Project Staff
Charles Marsh – Project Director
Marsh is Professor of Religious Studies and Director of The Project on Lived Theology at the University of Virginia. He is a graduate of Harvard Divinity School and the University of Virginia, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1989. The Project on Lived Theology is a research community that seeks to understand the social consequences of religious beliefs.
After publishing his doctoral dissertation Reclaiming Dietrich Bonhoeffer: The Promise of His Theology ( Oxford, 1994), he began considering the religious and moral paradoxes of his white southern Protestant upbringing. He was struck by the complex ways theological commitments and convictions came into dramatic conflict in the Civil Rights Movement in the American South. The religious beliefs and social practices of ordinary people of faith illuminated a new way of writing theology for him, the first fruit being God's Long Summer: Stories of Faith and Civil Rights (Princeton, 1997) which won the 1998 Grawemeyer Award in Religion.
His memoir, The Last Days: A Son's Story of Sin and Segregation at the Dawn of a New South (Basic Books, 2001), is a coming of age account of a minister’s son in a small Mississippi town that was home to the Christian terrorist organization called the White Knight of the Ku Klux Klan. In his 2005 book, The Beloved Community: How Faith Shapes Social Justice, from the Civil Rights Movement to Today (Basic Books), he developed a new narrative of the Civil Rights Movement based on Martin Luther King Jr.’s remark that “the end [of the movement] is not the protest, the end is not the boycott; the end is redemption, reconciliation and the creation beloved community.’
Marsh's most recent book, Wayward Christian Soldiers: Freeing the Gospel from Political Captivity (Oxford, June 2007), offered a theological analysis of the Christian Right’s support of the presidency of George W. Bush and was excerpted in the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune and the Boston Globe..
Marsh is delighted to have co-authored a book with his lifelong friend and mentor, the civil rights activist John M. Perkins. The book, titled Welcoming Justice: God's Movement Toward Beloved Community, was published by InterVarsity Press in Fall 2009 and is based on lectures given at the Teaching Communities Conference at the Duke Divinity School Center for Reconciliation.
Marsh is currently writing a new biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. This will be the first major trade biography in several decades of the German theologian and dissident. The book will be published by Knopf (New York) and Ullstein (Berlin).
Marsh is also the recipient of a 2009 John Simon Guggenheim Fellows in the Creative Arts.
Kelly Figueroa-Ray – Graduate Research Assistant
Kelly is an M.A. student in the program of Comparative Scripture, Interpretation and Practice in the Religious Studies at UVA. Her focus is the relationship between scripture and theology as it is lived out in particular communities with a particular interest in multicultural Christian ministries. Kelly earned her BA at the University of California at Berkeley in Development Studies. After a year of urban ministry experience in New Orleans, Kelly completed her M.Div. at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C. magna cum laude. Kelly combined her interests in social transformation with her theological concerns by traveling to Central America for five months in 2001. After learning Spanish and being immersed in various cultures in Latin America, Kelly worked for two years along with a local Peruvian Pentecostal church to develop a trade/theological training school for the community in Lima. In Maryland, during and after seminary, Kelly had the experience of working at First United Methodist Church in Hyattsville a multicultural ministry setting, while simultaneously working with people who live with mental illness in Northern, VA. Kelly lives in Charlottesville with her husband Javier and infant daughter Penelope.
Kristina García Wade – Project Manager
Kristina was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii before unadvisedly leaving the tropics to pursue collegiate study. Kristina attended Dartmouth College and studied at la Universidad Autonóma de Yucatán and la Universidad de La Habana, where she conducted a research project on Cuban race relations in the post-Cold War era. She wrote her thesis on the concept of home in the borderland literature of Toni Morrison, Gloria Anzaldúa and Tara Bray Smith. After graduating from Dartmouth College with honors in the English major, Kristina worked in the publishing industry for three years at Smith and Kraus and at University Press of New England in the fields of marketing, publicity, and editing. She moved to Virginia in June 2007, where she was introduced to the Project on Lived Theology after writing an article on a Project participant. Kristina lives in Free Union, Virginia with her husband, a pediatric resident at the University of Virginia, and their hounds.
Tim Hartman – Graduate Research Assistant
Tim is a Ph.D student in Theology, Ethics, and Culture in the department of Religious Studies. Tim earned his B.A. in History with Honors from Stanford University and his Masters of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary. Between college and seminary, Tim worked for two years in youth ministry at University Presbyterian Church in Seattle, Washington. Tim is ordained as a Minister of Word and Sacrament in the Presbyterian Church (USA) and served as an associate pastor at the First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood in Los Angeles for 4 years before partnering with his wife, Saranell (who is also an ordained Presbyterian pastor) to pioneer a non-traditional new church start in Baltimore, Maryland. Tim has also served on the Steering Committee for Micah Challenge—USA (www.micahchallenge.us) and as the chair for the boards of Amahoro Africa (http://www.amahoro-africa.org/) and Emergent Village (www.emergentvillage.org). Tim’s experience in both traditional mainline and emerging faith communities has given him a keen interest in questions that current generations are asking about faith and life. He believes that theology for tomorrow must be in dialogue with postmodern and postcolonial thought. His academic work seeks to address questions about life (“What does it mean to live?) using the integration found in the Trinity. Tim and Saranell live in Charlottesvile with their two children, Simeon and Elliana.
Philip Lorish – Graduate Research Assistant
Philip is a Ph.D. student in Theology, Ethics, and Culture in the department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia. After graduating from Furman University with a degree in Philosophy, Philip worked and lived in the faith-based residential recovery community of the Boston Rescue Mission, both as a community care fellow and an Americorps Vista. After moving to Charlottesville with his wife Lisa, Philip provided research assistance to the Center on Faith in Communities and received an M.A. in the religious studies department while Lisa earned a J.D. from the U.Va. school of law. Philip returns to complete his studies after finishing an M.Phil. in Christian Ethics at the University of Oxford and, as it happens, developing a taste for afternoon tea and crumpets. Born out of his first-hand experience within the NGO sector, his academic work is most generally concerned with the possibility and promise of theological speech in public domains. Philip and Lisa live in the Fifeville neighborhood of Charlottesville with their new daughter, Eloise.
Project Alumni
Sarah Azaransky – Graduate Research Assistant
Sarah Azaransky received her Ph.D. in Religious Studies from the University of Virginia in 2007. Her dissertation, The Dream is Freedom: Pauli Murray's Theology of American Democracy, argued that Murray offers a vision of democratic community that is rooted in a theological understanding of reconciliation and fueled by a robust democratic faith. Sarah is currently a postdoctoral teaching fellow in religious ethics at the University of San Diego.
Thurston Benns – Lived Theology Intern
Thurston graduated from the University of Virginia in 2009 as a Religious Studies major (concentrating on Christianity and Judaism) and Philosophy minor at the University of Virginia. Since his first year at UVa, he has served in leadership roles (in Bible studies and discipleship coordination) with the IMPACT Movement, a student run Christian fellowship on Grounds. Thurston was also a co-founding member of CHOSEN Bible study, which serves as an independent connection for Christians of all fellowships and races, focusing on holiness and racial reconciliation. As an outreach initiative of the Project, Thurston interned at Charlottesville Abundant Life Ministries, a whole-family, holistic ministry with incentive-based programming based in the Fifeville/Prospect Avenue neighborhood. Thurston is currently attending seminary at Liberty University and plans to become a full-time minister.
Kendall Cox – Graduate Research Assistant
Kendall is a Ph.D. student in Religious Studies at UVA. She is in the "Theology, Ethics, and Culture" program and her focus is philosophical theology. Kendall earned her BA at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, NC, where she studied Religion and Studio Art. She graduated with The John Allen Easley Medal and Award for excellence in Religious Studies (May 2002). Kendall completed her Master of Divinity at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia (2006). During her time in Vancouver, she was a pastoral intern at Grandview Calvary Baptist Church and worked at the Crossroads Community Project as an art therapy assistant. After finishing her masters she returned to Charlottesville with her husband Stephen Hitchcock, who is pursuing ordination in the Presbyterian Church (USA). Kendall spent the year working as an assistant art teacher and full time artist before beginning doctoral studies. One of her research interests is the way different understandings of the Trinity inform ecclesial practices, structures, and relationships. Her essay “The Trinitarian Dialectic of Creative Fullness and God’s Shared Mission of Suffering Love” won the 2006 Richard and Louise Goodwin Prize for Excellence in Theological Writing.
Jacob Goodson – Graduate Research Assistant
Jacob is completing his Ph.D. in philosophical theology in the department of religious studies at U.Va. His dissertation concerns the areas and intersections of empiricist philosophy, narrative theology, and the role of the virtues within the interpretation of Scripture and other authoritative texts. He uses William James’s radical empiricism to develop a science of interpretation that speaks to particular questions raised within the contemporary theological movement called narrative theology. Specifically, he argues that James’s radical empiricism offers the needed mechanics for problems concerning “reality” and “reference” within Hans Frei’s development of “narrative realism.” His primary contention is that the virtues of humility, patience, and trust are necessary characteristics and habits of the reader in order for authoritative texts to be interpreted in the terms of narrative realism. This argument serves as a science of interpretation because James himself argues that these virtues are required in order for the experimental method within science to work. Therefore, Frei and other narrative theologians, need not shy away from empiricism and science but rather embrace James’s radical empiricism and understanding of science as a fruitful possibility for the development of narrative realism.
Jacob has published articles in Contemporary Pragmatism and The Streams of William James. He edits The Journal of Scriptural Reasoning, and he is co-editing (with Brad Elliott Stone) a collection of essays on the American philosopher Richard Rorty.
Presently, Jacob is Visiting Professor of Religious Ethics at the College of William & Mary. He and his wife, Angela, and their two daughters Sophia Grace and Seraphina Rose live in Williamsburg. When he is not teaching or writing, he and his daughters reenact scenes from The Wonder Pets.
Jennifer McBride – Graduate Research Assistant
Jenny earned her Ph.D. in philosophical theology from the Religious Studies Department at the University of Virginia. She received a 2006-2007 Louisville Institute Dissertation Fellowship for the Study of Protestantism and American Culture for her dissertation, “The Church for the World: A Theology of Public Witness Constructed from Bonhoeffer’s Thought.” An article from her dissertation appeared in Religion, Religionlessness and Contemporary Western Culture, edited by Stephen Pland and Ralf K. Wüstenberg and published in 2008 by Peter Lang in Franfurt, Germany. Jenny has taught Accelerated Academic Writing in the English Department and received the 2005-2006 Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistantship Award in the Department of Religious Studies. After graduating from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1999 as a Bernard Boyd Fellow in Religious Studies, she worked at The Southeast White House (SEWH), an inner city community house in Southeast Washington DC . (To learn more about the SEWH see McBride's essay.) Jenny was startled by the dichotomy between the nation's powerful and powerless and began to wrestle with issues surrounding poverty, privilege and race, particularly from a theological perspective. She writes about this in her essay, "Living the Questions: Privilege, Poverty and Faith," published in Get Up Off Your Knees: Preaching the U2 Catalog (Cowley, 2003). Her interest in the Protestant church’s engagement in public life has led to participation in programs like the Civitas Fellowship and Summer Institute, to trips like the 2006 Centenary Study Tour of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life and Legacy in Germany and Poland, and to speaking engagements with the local Left of Center, and the national Erasing Hate Dialogue Series, which commemorated the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade in February 2007. She is co-editor of a forthcoming Fortress Press volume that interprets Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther King, Jr. and their legacies together in relation to Christian social thought. Jenny is currently a post-doctoral fellow in Religious Practices and Practical Theology at Emory University, a position funded by the Lilly Endowment. She will be teaching at Emory Candler School of Theology during the 2008-2009 school year.
Ashley Diaz Mejias– Spring Institute for Lived Theology Coordinator
Ashley finished an M.A. in Theology, Ethics, and Culture at the University of Virginia in the spring of 2006. She received her B.A. from Rhodes College in 2001 with a double major in Religious Studies and Philosophy. While at Rhodes, she began volunteering in the South Memphis community and conducted research there with the Nation of Islam for her senior thesis on creation myths in the Nation of Islam and the Aryan Nations, published in the Fall 2002 Journal of Theta Alpha Kappa. Before coming to UVA, she worked as a church community organizer in North Memphis and then returned to South Memphis in the fall of 2001 to join the full time staff as the educational director of Streets Ministries, a community development organization and youth ministry started in 1987 and located in the Cleaborne-Foote housing projects. There, Ashley ran a college preparatory mentoring program for middle and high school aged students and directed Summer Institute, a five week intensive study for neighborhood high school students, emphasizing economic development, African-American history, and reconciliation movements. An essay about her time at Streets is in the upcoming publication Transformations. Ashley's scholarly interests include the relationship of theology and race, the sociological and theological constructs of community building, and reconciliation movements.
Rebekah Menning – Project Manager
Bekah came to the Project with significant domestic and international experience in faith-based community organizing. After completing her B.A. in Social Work from Hope College, she served as an Americorps VISTA volunteer in Hamilton, Montana. Though she enjoyed the spectacular scenery and the hospitality of the people she met in the rural west, Bekah felt called to be back in the city at the end of her VISTA year. She moved to Washington, D.C. to work with Call to Renewal and Sojourners magazine and later completed a Master of Social Work in Community Organization from Howard University, during which she interned with the Interfaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington. Upon graduation, she spent four months living, learning, and working in a predominantly Zulu township south of Durban, South Africa as project assistant for a church-based community center. Before coming to the Project, Bekah also worked for Charlottesville Abundant Life Ministries in Charlottesville,Virginia. She currently lives in New Haven, CT, where her husband, Willis Jenkins, teaches social ethics at Yale Divinity School.
Ethan Richardson – Undergraduate Research Assistant
Ethan graduated from the University of Virginia in 2009 as English and Religious Studies major, concentrating primarily on philosophical theology and ethics, while also taking classes in creative writing and American literature. In the summers, he served as a pastoral intern at Imago Dei Community in Portland, OR (2006) and as a camp counselor (2007). In addition to researching with Professor Marsh, worked for the Charlottesville Quality Community Council's (QCC) urban farming initiative, while also serving in UVa's Environmental Sustainability Committee. As a part of the Distinguished Majors Program in Religious Studies, Ethan wrote his thesis on Bonhoeffer and the Harlem Renaissance, the expansive and communicative ability of theology, through the arts, to enter into a community of change. His current interests include literature and theological aesthetics, the culture of agriculture, and learning the banjo.
Peter Slade – Graduate Research Assistant
Peter Slade received a doctorate degree in Religious Studies at the University of Virginia in the spring of 2006. His dissertation, Open Friendship in a Closed Society: Mission Mississippi and a Theology of Friendship, brings the lived experience of an ecumenical racial reconciliation initiative in Jackson, Mississippi into conversation with academic theologies of reconciliation and friendship. His research and teaching marry his interest in Practical Theology and History with a particular focus on Race, Social Justice and the American South. Prior to studying at UVa, Slade earned an M.A. in Southern Studies from the University of Mississippi and a B.D. with Honours in Christian Ethics and Practical Theology from St. Andrews University, Scotland. He also worked for 5 years as a community development worker for the Church of England during which time he also studied at Ruskin College, Oxford. Slade held a dissertation fellowship from the Louisville Institute for The Study of Protestantism and American Culture and was a fellow at UVa's Center on Religion and Democracy. In 2004, he was an honoree in the Seven Society Graduate Fellowship for Superb Teaching. Slade is currently an assistant professor in the Religion Department at Ashland University in Ashland, OH. Read Slade's author interview.
Richard Wills – Graduate Research Assistant
Richard, a Ph.D. graduate of the University of Virginia in the area of Religious Ethics, is the former pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Montgomery, AL and is currently on faculty as assistant professor of Ethics and Systematic Theology at the School of Theology, Virginia Union University. His most recent publication by Oxford University Press entitled Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Image of God, is scheduled for a Spring 2009 release. The book provides a reconsideration of King’s position as mediating theologian, and the subsequent implications of his theological anthropology for cause of the civil rights. While unapologetically filtered through the lens of his Christian faith, the doctrine of imagoDei provided King with a theological rationale that was capable of addressing community beyond provincial notions of justice for its own pursuit, so as to offer the broadest possibility for human interest and participation. Read Wills' author interview.
Aurelius Wilson – Graduate Research Assistant
Originally from Los Angeles, Aurelius received his B.A. in Philosophy from Morehouse College, his J.D. from George Washington University and a M.A. in Religious Studies from Howard University. His masters thesis, "Living Within The Divine Presence: Howard Thurman's Worldview and its Implications for Spirituality, Theology and Ethics," revisits the deep insights Thurman provides for embodied theology as a continuous mode of being/way of life. Aurelius's doctoral studies will explore theology, philosophy and culture in a comparative framework (East/West, First/Third World) to assess diverse worldviews and competing articulations of normative ideals. These interests will ultimately coalesce around religious experience, spiritual formation, multiculturalism and social justice. With his extensive experience in the law, Aurelius hopes to engage issues of equity and justice in American society at the systemic level.