Carlos Eire seminar now available online

Eire Photo - Web sized - credit Jerry Bauer copyOn Wednesday, June 18, Carlos Eire led a seminar at the Bonhoeffer House entitled, “Writing Theology without Footnotes.” He spoke on his remarkable journey as a scholar and memoirist, with particular reference to his National Book Award-winning Waiting for Snow in Havana. Watch the video or listen to the seminar.

Carlos Eire was born in Havana in 1950 and left his homeland in 1962, one of fourteen thousand unaccompanied children airlifted out of Cuba by Operation Pedro Pan. After living in a series of foster homes, he was reunited with his mother in Chicago in 1965. Eire earned his PhD at Yale University in 1979 and was an award-winning professor at the University of Virginia from 1981 to 1996. He is now the T. Lawrason Riggs Professor of History and Religious Studies at Yale. Eire is the author of numerous books, including the National Book Award-winning “Waiting for Snow in Havana.” He lives in Guilford, Connecticut, with his wife, Jane, and their three children. 

(Photo: Jerry Bauer)

Project on Lived Theology launches 2014 summer internships

The Project on Lived Theology is delighted to introduce our 2014 summer interns and their internship projects:

Claire ConstanceClaire Constance is a second year in the College of Arts and Sciences planning on studying global public health and anthropology. She is a member of the student advisory board for the Center for Global Health and works for student affairs community engagement. She is spending this upcoming summer in Limpopo, South Africa with an interdisciplinary team of graduate and undergraduate students to train community health workers in child development assessment and intervention. Claire is very interested in the intersections between religious conviction, health, education, and empowerment and is looking forward to exploring these themes while she and her team live and learn with the people of Limpopo.

Peter HartwigPeter Hartwig is a Charlottesville native and the son of a local minister. It was not until he entered high school that he discovered a passion for theology, and it has been all downhill from there. Peter is majoring in religious studies and classics, and the academic study of theology has only intensified his love for religious thought. He is particularly interested—at least for the time being—in the history and promise of the Pentecostal movement, dogmatics, and the New Perspective. Outside of schoolwork, Peter fishes, tries to write creatively, and sings a cappella.

For the summer, Peter and his mentor, graduate student Nathan Walton, will be teaching a ten-week course in American religious autobiography at the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail. Their students will both read and write religious autobiographies. They hope that their project will foster a mutually beneficial discussion about autobiography as theological reflection.

Nathan WaltonNathan Walton is a second-year Ph.D. student in theology, ethics, and culture in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia. He is from Brodnax, a small town in southern Virginia, and holds a B.A. in religious studies from U.Va. and a master of divinity degree from Duke Divinity School. His current research focuses on the prosperity gospel movement, and he is primarily interested in how prosperity theology intersects with theological anthropology, Christology, and social reform. Nathan is also volunteer staff with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. Ultimately, Nathan plans to continue teaching in academic as well as church settings. Nathan is serving as a mentor for the internship program this summer.

Watch the intern blog all summer long to read Claire and Peter’s reflections on their work. Learn more about the internship program here.

History Is Lunch

Peter_Slade_0.previewProject alum Pete Slade spoke about the remarkable life and work of John M. Perkins as part of the History Is Lunch series on September 17, 2013 at the Old Capitol Museum in Jackson, Mississippi.

Slade, one of the editors of Mobilizing for the Common Good: The Lived Theology of John M. Perkins, was introduced by former governor William Winter.

To listen to the audio recording of Slade’s talk, click here.

New audio and video available on website

Victoria BarnettIn March, the Project on Lived Theology hosted two lectures at the University of Virginia. On March 4, Victoria Barnett gave a lecture entitled, “The New Era of Bonhoeffer Interpretation,” and David Bentley Hart, author of The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss, spoke on his book on March 25 at the Bonhoeffer House.

Audio and video of these lectures are now available online. Watch or listen to Dr. Barnett’s lecture, and watch or listen Dr. Hart’s lecture.

David Bentley HartVictoria Barnett is director of the programs on ethics, religion and the Holocaust at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and one of the general editors of Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, English Language Edition. David Bentley Hart is an Eastern Orthodox scholar of religion, philosopher, writer, and cultural commentator.

VA Seminar Featured Member: John Kiess

John KiessJohn Kiess is an assistant professor of theology at Loyola University Maryland. He completed his Ph.D. in theology and ethics at Duke University. As a George J. Mitchell Scholar, he earned his M.A. in comparative ethnic conflict at Queen’s University Belfast and M.Phil in theology from Cambridge University. His doctoral dissertation explored the ethics of war through the lens of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where he conducted fieldwork in 2008-2009. In addition to his work on conflict and peacemaking, he is also interested in political theology, political theory, and philosophy, and is currently completing a book entitled Hannah Arendt and Theology, (forthcoming T&T Clark, October, 2014).

VA Seminar Featured Member: Vanessa Ochs

Vanessa OchsVanessa Ochs is a professor in the Department of Religious Studies and Jewish Studies Program at the University of Virginia where she teaches courses in Judaism, the anthropology of religion, and spiritual writing. She is working on two projects now, which are linked not only to each other, but to her previous work in the study of religion and material culture and the study of Jewish ritual innovation. The first project is a “biography” of the Passover Haggadah, which will be part of a series of “biographies” of canonical texts to be published by Princeton University Press. The second is a multi-year, multi-site ethnography of Jewish homes in America that answers a question she has long been pondering, “What—from the perspective of material culture—makes a Jewish home Jewish?” To find more information about Vanessa’s work, click here.

To learn more about Vanessa at her author’s page, click here.

Strange Glory on Tour: A Photo Journal from the Road

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Project director Charles Marsh began the celebration of  Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia on April 24, at The Haven. This successful event brought out over 200 community members for a reading, signing and reception. New Dominion Bookshop hosted the book sales and A Pimento catered the event.

From there he made stops at City Seminary and New York Theological Seminary in New York City and continued the following two weeks with stops at southern independent book stores and congregations.

After a brief pause for U.Va. graduation and some time with his family in Charlottesville, Charles resumed his book tour with appearances in Winston-Salem and Raleigh, North Carolina. He finished up this current stage of the tour with two Sunday lectures: one at the National Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C. on June 1st and the other at Trinity Church in Boston, Massachusetts, on June 8th.

Visit livedtheology.org often, like us on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter for updates on book events around the country. Join the conversation about the book with #StrangeGlory.

Click on the tabs below to view pictures from Charles’s book tour journey. If you can’t see the tabs, click on the article title above. For more information on book talk venues, click on their logos. A interactive Google map is also available for you to explore at the bottom of this post.


Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer was published on April 29, 2014 by Alfred A. Knopf. Charles Marsh, director of the Project on Lived Theology, powerfully brings to life the struggles, triumphs, and transformations of Dietrich Bonhoeffer—German pastor, dissident, and conspirator in the resistance against Hitler and the Nazi party. No other theologian has crossed as many boundaries as Bonhoeffer while remaining exuberantly, generously Christian.

Writing Theology without Footnotes: Carlos Eire to speak on faith and writing

Eire Photo - Web sized - credit Jerry Bauer copyOn Wednesday, June 18, at 5:00 p.m., the Project on Lived Theology will welcome Carlos Eire to lead a seminar on faith and writing entitled, “Writing Theology without Footnotes.” Dr. Eire will offer practical advice to those writing about religion for a broad audience and will also speak on his own remarkable journey as a scholar and memoirist.

The seminar will be held at the Bonhoeffer House at 1841 University Circle. Parking will be available in Culbreth Road Parking Garage, a short walk from the Bonhoeffer House.

For more information, contact us or visit our Facebook event page.

Carlos Eire was born in Havana in 1950 and left his homeland in 1962, one of fourteen thousand unaccompanied children airlifted out of Cuba by Operation Pedro Pan. After living in a series of foster homes, he was reunited with his mother in Chicago in 1965. Eire earned his PhD at Yale University in 1979 and was an award-winning professor at the University of Virginia from 1981 to 1996. He is now the T. Lawrason Riggs Professor of History and Religious Studies at Yale. Eire is the author of numerous books, including the National Book Award-winning Waiting for Snow in Havana. He was a member of the first Virginia Seminar in Lived Theology, for which he wrote two books: A Very Brief History of Eternity and Learning to Die in Miami. He lives in Guilford, Connecticut, with his wife, Jane, and their three children.

Learn more about Carlos Eire and his publications at his PLT author page, here.

(Photo: Jerry Bauer)

VA Seminar Featured Member: Valerie C. Cooper

Valerie CooperValerie C. Cooper is the associate professor of black church studies at Duke Divinity School. In her research and teaching, Valerie examines issues of religion, race, and society. In her research for the Virginia Seminar, Valerie evaluates the successes and failures of the racial reconciliation efforts of Christian congregations and ministries from the 1990s to the present. In addition to examining why such efforts frequently fall short of their stated goals, she also hopes to propose methods for achieving meaningful cross-racial relationships in America’s still very segregated churches and religious organizations.

Learn more about Valerie by visiting her author’s page here.

VA Seminar Featured Member: Shannon Gayk

Shannon GaykShannon Gayk is associate professor of medieval literature at Indiana University in Bloomington and was recently appointed a fellow at the National Humanities Center for 2014-15. Her recent books explore the relationships among aesthetics, ethics, and theology in late-medieval England. She is currently completing several projects, including a book on pre-modern religious lyric, a study of the arma Christi (the instruments of Christ’s Passion) during the English reformations, and a co-edited collection of essays focusing on the changing place of sacred objects in medieval and early modern Europe.

Learn more about Shannon by visiting her author’s page here.