The Suffering Christ: Art, Theology, and the Image of Jesus: A Conversation with Mike Huston & Jenny Champoux

What happens when the image of Jesus changes?

For generations, Latter-day Saints have encountered Christ through the familiar Christus: resurrected, triumphant, and rendered in white marble. But new sculptures at Temple Square offer a strikingly different vision—a Christ in Gethsemane and a Christ struggling beneath the weight of the cross.

In this episode of Dialogue Unbound, Margaret Olsen Hemming and Caroline Kline are joined by art historian Jenny Champoux and theologian Mike Huston to explore what these images might mean for Latter-day Saint theology. Together, they discuss the value—and potential dangers—of depicting a suffering Christ, competing understandings of the atonement, the racial implications of the white Christus, and the power of religious art to shape how we understand Jesus.

Can a more embodied, vulnerable Christ open new theological possibilities? And as the Church expands its visual vocabulary, can new images change not only how Latter-day Saints see Jesus, but how they understand God, suffering, and one another?