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.
NEWS
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Project director Charles Marsh publishes article in The Cresset
Charles Marsh's article, "Are We Still of Any Use?: The Audacious Hope of the Engaged Scholar" appears in the Lilly Fellows Program Edition of The Cresset, published Easter 2012. Read the article online here.
Ph.D student Tim Hartman receives research grant
Tim Hartman, Ph.D candidate in the Department of Religious Studies at U.Va. and former graduate research assistant for the Project on Lived Theology, has received an Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (AHSS) Summer Research Fellowship in the amount of $5000. The fellowship will fund a research trip to Bujumbura, Burundi and Akropong-Akuapem, Ghana to study the thought and legacy of Kwame Bediako, an African Christian theologian. Tim's archival research and interviews with Bediako's widow and colleagues will provide the foundation for his doctoral dissertation.
Koinonia Farm announces Clarence Jordan Symposium
Visit the symposium website here, or view the symposium flyer here.
Summer Internship in Lived Theology recipients named
Erik Nelson, a second year religious studies and economics major, and Claire Hitchins, a third year religious studies major, have been selected for The Project on Lived Theology's summer internship program for 2012. Erik Nelson will travel to Lugari, Kenya to work with the African Great Lakes Initiative, and Claire Hitchens will intern with Shalom Farms in Richmond. See our full announcement here, and find out more about these interns and the internship program on the internship website, here.
Lauren Winner delivers Capps lecture in Rotunda dome room
Tuesday, April 10, at 6 p.m., Lauren F. Winner gave the Capps Lecture entitled, "Writing about God." The lecture drew on sources as diverse as slave narratives, St. Augustine and the memoirs of Frederick Buechner. Winner discussed the conventions and mores of spiritual autobiography, asking questions such as: Why are we, as writers and readers, drawn to spiritual autobiography? How do we narrate our stories religiously? What are the literary pitfalls of this kind of writing?
View the video of Winner's lecture here.
Interview: Jenny McBride discusses her new book
Virginia Seminar member and U.Va. alum Jenny McBride discusses her new book, The Church for the World: A Theology of Public Witness in an interview conducted by PLT graduate research assistant A.J. Walton. Read the interview here.
Virginia Seminar member Valerie Cooper featured on U.Va. Today
Dr. Cooper's new book, Word, Like Fire: Maria Stewart, the Bible, and the Rights of African Americans, published in January, is featured in this great article.
The Project on Lived Theology welcomes the new members of the Virginia Seminar
The Project on Lived Theology is delighted to welcome the members of the 2012-2015 Virginia Seminar in Lived Theology. The Virginia Seminar will convene yearly for four years and ultimately produce nine single-authored volumes on theology and lived experience.
Members of the seminar are:
| Valerie Cooper University of Virginia |
John Kiess Loyola University Maryland |
| David Dark Vanderbilt University |
Samuel T. Lloyd III Trinity Church Boston |
| Shannon Gayk Indiana University |
Jennifer M. McBride Wartburg College |
| Amy Laura Hall Duke Divinity School |
Vanessa L. Ochs University of Virginia |
| Russell Jeung San Francisco State University |
Learn more about the Virginia Seminar and the new members here.
Civil Rights Digital Archive launches for public use
The Civil Rights Movement as Theological Drama, an initiative of the Project on Lived Theology, is a highly interactive digital archive that brings the theological drama of the American Civil Rights Movement to life. Through personal interviews and primary documentary evidence, much of which is previously unpublished, the archive tells the stories of the time period in light of the hypothesis that God was--in some perplexingly and hitherto undelineated way--present there.
Visit the archive here.
Read an interview with Graduate Research Assistant Kelly West Figueroa-Ray, who both conceptualized and managed this project.
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.