A Weekend of Conversation and Inspiration with John M. Perkins

Posted on February 6, 2020 by PLT staff

February 22-23, 2020

How do we make justice and love a reality in our lives and in our communities? With wisdom born of 60 years in activism and Christian ministry, visionary leader and civil rights pioneer Dr. John M. Perkins guides the way.

A long time friend of Theological Horizons and The Project on Lived Theology nationally revered leader from Jackson, MS, Dr. John M. Perkins returns to Charlottesville for three free events over the weekend of Feb 22-23, 2020.

Saturday, February 22: A Morning Workshop on Community Activism & Engagement with Dr. Perkins

9:30 am coffee

10-12 am Workshop

at First Baptist Church, 632 West Main Street, Charlottesville

Questions or to RSVP? Email Anne Brown or DeTeasa Gathers.

Saturday, February 22: “Parting Words on Race and Love”: An Evening in the Rotunda with Dr. Perkins

7:30pm

in The Dome Room at the University of Virginia

Dr. Perkins will be joined onstage by Dr. Nathan Walton, a UVa PhD and Executive Director of Charlottesville’s Abundant Life Ministries, who will moderate the discussion.

This event will be live streamed and archived on Theological Horizon’s website & facebook page.

Seating in the Dome Room will by ticket only. Seating in the Lower West Oval Room will be free, first come and first served.

Sunday, February 23: “Dream with Me”: An Afternoon of Storytelling, Music and Worship with Dr. John M. Perkins & the Charlottesville Worship Collective.

3:00pm

at The Martin Luther King Performing Arts Center at Charlottesville High School

Free and open to the community. No tickets required All are welcome.

Sponsored by the Project on Lived Theology at UVA, the Department of Religious Studies, and Theological Horizons.

For more event details and up-to-date event listings please click here to visit the PLT Events page. We also post updates online using #PLTevents. To get these updates, please like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter @LivedTheology.

On the Lived Theology Reading List: Black Freethinkers

Posted on February 4, 2020 by PLT staff

A History of African American Secularism

There are many histories of African-American religion, but in this new book, historian Christopher Cameron charts the largely overlooked impact of irreligion on two centuries of black intellectual life. Cameron’s work challenges the idea that atheism, agnosticism, and religious skepticism were exclusively the concerns of whites. He documents how a tradition of black freethought shaped the careers of well known figures, including Frederick Douglass, Zora Neale Hurston, and James Forman. Cameron makes a compelling case that to understand the effects of religion, scholars also need to be attentive to those who rejected it.

Reviews and endorsements of the publication include:

“Cameron offers a compelling survey of African American freethought across two centuries. Rather than treating secularism as a regulatory discourse of modern statecraft, Cameron unpacks the alienations, arguments, and aspirations of black secularists themselves. He brings depth and clarity to an aspect of African American religious history rarely given the sustained attention it deserves.” —Leigh Eric Schmidt, author of Hearing Things: Religion, Illusion, and the American Enlightenment

“In African American intellectual history, religious skepticism, agnosticism, atheism, and secular humanism have long been lost in the shadow of the black church. Taking a closer look at the evidence, Cameron shows that the experience of slavery and the degradations of proslavery Christianity also led some enslaved and free blacks in the nineteenth century to varieties of unbelief. This tradition laid a foundation for the next century, from the Harlem Renaissance to the Black Power movement and beyond. With deft readings of a host of fascinating figures, Cameron shows how black freethinkers made important interventions in American culture.” —Christopher Grasso, author of Skepticism and American Faith: From the Revolution to the Civil War

For more information on the publication, click here.

Fellow travelers are scholars, activists, and practitioners that embody the ideals and commitments of the Project on Lived Theology. We admire their work and are grateful to be walking alongside them in the development and dissemination of Lived Theology.

For more of “On the Lived Theology Reading List,” click here. To engage in the conversation on Facebook and Twitter, @LivedTheology, please use #LivedTheologyReads. For more recommended resources from our fellow travelers, click here, #PLTfellowtravelers. To sign up for the Lived Theology monthly newsletter, click here.

Theology after Colonization

Posted on January 30, 2020 by PLT staff

Bediako, Barth, and the Future of Theological Reflection

Tim Hartman’s Theology after Colonization (Notre Dame Press, 2019) uses a comparative approach to examine two theologians, one from Europe and one from Africa, to gain insight into our contemporary theological situation. Hartman examines how the loss of cultural hegemony through rising pluralism and secularization has undermined the interconnection of the Christian faith with political power and how globalization undermined the expansive mindset of colonialization. Hartman engages Swiss-German theologian Karl Barth, whose work responded to the challenges of Christendom and the increasing secularization of Europe by articulating an early post-Christendom theology based on God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ, not on official institutional structures or societal consensus. In a similar way, Ghanaian theologian Kwame Bediako offered a post-colonial theology. He wrote from the perspective of the global South while the Christian faith was growing exponentially following the departure of Western missionaries from Africa. For Bediako, the infinite translatability of the gospel of Jesus Christ leads to the renewal of Christianity as a non-Western religion, not a product of colonialization.

Many Western theologies find themselves unable to respond to increasing secularization and intensifying globalization because they are based on the very assumptions of uniformity and parochialism that are being challenged. Hartman claims Bediako and Barth can serve as helpful guides for contemporary theological reflection as the consensus surrounding this theological complex disintegrates further. Collectively, their work points the way toward contemporary theological reflection that is Christological, contextual, cultural, constructive, and collaborative.

“Tim Hartman presents one of the strongest texts, from the perspective of Western theology, that argues for the wider world appeal of contextual African theology; one of the best and perhaps the only courageous proposition I have ever read that presents Karl Barth as a contextual Western (Swiss) theologian without diminishing Barth’s influence.”

—Elochukwu Uzukwu, Duquesne University

“This is the first significant comparison of Kwame Bediako and Karl Barth and one of the few treatments of Bediako. Tim Hartman’s volume is very rare in the fields of theology and mission studies”

—Willie Jennings, Yale Divinity School

For more resources from our Fellow Travelers, click here. For more news from PLT, click here. Engage in the conversation on Facebook and Twitter, @LivedTheology. To sign up for the Lived Theology newsletter, click here.

Call for Applications: Summer Internship in Lived Theology 2020

Posted on January 16, 2020 by PLT staff

Now Accepting Applications for Summer 2020

The Project on Lived Theology is now accepting applications for the 2020 Summer Internship in Lived Theology, a service learning immersion that offers undergraduates an opportunity to think and to write theologically about social justice and human rights in the context of community service in North America. To download an application, click here.

The internship is open to UVA undergraduate students in any field of study. Selected participants spend the summer interning with the partnering institution of their choice. Each intern works directly with a UVA faculty member who acts as a theological mentor, offering guidance in reading, discussing, and writing about selected texts. Each intern also has a site mentor who shapes his/her work experience and may act as a conversation partner in the intern’s academic and theological exploration. Throughout the summer, interns blog for the Project on Lived Theology website; at the end of the internship, interns complete a final project and present their work at a public event.

The deadline for application submission is February 21, 2020.

For more information on the internship and to read blog posts and biographies from past interns, click here.

For online updates about the PLT Summer Internship, please use #PLTinterns, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at @LivedTheology.

On the Lived Theology Reading List: One Soul at a Time

Posted on November 19, 2019 by PLT staff

The Story of Billy Graham

In One Soul at a Time: The Story of Billy Graham, Grant Wacker records the story of one of the most influential voices in the Christian world. Billy Graham was a hugely successful preacher for more than five decades, and nearly 215 million people around the world heard him preach in person or through live electronic media. While he remained orthodox over the course of his career, over time his approach on many issues became more irenic and progressive, and his preaching continued to resonate. For many people, Graham was less a preacher than a Protestant saint.

Wacker conducted personal interviews, engaged in archival research, and gathered never-before-published photographs from the Graham family and others to tell the remarkable story of one of the most celebrated Christians in American history.

Reviews and endorsements of the publication include:

“A beautifully crafted, eloquent, and deeply illuminating account of Billy Graham’s unparalleled evangelistic career, penned by one of the most eminent American religious historians of our time.”—R. Marie Griffith, John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics

“When I hear the word ‘evangelist,’ the first face I imagine is always that of Billy Graham. And when I think of careful analysis of Graham’s monumental reshaping of the world religious landscape, the only name I can imagine is that of renowned historian Grant Wacker.”—Russell Moore, author of The Storm-Tossed Family

“This fast-paced biography cuts through Billy Graham mythology to reveal who the great evangelist really was as a human individual.”—Molly Worthen, author of Apostles of Reason

“Grant Wacker is the finest Billy Graham scholar in the world today. . . . A must read for anyone interested in the amazing story of evangelical revivals in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.”—Harry S. Stout,Yale University

For more information on the publication, click here.

For more of “On the Lived Theology Reading List,” click here. To engage in the conversation on Facebook and Twitter, @LivedTheology, please use #LivedTheologyReads. For more recommended resources from our fellow travelers, click here, #PLTfellowtravelers. To sign up for the Lived Theology monthly newsletter, click here.

PLT Alum Kelly Figueroa-Ray Presents at the AAR

Posted on November 6, 2019 by PLT staff

Transformative Scholarship and Pedagogy Unit

On Saturday, November 23, PLT alum Kelly Figueroa-Ray of St. Olaf College will take part in a session at the American Academy of Religion (AAR) Annual Meeting in San Diego, California. The session is titled, Transgressing Borders: Immigration and Transformative Pedagogy in Religious Studies Classrooms. The theme of the session is:

In light of the Annual Meeting’s location in San Diego and the recent changes in immigration policy that serve to limit the entry of immigrants into the United States, this panel will outline transformative pedagogical strategies for teaching about the politics of immigration and Religion. The papers examine models and best practices of community-engaged learning and describe partnerships with faith-based organizations and community groups to support learning on the topic of immigration.

Professor Figueroa-Ray’s presentation is titled, Even the Cartel Members Pray: Studying Immigration through the Lens of Lived Theology. The abstract for her talk reads:

Competing and contradictory beliefs and interests propel a variety of actors each day as they attempt to cross, guard, and make peace with a line that in turn shapes their lives, relationships, communities, and in too many cases, their deaths. In this paper, I will demonstrate how a pedagogy of lived theology can introduce students to the politics of immigration by framing it first as a human issue, not merely an abstraction. Core to this pedagogy is the intersectional examination of first-hand accounts of border encounters through ethnographic fieldwork, reading memoirs, and watching films. This narrative framework is scaffolded by examination of the US-Mexico border as a racial and political construct and an introduction to relevant theological themes. Learning about immigration through the lens of lived theology challenges students to expand what Nancy Pineda-Madrid terms their “social imaginations,” by recognizing that they, too, are actors shaped by US immigration policy (2011).

Two of Kelly’s students will be presenting with her, Bronwynn Woodsworth and Maeve Atkinson. This will be a brief presentation, then a pedagogical exercise meant to lead people into lived theological analysis, then a reflection from each of the students about how this pedagogy transformed their understanding of immigration policy and their role in it.

There are two additional presentations in this session. Cassie Trentaz of Warner Pacific College will present, Crossing Borders and Raising the Stakes: Bridging Higher Education and Community Organizing to Get Real Shit Done in Real Time, a Model and Suzanne Klatt of Miami University will present, On the Borders: A Multiaxial Approach to Transformative Pedagogy on Immigration.

The session will take place from 3:30 – 5:00 pm in the Convention Center-28B (Upper Level East) with Michael Brandon McCormack, University of Louisville, presiding. For more information, please see the AAR website.

For more resources from our Fellow Travelers, click here. For more news from PLT, click here. Engage in the conversation on Facebook and Twitter, @LivedTheology. To sign up for the Lived Theology newsletter, click here.

The Roberson Project

Posted on October 22, 2019 by PLT staff

Slavery, Race, and Reconciliation

The Roberson Project on Slavery, Race, and Reconciliation at the University of the South is a six-year initiative investigating the university’s historical entanglements with slavery and slavery’s legacies. This project seeks to honor Houston Roberson, a long time professor and the first African American to earn tenure at the University of the South. His teaching was devoted to the subjects of African American history and culture.

In 2009 Dr. Roberson published an essay, “The Problem of the Twentieth Century: Sewanee, Race and Race Relations,” in the University’s sesquicentennial volume, Sewanee: Perspectives on the History of the University of the South. This essay directly addressed the history of race on campus and the larger community. It was the first piece of written scholarship to tackle these subjects, and helped to change how we think about the history of this community and university.

The Roberson Project hosts events related to scholarship and social justice, confronting history to seek a “more just and equitable future for our broad and diverse community.” These initiatives are a memorial to Roberson, honoring his historic contributions to the University of the South. This initiative also seeks to create a comprehensive history of the University of the South in relation to slavery, race, and racial injustice. In addition, it will work with existing campus groups to develop curricula and programs to enrich perspectives and equitable opportunities for students.

For more resources from our Fellow Travelers, click here. For more news from PLT, click here. Engage in the conversation on Facebook and Twitter, @LivedTheology. To sign up for the Lived Theology newsletter, click here.

How Faith Shapes Social Justice: UVA Summer Internship Reports from the Field

Posted on October 9, 2019 by PLT staff

The 2019 Summer Interns in Lived Theology will give their final presentations on Thursday, October 17 at Common Grounds, located at Rugby Rd. and Gordon Ave. in Charlottesville. The presentations will begin at 7 pm. The public is invited, and admission is free.

Zoe Larmey

Zoe (Col ’21) is majoring in political and social thought and in studio art. As a summer intern, Zoe worked at the City Seminary of New York‘s Walls-Ortiz Gallery, a non-profit space committed to creating community and conversation around art in Harlem.

Nan Marsh

Nan (Col ’21) is majoring in english with a focus in poetry, and a minor in art history. This summer, Nan worked with Arts & Minds in New York City, an organization committed to improving quality of life for all people living with Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias through engagement with art.

Kate Parker

Kate (Col ’20) is majoring in political philosophy, politics, and law. This summer, Kate worked with The Haven, which provides resources for homeless or financially struggling people in the city of Charlottesville.

The Summer Internship in Lived Theology is an immersion program designed to complement the numerous existing urban and rural service immersion programs flourishing nationally and globally by offering a unique opportunity to think and write theologically about service. For more information on this initiative, please click here.

For updates about the PLT Summer Internship, click here. We also post updates online using #PLTinterns. To get these updates please like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at @LivedTheology. To sign up for the Lived Theology monthly newsletter, click here.

Witnessing Whiteness

Posted on September 23, 2019 by PLT staff

Confronting White Supremacy in the American Church (Oxford University Press, coming spring 2020)

By Kristopher Norris

Book Description

Witnessing Whiteness is a scholarly yet accessible book that analyzes the current racial climate of American Christianity. It argues that, due to its role in the origins and proliferation of white supremacy, the white church and its theology (and theologians) have a special responsibility to work to dismantle racism. This work begins by witnessing our own whiteness, or uncovering the ways that our theology and church practices are influenced by white supremacy. The white church must then engage an ethic of responsibility to confront our racism through practices of remembrance, repentance, and reparation.

The book uncovers this responsibility ethic at the convergence of two prominent streams in theological ethics: the predominantly white witness theology and black liberation theology, specifically examining the work of the major figures of these two streams: Stanley Hauerwas and James Cone. Then, employing their shared resources and attending to the criticisms liberation theology directs at traditionalism, it proposes concrete practices to challenge the white church’s and white theology’s complicity in white supremacy.

For a preview of some of the arguments in the book, check out his article in the Journal of Religious Ethics, “Witnessing Whiteness in the Ethics of Hauerwas.”

Bio

Kristopher Norris is Visiting Distinguished Professor of Public Theology at Wesley Theological Seminary where he works for the Center of Public Theology and co-directs its National Capital Semester for Seminarians program. He received his PhD from the University of Virginia in Theology, Ethics, and Culture, as well as Masters degrees from Duke Divinity School and Candler School of Theology. He is also the author of two previous books, Pilgrim Practices and Kingdom Politics: In Search of a New Political Imagination for Today’s Church, as well as numerous articles.

For more resources from our Fellow Travelers, click here. For more news from PLT, click here. Engage in the conversation on Facebook and Twitter, @LivedTheology. To sign up for the Lived Theology newsletter, click here.

Can I Get a Witness? The Podcast: Update

Posted on September 7, 2019 by PLT staff

If you are trying to listen to our wonderful new podcast, you have likely discovered that the program disappeared from iTunes. This is a technical issue we are addressing and will be resolved soon. Thanks for your patience, and in the meantime you can still access the podcast on our site and on many other podcast platforms:

Can I Get a Witness? The Podcast

For more news from PLT, click here. Engage in the conversation on Facebook and Twitter, @LivedTheology. To sign up for the Lived Theology monthly newsletter, click here.