On the Lived Theology Reading List: When in Romans

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An Invitation to Linger with the Gospel according to Paul (Theological Exploration for the Church Catholic)

“When in Rome” is a well-worn phrase that encapsulates the tourist experience. Similarly, it reflects how most people engage with Paul’s letters—fleeting moments with worthwhile highlights. As a metaphor for the book of Romans, Gaventa’s work “When in Romans” invites readers to venture off the beaten path, making Romans accessible to new audiences without undermining the complexity of the letters.

Gaventa begins by introducing the cosmic vision of conception, pushing back against an individualized view of God’s liberation for a universal freedom against spiritual bondage. Sin and death are portrayed as supra-human captors, and salvation is defined by their defeat through Jesus Christ. In the same way, Gaventa moves away from individualizing theology by reframing Abraham. In Gaventa’s eyes, he acts not as a model of personal character, but as an example of God’s faithfulness.

The metaphor of Abraham further leads into a discussion of Paul’s ethics, reframing its previous individual framework. Instead, Gaventa describes a theocentric ethic that is rooted in the Gospel’s cosmic purposes. The book concludes by describing Paul’s “universal horizon,” calling for a communal church marked by gentleness and humility that reflects God’s universal grace. 

Overall, “When in Romans” presents Gaventa’s conception of Paul’s vision, encouraging deeper engagement with his letters and offering a fresh perspective for new audiences.

Reviews and Endorsements of this publication include:

“Using contemporary cultural illustrations from sources as varied as Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life and Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Land of Hope and Dreams,’ Beverly Roberts Gaventa delightfully clarifies Paul’s complex message in Romans. In beautifully written prose that is as compellingly clear for the novice as it is exegetically convincing for the scholar, Gaventa reminds us of the cosmic, liberative power of Paul’s message. Here is that book of uncommon quality: easily accessible and utterly indispensable. Reading Romans today? Start here.”
-Brian Blount, Union Presbyterian Seminary

“This is a book the church has long needed. Professor Gaventa pulls back the thin veneer of familiarity to introduce us to the high drama in Paul’s Letter to the Romans. Her writing is both scholarly and accessible, ancient and contemporary, theological and pastoral.”
-M. Craig Barnes, Princeton Theological Seminary

“From the beginning of the Christian era until the present day, Paul’s Letter to the Romans has been the source of revolutionary rethinking. Nowhere do we come closer to the radical heart of the gospel. The universal and cosmic notes of the Pauline symphony are sounded in this book by one of our most esteemed interpreters of the apostle’s letters. Beverly Gaventa has written a book for ordinary parish clergy and laypeople that is fun to read and full of spicy references to popular culture, and that will jolt readers into a new appreciation for the great apostle and his unique place in the history of Christian theology.”
-Fleming Rutledge, author of Not Ashamed of the Gospel: Sermons on Romans and The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ

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On the Lived Theology Reading List: Black Religion in The Madhouse

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Race and Psychiatry in Slavery’s Wake

Between the 18th and 19th centuries, a significant number of African Americans were institutionalized for a psychosis known as “religious excitement.” During this Jim Crow era, Black spirituality was often pathologized by white psychiatrists as a form of mental illness. Where a white Christian might have been praised as pious, a Black Christian would be considered delusional or deranged. Weisenfeld’s book, Black Religion in the Madhouse, explores the religious institutionalization of Black Americans and draws powerful connections to contemporary racism, particularly within mental health systems and police encounters.

Weisenfeld begins her book with a case study on Judy B., whose Black spiritual behaviors were disregarded as superstition and pathologized as “religious excitement.” Her experience reflects a larger issue in 19th-century southern psychiatry, where Black spirituality was viewed as fanatical, irrational, and dangerous. This racialized psychiatric framework, Weisenfeld argues, was used to suppress Black autonomy and characterize Black religious practitioners as mentally unfit for society.

However, the rise of Black psychiatrists and mental health activists challenged these oppressive frameworks. By reframing mental health away from racialized diagnoses, figures such as Rosa Kittrell became voices against a discipline dominated by white practitioners. Despite these efforts, the ramifications of past practices remain prevalent in contemporary culture. Today, Black individuals are disproportionately stereotyped as aggressive or unstable, which only further propels cases of police brutality.

What begins as a historical study of the spiritual institutionalization of Black Americans evolves into a powerful narrative of spiritual strength and resilience. Weisenfeld’s work not only chronicles religious medical racism but also tells the story of Black Americans’ spiritual endurance in the face of enormous challenges.

Judith Weisenfeld is an Agate Brown and George L. Collord Professor in the Department of Religion at Princeton University. In addition to her current work, she is the author of “New World A-Coming: Black Religion and Racial Identity during the Great Migration,” which explores racial entanglements of new religious movements in the early 20th-century urban north.

Judith Weisenfeld is Agate Brown and George L. Collord Professor in the Department of Religion at Princeton University and author, most recently, of New World A-Coming: Black Religion and Racial Identity during the Great Migration.

Reviews and Endorsements of this publication include:

“Breaks new ground by documenting how American psychiatry institutionalized a specific form of racism―one that pathologized black religious expressions. The book’s genius is showing how these diagnostic categories evolved over time and reached beyond asylums, shaping African American experiences after the Civil War. Weisenfeld skillfully recovers and uplifts individuals from the sparse historical records of African American psychiatric cases, honoring them in powerful vignettes. This book is a game changer for our historical understandings of religion, race, and mental health.” — Kristy L. Slominski, author of Teaching Moral Sex: A History of Religion and Sex Education in the United States

“Illuminates the often-overlooked intersection of religion, race, and psychology at the birth of U.S. psychiatry. Weisenfeld tells a compelling narrative of the historical pathologization of African American religiosity and how psychiatric ideas about rationality and irrationality came to shape dominant understandings of Black religions. . . . Both a monumental achievement of historical scholarship and deeply moving. . . . Invaluable for scholars U.S. religions but deserves to be read by practicing psychotherapists as well. . .I cannot recommend this book highly enough!” — Ira Helderman, author of Prescribing the Dharma: Psychotherapists, Buddhist Traditions, and Defining Religion

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On the Lived Theology Reading List: Restless Devices

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Recovering Personhood, Presence, and Place in the Digital Age

“Our contemporary digital lives are fundamentally shaping our imaginations and appetites about what it means to be human.”

Despite good intentions to step away from our devices, we remain bound to the habits these digital chains have created. Similarly, as human connections lag in the presence of artificial media-measured by likes, followers, and visibility-our everyday relationships deteriorate. This is the digital crisis exposed by Felicia Wu Song in “Restless Devices,” a crisis that, once recognized, can be addressed through a reorientation grounded in Christian theology.

The restlessness and dissatisfaction we experience with digital media, Song argues, reflect a deeper longing for a more rooted and meaningful life. She connects this longing to the “restless heart” from St. Augustine’s Confessions: our endless scrolling and search for superficial affirmation is ultimately a yearning for a deeper communion. In response, Song offers The Freedom Project—a framework for spiritual reformation through small, intentional practices. Through theological habits such as prayer, communion, and mindfulness, she invites readers to realign their digital behaviors with rhythms of grace, attentiveness, and faith.

Overall, “Restless Devices” is a timely and theologically rich reflection on the unseen costs of digital life, offering both critique and hope. With wisdom and compassion, Song calls us not just to unplug, but to realign according to a Christian vision-one of faith, grace, and ultimately greater fulfillment. 

Reviews and endorsements of the publication include:

“Digital media has shaped our spiritual lives and churches in profound ways, yet we have few guides to navigate this new terrain. I have longed for a book like Restless Devices to be written. Felicia Wu Song compellingly examines the addictive qualities of digital media—its ubiquity and totalizing power. But her depth of expertise and profound Christian imagination allow her to go further than mere critique. She offers us practical hope in the ‘counterliturgies’ of the Christian faith. I highly recommend this powerful work of spiritual formation to all who seek to live humanely and faithfully in our digital age.” — Tish Harrison Warren, Anglican priest and author of Liturgy of the Ordinary and Prayer in the Night

“I have been looking for this book for years. Dr. Song brings the top scholarship and the deepest Christian reflection to bear on the important spiritual topic of how we faithfully engage our devices. In this digital age, which requires new forms of moral and spiritual reflection, there are few topics that could be more relevant or more needed. This is a book I will read again and again.” — Elaine Howard Ecklund, professor of sociology at Rice University and author of Why Science and Faith Need Each Other: Eight Shared Values That Move Us Beyond Fear


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On the Lived Theology Reading List: Remaking the Rural South

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Remaking the Rural South: Interracialism, Christian Socialism, and Cooperative Farming in Jim Crow Mississippi, by Robert Hunt FergusonInterracialism, Christian Socialism, and Cooperative Farming in Jim Crow Mississippi

In the winter of 1936, two dozen black and white ex-sharecropping families settled on some two thousand acres in the rural Mississippi Delta, one of the most insular and oppressive regions in the nation. Remaking the Rural South, by Robert Hunt Ferguson, chronicles their story, and is the first book-length study of Delta Cooperative Farm (1936-42) and its descendant, Providence Farm (1938-56). These communities arose in reaction to the exploitation of small-scale, dispossessed farmers, and began a twenty-year experiment in interracialism, Christian socialism, cooperative farming, and civil and economic activism.

Modeled after cooperative farms in Japan and Soviet Russia, the farms drew on internationalist practices of cooperative communalism, and pragmatically challenged Jim Crow segregation and plantation labor. In addition to the income from farming, the communities also had the backing of philanthropist Sherwood Eddy, educator Charles Spurgeon Johnson, and theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, who helped get the farms get off the ground in their early years. The staff and residents of the farms, however, were everyday people who managed to develop a cooperative economy, operate a desegregated health clinic, and manage a credit union, all of which combined to create a working and loving community.

Unfortunately, even with these advances both communities eventually met their demise, with Delta being forced to close due to complications from WWII, and Providence succumbing to economic boycotts and outside threats from white racists. But the legacy of the farms lives on, and in this book Ferguson shows how a small group of committed people can challenge hegemonic social and economic structures simply by going about their daily routines.

Reviews and endorsements of the publication include:

“While it is a historically valuable, though sometimes dense, product of archival research, Remaking the Rural South, ‘a story of birth, death and hope on southern soil’ (p. 12), is also inspiring.” — Peter Slade, Journal of American Ethnic History

“Remaking the Rural South, though a story of one narrow effort, brings an important historical case to bear on the still pressing questions of racial and economic justice in the U.S. South. Readers should take heed in case another moment of opportunity comes.” — Ansley L. Quiros The Journal of Southern History 


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On the Lived Theology Reading List: Christian Metaphysics and Neoplatonism

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Albert Camus

Renowned author Albert Camus’ thesis at the age of 23 in order to complete his studies at the University of Algiers. It is his first attempt to explore humanist ethics, and draws from ancient Greek and Roman sources.

Contemporary scholarship tends to view Albert Camus as a modern, but he himself was conscious of the past and called the transition from Hellenism to Christianity the true and only turning point in history. For Camus, modernity was not fully comprehensible without an examination of the aspirations that were first articulated in antiquity and that later received their clearest expression in Christianity. These aspirations amounted to a fundamental reorientation of human life in politics, religion, science, and philosophy. Understanding the nature and achievement of that reorientation became the central task of Christian Metaphysics and Neoplatonism. Primarily known through its inclusion in a French omnibus edition, it has remained one of Camus’ least-read works, yet it marks his first attempt to understand the relationship between Greek philosophy and Christianity as he charted the movement from the Gospels through Gnosticism and Plotinus to what he calls Augustine’s second revelation of the Christian faith.

Ronald Srigley translated this seminal document into English in 2015, which helps illuminate these aspects of Camus’ work. His freestanding English edition exposes readers to an important part of Camus’ thought that is often overlooked by those concerned primarily with the book’s literary value. Arguing that Camus was one of the great critics of modernity through his attempt to disentangle the Greeks from the Christians, Srigley clearly demonstrates the place of Christian Metaphysics in Camus’ oeuvre.

Albert Camus was a French philosopher and author who lived from 1913-1960 in France and Algeria. He is best known for his books The Stranger and The Myth of Sisyphus.

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On the Lived Theology Reading List: Climate, Catastrophe, and Faith: How Changes in Climate Drive Religious Upheaval

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Global Climate History Through a Religious Lens

Writing into our current age, which is marked by climate crisis and anxiety, Philip Jenkins reflects in Climate, Catastrophe, and Faith on the religiosity inherent to global warming and the historical markings on culture and religion as a result of major climate events. Examining Western religious incidents of the fourteenth through the eighteenth century, Jenkins draws connections to the coinciding climate changes of those periods; including the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age, to name a few. Jenkins argues that the results of rapidly depleted resources and unforgiving natural environments lead in part to drastic changes in religious practice and doctrine, from apocalyptic declarations, to persecution and violence, to beliefs still maintained across traditions today. Jenkins concludes with his belief that rising global alarm and ensuing climate migration will ultimately result in more tumultuous changes in religiosity.

Philip Jenkins is Distinguished Professor of History at Baylor University within the Institute for Studies in Religion, and previously taught at Penn State University. He is the author of thirty books, including The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia–and How It Died, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, and most recently A Storm of Images: Iconoclasm and Religious Reformation in the Byzantine World.

Reviews and endorsements of the publication include:

“This masterpiece of historical scholarship should help policy makers and others transcend temporal myopia. Of special interest to students of climate, history, society, religion, and politics, this book can change the way one thinks about such matters.” 

-L. E. Sponsel, CHOICE

“Jenkins’s bold new argument may change the way we think about the history of religion, but more important, it could remind us that we can imagine a new and better way as we prepare for the consequences of this impending climate crisis.”

– Rt. Rev. Mark Van Koevering, author of The Living Church

“This timely and meticulously researched book makes an important contribution to the growing body of literature engaging religion and history with ecology and climate change.”

-Ruby Guyat, Times Higher Education

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9 Illuminating Memoirs by UVA Alumni

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By Sam Grossman

With elements of traditional memoir, biography and lyric essay, these nonfiction works chronicle some of the diverse experiences of the UVA alumni community.

In his newest book, UVA religious studies professor Charles Marsh explores the ways in which his Christian upbringing affected his mental health. For years he suffered from panic attacks and depression, but “we did not do therapy—my family, my particular evangelical coterie,” he writes. With vulnerability and humor, Marsh explains how he finally sought mental health treatment. Through years of Freudian psychoanalysis, he slowly sheds the secrecy and shame he was “primed for,” becoming “freer, and somehow more unified.” In the end, Marsh remains devoted to Christianity, with the understanding that it’s “much larger and more encompassing than the churches of my childhood.”

See the full article 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: 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

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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.

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On the Lived Theology Reading List: The Theology of Dorothee Soelle

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Practices for a world shaken by crisis

Dorothee Soelle is a pioneering figure: a leader among German Christians in grappling with Auschwitz; a poet expressing utopian longings; a political activist, socialist, and liberation theologian; a mystic offering a vision of faith for people disillusioned with bourgeois Christianity.

This is the first English language collection of original essays analyzing Soelle’s work. It explores her contributions to biblical hermeneutics, Christian feminism, social ethics, post-Holocaust thought, Mysticism, literature, and political and liberation theology. It includes three pieces by Soelle, recently translated into English, as well as essays from many contributors including the author.

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.

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