Spring Institute for Lived Theology 2008
Lived Theology and the Language of Peace
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SILT Participants
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From May 28-30, the 2008 Spring Institute, "Lived Theology and the Language of Peace," convened 40 theologians, pastors, students, and community organizers from around the United States for three days of concentrated exchange on theology and peace. The speakers, many of whom have participated in the Lived Theology workgroups and institutes in the past, consider the language of peace in relation to world violence, economics, public witness, conflict resolution, the politics of encounter, the American organizing tradition, and ecclesial practices. The phrase “the language of peace” has special significance for us at the Project on Lived Theology. It was the response of our friend, Victoria Gray Adams, former Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) field secretary, when asked by an undergraduate student what the mission of the Civil Rights movement is today. Without hesitation, she said, “It is learning to speak the language of peace.” Victoria Gray Adams passed away last winter; this year’s SILT is inspired by and dedicated to her witness of peace.
This year's speakers included, among others: 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 Spring Institute Schedule of Events, and Speaker Bios, and scroll down to see Institute proceedings and listen to sessions. Read an article on Victoria Gray Adams by former PLT assistant, Ashley Diaz Mejias, in UVa's Arts & Sciences online.
Spring Institute 2008 Proceedings
- Session I (May 28): Are We Still of Any Use? Lived Theology and the Language of Peace - Charles Marsh
- Session II (May 28): The Practices of Peace - Craig Wong and Jonathon Wilson-Hartgrove
Listen to the session (MP3 file). - Session III (May 28): Theology, Peace and Economic Life - Eugene McCarraher
- Session IV (May 29): Theology, Public Life and the Pursuit of Peace - Chuck Mathewes
- Session V (May 29): Theology and Conflict Resolution - Victoria Barnett
- Session VI (May 29): The Practices of Peace - Rhonda Miska, Tim Clayton, Josh Kaufman-Horner
- Session VII (May 29): The Peace of Desmond Tutu and Martin Luther King, Jr. - Johnny Hill
- Session VIII (May 29): Religion and the Politics of Encounter - Manuel Vásquez
- Session IX (May 29): Just Policing, Not War: An Alternative Response to World Violence - Gerald Schlabach
Listen to the session (MP3 file).
- Session X (May 30): The Chicago Declaration and the Problem of “Evangelical” Identity - Christian Collins Winn
Read a copy of the paper.
- Session XI (May 30): Moving Beyond Divisions: Evangelicals and Racial Reconciliation in the 21st Century - Valerie Cooper
- Session XII (May 30): The American Organizing Tradition - Susan Glisson, with respondent Rydell Payne
- Final Thoughts, in Memory of Victoria Gray Adams, and Eucharist
Read Victoria Gray Adams's speech: "Learning the Language of Peace: The Spiritual Vision of the Civil Rights Movement and its Promise for the Present Age," delivered October 13, 2005.