On the Lived Theology Reading List: To Live in Peace

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To Live in PeaceBiblical Faith and the Changing Inner City

Faith believers are called to understand and respond to the cries of their neighbors facing social and economic struggles in inner-city neighborhoods. In To Live in Peace, Mark Gornik shows us how Baltimore’s New Song Community Church can be used as a model for approaching community organizing and peacemaking within the context of Scripture. A testament to the power of a daring witness, the publication guides the church forward with proposals to overcome barriers to urban ministry and human flourishing.

PLT Director Charles Marsh reviews:

“This groundbreaking book offers us the most pervasively theological account to date of community building in an urban context. Like Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Cost of Discipleship and Martin Luther King Jr.’s Strength to Love, Mark Gornik’s To Live in Peace is theological writing born of intense human struggle and conviction, a stunningly imaginative and powerful work. Gornik shows us, through both theological analysis and gripping narrative, that biblical faith matters greatly to the social existence of Christians: to the way we locate ourselves in towns and cities as well as to the way we respond to the challenges of civic responsibility and the brokenness of creation. . . I regard Gornik as one of the church’s most exciting theological thinkers, the kind of organic theologian we academics dream about but very rarely find. He’s the real thing.”

For more on this publication, click here.

Mark Gornik is the director of City Seminary of New York. Mark has spent the last 25 years of his life as a pastor, community developer and researcher in African churches in NYC and beyond. His other publications include Word Made Global: Stories of African Christianity in New York City (2011), co-written with Andrew Walls.

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

On the Lived Theology Reading List: Original Sin

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Alan Jacobs - Original Sin: A Cultural HistoryA Cultural History

Controversy has always presided among the various doctrinal interpretations in religion, but perhaps none has created as much friction as that of original sin, the idea that humans are born into this world predisposed to evil and sin. For centuries, theologians have argued for and against the belief, and the debate continues today. In Original Sin, Alan Jacobs takes readers on a sweeping tour of the idea of original sin, its origins, its history, and its proponents and opponents. And he leaves us better prepared to answer one of the most important questions of all: Are we really, all of us, bad to the bone?

In an excerpt provided by HarperOne, Jacobs writes:

“It is the common fate of doctrines to be dismissed; you’d almost think that’s what they were made for… But of all the religious teachings I know, none- not even the belief that some people are eternally damned- generates as much hostility as the Christian doctrine we call “original sin.” It is one of the most “baleful” of ideas, says one modern scholar; it is “repulsive” and “revolting,” says another. I have seen it variously described as an insult to the dignity of humanity, an insult to the grace and loving-kindness of God, and an insult to God and humankind alike. And many of those who are particularly angry about the doctrine of original sin are Christians… What is this belief that generates such passionate rejection and such equally passionate defense?”

Read more on this publication here.

Alan Jacobs is the Distinguished Professor of the Humanities in the Honors Program at Baylor University. Jacobs’s work revolves around multiple interests, primarily literature, theology, and technology. His other publications include The Book of Common Prayer: A Biography (2013) and The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction (2011).

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

PLT summer internship program marks seventh year

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Summer 2016 interns begin work in Charlottesville, the Shenandoah Valley, and Jacksonville, Florida

Internship Banner

The 2016 Summer Internship in Lived Theology has begun. Tessa Crews (Col ’16) began her work at the Green Comfort School of Herbal Medicine several weeks ago, and we will begin publishing her blog reflections in the next two weeks. Elizabeth Surratt (Col ’17) starts her internship at Rebirth Community Ministries in Jacksonville, Florida, this week, and Brit Dunnavant (Col ’17), will begin working at The Haven next week.

Tessa, Elizabeth, and Brit mark the seventh consecutive class of the Summer Internship in Lived Theology. During the previous six summers, students have worked domestically in Washington, DC; Richmond, Virginia; Durham, North Carolina; Oakland, San Francisco, and Charlottesville; and internationally in the countries of England, South Africa, Burkina Faso, Nicaragua, and Kenya. We have coordinated with 15 community organizations and involved more than a half dozen U.Va. faculty in mentorship roles. Internship alumni have gone on to graduate studies, seminary, Teach for America, and to professions in areas of ministry, nonprofit work, nursing, community organizing, global health, finance, media, and social justice.

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.

 

On the Lived Theology Reading List: Ecologies of Grace

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Ecologies of GraceEnvironmental Ethics and Christian Theology

Environmental crises may be at the forefront of today’s most pressing issues, but theology’s failure to evaluate the resulting situations and reactions offers little guidance to faith believers inspired to respond. In Ecologies of Grace, Willis Jenkins presents a field-shaping introduction to Christian environmental ethics that offers resources for renewing theology. Observing how religious environmental practices often draw on concepts of grace, Jenkins maps the way Christian environmental strategies draw from traditions of salvation as they engage the problems of environmental ethics. By being particularly sensitive to the ways in which environmental problems are made intelligible to Christian moral experience, Jenkins guides his readers toward a fuller understanding of Christianity and ecology.

PLT Director Charles Marsh reviews:

“Ecologies of Grace is a stunning intellectual achievement and an interdisciplinary tour de force. While offering important conceptual clarifications of the major schools of environmental ethics, and framed within an essential rethinking of the Christian doctrines of salvation, creation and redemption, Willis Jenkins illuminates the promise of creative theological writing for the sake of the common good. This luminous book speaks not only to scholars of religion, students and ethicists, but also to policy makers, activists, clergy, and anyone concerned about the fate of the earth. Not to be overlooked, Jenkins presents his considerations with generous portions of well-crafted narrative.”

Find more information on the book here.

Willis Jenkins is the director of the religious studies graduate program at the University of Virginia and an associate professor of religion, ethics, and environment. Jenkins has authored two award-winning books and has also written a number of papers. He is currently working on three projects: a monograph entitled “The Moral Ecology of Food,” a textbook introducing religion, ethics, and environment, and a handbook to religion and ecology.

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

David Dark Dissects Chance the Rapper’s Embodied Theology

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On the Artist’s Faith and Latest Album, Coloring Book

While Christian music too often seems shrouded in an apathetic redundancy no longer phased by the ideas of God, love, and grace, Chance the Rapper reclaims the impassioned authenticity of Christianity with his songs. In his latest article, “I Speak to God in Public: Chance the Rapper’s Faith,” PLT Contributor David Dark explores the lyrics that boldly proclaim the artist’s faith convictions. The separation of the spiritual and secular may be what society is pushing for, but Chance disbands the divide with the release of his latest album, Coloring Book. The result is the potential for beholding blessedness and glory.

In the article, featured on MTV’s website, Dark concludes:

Coloring Book won’t be boundaried up. It’s made up of songs of innocence and experience, and full humanity requires both. We need a profound and ongoing recognition of both to keep from becoming hopelessly estranged from ourselves. It’s a process Chance the Rapper chronicles with wit and wonder: “You must’ve missed the come-up, I must be all I can be / Call me Mister Mufasa, I had to master stampedes.” In Chance, we have a chronicler determined to be a living and loving witness to his own experience. We also have, on the authority of Irenaeus of Lyons, a second-century Church father, that a glory of God is a human being fully alive. Maybe there’s glory to behold here. Maybe there’s glory everywhere. Are you ready for your blessing?

To read the full article on MTV’s website click here.

David Dark is an assistant professor at Belmont University in the College of Theology and Christian Ministry and also teaches at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution. His publications include Life’s Too Short to Pretend You’re Not Religious (2016), The Sacredness of Questioning Everything (2009) and The Gospel according to America: A Meditation on a God-blessed, Christ-haunted Idea (2005). 

For more of featured writings of our PLT Contributors, click here. To engage in the conversation on Facebook and Twitter,@LivedTheology, please use #LivedTheologyWrites. To sign up for the Lived Theology monthly newsletter, click here.

On the Lived Theology Reading List: I Have Come a Long Way

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I Have Come a Long Way, John W. de GruchyA Memoir

Renowned South African theologian John de Gruchy inspires many through his roles as minister, professor, researcher, and writer. In the newly published I Have Come a Long Way, he reflects on a life lived well, tracing his Viking ancestry through his work as an ecumenical activist for the South African Council of Churches to the present. Rated an A research scholar by the National Research Foundation, De Gruchy specializes in the theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, whose thought undoubtedly influenced the anti-apartheid leader’s own work in local reconciliation. Weaving this foundational thought throughout the autobiography, de Gruchy narrates an inspirational story still in the making.

De Gruchy reflects:

“If my life and experience is of some interest, it is chiefly so because I have lived through interesting times, in an interesting country, traveled to many interesting places, and been accompanied along the way by interesting folk.”

For more information on the book, click here.

John de Gruchy was the Robert Selby Taylor Professor of Christian Studies at the University of Cape Town before he retired in 2003 and was appointed a Senior Research Scholar at UCT and an Extraordinary Professor at the University of Stellenbosch. He remains active in both institutions, engaged in research, publishing and mentoring. His other publications include Confessions of a Christian Humanist (2006).

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

Google Creates Colorful Doodle to Celebrate Yuri Kochiyama

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Yuri Kochiyama

Google Celebrates Activist Yuri Kochiyama’s Legacy with Doodle Art for her 95th Birthday

Google produced a colorful doodle to celebrate the birthday and legacy of Yuri Kochiyama, an Asian-American activist who fought for human rights and justice. Kochiyama was a life-long activist at the forefront of issues in the black, Latino, Native American and Asian American communities. She was involved in many movements including Malcolm X’s black nationalism, Puerto Rican independence, and attaining reparations for Japanese-American internees. A 2005 Nobel Peace Prize nominee, Kochiyama died in 2014, but her legacy continues to inspire younger generations of activists today.

Grace Yia-Hei Kao is writing on Yuri Kochiyama as part of our upcoming Spring Institute for Lived Theology 2016/2017. SILT 16/17: Can I Get a Witness? is a two-part SILT that will celebrate scholars, activists, laypeople, and religious leaders whose lived theologies produced and inspired social justice in the United States and will produce a single volume entitled Can I Get a Witness? Stories of Radical Christians in the U.S., 1900-2014. The first meeting will be held at the University of Virginia in June 2016; the second meeting will follow at Loyola University Chicago’s Water Tower Campus in June 2017.

For more details about the Spring Institute for Lived Theology 2016/2017: Can I Get A Witness? initiative, click here. We also post updates online using #SILT. To get these and other news updates, please like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter @LivedTheology. To sign up for the Lived Theology monthly newsletter, click here.

Can I Get a Witness: Daniel Berrigan

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Spring Institute for Lived Theology 2016/2017 Author Series

The SILT 16/17: Can I Get a Witness? author series introduces the SILT participant authors and the historical figures they will be illuminating in their narratives. This week’s featured writers is David Dark, whose figure is Daniel Berrigan.

 

David Dark Ι Figure: daniel berrigan, S.J. (1921-2016)


Daniel Berrigan“There is no peace because there are no peacemakers. There are no makers of peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war – at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison, and death in its wake.” –Berrigan

Daniel Berrigan, S.J. was a Catholic priest whose life was punctuated with bold acts of nonviolent social action. Born in 1921, he grew up in an Irish Catholic family in Minnesota and joined a Jesuit seminary after high school. He became an ordained priest and traveled to France where he was influenced by the worker-priest movement and ideas of civil disobedience. Berrigan returned to the U.S. in 1954 and began teaching in colleges, including Le Moyne College in Syracuse, Cornell, and Yale. Another European tour ending in 1964 inspired him to join the protest against America’s burgeoning intervention in Vietnam and become one of the Catonsville Nine, a group of Catholic activists who destroyed draft records in 1968 Maryland. Avoiding his prison date earned him a spot on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List, but he eventually served two years in prison and was released in 1972. Other protests followed, leading to more arrests and prosecutions. From 1970 to 1995, Berrigan spent a total of nearly seven years in prison. He continued his peace activism, co-organizing the antinuclear Plowshares Movement and protesting against the 1991 Gulf War, the Kosovo War, the U.S invasion of Afghanistan, and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Berrigan spent his last years living in a Jesuit community in New York City where he continued to conduct retreats, speak publicly, and write before his passing on April 30, 2016.

David Dark is an assistant professor at Belmont University in the College of Theology and Christian Ministry and also teaches at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution. His publications include Life’s Too Short to Pretend You’re Not Religious (2016), The Sacredness of Questioning Everything (2009) and The Gospel according to America: A Meditation on a God-blessed, Christ-haunted Idea (2005).

 

 

SILT 16/17: Can I Get a Witness? is a two-part SILT that will celebrate scholars, activists, laypeople, and religious leaders whose lived theologies produced and inspired social justice in the United States and will produce a single volume entitled Can I Get a Witness? Stories of Radical Christians in the U.S., 1900-2014. The first meeting will be held at the University of Virginia in June 2016; the second meeting will follow at Loyola University Chicago’s Water Tower Campus in June 2017.

For more details about the Spring Institute for Lived Theology 2016/2017: Can I Get A Witness? initiative, click here. We also post updates online using #SILT. To get these and other news updates, please like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter @LivedTheology. To sign up for the Lived Theology monthly newsletter, click here.

On the Lived Theology Reading List: A Theology of the Built Environment

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A Theology of the Built EnvironmentJustice, Empowerment, Redemption

While many theological reflections exist on the city, none have recognized the built environment as a whole. In A Theology of the Built Environment, Gorringe examines this valuable dimension. He considers the divine grounding of constructed space, the ownership of land, the issues of housing (both urban and rural), and the built environment in terms of community and art. Drawing on a huge range of theological and social scientific reading, Gorringe places pressing issues surrounding the environment into a larger framework to guide the Church forward.

In an excerpt provided by Cambridge University Press, Gorringe writes:

To be human is to be placed: to be born in this house, hospital, stable (according to Luke), or even, as in the floods in Mozambique in 2000, in a tree. It is to live in this council house, semi-detached, tower block, farmhouse, mansion. It is to go to school through these streets or lanes, to play in this alley, park, garden; to shop in this market, that mall; to work in this factory, mine, office, farm. These facts are banal, but they form the fabric of our everyday lives, structuring our memories, determining our attitudes. How, as Christians, should we think of them? Are they a proper subject for theological reflection? Here and there great theologians, notably Aquinas and Calvin, have glanced in this direction, but the built environment forms no locus in theological ethics except insofar as it has dealt with land and property, and with the city as a metaphor for community, or our final destination. It is in ethics that theology has engaged with the concrete – with war, economics, work, sexuality. Why not, then, with the built environment?

Find more information on the publication here. To continue reading the excerpt, click here.

Timothy Gorringe is working on a two-year AHRC-funded research project on the values which underpin constructive social change, concentrating on the Transition Town Movement. His academic interests focus on the interrelation between theology, social science, art and politics. His most recent books are The Common Good and the Global Emergency (2011) and Earthly Visions: Theology and the Challenges of Art (2011).

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

The Symposia Series in Lived Theology: On Billy Graham

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Symposium-Header-13Introducing the Collaboration with Syndicate

The Project on Lived Theology and Syndicate have launched a lived theology series comprised of symposiums focusing on books that interpret the lived experience of a person, institution, or movement through the lens of its theological convictions and commitments. Each symposium features reviewers who offer unique perspectives on the subject and author to understand their contextual significance within the framework of lived theology.

The first book being studied is Grant Wacker’s America’s Pastor: Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation. Wacker highlights the rise of a mainstream, and political, evangelicalism in the second half of the twentieth century and the relation of evangelicalism and American culture through the influence of Billy Graham, arguably America’s most important religious figure. The reviewers in this symposium include Vincent Bacote, Randall Balmer, Kathryn Lofton, and PLT Contributor Nathan Walton. Each reflects on the influence of Graham, the intersection of Graham’s life and American culture, and Wacker’s interpretation of Graham’s impact.

PLT Contributor and symposium editor Kristopher Norris writes:

“Lived theology assumes that not only is it important to understand the context of our theological subjects, but that we theologians are also embodied and contextually embedded figures. This necessitates a degree of theological reflexivity and attention to the forces that have shaped our own approaches to an issue, theme, or person…

This story touches on themes of the rise of the evangelical mainstream—in contrast to its mainline Protestant and fundamentalist cousins—but more broadly, American politics, the popular media, commodity and celebrity culture, the civil rights movement, and the Cold War. Graham’s story engages all of these, and Wacker weaves these themes into a narrative interpretation of American religion viewed through the lens of this one encompassing life.”

Read the full article on Syndicate’s website here.

Kristopher Norris is an ordained Baptist minister focusing his studies on political ecclesiology, including such topics as church and democracy, just war and pacifism, Christian ethics and public life, and the work of theologians like John Howard Yoder and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. A graduate fellow for the Project on Lived Theology and Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, he has also taught courses ranging from eco-theology to American religious history and is currently teaching Christian ethics courses at Wesley Theological Seminary. 

Nathan Walton is currently a PhD student in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia. He is also an Associate Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies and Culture. Walton was previously a graduate research assistant for The Project on Lived Theology.

For more of featured writings of our PLT Contributors, click here. To engage in the conversation on Facebook and Twitter,@LivedTheology, please use #LivedTheologyWrites. To sign up for the Lived Theology monthly newsletter, click here.