In Faith in Black Power, Kerry Pimblott discusses the impact of religion on the black power movement through the story of Cairo, Illinois. In 1969, nineteen-year-old Robert Hunt was found dead in the Cairo police station, and while authorities ruled it a suicide, many members of the African American community believed that Hunt had been murdered. This event triggered a wave of protests across the city, and Cairo suddenly emerged as an important battleground for black survival in America Read More

In Empty Room with Light, Ann Hostetler’s first collection of poems, she draws on her training as a visual artist to articulate moments of illumination in everyday life. She pulls from a rich collection of memories to create poems that all have a distinctive voice and image, showcasing things like the beauty of her Amish Aunt’s flower garden and the psychedelic swirls on her own painted toes. Read More

In The Dangers of Christian Practice, Lauren Winner challenges the central place that “practices” have recently held in Christian theology. She argues that sometimes, beloved Christian practices go horrifyingly wrong, extending violence rather than promoting its healing. Read More

In Outlaw Christian, Jacqueline Bussie discusses the unspoken “laws” that govern modern Christian life: #1: Never get angry at God; #2: Never doubt; #3: Never question; #4: Never tell your real story; #5: Always speak in clichés about evil and suffering; and #6: Always believe hope comes easy for those who truly love God. Read More

In Safehold, Ann Hostetler has collected and published her poems that communicate what it means to endure a crisis of security. The topics are varied, ranging from 9/11, to the death of both her parents, to the election of the 45th president, but all the poems speak to existential dilemmas Hostetler has dealt with in her life, and ways she has learned to cope with outcomes out of her control. Read More

In Harvey Milk: His Lives and Death, author Lillian Faderman documents the life, and the untimely death, of the first openly gay man elected to public office in California. Harvey Milk created quite a stir when he was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977, but he was not able to serve even a full year in office before he was shot by a homophobic fellow supervisor at the age of 48.  Read More

Due to the emergence of COVID-19, based on the guidance and recommendation from UVA Health, the Virginia Department of Health, the CDC and other partners, we have decided to cancel our event with David Bentley Hart. Our top priority is the safety of the members of the University community, and we are taking all necessary precautions to mitigate the risk of infection. Read More

In On the Freedom Side, author Wesley C. Hogan argues that the future of democracy belongs to young people. In order to back up this claim, he cites multiple youth-led organizations throughout American history, starting with Ella Baker and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the 1960s. Read More

In this slender volume, scholar of religion Jack Miles explains the origins of the comparative study of religion, and how the concept of religion came to be thought of as being distinct from other human spheres of activity. Read More

In Mississippi Praying, historian Carolyn Renee Dupont challenges the prevalent notion that southern white evangelicals simply failed to support civil rights because they were carried along by the influence of the wider culture. Instead, she documents a link between their theological views and their hostility towards desegregation. Read More