As a research fellow for the Project on Lived Theology, Heather Warren explored the Atlanta-based Protestant Hour radio show, which began as one station in 1945 but boasted 600 participating stations by 1963, and sounded a liberal theology that promoted the liberalization of Protestantism throughout its largely southern listening area. Her research culminated in the publication of an article by Cambridge University Press titled “Turn Your Radio On: Liberal Theology in a Southern Register, 1953-1963.”

In the mid-twentieth century, a contest played out between evangelicals and mainline Protestant denominations over which organizations would have access to the radio airwaves and whose message, including whose theology, would receive the widest hearing. While networks favored the mainline denominations, a host of independent evangelical stations and the National Association of Evangelicals’ broadcast arm countered the impression that network religion represented American religion more generally. Preachers who frequently appeared on the show—Methodist Robert E. Goodrich, Jr., Presbyterian John A. Redhead, and Lutheran Edmund Steimle—presented this liberalism and echoed such evangelical elements as a heightened Christocentricity, repeated reference to the Bible, and personal appeal. Despite the later decline of mainline Protestantism, a type of evangelical liberalism in the 1950s and early 1960s attracted numerous radio listeners in the south contrary to the stereotype of southerners as fundamentalists who embraced a conservative theology.

Excerpt: “The theology offered in the Protestant Hour sermons was not so much the theologies that gained traction in the academy, but liberalism with evangelically associated elements that caught middlebrow attention at a time when Americans swelled congregations. That white, southern, mainline Protestantism grew in the context of the 1950s has gained little notice, being overshadowed because of its resistance to racial engagement or marked by some exceptions to the segregationist position. Closer attention to Protestant Hour preachers and their sermons, however, helps us to understand the kind of liberal theology that they communicated and that was apparently well received as indicated by the communications received from Protestant Hour listeners, the growth in number of stations broadcasting the program, and the growth in churches themselves.”

Warren has also authored an essay on Father John A. Ryan for the PLT book Can I Get a Witness? (2019). She also serves as an associate professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia, where she specializes in the history of American religious life and thought from the late-nineteenth century to the present. Her research has also carried her into the field of American religious autobiography.

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.

In association with the University of Notre Dame, The Church Life Journal: A Journal of the McGrath Institute for Church Life recently published a lovely excerpt from Charles Marsh’s book God’s Long Summer: Stories of Faith and the Civil Rights.

“Twenty-five years later, Bowers’s vision of Christianity and America is no longer an idiosyncratic position forged in the crucible of the anti-civil rights movement by segregationists clinging to authority they’d quickly lose. Rather, Bowers’s theories sound like talking points for a generation of Christian nationalists who hold political office, run think tanks, publish sleek journals and newspapers, and permeate social media.”

Marking the 60 year anniversary of Freedom Summer, God’s Long Summer became a Princeton Classic.

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.

Has religion ever kept you from doing something that was actually good for you?

It did for Charles Marsh. As a boy growing up in the evangelical South, Charles was taught to distrust his own body, to fear his desires, and to treat suffering as a gift from God. So when debilitating panic attacks shattered his world as a young man, he thought that he should count these panic attacks as something he was supposed to feel “joy” about.

Charles is now the Commonwealth Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia. In conversation with Lee C. Camp, find out how he navigated shedding the taboos of his evangelical upbringing as he sits down to discuss his memoir, Evangelical Anxiety.

Charles Marsh: Evangelical Anxiety

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.

Register to attend the Virtual Panel Discussion on April 24, 2025 at 8:00 pm, in which three experts chart a path for Faith in the University, moderated by Karen Marsh.

Featuring panelists: Felicia Wu-Song, cultural sociologist who studies the social effects of digital technologies on community and identity in contemporary life, Rev. Dr. Brandon Harris, Director of Partnerships and Business Development at Forum for Theological Exploration, & John Kiess, associate professor of theology at Loyola University Maryland. Moderated by Karen Marsh, Executive Dir., Theological Horizons & Charles Marsh, Commonwealth Professor of Religious Studies and Director of the Project on Lived Theology at UVA.

This is a companion event to the March 29 Scoper Lecture in Christian Theology with Dr. Charles Marsh which can be viewed 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 Wednesday, April 23 at 6:30 pm, St. Paul’s Memorial Church at the University of Virginia will be screening the Cast the First Stone Documentary in the “TUF Study Space” at St. Paul’s — located through the side courtyard, near the chapel. 

Seventy-five inmates from Angola Prison and Louisiana Correctional Institution for Women come together to perform the largest prison production of The Passion Play ever. CAST THE FIRST STONE is a 93 minute documentary based on the most popular story in history as performed by men and women for whom it is perhaps most relevant. The film cuts between the daily lives of the inmates with scenes from the play that are performed throughout the prison. It is an intimate and searing portrait of redemption. The actors, whose own experience mimics the characters they are playing, help us experience these biblical characters in ways rarely portrayed. Leading the effort is prisoner, Gary Tyler, who in 1974 at age 16 was the youngest person in America on death row. With 40 years behind bars, four on death row and six more in solitary, his wisdom guides the ship and assures its success. The film is directed by multiple Emmy winning and two-time Oscar nominated director Jonathan Stack.

View the trailer 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.