The Lumen Center is a hybrid of a research institute, a think tank, and a center for study. Our fellows specialize in writing and engaging the public through a variety of mediums and venues. They are recognized contributors to their fields of expertise while also representing Christian perspectives in interdisciplinary and university community settings. Collectively, our work seeks to benefit both the church and the university.

• For the benefit of the church through rigorous and academically-informed research that speaks to contemporary Christian challenges.
• For the benefit of the university through research that brings the resources of the Christian intellectual tradition to bear on contemporary academic conversations.

Alongside writing and public engagement, the Lumen Center hosts the annual Dallas A. Willard Lecture and works alongside other Stephen & Laurel Brown Foundation initiatives to offer courses, learning communities, and symposia advancing the study of Christianity and culture at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and beyond.

Our name is intended to signal three overlapping images:

• Lumen, or “light” in Latin, has deep roots in Christian history and has historically been invoked in educational settings to signal understanding, enlightenment, and wisdom about God, humanity, and the world rooted in the gospel message.
• One such educational setting (among many) is the University of Wisconsin, founded in 1848 with the motto Numen Lumen, or “God, our light.” While this motto is fittingly, for a public university, non-sectarian and can be interpreted in non-religious terms, at the Lumen Center we want to signal our support for the institution of the University of Wisconsin–Madison while affirming that the Christian intellectual tradition can play a vital role in achieving its core educational mission to “discover, examine critically, preserve, and transmit the knowledge, wisdom, and values.”
• Finally, we are an initiative of the Stephen & Laurel Brown Foundation. Steve and Laurel, UW alums and longtime benefactors of UW–Madison, were inspired to create a foundation in part because of a repeated image he held of light bathing the hills of campus, especially the iconic Bascom Hill at the center of campus. The Lumen Center honors and continues Steve and Laurel’s vision in its name and its work.

In October 2024, the Lumen Center celebrated its official launch as an initiative of the SL Brown Foundation by hosting a reception and the inaugural Dallas A. Willard Lecture at Upper House.
With prayers from local clergy and comments from the academic community and Foundation leaders, the reception celebrated the Lumen Center’s assembled team of Fellows and staff with members of the Madison-area university community, some of whom have been working toward a center for the study of Christianity and culture near UW for decades.

With a presentation on modern ethics by Rebecca DeYoung, professor of philosophy at Calvin University, the Dallas A. Willard Lecture began what we expect to be a lasting tradition to remember and steward the spirit of Willard’s legacy through establishing an annual forum for the presentation of Christian scholarship and thought on the grounds of his alma mater.