Dr. Aaron Rosen, a leading expert on art & religion and director of the Parsonage Gallery, talks about his newest book, What Would Jesus See?  The public  conversation will be led by accomplished Maine artist, writer, and UNE gallery director Hilary Irons.  They will explore the topic of Jesus as a visual thinker for people of many faiths--or none at all--with an unorthodox flair and an artistic eye.

BOOK SUMMARY
In his newest book, Dr. Aaron Rosen, one of the world’s leading experts on art and religion, examines Jesus as a visual thinker. He invites readers to use their imagination to explore with him how Jesus saw, what he saw, and why it is important today.

Rosen brings a fresh lens to biblical texts, informed by his experience as an art curator and scholar, as well as his life as a practicing Jew married to an Episcopal priest. He examines Jesus’s eye for spectacle, his strategies for attentiveness, and his tools for discerning truth amid the flurry of false appearances.

As Rosen applies Jesus’s unique ways of seeing the world to key challenges facing society today, he taps a surprising trove of examples drawn from art, current events, and popular culture. At the core of Jesus’s ministry, Rosen finds, is a call to look at our world—especially those who are most disadvantaged—with radical empathy. In a time when our eyes have grown weary and unfocused, Rosen argues, Jesus offers us the chance to see the world with renewed vision, focused on those who need us most.