole population of the church, but it is at minimum reflective of the population, a microcosm of it anyway, and there does seem to be in their answers, “I don't like to look at suffering and pain.” And that's understandable, but at the same time, life is suffering and pain. Life is difficult. And to know that Jesus descended below them all, when I personally view images of the crucifixion, I am so deeply moved by them. I found profound meaning in, for example, as I just mentioned, I just returned from Rome, going into these beautiful Catholic cathedrals and worship spaces. Man, profound meaning in seeing a suffering Christ for me personally, because it reminds me that Christ descended below them all so that he could ascend above them all, so that in my suffering he knows how to succor me, as is so beautifully been taught in our doctrine. So I think there's something meaningful there that we can tap into. Myself as an artist, I did a painting one time, called Man of Sorrows. And it was almost an accidental painting. But I started to do this painting of, with Jesus kind of with his head hung down. It's not a crucifixion painting itself. But it's with Christ with his head kind of hung down. And the painting, I wasn't jiving with it, I wasn't happy with it. So I got my sander and I started to scrub off and chip off and peel off aspects of it. And as I did that, it almost made what I found to be a more beautiful image. And so I just, I left it at that. I've had multiple people who have seen that image say that it profoundly impacted them, because it communicated suffering and helped them to know that, you know, God is a God of suffering. There's a beautiful poem by Edward Silito that -speaking of like Roman gods- it says, “The other gods were strong, but thou did stumble to a throne. No other God has wounds but ours alone.” I didn't get the whole poem there because I'm trying to remember to talk my head, but there's something profound to say, we worship a God who suffered and died for us. And that remembering those suffering wounds, that was central to him coming to the Nephites –“Behold the wounds in my hands and in my feet.” It was central to his apostles in the new world and keeping sacred things sacred. It's very central to our temple worship. And so we would be remiss to say we shouldn't remember it or think on it. Christ tells us to remember his suffering and his death. So there might be something we're missing in our visual artwork if we don't.

Welch: I so appreciate that. And it brings to mind a verse in the first chapter of the book of Jacob. And so Jacob here is addressing us, the readers of the Book of Mormon, and he says, “Wherefore we would to God that we could persuade all men not to rebel against God, to provoke him to anger, but that all men would believe in Christ and view his death and suffer his cross and bear the shame of the world. Wherefore I, Jacob, take it upon me to fulfill the commandment of my brother Nephi.” This is such a fascinating verse. There seems to be a connection. He uses this word “view,” right? View his death and then move on to suffer his cross. There seems to be a way in which when we are willing to do the hard work, the uncomfortable work, the sad work of viewing our Savior in His agony and in His mortality, that gives us a way to participate in that atonement. We too can suffer His cross, of course, in a much smaller way, but as His disciples, of course, we take the cross upon ourselves and we bear a burden as well as we also covenant to lose our lives. to save it, just as our master did. And you quote this really wonderful passage in your paper, you quote a passage from Deidre Green's brief theological introduction to the book of Jacob, which the Maxwell Institute published. And Deidre points out that during Joseph Smith's time, the operative definition of the word view was to survey intellectually, to examine with the mental eye, and to consider the subject in all its aspects. Additionally, a sense from the Latin root is that of reaching or extending toward the object one views. So when we're willing to view or to look visually at an image of Christ on the cross, it opens up our minds and our hearts and extends us towards him. It draws us towards him as he promised that it would. He would  draw all men to him on the cross.

Sweat: Yes, and he even says, I'm lifted up to draw all men unto me. And without beholding that lifting up, maybe that is something that is inhibiting us from drawing closer to him. You know, I'm just looking here at this verse from Moroni, chapter 9, verse 25, “May Christ lift thee up. And may his sufferings and death rest in your mind forever.” His sufferings, and again, I don't want to exclude Gethsemane, that part is important of our doctrine, and death rest in your mind forever. And I like that it's connected to Christ lifting you up. And maybe we could, there's lots of ways we could read that, but maybe one interpretation of that is that will lift us up closer to him. It might lift us up to be willing to sacrifice in our own smaller ways, as you said, as he did.

Welch: And the cross can become a beautiful symbol for that discipleship, right? We quite famously, as Latter-day Saints, we don't overly employ the imagery and symbolism of the cross. But it's worth thinking about, what is the symbolism of the cross? For you personally, and maybe thinking more broadly if you like, Anthony, what does the cross symbolize for you as an image?

Sweat: You know, for me personally, as I mentioned, I have a painting of the crucifixion in my home. It's right outside of my bedroom. It's a beautiful painting by Kirk Richards. And I look at it every day. I hung it there on purpose. To remind me to try to do what the scriptures are telling us to do to behold his suffering and his death. But as I see that painting, it reminds me that I worship a God who so loved the world that he gave his life for us, not just for me personally, but for the whole world. That God loves all of his children. You know, it's been said that we can determine what we love by what we're willing to sacrifice. You know, in the book of John, Chapter 15, verse 13, the Lord says, “Greater love hath no man than this, than a man layeth down his life for his friends.” So if you and I really wanna know what we love, ask ourself, what am I willing to sacrifice? Sacrifice reveals love in a lot of ways. And so when I see that image, what the crucifixion does for me personally is it reminds me of the depth. of the love of Jesus Christ. That he's willing to lay down the most precious thing, his own life voluntarily, even though he had power to stop it. The man who commands the elements and walks on water and raises the dead and gives sight to the blind. He could have stopped the crucifixion if he wanted to, but he voluntarily chose not to. So what it says to me is that God loves me and he loves you, Rosalynde, he loves everybody, the whole world. He loves the whole world so much that he's willing to voluntarily lay down his life for the world, that's what it does for me.

Rosalynde: I so agree, for me. The cross is a symbol of love. It's a symbol of Christ's love, God's love. It's a symbol of the condescension of God, as Nephi talks about in 1 Nephi 11, that Christ was willing to come down to be with us, to live among us, in solidarity with us, to the point of giving up his life for us. I also think there's something really profound in the image of the juxtaposed beams of the cross. And this is something that I've read other theologians write about. And they see in these two crosswise beams of the cross something that is sort of irreconcilable, right? If you think about two parallel lines, those are kind of reconciled. But the cross, there's a kind of irreconcilable crux. at the center of the cross. And to me that has very deep symbolic meaning as well. Ultimately, it can symbolize the burdens that as disciples we are asked to bear sometimes for a lifetime. To be a disciple of Jesus of Nazareth is to take up your cross and it is not an easy life. It's a strenuous life. And that... crux, that irreconcilable crux at the center of the cross speaks to me about that. But ultimately and most deeply, it speaks to me of what you mentioned earlier, that as Christians, we worship a God who died. And in some ways, of course, He rose again and He lives, and He defeated death. But he defeated death by first accepting it. for us and on our behalf. And in so many worldviews, that type of humility is just unthinkable, and especially in a God. But as Christians, we worship a savior who died for us. The all-powerful being gave it all up and suffered, descended below all things for our sake. And that kind of paradox, I think, is captured in the visual image of the cross. So Anthony I would love to know if there are any particular artistic representations of Christ that Speak to you with an especially powerful voice?

Sweat: Yeah, the one that's come into my mind as you ask that question, because I recently got to see the original of it is Michelangelo's La Pieta. It’s beautiful. It's in the Sistine Chapel, this beautiful carving of Mary the mother of Jesus holding her deceased son in her arms. And just the… What he's captured there artistically, not just technically, but artistically, is so powerful. It shows, it gives a visual representation of the price that was paid. You know, sometimes the paintings of not necessarily Christ on the cross, but sometimes the paintings of the descent from the cross. Or the women weeping or holding him like the pieta, or them wrapping his body. The reality and the corporal reality of them processing this and dealing with this, so powerful for me. Those images are very moving for me personally.

Welch: As we're moving towards the end of our interview, I'd love to think sort of practically for our listeners out there, Latter-day Saints, how do you think Saints can use art more effectively in their homes to influence their own family faith culture?

Sweat: Yeah, I was really grateful. Again, I would just maybe offer the invitation to reflect on how you're using art first. I offered some ways to think about art, but maybe ask yourself the question of, am I using it merely for decoration? Or am I using it for contemplation, emotion? You know, those words I gave again to read decorative, communicative, reflective, transformative, inquisitive. Why are you using the art you're using? Is it just filling a nice wall space? What's it trying to communicate? What's it reflecting? Ask yourself maybe this question of what are my values personally, doctrinally? What are my values aesthetically? What images would be powerful for me to maybe hang up to reflect those personal values? I think those are important questions. Instead of just saying, oh, we've got a blank wall there. Oh yeah, that's nice. Maybe to try to tap in to use the power of art more than decorative might be the challenge. And I don't wanna be critical of the decorative nature of it, but art really can do so much more if we'll employ it.

Rosalynde: Is it important, Anthony, for the painting above the couch to match the couch?

Anthony Sweat: I will leave that to the listener. I mean there definitely is something to be said for the aesthetics of it. But maybe my invitation would be to try to push things beyond mere aesthetics.

Rosalynde: And what about us not only as consumers of art, but as producers of art as well? You are an oil painter. I am a writer, but both have a creative dimension to it. And I think most Latter-day Saints have some kind of a creative outlet in their life. How has creativity related to your spiritual development? And do you think that Latter-day Saints can and should use creativity in their own lives to explore their spirituality?

Sweat: Most definitely, there's the beautiful talk by President Dieter F. Uchtdorf at the time about creating. Go listen to that alone and listen to that great apostle teach us. If we're here to become like God, which those are maybe the five words when I teach that I summarize the whole purpose of life into five words from our theology is to become more like God. And a God is creative. And if you say, well, I'm not creative. Well, the grace of Jesus Christ is here to help us become more like God. And I believe that the closer I am to the Spirit of the Lord, the more creative I get in different ways. And I'm inspired and strengthened and enlightened. And if that's the case, which I believe it is, and my experience is that that's true, then I need to find ways and I should find ways to express that. Both as a reminder to myself, but also to express it to other people that this is what matters to me. This is what moves me as a whole. So whether that's in song or dance or furniture or gardening, or creating a beautiful space, interior decoration, visual art, singing, run the gamut. You find your way to say, I'm gonna use some creative power to reflect what I value. It's part of being like God, in my opinion.

Rosalynde: Well, thank you, Anthony Sweatt, so much for joining us today on the Maxwell Institute podcast. You have given me so much to think about, and I think our listeners will agree. Thanks very much.

Anthony Sweat: Thank you so much.

Welch: Thanks for listening to the Maxwell Institute Podcast! If you enjoyed the episode, please subscribe and give us a rating or review on the platform you listened. For updates about the Maxwell Institute follow us on our social media platforms @byumaxwell and sign up for our newsletter at mi.byu.edu. Join us next time, and take care!