On Tuesday, April 5 at 2:00 p.m. EST, David Bentley Hart will be a guest of the Project on Lived Theology for a Zoom talk on “Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Critics.” In addition to being an Eastern Orthodox scholar of religion, Hart is also a philosopher, writer, and cultural commentator. 

Hart’s lecture will be based on his acclaimed book Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies, published by Yale University Press in 2009. His other books include In the Aftermath: Provocations and Laments (Eerdmans, 2008); That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation (Yale, 2019); and Tradition and Apocalypse: An Essay on the Future of Christian Belief (Baker Academic, 2022).

In his book Atheist Delusions, Hart dismantles distorted religious “histories” offered up by Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and other contemporary critics of religion and advocates of atheism. He provides a bold correction of the New Atheists’ misrepresentations of the Christian past, countering their polemics with a brilliant account of Christianity and its message of human charity as the most revolutionary movement in all of Western history.

Hart outlines how Christianity transformed the ancient world in ways we may have forgotten: bringing liberation from fatalism, conferring great dignity on human beings, subverting the cruelest aspects of pagan society, and elevating charity above all virtues. He then argues that what we term the “Age of Reason” was in fact the beginning of the eclipse of reason’s authority as a cultural value. Hart closes the book in the present, delineating the ominous consequences of the decline of Christendom in a culture that is built upon its moral and spiritual values.

The April 5 event, which is free and open to the public, can be watched on Zoom at https://bit.ly/3DuhGfE, Passcode: 921417. A question-and-answer session will follow the lecture.

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.

The semester may have just ended, but you can still watch and listen to many of the lectures from Project on Lived Theology director Charles Marsh’s Fall 2021 seminar, “Theologies of Resistance and Reconciliation: Bonhoeffer, Niebuhr, King.” Speakers include Marsh (who is also a religious studies professor at UVA) and PLT research fellow Guy Aiken, as well as special guests.

Wisdom to Know the Difference: Why Reinhold Niebuhr Isn’t the Theologian We Need Today (September 15, 2021)
Eugene McCarraher, associate professor of humanities and history at Villanova, asks, “Why do ‘very serious people’ like Reinhold Niebuhr so much?” and ultimately argues that Niebuhr’s philosophy of political realism cannot provide what we need for our time. According to McCarraher, public theologians and intellectuals must reclaim the language of political realism because Niebuhrian realism is not realistic or visionary enough. 
Watch the video.
Read more about McCarraher’s talk.

Evangelical Theology in the 19^th Century: Thinking after Karl Barth on the Story of Modern Protestant Thought (September 22, 2021)
Charles Marsh uses theologian Karl Barth’s essay “Evangelical Theology of the 19th Century” from the book The Humanity of God as a narrative framework for the seminar. Barth reads the Protestant liberal tradition’s emphasis on human experience and “ecstatic joy” as a theological mistake that had political and historical implications when Christianity then became an ingredient in the development of the Third Reich.
Watch the video.

“A Theological Miracle”: The Awkward Brilliance of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Sanctorum Communio (September 29, 2021)
Charles Marsh discusses the first of theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s two dissertations, Sanctorum Communio, which Karl Barth called “a theological miracle.” Marsh argues that Bonhoeffer, as the theologian of the concrete, shows how the doctrine of God comes to expression in lived social experience and only by this concept of revelation can the Christian concept of the church be uncovered. 
Watch the video.
Listen to the audio.

Letters and Papers from Montgomery, Alabama: The Formation of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Theological Imagination (November 3, 2021)
Charles Marsh demonstrates the tensions between trying to understand Martin Luther King, Jr. as theologian and how the documentary evidence illuminates that for King, the political was always understood primarily through the lens of the theological. Marsh then uses the Montgomery bus boycott as a case study in lived theology as well as a historical moment that represents an awakening of the Civil Rights Movement in the American South. 
Watch the video.

Kingdom Come: King and the Third Way of Nonviolence (November 10, 2021)
PLT research fellow Guy Aiken presents a comprehensive overview of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s philosophy of nonviolence by drawing out some of the oppositions that were always at work in the civil rights leader’s mind. Aiken then demonstrates how King saw nonviolent resistance as a third way between fight or flight. Ultimately, King thought of nonviolence as morally, strategically, and tactically superior to both violence and passive resistance. 
Watch the video.
Listen to the audio.

Writing Blackness: A Conversation with Danté Stewart on Theology and Memoir (November 17, 2021)
Writer and speaker Danté Stewart reads from and discusses his book Shoutin’ in the Fire: An American Epistle (Convergent, 2021). He describes his experiences as a Black man in predominantly white evangelical spaces and his study of Black texts, which led him to not only confront Black death but to also embrace Black life outside the white gaze.
Watch the video.
Listen to the audio.
Explore Danté Stewart’s recommended reading list.

Thinking Theologically after Dorothee Soelle on the Future of Christian Faith and Practice (December 1, 2021)
Charles Marsh explains how theologian Dorothee Soelle’s theology has been characterized as radical, political, feminist, mystical, post-theistic, post-metaphysical, and post-religious, while her writing style has been called lyrical and fragmentary. Marsh argues that Soelle’s memoir, Against the Wind: A Memoir of a Radical Christian, asks readers to consider how we might understand her as a theologian.
Listen to the audio.

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.

The Project on Lived Theology was happy to host writer and speaker Danté Stewart for a special Nov. 17 event, “Writing Blackness: A Conversation with Danté Stewart on Theology and Memoir.” As part of his talk, Danté cited various Black authors and texts (as well as other voices) that inspired him on his journey. We’ve compiled that list below if you’d like to read along.

You can also watch the video or listen to the audio of Danté’s talk on the PLT website.

Elizabeth Alexander, The Black Interior: Essays (2004)

James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (1963)

Toni Cade Bambara: Gorilla, My Love (1992); The Salt Eaters (1992); Deep Sightings and Rescue Missions: Fiction, Essays, and Conversations (1999)

Sarah Broom, The Yellow House (2019)

Tarana Burke and Brené Brown, You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience (2021)

Octavia E. Butler, The Parable series (1993-98)

Rebecca Carroll, Surviving the White Gaze (2021)

J. Kameron Carter, Race: A Theological Account (2008)

James H. Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree (2013)

Patricia Hill Collins, Intersectionality as Critical Social Theory (2019)

Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora, edited by Sheree R. Thomas (2000)

Angela Y. Davis, Women, Race and Class (1981)

Mark Dery, Black to the Future: Interviews with Samuel R. Delany, Greg Tate, and Tricia Rose (1994)

W. E. B. Du Bois, Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil (1920)

Farah Jasmine Griffin, Read Until You Understand: The Profound Wisdom of Black Life and Literature (2021)

Abraham Joshua Heschel, God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism (1955)

bell hooks: Salvation: Black People and Love (2001), Killing Rage: Ending Racism (1995)

Viola Huang

Zakiyyah Iman Jackson

N. K. Jemisin, How Long ‘til Black Future Month? (2018)

Robert Jones, Jr., The Prophets (2021)

June Jordan, Some of Us Did Not Die: Selected Essays (2002)

Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (1967)

Nella Larsen, Passing (1929, also a 2021 Netflix movie)

Kiese Laymon, Heavy: An American Memoir (2018)

Audre Lord, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (2020)

Charles W. Mills, The Racial Contract (1997)

Darnell L. Moore, No Ashes in the Fire: Coming of Age Black and Free in America (2018)

Toni Morrison, “Unspeakable Things Unspoken: The Afro-American Presence in American Literature,” The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, delivered at the University of Michigan on Oct. 7, 1988

Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (1932)

Deesha Philyaw, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies (2020)

Josef Sorett, Spirit in the Dark: A Religious History of Racial Aesthetics (2016)

Jean Toomer, Cane (1923)

Alice Walker, The Color Purple (1982)

Jesmyn Ward, Men We Reaped (2013)

Ida B. Wells

Elie Wiesel, The Trial of God (as it was held on February 25, 1649, in Shamgorod) (1979)

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 Wednesday, Nov. 17 at 3:30 p.m. EST, writer and speaker Danté Stewart will be a guest of the Project on Lived Theology to talk about his new book, Shoutin’ in the Fire: An American Epistle (Convergent, 2021). Shoutin’ in the Fire is a coming-of-age memoir on being Black and learning to love in a loveless world.

Stewart, whose work focuses on the areas of race, religion, and politics, has been featured on CNN and in the Washington Post, Christianity Today, Sojourners, The Witness: A Black Christian Collective, Comment, and elsewhere. His recent essay, “How I learned that Jesus is Black” has inspired exuberant public debate weeks since it appeared in the New York Times on Monday, October 18. 

“We are delighted to welcome this dazzling young writer-activist to UVA and look forward to a generative exchange on matters that remain urgent, persistent, and confounding to us all,” says Charles Marsh, Commonwealth Professor of Religious Studies and the director of the Project on Lived Theology.

In Shoutin’ in the Fire, Danté Stewart gives breathtaking language to his reckoning with the legacy of white supremacy – both the kind that hangs over our country and the kind that is internalized on a molecular level. Stewart uses his personal experiences as a vehicle to reclaim and reimagine spiritual virtues like rage, resilience, and remembrance – and explores how these virtues might function as a work of love against an unjust, unloving world.

“Only once in a lifetime do we come across a writer like Danté Stewart, so young and yet so masterful with the pen. This work is a thing to make dungeons shake and hearts thunder.” (Robert Jones, Jr., New York Times best-selling author of The Prophets).

Stewart received his BA in sociology from Clemson University and is currently studying at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta.

The Nov. 17 event, which is free and open to the public, can be watched on Zoom at https://tinyurl.com/joinPLT, Passcode: 546359. A question-and-answer session will follow the lecture.

The Project on Lived Theology at the University of Virginia is a research community funded by the Lilly Endowment, Inc., commissioned to understand the social consequences of theological ideas for the sake of a more just and compassionate world.

Public figures across the political spectrum, from President Barack Obama to conservative commentator David Brooks, have cited theologian Reinhold Niebuhr and his philosophies as major influences on their worldviews.

During a Sept. 15 seminar with University of Virginia undergraduates, Eugene McCarraher, professor of humanities and history at Villanova University, asked, “Why do ‘very serious people’ like Reinhold Niebuhr so much?” McCarraher ultimately concluded that Niebuhr’s philosophy of political realism cannot provide us with what we need for our time.

Video of McCarraher’s talk, “Wisdom to Know the Difference: Why Reinhold Niebuhr Isn’t the Theologian We Need Today,” is now available on the Project on Lived Theology’s website here.

During his lecture over Zoom, McCarraher explained how Niebuhr’s version of the Serenity Prayer illustrates both philosophical strengths and limitations: the serenity that the prayer counsels, while inspiring to many people, can too easily turn into complacency and resignation, while the courage that the prayer espouses is too narrow a concept. 

“As with so many of Niebuhr’s pronouncements, we’re all expected to stroke our chins and furrow our brows at its stringent gravitas,” said McCarraher. “Yet I think this prayer also includes everything I consider to be anemic and debilitating about Niebuhr’s political theology.”

According to McCarraher, Niebuhr was a radical firebrand as a young evangelical minister and had criticized postwar liberalism “as a philosophy of the middle-aged.”

In his 1932 book Moral Man and Immoral Society, Niebuhr advocated for the philosophy of political realism. He argued that the concept of American exceptionalism and the perceived connection between material success and divine favor are the most fatal delusions of all. As a result, our democracy might be short-lived unless we face the issues of social injustice, economic immobility, and imperialism. Niebuhr stated that the beloved community will have to wait until the end of history and that politics could serve as a means of damage control until then. Niebuhr called on American leaders to practice humility, circumspection, self-restraint, and realism in the meantime.

Despite this appeal to leaders, Niebuhr would go on to support World War II, anti-communism, and the development of nuclear weapons but would oppose the Vietnam War. McCarraher, during his lecture, contended that Niebuhr’s inability to go a step further and openly call for America’s withdrawal from Vietnam was actually a capitulation to realism as well as a lack of imagination about how society could be restructured. Cold War elites could in this way invoke Niebuhr in order to maintain public lawfulness via imperialism and militarism, especially when connected to national identity.

And so, according to McCarraher, public theologians and intellectuals must reclaim the language of political realism because Niebuhrian realism is not realistic or visionary enough. 

During the subsequent question-and-answer session, McCarraher and the students discussed the role of guilt in pacifist politics, the political consequences of the original sin doctrine, the role of human finitude and fallibility in Christian realism, and Niebuhr’s influence on Martin Luther King, Jr., and theologians today.

McCarraher’s talk was part of “Theologies of Resistance and Reconciliation: Bonhoeffer, Niebuhr, King,” a UVA undergraduate seminar taught by Guy Aiken, Project on Lived Theology research fellow, and Charles Marsh, PLT director and UVA religious studies professor. 

A professor at Villanova since 2000, Eugene McCarraher’s research has focused on social thought, capitalism, and religion in the United States. He has received fellowships from the Lilly Endowment, the Pew Charitable Trusts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Council of Learned Societies. In addition to his scholarly work, McCarraher has published reviews and essays in Commonweal, Dissent, the Baffler, the Nation, the Hedgehog Review, and Raritan. His two books are Christian Critics: Religion and the Impasse in Modern American Social Thought (Cornell University Press, 2000) and The Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2019). 

In addition to speaking at various PLT events, McCarraher has participated in PLT’s 2008 Spring Institute for Lived Theology and 2002 Lived Theology and Power Workgroup.

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.