This Week in Lived Theology: Project Contributor Susan R. Holman

Posted on July 6, 2015 by PLT Staff

“My writing is most influenced by the perpetual paradox of silences in the city.” -Susan R. Holman

This fall, we will launch a weekly feature of Project contributors and initiatives. Throughout the week we will highlight the work and reach of these individuals and programs through various posts on our website and on social media. As pre-launch foretaste of this online segment, we’ll feature contributor Susan Holman this week. To engage in the exploration of her work and the issues engaged by her scholarship, find the Project on Facebook and follow us on Twitter @LivedTheology. Here is a bit about Susan and some of her recent work.

Susan R. Holman is senior writer at the Global Health Education and Learning Incubator at Harvard University and a member of the first class of the Project’s Virginia Seminar. She also recently contributed as a writing consultant for the second class of Virginia Seminar members. Her book project with the Virginia Seminar, God Knows There’s Need: Christian Responses to Poverty, “blends personal memoir and deep research into ancient writings to illuminate the age-old issues of need, poverty, and social justice in the history of the Christian tradition.” Click here and here to read excerpts, and here to read an interview with Susan about this work. Also, you can find resources she’s put together related to this topic at povertystudies.org. To visit her Virginia Seminar author page, click here.

In Susan’s new book, Beholden: Religion, Global Health, and Human Rights (Oxford University Press, 2015), she “tells stories designed to help shape a new perspective on global health, one that involves a multidisciplinary integration of religion and culture with human rights and social justice.” In her photo essay on the Oxford University Press blog, Susan reflects, “Sometimes the most enduring image of how religion affects health is not what you see, but what you don’t.” Click here to read an interview with Susan related to this wonderful new resource for students of global health.

Recently, Susan contributed to an ecumenical colloquium “Orthodox Christianity and Humanitarianism.” Videos of all the panelists can be found by clicking here. Watch her talk on “Theological foundations: Conceptual architectures and definitions of humanitarianism,” here:

Click here to check out her blog Jottings and be on the look out this week for more about Susan, her work, and organizations and initiatives carrying out work at the intersections of religion, global health, and poverty. You can find our posts and join in the conversation by liking the Project on Facebook and following us on Twitter @LivedTheology.

Bonhoeffer and the theology of disability

Posted on July 3, 2015 by PLT Staff

“To love another person is to see the face of God.” -Victor Hugo

I can picture it now: I was sitting near the stir-fry bar in Newcomb dining hall cramming for my Hebrew Bible exam in early December when I was presented with a welcome distraction. No, I’m not talking about the fish tacos. I received an email that morning from the manager of the Project on Lived Theology, asking me to advertise something about some random summer internship to a Christian apologetics club of which I am a part. I had never before heard of this organization, and suddenly I forgot entirely about my previous task of learning to spell “Tanakh” correctly (come on, Hebrew!) and became entrenched in finding all information I could about this initiative and its summer internship.

Having wiffle-waffled in my own personal view of theology in recent years, I knew I had always struggled to see it as valuable in its own right. Although I was drawn to the idea of worshipping God with one’s mind, I usually left even charitable discussions of theology with a nagging emptiness indicative of wasted time. “God’s relation to time is really, really cool- but what does this say about how I am to relate to God and other people? How does this teach me to love other people better?” Theology was for me, at best, interesting intellectual gymnastics, and I regarded my own interest in it as selfish. At the same time, I really thought there was something to the idea of “worshipping God with your mind,” but usually confined this to what I believed to be necessarily a relational and evangelistic use of apologetics.

Flash back to Newcomb. Pieces started to fit together like a puzzle. I am double-majoring in speech therapy and religious studies, and I was looking for an opportunity to delve deeper into something related to either of those over the summer. Usually when I explain my major to people, I am met with a confused look and/or awkward silence to which I reply “Yeah… I know they don’t really go together… I don’t really know what I’m doing with my life.” It only goes downhill from there. I have gotten all sorts of career counseling, from “You could teach communications at a Christian school!” to “You could help preachers with speech impediments!”

So naturally, when considering a program whose goal is to integrate theology into the banality of everyday life rather than segregate it, it did not take me long to decide to apply. And here I am! One of the things I love about the Project on Lived Theology is how individualized each internship can be. I was encouraged to pick an issue that mattered to me, spend some time serving that cause, and then spend time thinking about the theological implications of the issue. I decided to do my project on the topic of disability, exploring what it looks like to construct a theological framework which honors and empowers people with disabilities.

The organization that I will be working with this summer is the Virginia Institute of Autism (VIA) here in Charlottesville, Virginia. As an intern, I will be learning how to implement a relatively new form of behavioral therapy called applied behavioral analysis therapy (ABA) in VIA’s youngest classroom. VIA’s mission is to “help people overcome the challenges of autism through innovative, evidence-based programs in education, outreach and adult services.” There are several different classrooms according to age group, and instruction occurs either 1:1, 2:1, or in a small group setting according to the needs of each student. Because of the extremely low instructor: student ratio, students receive very individualized instruction and data is taken on every activity and analyzed for progress on various prescribed goals. I will be spending most of my time in the youngest classroom, consisting of eight students between the ages of 5 and 9.

In an attempt to learn how to think theologically about this project, I have been reading about several church fathers’ and modern theologians’ views on disability and its theology. Honestly, I have been surprised at the breadth of work that has been done on “theology of disability” and have come to see that the question of disability is necessarily connected to deeper philosophical and metaphysical commitments. For example, one’s answer to the question of disability largely depends on one’s prior answer to the question “What does it mean to be human?”

Greats of the Christian tradition such as Augustine, Calvin, and Luther all contain some degree of internal tension in the way they discuss disability. Many share the often counter-cultural concern of providing for people with disabilities, both ecclesially and governmentally, as well as a rich understanding of the Imago Dei as present in all humans. However, their stubborn insistence that rationality is what separates man from beast seems de facto to exclude people with certain cognitive disabilities, which would include many of the children I am working with at VIA. Personally, I found Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s response to be the most effective in assessing “the real problem” in discussions of disability. Growing up in a context in which the Imago Dei was effectively smashed to pieces in Nazi Germany, his reflections on what it means to be human are particularly emotionally charged. His response to the question of how a Christian ought to think about disability is particularly paradigm-shifting. Scholar Brand Wannenwetsch offers a synthesis of Bonhoeffer’s opinion as it applies to current debates about the language used to describe disability: “Should we ‘include’ the disabled in the protective zone of the language of ‘personhood,’ a moral attitude which would still be based on a condescending ‘us-them’ rationale, or should we instead summon those who consider themselves not disabled to find themselves included in the same frail and dependent human existence as God’s creatures that the disabled exemplify?” (Wannenwetsch 364).

Maybe it is not simply more inclusive language that is needed in a theological framework of disability, but a shift from the ground up in how we talk about the human condition. Maybe able-bodied humans are not born in a state that is “already closer to the ideal.” As my professor Dr. Paul Jones has said in conversation, “maybe there are ways of entering into the suffering of Christ, and even doing theology, that only people with disabilities can do.” This strikes me as incredibly apt. In a time where experience is being seen as more and more informative for theology, maybe “able-bodied” needs to be understood as a category of privilege right alongside “white,” “male,” and “straight”.

Thinking about theology as more and more experiential has led me to begin to see what this “lived theology” thing is all about. What is theology if it is not lived? Can a theology with no inherent attempt to wrestle with its implications for “real life” truthfully be called “theology” at all? What if God is not primarily defined by his abstract attributes (omnipresence, omnipotence, omniscience), but by his entering into the human condition? What if it is God’s actions that define him more fully than anything else? And what if the moment in which we most clearly perceive God is not when we finally “get” the best analogy to explain the Trinity (good luck with that), but when we look into the eyes of another human being made in his image?

Wannenwetsch,Brand. “’My Strength Is Made Perfect In Weakness’: Bonhoeffer and the War over Disabled Life.” Disability in the Christian Tradition. Ed. Brian Brock and John Swinton. Grand Rapids/Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2012. 353-390. Print.

Introducing the 2015 Summer Interns in Lived Theology

Posted on June 25, 2015 by PLT Staff

Caitlin Montgomery

Caitlin Montgomery is a third-year religious studies and speech-language pathology student with a passion for helping children with special needs. While interning at the Virginia Institute of Autism and navigating new methods of behavioral therapy for children with autism, she hopes to explore what it looks like to construct a theological framework that empowers individuals with disabilities.

The Virginia Institute of Autism is dedicated to helping people overcome the challenges of autism through innovative, evidence-based programs in education, outreach and adult services. Learn more about their work at their website.

Rachel Prestipino is a third year student majoring in religious studies and global development studies. She is particularly interested in notions of human dignity, especially with regard to women, as they are presented by various Christian theologies. She will be spending her summer serving women who have experienced violence and exploitation in the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco.

Rachel will be working this summer with the organization Because Justice Matters whose mission is to reach women who are victims of sexual exploitation and domestic violence, and offer support to those experiencing isolation due to economic and cultural challenges. Learn more about their work here.

Melina Rapazzini is a third year student majoring in religious studies and nursing, which has naturally resulted in a passion for studying the intersection between ethics and direct patient care. A native from the San Francisco Bay Area, Melina is excited to live in in Oakland and work with New Hope Covenant Church to develop a reading, art, and gardening program for inner city refugee children. Melina is mostly looking forward to learning from these children how to see and understand the Kingdom of God in a neighborhood with historically one of the highest rates of robbery in the United States.

The vision of New Hope Covenant Church is to worship God and embody the good news of Jesus through Community, Compassion, Discipleship, and Justice. Learn more about New Hope at this link.

Beginning Monday, you can hear about our summer interns’ work in their own words. Watch this space for highlights, visit the intern blog, and get all the updates by following their summers on Facebook and Twitter.

Lived Theology summer internship program in full swing

Posted on June 23, 2015 by PLT Staff

This summer, three U.Va. undergraduates are participating in the Summer Internship in Lived Theology, our summer immersion program that encourages students to think and write theologically about service. Beginning next Monday, we will be rolling out our interns’ excellent blog posts in which they reflect creatively and theologically on the service work they are doing this summer.

Our summer interns, Caitin Montgomery, Rachel Prestipino, and Melina Rapazzini, are working throughout the summer at three different service organizations. (You’ll learn more about the interns and the organizations in this Thursday’s post.) In preparation for this work, we held two training events this spring to ready them for summers of fruitful work and intentional reflection. These events both included other students and community members as well as our interns and staff.

First, we held a workshop entitled Parables of Privilege Meeting Poverty during which we talked with Josh Kaufman-Horner, co-founder of Mission Year and current director of the Center for Hope at the Charlottesville Salvation Army. Josh used parables from Christian scripture as starting points for conversation about privilege, poverty, and faith-based service, including how to navigate difference and avoid some of the common pitfalls of various kinds of privilege.

Later that same week, Vanessa Ochs, author and U.Va. professor of religious studies, led us in conversation about writing lived theology. We shared personal narratives around the dinner table and talked about the interrelatedness of story, truth, and faith. We also read and discussed examples of writing about religious belief and lived experience.

We can’t wait to share more with you about our interns and their unfolding summers. Stay tuned to learn more about Caitlin, Rachel, and Melina this Thursday, and for their own words starting Monday.

On the Lived Theology reading list: In Search of the Movement by Benjamin Hedin

Posted on June 16, 2015 by PLT Staff

This summer the Project on Lived Theology is updating our resources section. As part of the website facelift (which is still in progress) the Project is creating a list of recommend resources. These resources reflect the work of fellow travelers — 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.

Our first offering in this new resource format and news series, “On the Lived Theology reading list,” is In Search of the Movement: The Struggle for Civil Rights Then and Now by Benjamin Hedin. In this work, Hedin sets out “to find the movement in its contemporary guise, which also [means] answering the critical question of what happened to it after the 1960s.”

From the publisher:

Hedin profiles legendary figures like John Lewis, Robert Moses, and Julian Bond, and also visits with contemporary leaders such as William Barber II and the staff of the Dream Defenders. But just as powerful—and instructional—are the stories of those whose work goes unrecorded, the organizers and teachers who make all the rest possible.

In these pages the movement is portrayed as never before, as a vibrant tradition of activism that remains in our midst. In Search of the Movement is a fascinating meditation on the patterns of history, as well as an indelible look at the meaning and limits of American freedom.

For more information on In Search of the Movement, click here.

About the author:
Benjamin Hedin was born in Paris, France, and raised in North Carolina and Minnesota. He studied music at the College of William and Mary and in the fall of 2002 entered the Graduate Writing Program at The New School in New York City. After earning his M.F.A. in fiction from The New School he started teaching, first at Long Island University and The New School, and later in the Expository Writing Program at New York University.

Hedin’s fiction, essays, and interviews have been published by a number of publications, includingThe New Yorker, Slate, The Nation, The Chicago Tribune, Poets and Writers, Salmagundi, The Georgia Review, The Gettysburg Review, and Radio Silence. He is the editor of Studio A: The Bob Dylan Reader, widely regarded as one of the finest collections of music writing. He is also the producer and author of a forthcoming documentary titled The Blues House. This movie tells the story of the search for two forgotten blues singers, carried out in Mississippi in June of 1964, during some of the most violent days of the civil rights movement.

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

PBS Video offers a brief and beautiful look at Bonhoeffer’s life

Posted on June 10, 2015 by PLT Staff

Last week PBS Video released a video clip of an interview with Charles Marsh on Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The video PBS produced uses photography throughout the 8 minute segment and highlights how Bonhoeffer’s trip to the United States impacted his future involvement in the resistance against Hitler. Watch the entire clip below, or click here to find it on the PBS Video website.

Undergrad Parker Bates Fleming receives the Bernard Peyton Chamberlain Memorial Prize

Posted on May 15, 2015 by PLT Staff

The Corcoran Department of History has selected Parker Bates Fleming to be the recipient of the Bernard Peyton Chamberlain Memorial Prize for the best Distinguished Majors Thesis in World History, titled “‘Must We Do Nothing?’: Reinhold Niebuhr and the Origins of Christian Realism, 1928-1941,” written under the direction of Professor Charles Marsh.

The award will be presented tomorrow at the History Department’s diploma ceremony.

We join our colleagues in the History Department in congratulating Parker on this extraordinary achievement!

Ethics: The Fundamental Questions of our Lives by Wolfgang Huber, now available

Posted on May 12, 2015 by PLT Staff

Friend of the Project, Wolfgang Huber, has recently published Ethics: The Fundamental Questions of our Lives with Georgetown University Press.

From the publisher:

In the twenty-first century the basic questions of ethics are no longer the abstract terms of ethical theory, but the concrete and burning issues related to the influence of life sciences, the impact of a globalized economy, and the consequences of present decisions for the future of humankind. Ethics: The Fundamental Questions of Our Lives analyzes twenty ethical issues that address education and culture, labor and economy, the environment and sustainability, democracy and cosmopolitanism, peace and war, and life and death. Each chapter describes a concrete example showing the relevance of the fundamental ethical question, then provides an explanation of how one can think through possible responses and reactions. Huber emphasizes the connections between personal, professional, and institutional ethics and demonstrates how human relationships lie at the center of our ethical lives. His aim is to articulate a theology of what he calls “responsible freedom” that transcends individualistic self-realization and includes communal obligations.

Wolfgang Huber is a German theologian and ethicist who was professor of systematic theology at the University of Heidelberg and, later, bishop of the Evangelical Church in Germany. He retired in 2009 and is an Honorary Professor at Stellenbosch University. Huber is the author and editor of numerous books, including Violence: The Unrelenting Assault on Human Dignity and Christian Belief.

To read more about Ethics, please click here.

U.Va. to host book launch for Benjamin C. Ray’s Satan and Salem: The Witch-Hunt Crisis of 1692

Posted on April 24, 2015 by PLT Staff

On Wednesday, April 29, 2015, the U.Va. Department of Religious Studies and the Virginia Center for the Study of Religion will host a book launch for Satan and Salem: The Witch-Hunt Crisis of 1692 by Benjamin C. Ray. The event will begin at 4:30 p.m. in the Religious Studies Faculty Lounge in Gibson 442. Erik Midelfort, Julian Bishko Emeritus Professor of History, will comment on the book. Light refreshments will be served and the public is invited to attend.

From the publisher’s website:

The result of a perfect storm of factors that culminated in a great moral catastrophe, the Salem witch trials of 1692 took a breathtaking toll on the young English colony of Massachusetts. Over 150 people were imprisoned, and nineteen men and women, including a minister, were executed by hanging. The colonial government, which was responsible for initiating the trials, eventually repudiated the entire affair as a great “delusion of the Devil.”

In Satan and Salem, Benjamin Ray looks beyond single-factor interpretations to offer a far more nuanced view of why the Salem witch-hunt spiraled out of control. Rather than assigning blame to a single perpetrator, Ray assembles portraits of several major characters, each of whom had complex motives for accusing his or her neighbors. In this way, he reveals how religious, social, political, and legal factors all played a role in the drama. Ray’s historical database of court records, documents, and maps yields a unique analysis of the geographic spread of accusations and trials, ultimately showing how the witch-hunt resulted in the execution of so many people—far more than any comparable episode on this side of the Atlantic.

Benjamin C. Ray is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia. He is the Director of the award-winning Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive and an associate editor of Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt.

To purchase the book from the University of Virginia Press website, click here.

Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer shortlisted for PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography

Posted on April 21, 2015 by PLT Staff

Charles Marsh’s newest publication Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer has been shortlisted for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography, awarded for excellence in the art of biography. This prize of $5,000 will go to the author of a distinguished work published in the United States during the previous calendar year. The winning title should be a work of exceptional literary, narrative and artistic merit, based on scrupulous research. The winner will be chosen May 13th. For more information and a list of the other authors on the shortlist, click here.