Struggles in Global Public Health

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I didn’t notice it at first – my second coffee of the morning probably hadn’t kicked in yet. Most mornings, I sort all of the mail that has come into Bread for the City for their representative payee clients. These are consumers who have been declared mentally unable to take care of their own finances by a judge or doctor. BFC is one of a few organizations around the city that manages the consumer’s money to pay their bills and give them a weekly allowance. Sorting this mail requires looking up the recipient’s name and categorizing them according to what “group” the recipient is labeled as. 

After I got about halfway through the pile, I realized a lot of them were going to various teams at Anchor Mental Health – the building in which I work for Catholic Charities on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Anchor is the headquarters for all of Catholic Charities’ mental health and psychiatric care – which is a lot. They have about a half-dozen teams responding to various groups’ needs, with school interventions, crisis response, and counseling. The biggest recipient of the mail I was sorting was the ACT team. ACT, or Assertive Community Treatment, is for people who have severe, untreated mental illness. 

Dozens of these mail recipients, who were clients of Bread, were also clients of Catholic Charities. I guess I should not have been surprised by this, because both organizations provide similar but complementary social services. There is a lot of overlap in the groups of people who seek out their services. 

If someone is severely mentally ill, chances are they have a hard time keeping a job. That affects their ability to pay bills or get food, which Bread helps with. It also affects their ability to function independently, which Catholic Charities would help with. I mentioned what I had noticed to Ms. Kesara, my supervisor, and she explained it much more succinctly: “We help with the money and the food, they [Catholic Charities and other nonprofits] help with the other stuff.” 

This realization got me thinking more about how various social determinants of health overlap and feed off of each other. In the public health sphere, social determinants of health, in a broad sense, are the various nonmedical factors that affect health. These are the environments and conditions in which one grows up and lives in. Access to nutritious food is a good example, as are water and air quality, safe housing and transportation, exposure to trauma and violence, and financial stability. And a lot of times, these overlap. A child born in poverty lives in a rough neighborhood near an industrial park. The pollution he grows up breathing, coupled with the fact that there are no safe parks nearby to run around in, means that he has a vastly greater chance of developing asthma or other health issues.

Just by sorting the mail, I was seeing some of these social determinants play out in real life. Financial struggles were connected to physical health struggles were connected to mental health struggles were connected to food struggles were connected to… you get it. 

Local nonprofit organizations are uniquely able to get to know their clients and work with them on specific issues. They’re generally best suited to address the needs of consumers for whom the social determinants of health have overlapped in difficult ways. Picture an archetypal homeless person. Probably influenced as much by stereotypes as by lived experience, this is probably a drinking, smoking, guy talking loudly to himself. You (and me, too) start mentally preparing to look straight ahead and give him a wide berth as soon as you hear him down the block. Bread for the City might help him pay his bills if he is unable to. Catholic Charities might help him with psychiatric care and substance abuse recovery. Another organization might assist with finding a job.

Local, specialized NGOs can understand the local environment and residents far better than a statewide, national, or even international effort can. But it also means that there are that many more opportunities for information – and people – to slip through the cracks. Here we find a very fine balance between specialization and complication. 

Global public health at large faces the same difficulties. This week, I have continued reading Ellen Idler’s Religion as a Social Determinant of Public Health. In his chapter, “Religion and Global Health,” Peter Brown writes that global health is “fragmented, complicated, and inadequately tracked.” A pretty condemning description! In this chapter, Brown writes about how nationally- or internationally-funded programs work best when enacted by local actors. Instead of outsiders entering a community and attempting to run (usually very well-intentioned) initiatives, these initiatives should be run by those who they would benefit. Community leaders better understand the culture, the issues affecting the residents, and what solutions might work best. 

However, these locally-run initiatives often struggle to communicate with each other and as a group. This damages both day-to-day logistics as well as prevents everyone from learning what works and what doesn’t. 

In our conversation last Friday, Dr. Holman and I discussed these issues of autonomy, locality, communication, and consistency of care. Ultimately, it comes down to a balance between effectiveness and efficiency. Balancing the scale requires both being fair to local needs and emphasizing quality assessment. Yes, public health initiatives should be locally-run as much as possible if (!) they are consistently assessed to be working. 

It’s difficult to measure the costs and benefits of this fragmented approach to holistic public health. How many bills were late because a Catholic Charities intern took too long to sort the mail forwarded to another organization? How many people had to rethink their whole schedule because Bread changed their food pantry hours? But also: how many mentally disabled people are able to lead more independent lives with fewer financial burdens? How many meals have been distributed to those who would have otherwise not eaten? 

These next two weeks, I will be reading Bread for the World by Arthur Simon and the chapter “Toward a Theology of Medicine,” in Hostility and Hospitality by Michael and Tracy Balboni, and am looking forward to finally getting to My Year of Rest and Relaxation (the book, but maybe it’ll also spark a very mellow next 365 days). 

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: The Class of ’65: A Student, a Divided Town, and the Long Road to Forgiveness

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Forgiveness from Americus, Georgia

Greg Wittkamper, a white teenager in the 1960s, welcomed desegregation at Americus High School, having grown up on a diverse, accepting Christian commune. The same could not be said for his fellow white students, who subjected Greg to endless cruelty as punishment for his lack of hostility toward black students. In The Class of ’65, Atlanta journalist Jim Auchmutey explores Greg’s life in Americus, as well as the moment when a dozen white students reached out to Greg 40 years after graduating high school, seeking his forgiveness for their past behavior. Auchmutey’s book involves Greg unearthing the traumatic abuse he endured in his teenage years, while at the same time taking a complicated path toward radical forgiveness of his peers. As devastating as it is hopeful, The Class of ’65 tells a true story of redemption while recalling chilling details of the racially divided American South during the Civil Rights Era.

Jim Auchmutey is a former journalist at the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, with stories focusing on culture and life in the American South. In addition to The Class of ’65, Auchmutey is also the author of Smokelore: A Short History of Barbecue in America and The Ultimate Barbecue Sauce Cookbook. He is a two-time winner of Cox Newspapers chain’s Writer of the Year award.

Reviews and endorsements of the publication include:

“Jim Auchmutey set out to write a book about one man’s journey to forgiveness, but The Class of ’65 is truly the story of how one generation discovered its soul. [Auchmutey] takes readers to that reunion and beautifully describes the conflictive feelings that were present.”

-The Columbus Ledger Dispatch

“A spellbinding, deeply sensitive portrayal of the conflicted heart of the South. Through the stories of children who have now become middle age, we see racism crashing into conscience, cowardice transforming into courage.”

– Hank Klibanoff, co-author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Race Beat

“Author Jim Auchmutey, a journalist who worked for nearly three decades at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, expertly tells the story of that student, the Americus community, the larger civil rights struggle and an unexpected reconciliation decades later. The reconciliation that follows in Auchmutey’s compelling narrative is at times tentative and halting, but also filled with emotional power. And it appears to be still in progress. At the time of the reunion, it included only Wittkamper and his white classmates. The closing section of Auchmutey’s book suggests another chapter yet to be written, as blacks and whites together make peace with the past.”

– The Associated Press

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.

I Don’t Have Anybody: Loneliness and Health

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It has been almost three weeks since I started my internships at Bread for the City and Catholic Charities. I’ve started to get a view of what my work looks like, and how it fits into both each organization’s mission and public health in D.C. My days at Bread usually consist of helping organize and run their extensive food pantry, which serves hundreds of people a day. This is a lot of on-the-ground, with-the-people work, and it is as exhausting as it is rewarding. 

Recently, a lot of my time at Bread has involved making calls. Because of a lack of funding, the organization has had to cut their food delivery program. For the past few years, since the beginning of the pandemic, they have delivered monthly groceries to many clients around the city. The program is shuttering on July 1, and we have to call all 1,500 (yes) recipients before then to let them know. I have the script practically memorized at this point: We have to end the delivery program, no, there is not enough money for it, yes, the pantries will still be open, yes, from Monday through Thursday, 9 am to 3 pm. The phrasings of “this number is no longer in service,” or “this number cannot accept calls” are ingrained in my mind at this point. 

Nearly everyone was very understanding, although I’m sure this created a considerable disruption to their food supply. The monthly deliveries are not meant to provide every single meal for a whole month, but they are a significant supplement. They are often part of a puzzle, put together with other pieces from other nonprofits, services and purchased food. People were sympathetic about the financial constraints and made plans to come in-person, and lots were thankful I let them know. A few people were upset, and I was hung up on a few times. 

The calls that have stuck with me, though, are the ones of older people who are homebound, from illness, immobility, or both. And when I go into the next part of my spiel – don’t worry! If they can’t get to us, they can send someone to pick up their groceries for them! – these callers have responded with “well, I don’t have anybody.” Nobody – no family or friends, no caretaker or assistant, no neighbor or random neighborhood acquaintance. They “don’t have anybody” to pick up their food, their medication, help them get dressed, or just to sit and spend time with them. 

I am especially struck by this loneliness when I think about all of the people I have interacted with today. I called my parents and brother, who are all interested in my summer. I played pickleball and went to a museum with my friend Caroline. I went to church with my great aunt and uncle (with whom I am living) and chatted with the pastor afterwards. All of those people would help me if I needed it – and these are only the people I saw today. Being confined to bed would be immensely difficult for anyone, even if they were well-connected. But to go at it alone – I’m embarrassed to say that it is difficult for me to comprehend and it is mind-boggling in its emptiness. This is a loneliness that stands apart, and is far deeper than any of my dabblings during my first semester of college. 

From my reading list, provided by Dr. Holman, I have begun Religion as a Social Determinant of Public Health,by Ellen Idler. In it, she describes how there is something about religion that is good for health.1 Even when controlling for related variables (like being married or drinking less), the uplifting community that religion creates consistently predicts a longer lifespan. Being with other people and feeling connected to them is not only good for the soul, but also good for the body. So in a way, facilitating connection is one of the ultimate public health interventions. It’s probably why the surgeon general called our nation’s loneliness “an epidemic.”2 

When I read this information today, I couldn’t help but think about Alice*, who sounded as though she might be about to cry when she said she didn’t have anyone to get her groceries for her. Her voice sounded like my grandmother’s as she described how she is bedridden. Or about Cassandra*, who was struggling to think of someone to do her pickup after her son passed away on Friday. There is a depth to this loneliness that touches on a spiritual level, but hurts physical health, too. 

This (very) windy thought tangent has started to nudge me outside of what I typically picture as public health interventions. This is beyond the typical vaccinations and seatbelts – how can we prescribe something so intangible as connection, to a culture so desperately in need of a cure? My normal knee-jerk response of “public policy” is limited here. The types of community interventions, as well as the layered complexities of social determinants of health, are something I will enjoy diving into with Dr. Holman during our next meeting.

As I begin to think about what it means to be a Christian in public health spaces, and to serve others through faith, I think about Ms. Jeanette, one of my supervisors at Bread. During some of the busiest parts of the day – when the line of customers keeps growing, the grocery bags keep tearing, and my feet are sore – is when she likes to play her gospel music. It isn’t a dramatic singalong, but an underlying soundtrack that everyone who enters the food bank can hear. 

Her music is not just some silly, platitudinous attempt to tell the people coming in for food to “not worry, because God has a plan!” I don’t think that’s comforting, and I doubt many other people think it is, either. Somehow Ms. Jeanette finds additional room for praise in the midst of need. But there is also grief: “in the darkest night you are close like no other,” one song says. There is both praise and lament in this space, where the hungry are lonely, and somehow there is still a God walking alongside. 

1 Idler, Ellen L. (2014). Religion as a social determinant of public health. Oxford University Press.

2 Murthy, Vivek H. Office of the Surgeon General. (2023). Our Epidemic of Loneliness: The U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory on the Healing Effects of Social Connection and Community. https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/surgeon-general-social-connection-advisory.pdf

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.

Elizabeth Rambo to Study Faith-Based Approaches to Health

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We are pleased to announce that the Project on Lived Theology (PLT) has awarded an Undergraduate Summer Fellowship to Elizabeth Rambo, a rising fourth year from Columbia, South Carolina, majoring in Global Public Health.

Alongside an academic and theological mentorship with Dr. Susan Holman, Elizabeth will be interning in the health outreach arm of Catholic Charities of Washington, D.C and the food department of Bread for the City. Elizabeth and Dr. Holman will focus their studies on faith-based approaches to public health.

Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Washington (CCADW), among other services, provides extensive physical and mental healthcare through free and low-cost dental care, general medicine, medications, and behavioral and psychiatric aid. Serving the community for nearly a century, they provide care to the entirety of Washington, D.C. as well as eastern and southern Maryland. Bread for the City gives comprehensive social services as well, to a smaller area in downtown D.C. Their food bank serves hundreds daily facing short or long-term food insecurity.

With Dr. Holman, Elizabeth will study and reflect upon the intersection of faith, human rights, and global public health. This study will complement her roles at organizations who deal extensively with the public health crises of poverty, mental health, and food insecurity. She plans to research and discuss how race and racism, public health policy, and culture have impacted the diverse D.C. community and the health issues it faces – and how faith-based organizations can begin the healing process.

At UVA, Elizabeth is on the leadership team for Reformed University Fellowship (RUF), mentors for the Young Women Leaders Program, and enjoys hiking, reading, and being with friends.

Reading List: 

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: Restorative Hope: Creating Pathways of Connection in Women’s Prisons

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Having Hope in the Darkest of Places

Inspired by her life of ministry and service, Sarah Farmer presents a model for fostering agency and perseverance among incarcerated women in Restorative Hope: Creating Pathways of Connection in Women’s Prisons. Examining moments of both suffering and joy amid the circumstances of these women, Farmer platforms their voices and experiences to argue for the value of theological programs in their lives. Honest and with great analytical depth, Farmer approaches the complicated and often tragic circumstances- things like “chronic and infectious disease, reproductive health challenges, substance abuse, sexual victimization, poverty, unemployment, housing insecurity, maternal incarceration, shame and stigma, grief, trauma, diminished faith”- that inform women’s incarceration. With a focus on hope and justice, and written with the knowledge that only direct experience provides, Restorative Hope is an important pedagogy and narrative for serving communities in the most desolate of conditions.

Sarah F. Farmer is the Associate Director at the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion. She was previously a professor of community development and practical theology at Indiana Wesleyan University and an associate research scholar and lecturer at Yale Divinity School. She also worked with the Youth Hope-Builders Academy at Interdenominational Theological Center and founded Youth Arts and Peace Camp in Chester, Pennsylvania.

Reviews and endorsements of the publication include:

“By connecting mobility to hope, Farmer names something fundamental about the prison —restricting movement also restricts hope. As readers learn firsthand how incarcerated women nurture hope in a place characterized by restraint, we are invited into a shared project with them. We may get proximate and cultivate spaces of hope where resilience is strengthened, identities are reclaimed, and meaningful connections are made. Farmer’s book is itself an instigator of hope, moving us to reclaim our own agency in the face of a seemingly unmovable reality.”

-Jennifer McBride, author of You Shall Not Condemn: A Story of Faith and Advocacy on Death Row

“Sarah Farmer listens brilliantly to those who are rarely heard—women who are or have been incarcerated. She listens with a depth of theological analysis and emotional intelligence unmatched by any other text on women in prison that I have ever read. This is one of the most beautiful accounts of a practice of hope that we have. If you read it, you might come to learn how to listen as well as Sarah Farmer. This book will be read for generations.”

– Willie James Jennings, Yale Divinity School

“Read the preface of this wonderfully written and carefully researched book by my former colleague and you will be hooked. As you read further, you will see hope come and spread its wings in some of our most desolate social spaces—prisons. A compelling practical theology and pedagogy of restorative hope.”

– Miroslav Volf, Yale Divinity School

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.

Mt. Zion: Being In The Neighborhood

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by Lilly West, 2023 Undergraduate Summer Research Fellow in Lived Theology

“I’ve got another Yes, Lord (in my soul)” Mt. Zion’s choir sings. In the same way that the church’s historic 105 Ridge Street building holds echoes of a century of worship, praise reverberates in the sanctuary of the new edifice at 105 Lankford Street. Theirs is a resilient adoration. 

As Reverend Dr. Edwards noted in an interview in 1986, five years into his ministry at Mt. Zion, they are a “survival church.”[1] My research this summer has been a project of storytelling, attempting to bear witness to an intersection of communities “sing[ing] better songs with [their] lives.”[2] The harmonies and disharmonies that I have encountered swell around me, holding despair, pain, and, ultimately, “triumph and calm confidence.”[3]

Early on a Tuesday morning, I walked into Mt. Zion’s church office to interview the Reverend Dr. Alvin Edwards. Characterized by most who know him as a busy man whose love for his congregation and his city orders his schedule, he graciously agreed to sit with me for a sizeable portion of his morning. Within those few hours, in the spirit of calm confidence, Reverend Edwards shared his experience of God’s faithfulness in Mt. Zion’s survival. 

When he stepped into his ministry at Mt. Zion in 1981, Reverend Edwards stepped into a story and a history that preceded himself. “When I came, my focus was probably more healing than anything else,” he notes, since the church was very divided in the wake of pastoral transition. I asked about his relationship with Reverend Hamilton, who served Mt. Zion from 1960 to 1980. “To be honest,” he started, “I did not meet him until years later at the 125th Anniversary when I invited all living former pastors to come preach.” 

I had assumed that Reverend Hamilton, who led the church during Charlottesville’s urban renewal initiative, which razed the Vinegar Hill neighborhood surrounding the historic church building, had shaped Reverend Edwards’ vision for the future of the church, particularly its move to the Lankford location. However, as Reverend Edwards describes it, the congregation directed his energies for the first 20 years of his ministry. Upon his arrival to Mt. Zion, he felt a tense air, “so thick you could cut it.” Church membership, as he understood it, dwindled and the average age rose. In the early days of his leadership, faithful church members invited him into the church’s recent history. “I began to hear the stories about Vinegar Hill and how they razed the community, how it dispersed all the African American people, their families, their businesses; to see how the city of Charlottesville really cheated Zion Union Baptist Church. That destroyed,” he reflects and starts again, “that decimated the Black community.”

Prior to Charlottesville’s urban renewal, many members of Mt. Zion lived in the Vinegar Hill neighborhood, easily within walking distance of the church. With the demolition of the neighborhood, residents were forced to relocate, which resulted in many moving to the 10th & Page, Ridge Street, and Belmont neighborhoods. Physical distance, as well the absence of a centralized communal space, dimmed the liveliness of the community. The land set to be “renewed” remained untouched for decades. Confusion and grief shattered the Black community. For Mt. Zion’s purposes, community engagement became a completely new project, and relocated members now had to commute for worship on Sundays. Mt. Zion’s new problem? No parking lot. 

So, it would come as no surprise that when Reverend Edwards asked the congregation in 1981 their hopes for the church’s future, he noticed that the church was in desperate need of space, something he had little of in the historic building. Thus, the land for the new church building at First and Lankford was purchased within the first few years of his pastorate. He told his congregation and the broader city of Charlottesville, “I want to put our church back into the neighborhood.”[4]

Beyond moving the congregation’s physical presence “into the neighborhood,” Reverend Edwards himself entered into the realm of city leadership. For him, politics and religion cannot be divorced, especially in his role as a pastor. “There is a separation in the sense that you can’t legislate righteousness,” he offers; however, “do[ing] what’s best for [the] community,” which he understands to be his responsibility, means that he must involve himself in the workings of the city. Repeatedly, he tells me, “[m]y faith makes me look at the total person, the head, the heart and the soul.” To see someone as a “total being” should direct the Christian longing for justice and participation in spaces where there are opportunities for growth towards a more just, nurturing, safe community. To this end, Reverend Edwards had involved himself in leadership spaces such as the Monticello Area Community Action Agency, Alliance for Interfaith Ministries, Charlottesville Redevelopment Housing Authority, Charlottesville Albemarle Boys and Girls Club, Charlottesville City Council, and Back to School Bash.[5] “I want to keep working,” he looks at me and shakes his head, “I don’t want to rust out in life, I want to wear out.” 

The church should be a place where the desire for the health of the “total being” abounds. Yet, as Reverend Edwards solemnly addresses, “the church as the body of Christ is polarized.” Our differences, he argues, prevent us from working together for the flourishing of our shared community. He, alongside the Charlottesville Clergy Collective, “a group of faith and allied  community leaders” and his “brainchild”[6]  pray for solidarity in the fight for justice and righteousness. 

What can that solidarity look like in our racially separated church communities? Well, for one, the White church has to shift its understanding of solidarity. “If White churches expect Black churches to act like them, it’ll never happen,” Reverend Edwards notes, “because the Black church has been the one to have to fight and defend who we are historically, because the White church hasn’t stepped up to do it, especially the ‘body of Christ’.” Growth in this area will start with truth telling. “I think some of the white pastors and their members need to start speaking out against the wrongs that they see and stop burying their heads in the sand,” he cries out, “if we don’t turn it around we are getting ready to lose another generation of people because we haven’t ministered to them in a way that their lives have been transformed. Because we are scared. We are comfortable where we are. It ought not to be that way.” 

His prayer for the body of Christ is that God would “liberate all of us from our prejudices, from our biases.” There is a richer future available to the Christian community. God invites us into an active, lived faith. This faith points to God’s inauguration of the eternal Kingdom, where God’s love in us transcends the brokenness of this earth. The more I read, the more I feel that proximity, “being in the neighborhood,” as Reverend Edwards described, is central to this future reality. Our brightest conceptions of racial reconciliation and the renewal of our church bodies are glimpses of a future not yet accessible to us.[7] Until that time, God has protected and steadied communities like Mt. Zion, communities that desire to “make kingdom kids, kingdom churches, to make God’s kingdom here on earth as in heaven.” Ultimately, I hope that God stirs us to work that grows “far more organic, meaningful, and authentic relationships than any of us can think of and project in the abstract from the alienated and still unredressed ground on which we currently stand.”[8]

This summer, I’ve been blessed to sit and reflect at the intersection of communities, Mt. Zion, the Music Resource Center, and Church of the Good Shepherd, which I have been able to research. It has been a summer of resonant worship, and songs have echoed within me and refashioned my soul. Maybe I’ve sung “Got Another Yes Lord” too many times,  but I think that God continually places sustained, partnered work in front of us. My summer ends calmly confident in prayer for “another yes.” 

[1] Charlottesville Daily Progress, (12/24/1986).

[2] Charles Marsh, Welcoming Justice, “The Power of True Conversion” (78)

[3]  W.E.B. Dubois, The Souls of Black Folk (222) 

[4] Charlottesville Daily Progress, (12/24/1986). 

[5] https://ministeringtoministers.org/awards/the-rev-dr-alvin-edwards/

 Reverend Edwards states that one of his dreams would be to see communities of believers work together to help every child reach grade reading level. The potential for human and community flourishing from this effort would be transformative. 

[6] https://www.cvilleclergycollective.org/about.html

[7] Harvey, Jennifer. Dear White Christians. (100)

[8]  Harvey, Jennifer. Dear White Christians. (100)

Learn more about the Lilly’s Undergraduate Summer Research Fellowship in Lived Theology 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.

On the Lived Theology Reading List: In the Pines: A Lynching, a Lie, a Reckoning

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Untangling a Lie

Grace Elizabeth Hale learned in her early adult life about the heroism of her grandfather: a 1947 sheriff in Prentiss, Mississippi, who courageously protected a black man, wrongly accused of raping a white woman, from a ferocious mob. With the help of a Carnegie Fellowship, Hale endeavors in In the Pines: A Lynching, a Lie, a Reckoning to investigate the decades-old tale that held deep significance and emotional gravity in her family. The truth she uncovers unravels her own family history as she knows it.

Hale’s mission to uncover the story leads her to a new version of events that occurred on the day that Versie Johnson, the accused, died under the watch of Oury Berry, Hale’s grandfather. Johnson died by lynching, and Berry, as it turns out, sanctioned the attack. Through Hale’s deeply immersive research, In the Pines tells the buried, tortured story of Versie Johnson and examines the institutional and social structures of racism that conceal stories just like it. While grappling with her own family history, Hale seeks to uplift justice and set the record straight.

Grace Elizabeth Hale is a Commonwealth Professor of American Studies and History at the University of Virginia. She has received a variety of fellowships including the American Association of University Women, the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, and the American Historical Association. Interested in the topics of white supremacy and the culture of the American South, Hale is also the author of Making Whiteness: The Culture of Segregation in the South, 1890-1940.

Reviews and endorsements of the publication include:

“Hale is a phenomenal historian, a dogged researcher, and a gifted writer.” 

-Kevin M. Kruse, author of One Nation Under God

“Intimate, devastating, and historically meticulous.”

– Gilbert King, Pulitzer Prizer winner and author of Devil in the Grove

“Courageous and compelling… essential and critically important.”

-Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy

“Remarkable… Hale deftly captures the racial terror of the Jim Crow South.”

– John Grisham, award-winning novelist

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.

On the Lived Theology Reading List: The Aesthetics of Solidarity: Our Lady of Guadalupe and American Democracy

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Unifying Symbols in the Face of Oppression

In The Aesthetics of Solidarity, theologian and University of Virginia Professor Nichole M. Flores probes the historical uses of Our Lady of Guadalupe as an aesthetic symbol among Latine Catholics. Reflecting first on the legend of Our Lady and Juan Diego, she goes on to highlight in her work the religious, political, and economic interests that Guadalupe functions to uplift, “ranging from the Chicano movement and United Farm Workers’ movements to contemporary calls for just immigration reform.” Through the course of these observations, Flores tracks the ways in which the symbol serves as a mirror back toward the beholder, allowing them to reflect inward on Guadalupe’s meaning for their own self concept: as a mother, as a revolutionary, or as a believer, to name a few. Making note of many of Guadalupe’s culturally significant ‘little stories’ through a critical and philosophical lens, Aesthetics makes a theologically compelling case for Guadalupe’s value for unification and democracy.

Nichole M. Flores is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia. Besides authoring The Aesthetics of Solidarity, Flores has written a number of articles and book chapters, including a chapter on Ella Baker for PLT Director Charles Marsh’s book Can I Get a Witness? Her research interests include the relationship between Catholic and Latinx communities and aesthetics to various issues, including (but not limited to) justice, democracy, race, ethnicity, and gender.

Reviews and endorsements of the publication include:

“At a moment when society is fraying and politics is polarized Flores provides a rich, ethical conception of democratic solidarity and its centrality to a politics of the common good in a pluralistic context. Arguing against key liberal philosophers, Flores’s theologically and aesthetically sophisticated political theology of solidarity creatively draws on a set of resources rooted in Latine responses to oppression, including movements for social justice, political campaigns, theatre, popular religious celebrations of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and experiences of lo cotidiano. In doing so the book models the best of what teologia en conjunto means both in practice and in scholarship.” 

-Luke Bretherton,  Robert E. Cushman Professor of Moral & Political Theology at Duke University

“The Aesthetics of Solidarity represents a major contribution to the ongoing development of U.S. Latinx theology. Flores has produced a first-rate scholarly monograph in which she carefully develops, and clearly articulates, the intellectual features of an aesthetics of solidarity ― a rich notion that will, no doubt, influence theological conversation in the future, not only among Latinx scholars but in the broader theological community.”

– Journal of Hispanic/Latino Theology

“Nichole M. Flores expertly weaves in storytelling and theology to examine the usage of Marian symbols, from the Chicano movement to immigration organizers today. The Aesthetics of Solidarity is a must-read for everyone looking to deepen their understanding of Latinx theology and proves why Flores is one of the most important theological voices in the Catholic Church today.”

-Olga Segura, author of Birth of a Movement: Black Lives Matter and the Catholic Church

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.

Until Justice and Peace Embrace

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In 1983, the philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff’s landmark book Until Justice and Peace Embrace was published by Eerdmans to the praise of scholars and practitioners in the United States and throughout the global church.  Originally delivered as the 1981 Kuyper Lectures at the Free University of Amsterdam, the book mines the resources of the Dutch Reformed, neo-Calvinist tradition to address contemporary challenges and conflicts in Christian faith and practice. 

“Now forty years after its publication, does Until Justice and Peace Embrace still speak to our times?” Dr. Mark Gornik asks in a recent essay, which we are delighted to share. 

Gornik answers in the affirmative. Wolterstorrf’s enduring significance is his crafting of a political theology and a piety rooted in grace – “and a project of hope marked by struggle to continually hear and live the Word in and for changing times.”

Mark Gornik is the director of City Seminary of New York. He has spent his life as a pastor, community developer, teacher, and scholar of world Christianity. His 2005 book Word Made Global: Stories of African Christianity in New York City, originally appeared as his doctoral dissertation at the University of Edinburgh, and it was revised for publication during his fellowship with the PLT Virginia Seminar.

Dr. Gornik also contributed a deeply personal and moving essay on the late Allan Tibbels in our recent volume People Get Ready! Twelve Jesus-Haunted Misfits, Malcontents, and Dreamers in Pursuit of Justice.

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.

Spring Seminar: Faith and Doubt in the Modern World

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PLT Director Charles Marsh returns to the classroom to teach “Faith and Doubt in the Modern World” at UVA this spring. This course introduces students to seminal writings in modern western thought concerning the meaning, truthfulness, and uses of religious belief. The goal is to develop a multi-storied narrative that conveys the variety of interpretations given to the idea of God in modernity and to clarify the conditions of responsible religious belief in a pluralistic and post-modern, post-theistic, post-something world. 

Lectures and discussions will follow such questions as: 

Is belief in God a product of wishful thinking?

Is religious belief a symptom of neurotic behavior? 

If there is no God, is everything permissible? 

Is atheism (new and old) parasitic on the moral convictions inspired by religion? 

Is religion a primitive stage in human intellectual development in need of an education to reality? 

Does religion promote violent tendencies among individuals and groups? Is it inherently immoral? 

How do we account for the fact that some intelligent people argue that belief in God is rational and others that belief in God violates reason? 

We will consider such questions by studying the modern critiques of religion and the implications of such critiques for believers and people of faith.  

We will build our narrative not only from philosophical and religious sources but from novels, film, music, and psychology as well.  

Students will be reading:

Albert Camus, The Stranger 

Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen), Babette’s Feast

Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion

David Bentley Hart, Atheist Delusions

David Hume, The Natural History of Religion

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals

Flannery O’Connor, A Prayer Journal

Dorothee Soelle, Suffering

Howard Thurman, Deep River

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.