Skip to main content
← BACK TO Culture Care

Practicing Culture Care

Caring for culture through wrestling deeply with issues of art, faith, and humanity.

(Culture Care Summit 2018 | Creation and New Creation) For the third annual Culture Care Summit, Brehm Center director Mako Fujimura hosted a conversation on culture care in education, journalism, and more. (Pictured left to right: Makoto Fujimura, Ivan Penn, Andy Crouch, Catherine Hirshfield Crouch, Satyan Devadoss)
(Culture Care Summit 2018 | Creation and New Creation) For the third annual Culture Care Summit, Brehm Center director Mako Fujimura hosted a conversation on culture care in education, journalism, and more. (Pictured left to right: Makoto Fujimura, Ivan Penn, Andy Crouch, Catherine Hirshfield Crouch, Satyan Devadoss)
(Culture Care Summit 2018 | Creation and New Creation) Mark Labberton reflects on creation that groans toward beauty and how the arts can express this deep longing. He is joined by Mako Fujimura and Andy Crouch, author and Fuller trustee, for a conversation on “kintsugi theology,” vulnerability, and culture care.
(Culture Care Summit 2018 | Creation and New Creation) Ivan Penn, alternative energy reporter for the New York Times, reflects on justice, truth-telling and ethics, and the risks he has faced standing against a culture of greed and power in a public forum.
(Culture Care Summit 2018 | Creation and New Creation) Mako Fujimura, Andy Crouch, and Ivan Penn reflect on the complicated challenges of ethics, media, and public communication during this political moment.
(Culture Care Summit 2018 | Creation and New Creation) Left: Andy Crouch, author and Fuller trustee, lectures on the intersection of culture care and the Shema, reflecting on the biblical vision of the complex interconnected reality of personhood, family, and culture. Right: Catherine Hirshfield Crouch, professor of physics at Swarthmore College, who spoke on higher education and science.
(Culture Care Summit 2018 | Creation and New Creation) Left: Andy Crouch, author and Fuller trustee, lectures on the intersection of culture care and the Shema, reflecting on the biblical vision of the complex interconnected reality of personhood, family, and culture. Right: Catherine Hirshfield Crouch, professor of physics at Swarthmore College, who spoke on higher education and science.
(Culture Care Summit 2018 | Creation and New Creation) Satyan Devadoss, Fletcher Jones Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of San Diego, lectures on complexity, the limits of quantification, and a vision of mathematics informed by the humanities.
(Culture Care Summit 2018 | Creation and New Creation) Various voices from the Culture Care Summit reflect together on culture care, truth-telling in the public sphere, and the future of higher education.
(Culture Care Summit 2018 | Creation and New Creation) Students and alumni respond to the Culture Care Summit with research at the intersection of worship, theology, and the arts.
(Culture Care Summit 2018 | Creation and New Creation) Maria Fee, adjunct professor of theology and culture and PhD student (pictured above) leads students through a creative thesis project.
(Culture Care Summit 2018 | Creation and New Creation) Maria Fee, adjunct professor of theology and culture and PhD student (pictured above) leads students through a creative thesis project.
(Culture Care Summit 2017 | Beauty in Exile) Mako Fujimura, visual artist and director of the Brehm Center for Worship, Theology, and the Arts, reflects on the relationships among culture care, beauty, and suffering. A community of artists and theologians reflected on these themes at the Brehm Center’s second annual Culture Care Summit, and explore more below.
(Culture Care Summit 2017 | Beauty in Exile) Nate Risdon, director of operations for the Brehm Center for Worship, Theology, and the Arts (pictured), elaborates on the Brehm Center’s vision for caring for culture.
(Culture Care Summit 2017 | Beauty in Exile) Nate Risdon, director of operations for the Brehm Center for Worship, Theology, and the Arts (pictured), elaborates on the Brehm Center’s vision for caring for culture.
(Culture Care Summit 2017 | Beauty in Exile) Mark Labberton, president of Fuller Seminary, reflects on themes of culture care through the lens of exile in the Old Testament and today’s culture.
(Culture Care Summit 2017 | Beauty in Exile) Celebrated author Philip Yancey and Brehm Center director Mako Fujimura discuss Shūsaku Endo’s novel Silence and reflect on the role of art to respond gracefully to cultural trauma and suffering around the world.
(Culture Care Summit 2017 | Beauty in Exile) Scott Cormode, director of innovation, lectures on culture care, the marketplace, and sharing stories of hope to encourage those entrusted to our care.
(Culture Care Summit 2017 | Beauty in Exile) Oscar García-Johnson, associate professor of theology and Latino/a studies (pictured), and Joey Tomassoni, artist and church planter, reflect on the complex overlap of European colonization and mission work and navigating the worlds of justice, faith, and art.
(Culture Care Summit 2017 | Beauty in Exile) Oscar García-Johnson, associate professor of theology and Latino/a studies (pictured), and Joey Tomassoni, artist and church planter, reflect on the complex overlap of European colonization and mission work and navigating the worlds of justice, faith, and art.
(Culture Care Summit 2017 | Beauty in Exile) Alexis Abernethy, professor of psychology (pictured), and Shann Ray, novelist and psychologist, reflect on forgiveness, worship, naming our suffering, and cultivating a yielding presence in the world.
(Culture Care Summit 2017 | Beauty in Exile) Alexis Abernethy, professor of psychology (pictured), and Shann Ray, novelist and psychologist, reflect on forgiveness, worship, naming our suffering, and cultivating a yielding presence in the world.
(Culture Care Summit 2017 | Beauty in Exile) Pictured above: members of the All-Seminary Chapel team lead attendees in worship (left to right: students Megan Moody, September Penn, Melba Mathew, and Director of Chapel Julie Tai).
(Culture Care Summit 2017 | Beauty in Exile) Pictured above: members of the All-Seminary Chapel team lead attendees in worship (left to right: students Megan Moody, September Penn, Melba Mathew, and Director of Chapel Julie Tai).
(Culture Care Summit 2016 | Culture and Poetry) Dana Gioia, Poet Laureate of California, recites poetry and discusses its role in shaping culture at “Culture Care and Poetry,” an event sponsored by the Brehm Center for Worship, Theology, and the Arts. He read from his most recent book 99 Poems: New and Selected and reflected with Brehm Center Director Mako Fujimura on what he learned while leading the National Endowment for the Arts.
(Culture Care Summit 2016 | Culture and Poetry) Dana Gioia, Poet Laureate of California, recites poetry and discusses its role in shaping culture at “Culture Care and Poetry,” an event sponsored by the Brehm Center for Worship, Theology, and the Arts. He read from his most recent book 99 Poems: New and Selected and reflected with Brehm Center Director Mako Fujimura on what he learned while leading the National Endowment for the Arts.
(Culture Care Summit 2016 | Culture and Poetry) Dana Gioia, Poet Laureate of California, recites poetry and discusses its role in shaping culture at “Culture Care and Poetry,” an event sponsored by the Brehm Center for Worship, Theology, and the Arts. He read from his most recent book 99 Poems: New and Selected and reflected with Brehm Center Director Mako Fujimura on what he learned while leading the National Endowment for the Arts.
The Culture Care summits are hosted as Payton Lectures in the Travis Auditorium.
The Culture Care summits are hosted as Payton Lectures in the Travis Auditorium.

International Arts Movement creates a new paradigm by lovingly tending to cultural soil and caring for artists as pollinators of the good, true, and beautiful. Our culture is not a territory to win, but a garden to tend to, an ecosystem to steward.

The mission of International Arts Movement is to collaborate with culture care affiliates to nurture artists and creative catalysts, academics and professionals, to provide a sanctuary in which to gather, learn, collaborate, and create. IAM serves as a catalytic agent for the renewal of our cultural ecosystem and to create bridges between cultures.

Click through the gallery of videos above to watch our archive of Culture Care events.

Ongoing Culture Care Initiatives

Monthly Culture Care Newsletter

Our monthly newsletter features regular reflections, essays, art of all media, and announcements from Makoto Fujimura and others from our IAMCC community. The newsletter seeks to be encourage our community and be a forum for Culture Care on a regular basis.

Culture Care Podcast 

The Culture Care Podcast is a Kintsugi-based workshop in audio form to name our fractures and to become students of ways of mending. Seated around this workshop table are guests with a range of interests, stories, skills, experiences. They are artists, journalists, thinkers, professors, students, theologians, poets, musicians…all makers who are paving the way for a more generative and holistic world. Each person brings something unique to the table –– their particular experience with brokenness, and finding their way toward healing. Listen to the two seasons here!

“Belonging Conversations”

IAMCultureCare board members Makoto Fujimura and Julia Hendrickson reflect each month on a different Culture Care topic from their studios in New Jersey and California, respectively. Watch on YouTube.

IAM & Fuller Theological Seminary’s Brehm Center

Changing the Metaphor: From Culture Wars to Culture Care

Fuller Studio & Mako Fujimura: Culture Care

Culture Care Summit 2016: Culture and Poetry

Listen to Dana Gioia, Poet Laureate of California, recite poetry and discuss its role in shaping culture at ​“Culture Care and Poetry:”

Mako Fujimura interviews Dana Gioia at the 2016 summit, Culture Care & Poetry.

Dana Gioia reads his poetry and then engages in Q&A at the 2016 summit, Culture Care & Poetry.

Culture Care Summit 2017: Beauty in Exile

Listen to the full set of lectures, from the 2017 Culture Care Summit:

Culture Care | Beauty in Exile

The Emerging Voice series is offered by students and alumni during the Culture Care Summit. Listen to these students bear witness to culture in their specific contexts at the 2017 Culture Care Summit:

Emerging Voices | Culture Care 2017

Culture Care Summit 2018: From Creation to New Creation

Listen to Andy Crouch lecture on the intersection of culture care and the Shema, reflecting on the biblical vision of the complex interconnected reality of personhood, family, and culture:

Reclaiming Personhood in a Personalized World | Andy Crouch

Further Reading

The Earth Is God’s: A Theology of American Culture
William Dyrness (Wipf & Stock, 2004)

Visual Faith: Art, Theology, and Worship in Dialogue
William Dyrness (Baker Academic, 2001)

Silence and Beauty: Hidden Faith Born of Suffering
Mako Fujimura (IVP Press, 2016)

Culture Care: Reconnecting with Beauty for our Common Life
Mako Fujimura (IVP, 2017; originally published by International Arts Movement and the Fujimura Institute, 2015)

Refractions: A Journey of Faith, Art, and Culture
Mako Fujimura (NavPress, 2024 anniversary edition)

On Becoming Generative: An Introduction to Culture Care
Mako Fujimura (International Arts Movement and the Fujimura Institute, 2013)

Reel Spirituality: Theology and Film in Dialogue
Robert Johnston (Baker Academic, 2006)

More from Fuller Theological Seminary: Culture Care, Theology and Art, Theology and Culture