On the Lived Theology Reading List: Journey Toward Justice: Personal Encounters in the Global South

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Biblical Justice in the Global South

Nicholas Wolterstorff combines his extensive philosophical training with his vast experience of South Africa, the Middle East, and Honduras to present a theology of justice in Journey Toward Justice: Personal Encounters in the Global South. Wolterstorff seeks to elevate marginalized voices of the Global South, centering his ethical framework around the principle of shalom, or flourishing. Journey Toward Justice examines principles of human rights down to their most basic components, and at the same time tells the deeply important stories of people who have had their rights stripped away, ultimately making a case for biblical justice’s use in the world. Nuanced, hopeful, and thoughtfully-constructed, Wolterstorff uses his encounters with global persecution to imagine a liberative and salvific future for the all the world’s oppressed.

Nicholas Wolterstorff is a senior fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia, and is also a Noah Porter Professor Emeritus of Philosophical Theology at Yale University. He has authored several books, including Four (and a half) Dialogues on Homosexuality and the Bible (with Donald J. Zeyl) and Call for Justice: From Practice to Theory and Back (with Kurt Ver Beek), and Lament for a Son.

Reviews and endorsements of the publication include:

“Drawing on his experience of being confronted by those who have suffered injustice, Wolterstorff helps us understand why and how such experiences should make a difference for how justice is understood. His reflections on the relations of beauty, hope, and justice are profound and moving.” 

-Stanley Hauerwas, Duke Divinity School, author of With the Grain of the Universe and Hannah’s Child

“I have been so deeply grateful, over many years, for the gift of rigorous scholarship Dr. Wolterstorff has brought to the body of Christ. Now my gratitude expands all the more with his newest gift: his work on biblical justice made accessible for even wider audiences and, most of all, the sharing of his personal journey. This is a book that I will use in many settings for years to come.”

– Bethany H. Hoang, Director of the IJM Institute for Biblical Justice

“Wolterstorff’s Journey toward Justice is far more than his personal story of how his encounters with suffering people shaped his thinking (and life) around an active concern for justice. The book combines this story with deep and clear thinking, centered in the biblical revelation, about how Christians should think about justice and about the implications of a biblical concern for justice in the contemporary world.”

– C. Stephen Evans, Baylor University

For more information on the publication, click here.

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

Evangelical Anxiety Now Available in Paperback Edition

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In this riveting spiritual memoir, Charles Marsh tells the story of his struggles with mental illness, explores the void between the Christian faith and scientific treatment, and forges a path toward reconciling these divergent worlds.

For years, Charles Marsh suffered panic attacks and debilitating anxiety. As an Evangelical Christian, he was taught to trust in the power of God and His will. While his Christian community resisted therapy and personal introspection, Marsh eventually knew he needed help. To alleviate his suffering, he made the bold decision to seek medical treatment and underwent years of psychoanalysis. 

In this riveting spiritual memoir, Marsh tells the story of his struggle to find peace and the dramatic, inspiring transformation that redefined his life and his faith. He examines the tensions between faith and science and reflects on how his own experiences offer hope for bridging the gap between the two. Honest and revealing, Marsh traces the roots of shame, examines Christian notions of sex, faith, and mental illness and their genesis, and chronicles how he redefined his beliefs and rebuilt his relationship with his community. 

A poignant and vital story of deep soul work, Evangelical Anxiety helps us look beyond the stigma that leaves too many people in pain and offers people of faith a way forward to find the help they need while remaining true to their beliefs. 

Paperback edition available here or at your favorite reseller

“White Too Long” with Robert P. Jones

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On December 3, 2024, Robert P. Jones joined the UVA graduate seminar Theologies of Resistance and Reconciliation by Zoom to talk about his research on the theological and historical sources of white supremacy in the United States.

Dr. Robert P. Jones is the president and founder of the Public Religion Research Institute, a nonprofit nonpartisan organization dedicated to conducting independent research and driving conversations at the intersection of religion, culture, and politics. He is a frequent on-air guest on television shows, and his editorials and essays have been published in such places as The Atlantic, Religion News Services, Time Magazine, and other outlets. He’s frequently featured in major news media, such as CNN, MSNBC, NPR, The New York Times, and the Washington Post.

Dr. Jones is also a New York Times bestselling author. His most recent book is The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy, and the Path to Shared American Future. His book The End of White Christian America won the 2019 Grawemeyer award, which is given every year to the most influential book written in religion in North America, and this is quite an extraordinary honor. His talk today is based on an earlier book called White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity.

Watch the event here

Listen to the event here

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.

Remembering Rev. Dr. Charles Robert Marsh

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CELEBRATION OF LIFE:

2:00 PM EST, MONDAY, JANUARY 13

WATCH HERE

The Rev. Dr. Charles Robert Marsh, a Southern Baptist minister who served as senior pastor at Atlanta’s Second Ponce de Leon Baptist Church from 1978 to 1993 died on Christmas Eve while in hospice care at Lenbrook in Atlanta, Georgia. Marsh, a passionate teacher of the Bible, and a local religious leader in the desegregation of public schools in the South, was 92-years old.

The full obituary is available here.

Call for Applications: Summer Internship in Lived Theology 2025

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Now Accepting Applications for Summer 2025

The Project on Lived Theology is now accepting applications for the 2025 Summer Internship in Lived Theology, a service-learning immersion that offers undergraduates an opportunity to think and to write theologically about human rights and social justice in the context of an in-the-field service internship. To download an application, click here.

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

The deadline for application submission is February 21, 2025.

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

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

“The World Can Be Different: The Theological Vision of Dorothee Soelle” with Sarah K. Pinnock

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On November 19, 2024, Professor Sarah Pinnock joined the UVA graduate seminar Theologies of Resistance and Reconciliation to talk about the life and thought of Dorothee Soelle. 

Dr. Sarah Pinnock is professor of contemporary religious thought at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. Sarah was born in New Orleans in 1968-67, where her father, a Baptist theologian and influential, evangelical thinker, Clark Pinnock, taught theology. When she was her family moved back to their native Canada, first to Vancouver, and later to Toronto. 

After undergraduate and M.A. studies at MacMaster University, Sarah began doctoral studies in philosophical theology at Yale University under the tutelage of Louis Dupree. During a research year in Germany, Sarah served as Dorothee Soelle’s assistant. 

Her research on Soelle and more broadly on Christian responses to the Holocaust, culminated in her doctoral dissertation, which led in turn to her first book, Beyond Theodicy, Christian Continental Thinkers Respond to the Holocaust.

Dr. Pinnock joined the faculty at Trinity University in 2000.  Her book The Theology of Dorothee Soelle is a stellar collaboration of essays  and the basis of her presentation this afternoon.

On the shape of Soelle’s thought, Pinnock writes: “Soelle’s mysticism and christology responds to critiques in modernity. God is not the explanation for scientific unknowns, or what Bonhoeffer calls ‘the God of the gaps.’ She also rejected the image of God as the ruler of history… Soelle proposed a nontheistic christology that opens up a vision of God in which God is dependent, and our actions represent God in the world. We are each unique contributors to the work of God in the world.”

Listen to the event here

Watch the event here

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.

Robert P. Jones on the Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity

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The Project on Lived Theology presents a lecture with Robert P. Jones, New York Times Bestselling Author and Founder and President of the Public Religion Research Institute, titled “White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity.” The lecture will take place on Tuesday, December 3, from 3:30-4:45 EST. It is a virtual presentation and can be viewed at the following link:

ZOOM LINK

The lecture is part of Professor Charles Marsh’s Theologies of Reconciliation and Resistance fall seminar. 

The Project on Lived Theology at the University of Virginia is a research initiative that studies the social consequences of theological ideas for the sake of a more just and compassionate world.

On the Lived Theology Reading List: Facing Death

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Confronting Mortality in the Holocaust and Ourselves

What do we learn about death from the Holocaust and how does it impact our responses to mortality today?

This book brings together the work of eleven Holocaust and genocide scholars who address this difficult question, convinced of the urgency of further reflection on the Holocaust as the last survivors pass away. The volume is distinctive in its dialogical and introspective approach, where the contributors position themselves to confront their own impending death while listening to the voices of victims and learning from their life experiences. Broken into three parts, this collection engages with these voices in a way that is not only scholarly, but deeply personal.

The first part of the book engages with Holocaust testimony by drawing on the writings of survivors and witnesses such as Elie Wiesel, Jean Améry, and Charlotte Delbo, including rare accounts from members of the Sonderkommando. Reflections of post-Holocaust generations—the children and grandchildren of survivors—are housed in the second part, addressing questions of remembrance and memorialization. The concluding essays offer intimate self-reflection about how engagement with the Holocaust impacts the contributors’ lives, faiths, and ethics.

In an age of continuing atrocities, this book provides careful attention to the affective dimension of coping with death, in particular, how loss and grief are deferred or denied, narrated, and passed along.

Author Sarah K. Pinnock is a professor of contemporary religious thought at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. In Hamburg Germany (1997-98) she held a DAAD (German Academic Exchange) doctoral fellowship at the Faculty of Protestant Theology. She joined the Trinity faculty in fall 2000 after two years teaching at California State University Chico. She won a Fulbright award to hold a visiting professorship at the Faculty of Theology of Latvia University in Riga (2006-07). She served as the Religion Department Chair at Trinity from 2012-18.

For more information on the publication, click here.

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

Lecture in Lived Theology with Sarah K. Pinnock

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The Project on Lived Theology presents a lecture with Sarah K. Pinnock, Professor of Contemporary Religious Thought, Trinity University, titled “The World Can Be Different: The Theological Vision of Dorothee Soelle.” The lecture will take place on Tuesday, November 19, from 3:30-4:45 EST. It is a virtual presentation and can be viewed at the following link:

ZOOM LINK

The lecture is part of Professor Charles Marsh’s Theologies of Reconciliation and Resistance fall seminar. 

The Project on Lived Theology at the University of Virginia is a research initiative that studies the social consequences of theological ideas for the sake of a more just and compassionate world.

“Why Reinhold Niebuhr Matters” with Larry Rasmussen

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On October 8, 2024, Dr. Larry Rasmussen joined a graduate seminar in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia called Theologies of Resistance and Reconciliation to speak to the class about the thought and life of Niebuhr. The course was rolled out twenty years as a graduate seminar on Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther King. Jr. and has expanded over the years to include Reinhold Niebuhr and Dorothee Soelle. 

Dr. Larry Rasmussen is the Reinhold Niebuhr Professor Emeritus of Social Ethics at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Rasmussen’s first book – his revised doctoral dissertation – was based on a fellowship year in Berlin in 1969 during which he conducted oral interviews wit Bonhoeffer’s students, fellow conspirators, family members, and allies in the Kirchenkampf. The landmark book, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Reality and Resistance. Originally was published in 1972, and reissued by Westminster John Knox Press in 2005. Larry has also served as an editor and consultant to the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works Translation Project. 

Professor Rasmussen is a lay theologian of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. His current work in Christian ethics includes analysis of power, methodological issues in Bible and ethics, and reflections on technology and ecology. His volume, Earth Community, Earth Ethics (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1996), won the prestigious Grawemeyer Award in Religion of 1997.  He served as a member of the Science, Ethics, and Religion Advisory Committee of the AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) and was a recipient of a Henry Luce Fellowship in Theology, 1998-99, the Burnice Fjellman Award for Distinguished Christian Ministries in Higher Education, and the Joseph Sittler Award for Outstanding Leadership in Theological Education.  From 1990-2000 he served as co-moderator of the WCC unit, Justice, Peace, Creation.  He and Nyla live in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Excerpt: “Pandemics that have deep roots and institutional legs like the pandemic of racism, take a long time to eradicate. Victories come in fits and start in context after being engaged anew over and again, not least because the poisonous virus develops new variant strains. This means you should celebrate victories when you can rest up, return to the struggle with vigor, and pass the torch when you must.”

Listen to the event here

Watch the event here

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.