My conversation with... Marilynne Robinson

Re-Enchanting the human story. Belle Tindall reflects on the nature of her conversation with Pulitzer Prize winning author Marilynne Robinson for Seen and Unseen’s ‘Re-Enchanting’ podcast.

Belle Tindall

Belle is the staff writer at Seen & Unseen and co-host of its Re-enchanting podcast.

A woman talks while tilting her head to one side.

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Professor Marilynne Robinson was a guest that I felt utterly underqualified to interview. And with Barack Obama among her list of previous interviewers, I don’t think such a feeling was unjustified. But, nevertheless, there I was - talking to a Pulitzer Prize winning force of nature - all the while, hoping she could neither sense my terror, nor hear my neighbours rowing through the thin walls of my tiny, terraced house.

It was a surreal moment, to say the least.

Marilynne Robinson, if you are not yet acquainted, is the author of best-selling novels such as Housekeeping, Gilead, Home, and Lila and Jack. Each one a masterpiece. She has also written plenty of non-fiction, continuing to be generous with her genius.

Just before we began recording our episode over Zoom, my co-host, Justin, asked Marilynne whether she was able to somehow block the light streaming in from the windows behind her (needless to say he is the practical maestro behind Re-Enchanting), to which Marilynne simply replied: ‘many windows, no curtains.’ Oh gosh, I thought. This lady oozes philosophy.

How would I ever keep up?

I was always three steps behind Marilynne; partly because I imagine most people are, but mostly because it is a truly enchanting place to find oneself.

Well, if I’m being honest, I didn’t. When the conversation turned to the quantum realm, I was indescribably glad that Justin was there. My mind was still pondering the possible analogous depths of curtain-less windows. But I have since decided that I’m not ashamed to admit that I was always three steps behind Marilynne; partly because I imagine most people are, but mostly because it is a truly enchanting place to find oneself.

To trail behind someone so thoughtful means that while they may be onto their next thought or point of conversation, you are able to savour what has already been said, free to pick up and ponder the magnificent breadcrumbs that they have left in their wake. And when it comes to Marilynne Robinson, there are an awful lot of breadcrumbs. If you have ever read a line of a book that has struck you to the point of not being able to read on, even if only for a moment, then you are familiar with the sensation to which I am referring.

When you come to listen to the episode of Re-Enchanting, I do hope that you’ll hit the pause button as often as you need to in order to truly soak Marilynne in. I only wish that my real-time conversation with her had that on offer.

Nevertheless, here is what the view looks like from three steps behind Marilynne Robinson: it resembles a mysterious and wholistic fascination with, and (if I may be so romantic) a love for humanity. That is, both my own humanity and humanity in general. Mind, body, and soul (terms which, in themselves, are full of mystery and nuance) – the whole thing.

Marilynne defines herself as a Christian Humanist. What may sound like somewhat of an oxymoron at first, begins to make profound sense when humanism is stripped of its (rather recent) atheist connotations. Afterall, the intrinsic value every person holds just because they are a person is a profoundly spiritual and biblical concept. As Tom Holland suggests, humanism, whether one likes it or not, is rooted in, and therefore utterly dependent upon, Christian perceptions of reality. When engaging with Marilynne, whether that be through conversation or through her work, it becomes clear that her Christianity enchants her view of humanity, which in turn, has re-enchanted my own.

It is evident in the care and complexity with which she creates her characters, giving notable time and space to the intricate inner-workings of their consciousness, amplifying their inner-monologue, and focusing attention on their interior rejuvenations, how their sense of self responds to their shifting exterior contexts. It is just as obvious when you are privileged enough to observe her gently marvel over the beautiful capacities of the human mind, the innate mysteries of the human soul; the endless nuances of all that is seen and unseen when it comes to the human-being.

Goodness seems to be Marilynne’s preferred start-line. Undergirding any humanism that she may adhere to is the notion that human beings were designed and created...

It should be noted that such an admiration is not born out of an avoidance of the brokenness that human-beings are so prone to displaying. Indeed, this world does not offer any of us such a luxury. The evidence of the imperfection of humanity is easier to find than the evidence of any innate goodness. And yet, that goodness seems to be Marilynne’s preferred start-line. Undergirding any humanism that she may adhere to is the notion that human beings were designed and created, that there is an intimate creator / creation dynamic at play in the cosmos; one that is ultimately fuelled by the care of the creator for the created. There is, to borrow a phrase, a ‘givenness’ to all things.

If we, like Marilynne, choose to use the givenness of things as a lens through which we perceive reality, there is utter delight to be found.

It is an admittedly cosmic-sized enchantment, but the implications of it trickle all the way down to the detail of the every-day, the ordinary, the (so-called) mundane. If we, like Marilynne, choose to use the givenness of things as a lens through which we perceive reality, there is utter delight to be found in our streams of thought, in our capacity to collaborate with what is beyond our control. There is a deep enchantment to be found in our very existence, our presence in both space and time.

As a disclaimer, I feel that I must admit to merely scratching the surface of the conversation that we had with Marilynne Robinson here, to read this piece and not listen to her episode (or read her work, for that matter) is to settle for a minute fraction of her thoughts. Trust me when I say - you want the whole thing.

Here I am, three days on and still admittedly three steps behind Marilynne as I mentally re-trace the trajectory of our conversation. But that is quite alright with me, I’m still enjoying picking up each of the breadcrumbs that she left along the way.

Article

Art

Belief

Culture

24 July 2025

5 min read

Critics and curators are missing this about contemporary artists

An interview with Jonathan Anderson

Jonathan Evens

Jonathan is Team Rector for Wickford and Runwell. He is co-author of The Secret Chord, and writes on the arts.

A metak sculpture outlines an altar, stands on a beach.

Kris Martin, Altar.

Throughout much of the twentieth century, many modern artists engaged with religion in and through their work but art critics and art historians routinely overlooked or ignored those aspects of the work when writing about it. They did so because of a secularisation agenda that overrode reflection on key elements of the art that artists were creating.

In Modern Art and the Life of a Culture, Jonathan A. Anderson, together with William Dyrness, recovered some of the religious influences explored in the work of key modern artists by writing an alternative history of modern art. Now, with The Invisibility of Religion in Contemporary Art, Anderson has addressed the central issue, which is the way in which art critics and historians have written about modern and contemporary art.

JE: What is it about this situation – that modern art has often wrestled with God, but critics and curators haven’t always shared that focus – that engages your interest and motivates you to write so compellingly about it?

JA: The more I have studied and circulated through the worlds of contemporary art (first as an artist, then as a critic), the more attentive I became to significant disconnects in the ways we talk and write about religion in modern and contemporary art. Many prominent artists working today and over the past century have been shaped by religious traditions, and their works are in serious dialogue with those traditions in various ways and from various perspectives. Their relationship to religion might be highly conflicted or nuanced—it often is—but it is a live issue in their work and one can talk with them about it in their studios or in informal settings. But when one moves to the critical writing and public discussions about these artists’ works, this aspect either disappears altogether or is discussed in ways that are clumsy, stifled, or shapeless.

The aim of a lot of my work is to understand in a non-superficial way why this has been the case, why there has been a recent resurgence of discussions of religion and spirituality, and how we might develop more substantive ways of thinking and speaking about these topics.

JE: What did you find most surprising as you undertook the research for both books?

JA: I am consistently surprised at how sprawling and dense this topic is. Once one begins rethinking ‘the strange place of religion’ in the histories of modern and contemporary, the more one finds that there is an enormous amount of material that deserves renewed investigation. Both books give a strong sense of this, but chapter three in my new book is especially full of sign-pointers toward items that require further exploration.

To give one concrete example, I found myself referring to several major curated group exhibitions that, in one way or another, significantly address topics of religion and spirituality in twentieth- and twenty-first-century art. As I began to look more seriously at the history of such exhibitions, this curiosity swelled into a huge endeavour. Over the course of several years, I assembled a long list of exhibition catalogues and other documentation—the most comprehensive list of its kind that I’m aware of—which in turn helped me not only to recognize how prevalent interest in these topics has been but to think through the diversity of approaches. A version of this list is published in The Invisibility of Religion in Contemporary Art as an appendix, and the full, updated list is also available on my website. I hope it’s a valuable resource for others.

JE: Both books offer ideas and suggestions for constructive ways to understand, address and write about the relationship between art and religion going forward. In Modern Art and the Life of a Culture there is the idea of a charitable hermeneutic, while in The Invisibility of Religion in Contemporary Art you offer substantial new frameworks for discussing art and religion. Why is it important that the dialogue between art and religion finds paths to conversation rather than conflict?

JA: This is an important question. The public dialogue between contemporary art and religion has been relatively dysfunctional for much of the past century, often riddled with mutual antagonisms, melodramatic controversies, misunderstandings, and mutual unintelligibility. But art and religion are complex, vital domains of meaning that have continued to deeply shape each other up to the present and that have an enormous amount to ‘say’ to one another today, both critically and constructively. My own experience is that the more the participants in this conversation become attentive to and conversant in the other’s history, vernacular, and ways of thinking, the more highly constructive and mutually enriching the dialogue becomes.

I think this kind of dialogue has everything to do with cultivating mutual care and love of neighbour. The art world is a series of loosely connected communities full of people who are your and my neighbours. I happen to really care about these communities who make, exhibit, and talk about art, despite their problems. And the same might be said about various religious communities, who have their own problems and who often have more complicated interrelations with those art communities than is generally recognized. Wherever you’re coming from—the arts, the church, or otherwise—I’m interested in expanding dialogue oriented toward loving one’s neighbours, or even one’s enemies if that’s how it must be. At the most basic level, that means listening in a way that tries to discern others’ animating cares and concerns.

JE: Do you see any parallels or differences between the way the relationship between secularism and religion has played out in the world of art and the way the broader relationship between the two has been shaped in Western society in the same period?

JA: This is a fascinating but complicated question. For some people, the whole point of the artistic avant-garde was to enact and exemplify, in a highly concentrated way, the secularization of Western society. At the same time, however, it was also widely recognized that the arts have, in almost all places and times, been deeply interconnected with religion and spirituality, and this was, in some conflicted or repressed way, still likely the case for much of the avant-garde as well.

Secularization has meant the pressurizing and pluralizing of religious belief, sometimes corresponding to disaffiliation from traditional organizations, but this has relatively little to do with an eradication or obsolescence of religious belief. Indeed, any notion of what Rosalind Krauss memorably described as an ‘absolute rift’ between ‘the sacred’ and ‘the secular’ is really just shorthand for some kind of social conflict, because there’s not really any rational way to absolutize these as mutually exclusive. Whether acknowledged or not, religion still provides the metaphysical and ethical groundings of modern secularity, and modern secularity provides the social conditions for contemporary religion. In this context, distinctions between religiosity and irreligiosity are often ambiguous, running through each of us in unexpected and ever-changing ways (rather than simplistically separating us from each other). In my view, contemporary art is highly illuminating to these broader dynamics. Anyone who has spent any extended time in the worlds of modern and contemporary art knows that they are full of spiritual and theological struggle. To put it succinctly: contemporary art is not an art of unbelief and nonpractice but an art of conflicted, pressurized belief and practice, which is theologically significant if attended to as such.

The Invisibility of Religion in Contemporary Art, Jonathan A. Anderson (Notre Dame Press)

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