How their Why Religion Friends, Professor Anthony Sweat from B.O.U. Church History and

Doctrine, welcome to another episode of The Why Religion Podcast.

I finished my bachelor's degree in Fine Art in 1999, feeling a deep desire to produce

religious imagery that could contribute in some way to our understanding of the restored

gospel.

I had recently painted an image of Christ, and I was wrestling over common questions that

artists have related to how we physically depict the Savior.

I was a full-time seminary teacher at that time, and at the seminary where I was teaching,

I randomly came across a recently published volume of B.O.U. studies, with four essays in

it that were directly dedicated to latter-day Saint Perspectives on visual images of Christ.

Those articles included artistic, cultural, historical, and religious views about how

we depict him.

Those four essays covered about 100 printed pages, and I devoured each one of them.

I was so enthralled by the content that I kept that printed volume of B.O.U.U.U. studies,

and it has stayed on my bookshelf for more than 20 years now.

Its content and its meaning have simply been that valuable and impactful to me.

As a matter of fact, I pulled it down and looked through it again as I prepared this introduction.

That volume was my own first personal exposure to B.O.U. studies.

And since then, B.O.U. studies has become a go-to repository for me for peer-reviewed and

careful research on a broad range of topics that are of interest to latter-day Saints.

Last year, B.O.U. studies celebrated its 60th year of publications, and a few scholars,

including Why Religion's own Brad Wilcox, authored an article analyzing the history of the

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