Ansley L. Quiros, Race and Religion Scholar, to Speak at UVA Undergrad Seminar, “Kingdom of God in America”

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The March 25 Zoom event is open to the public.

On Thursday, March 25 at 2:00 p.m. EST, Ansley L. Quiros, assistant professor of history at the University of North Alabama, will be the guest speaker in a University of Virginia undergraduate seminar, “The Kingdom of God in America,” taught by Charles Marsh, director of the Project on Lived Theology. Marsh is also a professor in UVA’s Department of Religious Studies. The March 25 event, which is free and open to the public, can be watched on Zoom at https://tinyurl.com/quirostalk, Passcode: 777591. A question-and-answer session will follow the lecture.

Quiros will talk about her award-winning book, God with Us: Lived Theology and the Freedom Struggle in Americus, Georgia, 1942-1976 (University of North Carolina Press, 2018). God with Us examines the theological struggle over racial justice through the story of one southern town, where ordinary Americans sought and confronted racial change in the twentieth century. Documenting the passion and virulence of these contestations, Quiros offers insight into how midcentury battles over theology and race affected the rise of the Religious Right and continue to resonate deeply in American life.

As a history professor at the University of North Alabama, Quiros specializes in twentieth-century U.S. history, with a focus on race, politics, and religion. She is also contributing a chapter on Florence Jordan, co-founder of the interracial Christian farming community Koinonia Farm, to the upcoming PLT book People Get Ready! Thirteen Jesus-Haunted Misfits, Malcontents and Dreamers for Troubled Times.

 

The Project on Lived Theology at the University of Virginia is a research initiative, whose mission is to study the social consequences of theological ideas for the sake of a more just and compassionate world.

PLT Collaborator Jane Hong Receives Prestigious Louisville Institute Grant

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Hong’s New Book to Explore Asian Americans and U.S. Evangelicalism

Jane Hong, a frequent Project on Lived Theology collaborator, has received a sabbatical grant from the Louisville Institute. The grant will allow Hong to devote the spring of 2022 to writing her second book, Model Christians, Model Minorities: Asian Americans, Race, and Politics in the Transformation of U.S. Evangelicalism.

“During a time when public discussions of Christianity and religion generally are so polarized, I’m grateful for the time the grant affords me to make sense of how we got here,” said Hong.

Model Christians, Model Minorities will explore the relationship between the demographic transformations resulting from the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act and the rise of the Religious Right. Specifically, Hong’s book will reflect on how Asians and Asian Americans have changed U.S. evangelicalism; individuals of Asian descent comprise fewer than three percent of U.S. evangelicals but have had an outsized impact on evangelical institutions and communities.

According to Hong, “Just as you cannot understand the history of post-WWII evangelical Christianity without Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell, you cannot make sense of contemporary evangelicalism without accounting for Asians and Asian Americans.”

Hong​ is an associate professor of history at Occidental College and the author of ​Opening the Gates to Asia: A Transpacific History of How America Repealed Asian Exclusion (University of North Carolina Press, 2019). She received her Ph.D. in history from Harvard.

Hong was recently a guest lecturer for PLT director Charles Marsh’s University of Virginia undergraduate seminar, “The Civil Rights Movement in Religious and Theological Perspective.” Video of her talk, “Asian Americans and U.S. Civil Rights Movements,” is available here.

In addition, Hong is contributing a chapter on Korean American writer Mary Paik Lee to the upcoming PLT book People Get Ready! Thirteen Jesus-Haunted Misfits, Malcontents and Dreamers for Troubled Times.

Funded by the Religion Division of the Lilly Endowment, the Louisville Institute awards grants and fellowships to those who lead and study North American religious institutions, practices, and movements. The institute’s Sabbatical Grant for Researchers offers grants of up to $40,000, which enable scholars to take up to a full academic year of leave from teaching and administrative responsibilities. This funding allows them to instead focus on research and writing projects that will advance religious and theological scholarship.

 

The Project on Lived Theology at the University of Virginia is a research initiative, whose mission is to study the social consequences of theological ideas for the sake of a more just and compassionate world.

On the Lived Theology Reading List: Black Mountain

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Black Mountain: An Exploration in Community, by Martin DubermanAn Exploration in Community

Despite only being open for 23 years, Black Mountain College ranked among the most important artistic and intellectual communities of the twentieth century, with a legacy that lives on in the avant-garde colleges of today. In Black Mountain, author Martin Duberman uses interviews, anecdotes, and research to depict the relationships that made Black Mountain College what it was.

Black Mountain College had an eclectic group of faculty and alumni, including John Cage, Robert Creeley, Merce Cunningham, Buckminster Fuller, Charles Olson, Josef and Anni Albers, Paul Goodman, and Robert Rauschenberg. However, it also had massive financial difficulties during its tenure, requiring a large amount of determination to keep the college in operation. Duberman documents Black Mountain college in all its stages, from its most brilliant moments of self-reinvention to its lowest moments of petty infighting, creating a nuanced portrait of this community so essential to the development of American arts and counterculture.

Reviews and endorsements of the publication include:

“Fascinating history with a resonance that far exceeds the experience of the Black Mountaineers themselves.”—Newsweek

“Reading the book, it is hard to imagine how it might have been done more intelligently.”—Catharine R. Stimpson, The Nation

“[Black Mountain] leaps beyond the discipline of history in its significance . . . Henceforth debates about the relation between historian and sources will have to take account of this radically new model for doing history.”—Jesse Lemisch, New York Times Book Review

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.

W. Ralph Eubanks Will Discuss New Book, “A Place Like Mississippi,” at Virtual Events Next Week

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Politics and Prose Event Will Be Moderated by Former U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey

Ralph Eubanks SILT 2016-2017 Can I get a witness?

Award-winning author and Mississippi native W. Ralph Eubanks will talk about his new book, A Place Like Mississippi: A Journey Through a Real and Imagined Literary Landscape, at two upcoming live virtual events:

  • Square Books, Tuesday, March 16 at 6:00 p.m. EST (5:00 p.m. CST). An RSVP is required; register here.
  • Politics and Prose Bookstore, Wednesday, March 17 at 8:00 p.m. EST. Former U.S poet laureate Natasha Trethewey will moderate. An RSVP is required; register here.

A longtime friend of the Project on Lived Theology, Eubanks contributed a chapter on gospel singer Mahalia Jackson to the PLT book Can I Get a Witness? Thirteen Peacemakers, Community Builders, and Agitators for Faith and Justice (Eerdman’s, 2019). Eubanks’ Can I Get a Witness podcast episode about Jackson can be heard here.

In his new book A Place Like Mississippi, Eubanks treats us to a literary tour of the evocative landscapes that have inspired writers in every era. From Faulkner to Wright, Welty to Trethewey, Mississippi has been both a backdrop and a central character in some of the most compelling prose and poetry of modern literature. The journey unfolds on a winding path, touching the muddy Delta, the rolling Hill Country, down to the Gulf Coast, and all points between. In every corner of the state lie the settings that informed hundreds of iconic works. Immersing us in these spaces, Eubanks helps us understand that Mississippi is not only a state but a state of mind. Or as Faulkner is said to have observed, “To understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi.”

“Ralph Eubanks’ A Place Like Mississippi is the book all of us Mississippi writers, dead and alive, need to read,” said Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy: An American Memoir. “It is indeed a strange but glorious sensation to see your literary and geographic lineage so beautifully and rigorously explored and valued as it’s still being created.”

Eubanks currently serves as Visiting Professor of Southern Studies, English, and Honors at the University of Mississippi. He is the author of The House at the End of the Road: The Story of Three Generations of an Interracial Family in the American South and Ever Is a Long Time: A Journey into Mississippi’s Dark Past, which Washington Post book critic Jonathan Yardley named as one of the best nonfiction books of the year. Eubanks has contributed articles to the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, WIRED, the New Yorker, and NPR. He is a recipient of a 2007 Guggenheim Fellowship and has been a fellow at the New America Foundation. He is the former editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review at the University of Virginia and served as director of publishing at the Library of Congress from 1995 to 2013.

 

The Project on Lived Theology at the University of Virginia is a research initiative, whose mission is to study the social consequences of theological ideas for the sake of a more just and compassionate world.

On the Lived Theology Reading List: A Different Shade of Justice

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A Different Shade of Justice: Asian American Civil Rights in the South, by Stephanie HinnershitzAsian American Civil Rights in the South

Asian Americans often fell into a middle ground in the Jim Crow South, for although they were not black, they were also not considered white, and thus were subject to school segregation, antimiscegenation laws, and discriminatory business practices. In A Different Shade of Justice, author Stephanie Hinnershitz explores the lives of Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, and, later, Vietnamese and Indian Americans in the South, and how they faced obstacles similar to those experienced by African Americans in their fight for civil and human rights.

As Asian Americans attempted to establish themselves in the South, they found that institutionalized racism thwarted their efforts time and again. In order to combat this, they organized carefully constructed legal battles that often traveled to the state and federal supreme courts, starting with the formation of Chinese and Japanese communities in the early twentieth century and going up through Indian hotel owners’ battles against business discrimination in the 1980s and ’90s. Hinnershitz draws from legislative and legal records as well as oral histories, memoirs, and newspapers in order to tell the story of how Asian American political actors and civil rights activists challenged existing definitions of rights and justice in the South.

Reviews and endorsements of the publication include:

“Readable and engaging, and recommended to anyone interested in the intersections of race, gender, ethnicity, and labor in the United States.”—Arkansas Historical Quarterly

“Provides a welcome addition to a flourishing body of scholarship on the experiences of Asian Americans and other immigrant groups in the U.S. South. This scholarship has challenged assumptions that the South was largely excepted from national histories of immigration, and it complicates understandings of racial identity in the region.”—Journal of Southern History

“This valuable work presents sophisticated and nuanced insight about Asians in the post-Civil War South . . . A welcome volume.”—Journal of American History

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.

On the Lived Theology Reading List: Philosopher of the Heart

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Philosopher of the Heart: The Restless Life of Søren Kierkegaard, by Clare CarlisleThe Restless Life of Søren Kierkegaard

Søren Kierkegaard is often regarded as the founder of existentialism, writing about his new philosophy for almost a decade in the 1840s and 1850s until he died in 1855 at the age of 42. In Philosopher of the Heart, author Clare Carlisle writes this biography as far from Kierkegaard’s original perspective as she can in order to convey what it was like actually being this Socrates of Christendom—as he put it, living life forwards yet only understanding it backwards.

Kierkegaard was an incredibly prolific author, and much of his creativity sprang from his relationship with the young woman whom he promised to marry, despite the fact that he left her before marriage in order to devote himself to writing. While living alone in Copenhagen, much of his writing centered around pursuing the question of existence, as well as exploring the possibilities of Christianity and confronting the failures of its institutional manifestation around him. When he finally died exhausted, he left his remarkable writings to his muse and erstwhile fiancée.

Reviews and endorsements of the publication include:

“Engrossing . . . Carlisle has pulled off the feat of writing a truly Kierkegaardian biography of Kierkegaard. Just as Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous writings were meant to enable the reader to understand different modes of existence from the inside, Carlisle’s biography takes us inside Kierkegaard’s troubled, complicated life, portraying a man who both compels and repels in turn.” —Julian Baggini, Financial Times

“For those interested in Kierkegaard’s legacy, but bewildered by the sheer volume of his writings, Carlisle opens a compact but insightful gateway onto his work, one designed to entrance as well as inform. For those of us who have been reading the man long enough to forget why we began, Carlisle offers a bracing reminder of the human drama, the passionate conviction, that drew us to Kierkegaard in the first place.” —Asher Gelzer-Govatos, The Russell Kirk Center

“It is a testimony to [Carlisle’s] skill that, as in a great novel, the portrayal of her protagonist is so vivid . . . She wonderfully conveys how, pelican-like, Kierkegaard tore his philosophy from his own breast.” —Jane O’Grady, Daily Telegraph

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.

On the Lived Theology Reading List: Free All Along

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Free All Along: The Robert Penn Warren Civil Rights Interviews, edited by Stephen Drury Smith and Catherine EllisThe Robert Penn Warren Civil Rights Interviews

In 1965, Pulitzer Prize–winning author and poet Robert Penn Warren published Who Speaks for the Negro?, a personal narrative that blended his own experiences and reflections with quotes from interviews he had done with prominent Civil Rights leaders a year earlier. The full interviews, however, were never released, and the audiotapes stayed largely unknown until recent years. In Free All Along, editors Stephen Drury Smith and Catherine Ellis have compiled and transcribed the never before seen interviews into one book.

In 1964, in the height of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, Robert Penn Warren set out with a tape recorder to interview leaders of the black freedom struggle. He spoke at length with luminaries such as James Baldwin, Martin Luther King Jr., Stokely Carmichael, Ralph Ellison, and Roy Wilkins. In Harlem, a fifteen-minute appointment with Malcolm X unwound into several hours of vivid conversation. The interviews were long and detailed, eliciting reflections and frank assessments of race in America and the possibilities for meaningful change. A major contribution to our understanding of the struggle for justice and equality, these remarkable long-form interviews are presented here as original documents that have pressing relevance today.

Reviews and endorsements of the publication include:

“The conversations feel immediate and are thoroughly engaging, and it seems as though this was organically the case; when Warren interviewed Malcolm X, he was in such high demand that he committed to only 15 minutes for the interview, but ended up staying for over an hour. Free All Along is the book Warren should have published: It’s a product of careful listening to people more than qualified to speak for themselves.”―The Progressive Populist

“There are times when voices from the past speak directly to our present. Free All Along is a rare and electrifying document, one that reveals the enduring connections between the long struggle for civil rights in the last century to the fight for justice in our own.” ―Michael Eric Dyson, New York Times bestselling author of What Truth Sounds Like

“An anthology that arguably holds more contemporary importance as an historical document than the original release.”―Kirkus Reviews

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.

On the Lived Theology Reading List: Rapture Culture

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Rapture Culture: Left Behind in Evangelical America, by Amy Johnson FrykholmLeft Behind in Evangelical America

In Rapture Culture, Amy Johnson Frykholm explores the remarkable phenomenon of “rapture fiction,” a genre popularized by the Left Behind series. Depicting the rapture and subsequent apocalypse, the main characters of the series suffer through a world ruled by the antichrist, one that is wracked with plagues, famine, and suffering. The series culminates with Christ’s return and the defeat of the antichrist, showcasing a scenario that is anticipated by millions of American evangelicals. The genre is wildly popular, with Left Behind having over 40 million copies now in print, and in Rapture Culture Frykholm explores why the idea of the rapture itself is so compelling.

Tracing the evolution of the genre of rapture fiction, Frykholm notes that at one time such narratives expressed a sense of alienation from modern life and protest against the loss of tradition and the marginalization of conservative religious views. Yet even as evangelism has gained popularity and the themes become obsolete, the genre has yet to see a correlated decline. In order to explain this, Frykholm argues that the books provide a sense of identification and communal belonging that counters the “social atomization” that characterizes modern life. This also helps explain why they appeal to female readers, despite the deeply patriarchal worldview they promote. Drawing on extensive interviews with readers of the novels, Rapture Culture sheds light on a mindset that is little understood and far more common than many of us suppose.

Reviews and endorsements of the publication include:

“An informative, brightly written analysis of apocalyptic sentiment on the popular level. This is a most interesting book and an important contribution to the growing literature on evangelicalism.” —Randall Balmer, author of Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Journey into the Evangelical Subculture in America

“Rapture Culture offers fresh and illuminating insights into one of the most significant cultural phenomena of our era, the explosion of interest in biblical prophecies of the end times. Drawing on in-depth interviews, Amy Johnson Frykholm shrewdly explores the popular reception of the bestselling Left Behind prophecy novels as readers share their responses in the context of family, church, and other social networks. This eminently readable book explores the interaction of contemporary American religion, cultural politics, gender issues, and the mass media. Highly recommended.” —Paul S. Boyer, author of When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture

“This fascinating book is a one-of-a-kind look at how people read religious literature. Thoroughly engaging, it asks us to consider the importance of imagination in the construction of a spiritual life. The author gives us an inside view of often conflicting interpretations that Christians give of the drama of the End Times.” —Colleen McDannell, author of Material Christianity: Religion and Popular Culture in America

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.

On the Lived Theology Reading List: European Mennonites and the Holocaust

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European Mennonites and the Holocaust, by Mark Jantzen and John D. ThiesenTransnational Mennonite Studies

After the Second World War, much of the Mennonites’ history was forgotten as they sought to rebuild or find new homes as refugees. This created a myth of Mennonite innocence and ignorance, one that European Mennonites and the Holocaust sets out to dissipate. This book identifies a significant number of Mennonite perpetrators, along with a smaller number of Mennonites who helped Jews survive, and examines the context in which they acted.

During the war, Mennonites in the Netherlands, Germany, occupied Poland, and Ukraine lived in communities with Jews and close to various Nazi camps and killing sites. In some cases, theology led them to accept or reject Nazi ideals. In others, Mennonites chose a closer embrace of German identity as a strategy to improve their standing with Germans or for material benefit. By examining this difficult and oft-forgotten history, European Mennonites and the Holocaust uncovers a more complete picture of Mennonite life in these years, underscoring actions that were not always innocent.

Reviews and endorsements of the publication include:

“Grounded in literature on the Holocaust, German, Dutch, Ukrainian, and Mennonite history, editors Mark Jantzen and John D. Thiesen, along with the authors in this volume, demonstrate how collective memory can be made oblivious to collaboration with evil, and the responsibility of scholars to ruthlessly and compassionately alter past narratives. The research represented here is crucial to better understand the multilayered Mennonite past, and offers broader implications for how small and seemingly benign groups become complicit in mass violence.”—Marlene Epp, Conrad Grebel University College, University of Waterloo

“What makes European Mennonites and the Holocaust important is the bringing together of the most active scholars in this emerging field. It serves as a case study for the ways in which cultural and ethnic minorities reacted to and engaged in the Holocaust, as well as an exploration of the transnational reality of the Holocaust. A fine work of scholarship edited by experienced scholars, this book will be of great interest to those interested in Holocaust and memory, and to members of the Mennonite community – a subculture deeply interested in and committed to its own history.”—Kyle Jantzen, Department of History, Ambrose University

“A particularly interesting case study, European Mennonites and the Holocaust is a valuable collection representing topics, such as ecclesiology and other branches of theology, often neglected by historians. Situating itself into the wider historical literature, especially the literature on the Holocaust, there is a lot in this book to chew on.”—John-Paul Himka, Professor Emeritus, Department of History and Classics, University of Alberta

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.

On the Lived Theology Reading List: The Movement

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The Movement: The African American Struggle for Civil Rights, by Thomas C. HoltThe African American Struggle for Civil Rights

Although the civil rights movement was one of the most important mass movements of the twentieth century, and an incredibly pivotal moment in American history, it is often misrepresented and misunderstood by the general American public. In The Movement, Thomas Holt revisits the freedom struggle to provide an informed and nuanced understanding of its origins, character, and objectives, privileging the aspirations and initiatives of the grassroots people who made it possible.

The civil rights movement decisively changed the legal and political status of African Americans, and prefigured the moral premises and methods of struggle for other historically oppressed groups seeking equal standing in American society. Despite that, much of its context and impact has been stripped away, leaving a singular moment, frozen in time at the Lincoln Memorial, to sum up much of what Americans know about an entire decade of struggle. In this book, Holt emphasizes the conditions of possibility that enabled the heroic initiatives of the common folk over those of their more celebrated leaders, and conveys a sense of these developments as a social movement, one that shaped its participants even as they shaped it.

Reviews and endorsements of the publication include:

“Thomas C. Holt’s The Movement is a succinct and powerful book… A skilled historian whose powers are on full display in The Movement, he knows the moments when it is best to let the participants themselves summarize the extraordinary power of their struggle.”—The American Scholar

“Covering less discussed moments from America’s struggle for equality, The Movement is a nuanced history that takes layered ideologies and obscured figures into account.”—Foreword Reviews

“Rooted in the author’s personal experience of the movement, this book is a marvelous balance between economy of expression and complexity of thought. Even those well-versed in recent movement scholarship will learn something from this engaging and challenging work. Some parts of the history are more telling than others and Holt has an unerring eye for just those parts.”—Charles M. Payne, author of I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle

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.