is a research community based in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia. Our goal is to understand the way theological commitments shape the social patterns and practices of everyday life. The heart of the Project's mission is encouraging younger theologians and scholars of religion to embrace theological life as a form of public responsibility. Among an emerging generation of teachers, writers, and researchers, we are discovering a hunger for the opportunity to reconnect the theological enterprise with lived experience, and it is our privilege to provide a public space in which that task can be pursued.
at a 2003 conference
"We are trained to focus on institutional and structural dynamics and to privilege the overt behavior of social actors, but this approach can be reductive. By visiting specific religiously based community building projects, I was able to see theology in action, to see how local Christians draw from theological resources in their traditions to tackle complex socio-political challenges. We have only begun to scratch the surface."
Wallace Best
Professor of Religion and African American Studies at Princeton University
NEWS
New Project Book
Willis Jenkins and Jennifer McBride (both of whom received their Ph.Ds from U.Va.) have co-edited a new book out from Fortress Press, Bonhoeffer and King: Their Legacies and Import for Christian Social Thought. Here, leaders in Christian social thought revisit the insights, causes, and strategies Bonhoeffer and King employed for a new generation and its concerns: race, reconciliation, nonviolence, political violence, Christian theological identity, and ministry.
New Virginia Seminar Book
With The Republic of Grace: Augustinian Thoughts for Dark Times, Charles Mathewes provides a primer for citizenship and public life. The Republic of Grace will help reignite and inform a fierce commitment to the common good of our society, caring concern for the least and most vulnerable, and the use of each person's gifts, power, and wealth as a force for good and justice in the world.
NEW Lived Theology Internships
Read the theological reflections of the Lived Theology Interns on our new blog. Roger Conarroe checks in from Burkina Faso, where he is interning with the Health and Nutrition sector of Save the Children, and Lee Stephenson writes from Washington, D.C. about her experiences working for ONE.
Intersections: Jon Foreman, John Perkins, and Charles Marsh
Watch the video of Switchfoot's new song The Sound (John M. Perkins' Blues). Switchfoot band member Jon Foreman recently visited Charles Marsh in Germany, where they visited sites significant to Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the German Resistance.
Foreman, who blogs for The Huffington Post, had this to say about Welcoming Justice, co-written by Charles Marsh and John Perkins: "Charles Marsh and John Perkins are incredible navigators in the murky waters of race and reconciliation... If words are the scaffolding we build our lives on, this book lays a true and elegant foundation."
Listen to SILT 2010
Visit the 2010 SILT page to view photos and listen to audio from "Theology, Migration, and the Borderlands", held at the University of San Diego. Speakers included Daisy Machado, Craig Wong, and
Project DVD with John Perkins and Charles Marsh
If you missed the Lived Theology event Let Justice Roll Down, email us for a complementary DVD of the dialogue between Dr. Perkins and Dr. Marsh.