THE PROJECT ON LIVED THEOLOGY HOLDS ANNUAL SPRING INSTITUTE FOR LIVED THEOLOGY, MAY 28 – MAY 30
THEME OF THIS YEAR’S CONFERENCE IS THEOLOGY AND THE LANGUAGE OF PEACE
The Spring Institute for Lived Theology, an annual event sponsored by the Project on Lived Theology, will convene 40 theologians, ethicists, practitioners, and students for a three day conference on theology and the language of peace. The speakers and participants will focus on theological contributions to peacemaking in relation to global violence, economics, civil engagement, conflict resolution, the American organizing tradition, and congregational practices.
The speakers include Craig Wong, the executive director of Grace Urban Ministries (GUM), a congregation-based nonprofit located in San Francisco’s Mission District that serves low-income families through academic tutoring, youth job-training, adult education, health services, and advocacy; Victoria Barnett, the Staff Director of Church Relations at the U. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and one of the general editors of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works English Edition; Johnny Hill, a professor of theology at Louisville Seminary, director of the Foundation for Reconciliation and Dialogue and author of The Theology of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Desmond Mpilo Tutu; Manuel Vásquez, professor of religion at the University of Florida and author of Globalizing the Sacred: Religion Across the Americas; Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, a founder of the New Monastic movement and author of To Baghdad and Beyond: How I Got Born Again in Babylon; Susan Glisson, director of the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation at the University of Mississippi; and Gerald W. Schlabach, director of Justice and Peace Studies at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota and author of Just Policing, Not War: An Alternative Response to World Violence. [view the full speakers list]
The phrase “the language of peace” has special significance for the Project on Lived Theology. The late Victoria Gray Adams, a former Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) field secretary and chaplain at Virginia State University, told a group of students at the University of Virginia that the unfinished business of the civil rights movement was “learning to speak the language of peace”. This year’s SILT is inspired by and dedicated to her witness of peace. [see Ashley Diaz’s article on Victoria Gray Adams]
The Project on Lived Theology was established in the summer of 2000 for the purpose of bringing clarity to the interconnection of theology and lived experience. The Project seeks to offer academic resources in the pursuit of social justice and offers a variety of familiar and unconventional spaces where students, theologians and scholars of religion can collaborate with practitioners and non-academics. Housed in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia, the Project on Lived Theology has held meetings in the Rotunda’s Dome Room and in community centers in Harlem, Charlottesville, Memphis, East LA, and Baltimore as well as in congregations across the ecumenical spectrum.
The Project on Lived Theology is directed by Charles Marsh, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia and author of numerous books including the recent Wayward Christian Soldiers: Freeing the Gospel from Political Captivity.
For more information, contact the Project on Lived Theology at pltheology@virginia.edu or visit the Project on Lived Theology web site at: www.livedtheology.org.