William Dyrness

William Dyrness is a scholar—there's no doubt about that. But his studies and publications have always been about the dramatic encounter between faith and human culture. In short, his scholarship is relevant to practicing artists because he cares about concrete, down-to-earth issues and approaches his work from an incarnational perspective. His 1971 book on the twentieth-century French Catholic painter Georges Rouault influenced an entire generation of Christian visual artists. As they struggled to find the freedom and visual vocabulary for their work, his explication of Rouault was liberating. And Dyrness's commitment to fostering the relationship between Christianity and art has continued unabated. He also serves on the board of Christians in the Visual Arts. We hope to have him back in the pages of Image soon.

Click here to read Dyrness's essay from Image #15.

Click here to read his essay on art and worship from Image #49.

William Dyrness 's Current Projects

"I have just completed ten years as dean at Fuller Seminary and am in the midst of a year's sabbatical. I have just completed a book, Visual Faith: Art, Theology and Worship in Dialogue, which is due out in the fall from Baker. Meanwhile I am working on a long-term project on the visual arts and Protestantism: 'What happened to the Protestant Imagination?' I am very excited about the light this project might shed on current ecumenical renewal in worship and the arts (of which Image is a huge part!)."

Biography

Dyrness is a professor of theology and culture in the graduate school at Fuller Theological Seminary. He has held professorships at New College Berkeley in Berkeley, California (where he also served as president from 1982 to 1990), the Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology in Nairobi, Kenya, the Asian Center for Theological Studies and Mission in Seoul, Korea, and the Asian Theological Seminary in Manila, Philippines. He was co-founder and program director of the Institute for Studies in Asian Church Culture in Manila, and served as coeditor of its journal, Patmos. In 2000, he was a research fellow at the Center for Religion and Civic Culture at the University of Southern California.

He currently serves on the board of directors of Christians in the Visual Arts (CIVA) and the editorial board of the International Journal of Systematic Theology, and is a consulting editor for Christianity Today.

His books include:Visual Faith: Art, Theology and Worship in Dialogue. Grand Rapids: Baker (Fall, 2001). The Earth is God's: A Theology of American Culture. Maryknoll, Orbis Books (1997). Invitation to Cross-cultural Theology: Case Studies in Vernacular Theology. Grand Rapids, Zondervan (1992). Learning About Theology from the Third World. Grand Rapids, Zondervan (1990). How Does America Hear the Gospel? Grand Rapids, Eerdmans (1989). Christian Art in Asia. Amsterdam, Rodopi (1979). Rouault: A Vision of Suffering and Salvation. Grand Rapids, Eerdmans (1971).

Dyrness received a bachelor's degree from Wheaton College in 1965 and from Columbia Theological Seminary in 1967, a Bachelor's of Divinity from Fuller in 1968, and doctorates from the University of Strasbourg and the Free University in Amsterdam, and was a post-doctoral fellow at Cambridge University in 1978 and again in 2000. He was ordained by the Presbyterian Church (USA) in 1994.

He is married to Grace Roberts Dyrness. They have three children.

June 2001