is a research community based in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia. Our goal is to understand the way theological commitments shape the social patterns and practices of everyday life. The heart of the Project's mission is encouraging younger theologians and scholars of religion to embrace theological life as a form of public responsibility. Among an emerging generation of teachers, writers, and researchers, we are discovering a hunger for the opportunity to reconnect the theological enterprise with lived experience, and it is our privilege to provide a public space in which that task can be pursued.
at a 2003 conference
"We are trained to focus on institutional and structural dynamics and to privilege the overt behavior of social actors, but this approach can be reductive. By visiting specific religiously based community building projects, I was able to see theology in action, to see how local Christians draw from theological resources in their traditions to tackle complex socio-political challenges. We have only begun to scratch the surface."
Wallace Best
Professor of Religion and African American Studies at Princeton University
NEWS
Coming Soon: Project DVD with John Perkins and Charles Marsh
If you missed the Lived Theology event Let Justice Roll Down, email us for a complementary DVD of the dialogue between Dr. Perkins and Dr. Marsh.
2009 Spring Institute on Lived Theology
Influential community organizer and minister John M. Perkins was the keynote speaker at the 2009 Spring Institute on Lived Theology (SILT). See the SILT page for more information and to listen to recorded talks.
For more information on John Perkins, read the article in the Jackson Free Press, visit the John M. Perkins Foundation and refer to Charles Marsh's interview with the Pew Forum Roundtable on Religion and Social Welfare Policy.
New Project Book
In Martin Luther King Jr. and the Image of God, Project alum (and recent Ph.D.) Richard Wills
argues convincingly that Martin Luther King Jr.’s concept of imago Dei formed the heart of his theology and that King's theology was central to the unfolding of the civil rights movement. Read Wills' author interview.
"Christian anthropology asks the big questions: Who are we? What ought we to do? What might we become? Martin Luther King raised the same questions--and answered them in ways that have challenged succeeding generations. Richard Wills brings a wealth of data and insight to his portrait of King the theologian. He reminds us that under King's leadership the Movement was bursting not only with political promise but theological meaning as well. This is a carefully nuanced, yet exciting book."
--Richard Lischer, author of The Preacher King: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Word that Moved America
New Religious Studies Journal
Pushing the boundaries of both the study of religious practices and the discipline of practical theology, Practical Matters publishes a variety of media and genres, illuminating each of these areas and drawing connections between them.