On the Lived Theology Reading List: The Improbable Community

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Camp Woodland And the American Democratic Ideal

What is the American democratic ideal?

At its core, it is the aspiration of equality, inclusion, and mutual respect. While these principles may appear simple, true examples of communities that have embodied them are rare. Camp Woodland is one of those rare examples. Its founder, Norman Studer, shaped by the social and political upheavals of World War II, sought to create a summer camp that would model cultural inclusion, progressive education, and democratic values. For more than two decades, Camp Woodland stood as a folk-singing institution that carried these ideals through the postwar years, the Cold War and McCarthyism, and into the beginnings of the Civil Rights movement. Bill Horne, a camper deeply influenced by the lessons he learned there, later chronicled the camp’s importance within the broader sweep of American history in his book The Improbable Community.

With personal anecdotes of his time in the Catskills, Horne describes the origins and ideals of Camp Woodland that Norman Studer envisioned when he opened the camp in 1939. Through daily chores, hikes, and group activities, the culture of Camp Woodland fostered inclusion and shared responsibility, nurturing an environment of camaraderie and trust not defined by cultural or racial barriers. A key feature of Studer’s vision was bringing together campers and staff from different racial and ethnic backgrounds. Additionally, the camp held reverence for the land it stood on by preserving local traditions in its educational program. Anti-war ballads such as “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” echoed throughout the grounds, binding campers to larger struggles for peace and justice. While Horne acknowledges that the social turmoil of the 20th century inevitably affected the camp, he emphasizes that conflicts were resolved through collective decision-making and mutual respect. Though the camp eventually ended in 1962, its legacy clearly resonates with each camper to this day, and its vision of democracy remains a hopeful reminder that the American ideal can be achieved.

Bill Horne is an attorney in trade regulation Wasington D.C., and civil rights law in Boston, Massachusetts. Groing up in Queens, New York, he was a camper for a decade at Camp Woodland.

Reviews and Endorsements of this Publication include the following:

“Tells the story of a remarkable summer camp in the Catskill Mountains of New York. From 1939 to 1962, Camp Woodland created an educational experience that fostered a unique community …”

-Joe Hickerson, Archive of Folk Song Culture and former Camp Counselor

“In this excellent telling, author (and former camper) Bill Horne weaves a complex story that describes how John Dewey’s educational philosophy merged with democratic ideals and the political witch hunts of the 1950s to create the world of Camp Woodland set in the natural beauty of the rugged mountains.”

– John Cohen, filmaker, photographer, and musician for New Lost City Ramblers

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On the Lived Theology Reading List: My Family and I

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A Mississippi Memoir

Narratives about Mississippi often focus on segregation and discrimination in the Magnolia State; however, Adam Gussow’s story chronicles love and reexamines race relations. Without dismissing Mississippi’s tumultuous history, Gussow shares his own experience, in which an interracial couple is embraced by their community in the midst of racial protests and the Black Lives Matter movement.

The memoir repeatedly returns to the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., whose vision of America was a colorblind nation built on a foundation of love. As the book traces Gussow’s journey to Mississippi as both a professor and blues harmonica player, he reverently tells the story of his life with his wife, Sherrie, and their son, Shaun. The quiet simplicity of their happiness is central to Gussow’s narrative, as it challenges the dominant image of racial division in Mississippi.

At its core, Gussow’s memoir is infused with love and hope, qualities that endure even during the turbulence of the Black Lives Matter movement. Gussow himself remains committed to the vision of Martin Luther King Jr. and hopes readers will leave with a renewed belief in the possibility of a colorblind world.

Adam Gussow is a Professor at the University of Mississippi and a professional blues harmonica player and teacher. In addition to his current work, he is the author of the blues novel, “Mister Satan’s Apprentice: A Blues Memoir and Beyond the Crossroads: The Devil and the Blues Tradition.”

Reviews and Endorsements of this publication include the following:

“In an America increasingly divided by the clash between those who seek power in the reductive, skin-deep world of identity politics and those who wish to remain within our greater humanity, Adam Gussow’s My Family and I offers a powerful argument for the latter. Gussow’s refusal to betray his humanity for this nefarious ideology is what gives this book of his its enduring and enlightening power. Most of all, it gives us hope.”

– Eli Steele, filmmaker and director of Resegregating America (2021), What Killed Michael Brown? (2020), and How Jack Became Black (2018)

“Gussow’s harrowing account of attending an anti-racist workshop is an edgy parable on the dangers of thinking in racial categories. He is a first-rate scholar whose earlier work probed racial wounds in the American past, but his stimulating new study lets us see that racial healing can be on the horizon in our society.”

– Charles Reagan Wilson, editor-in-chief, The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture

“My Family and I: A Mississippi Memoir is an unflinchingly challenging, provocative book that demands nuanced, careful thought. As an Ashkenazi Jewish and Black woman, I am grateful for the challenge that Adam Gussow’s book provides, and for the ways in which I was forced to consider my own belief systems as I read. What a gift.”

– Marra B. Gad, author of The Color of Love: A Story of a Mixed-Race Jewish Girl

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On the Lived Theology Reading List: Deadheads and Christians

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You Will Know Them by Their Love

“Music is my religion,” Jimi Hendrix.

Music and religion are often intertwined for the emotional connectivity, catharsis, and fulfillment that an individual song offers; however, rarely is a band’s cultural impact compared to biblical foundations. Finding parallels between the rise of Deadhead communities and the early Christian movement, Coogan urges readers to consider the depth of spiritual energy as it pertains to other walks of life.

As a self-proclaimed Deadhead, Coogan found similarities in the counterculture community the Grateful Dead fostered and the rise of early Christianity. Unlike many bands, the legacy of the Grateful Dead culture has persisted past the death of the lead singer, Jerry Garcia, into new generations. In addition, the membership of a Deadhead supersedes social boundaries, bringing together a community of people guided by a shared love and fostering a culture rooted in empathy, grace, and spirituality. Coogan himself admits to juxtaposing the archetypal Deadhead with his longstanding religious background; however, this serves to further connect Christianity and the Deadhead community, as both are built on a foundation of love and spiritual curiosity.

While the novel offers an insightful perspective on a music culture that spans generations, Coogan’s aim is for readers to walk away finding faith in all walks of life and seeking out grace in everyday mundanity.

Thomas Coogan is a deacon and member of the Nassau Presbyterian Church in Princeton, New Jersey. He holds degrees from Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Reviews and Endorsements of this publication include:

“Inviting the faithful to come, reason, and even jam together, Tom Coogan helps us have ears to hear what many a neighbor has been listening to. Should we follow to that fountain not made by the hands of men, what a long, strange, and redemptive trip it is sure to be. Would you hear his voice come through the music? For Christ is Lord of the living and the Dead.”

—Mark James Edwards, author of Christ Is Time: The Gospel According to Karl Barth (and the Red Hot Chili Peppers)

“Thomas Coogan has done a masterful job of examining the Grateful Dead in light of the Christian gospel. As someone who knew little about the ‘Deadheads,’ I learned a lot to my surprise and delight.”

—George Hunsinger, McCord Professor of Theology, Princeton Theological Seminary

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On the Lived Theology Reading List: From the Heart

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A Memoir and a Meditation on a Vital Organ

At a young age, Jeff Kosky was diagnosed with a congenital bicuspid valve defect—his heart didn’t function properly. The persistent back-and-forth between hospital visits escalated into an internal struggle between hope and anxiety. For Kosky, this instability formed a deep existential uncertainty about the philosophy of healing and what it truly means to have a heart. His memoir deepens these philosophical explorations by weaving together personal narrative and the experience of living with a chronic heart condition to ask fundamental questions about human existence: What does it mean to lose a heart?

Kosky begins by chronicling his childhood experience with his heart defect, showing how the condition shaped his identity and worldview. This journey led him to theology and philosophy, such as St. Augustine, who links one’s spiritual and physical identity to the heart. In Confessions, Augustine explores paradoxes such as the need to open and even wound the heart in order to heal the soul. Kosky expands on these ideas within the biomedical world of surgery, asking what it means to cut open the chest while trying to preserve the self. For him, the heart isn’t just functionally important, it spiritually and symbolically sustains our sense of self. A heart defect, then, imposes more than just physical limitations; it carries emotional and existential weight.

Drawing from the philosophical minds of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Marion, and Weil, Kosky ultimately invites readers to live with “heartfulness”: to be emotionally present, vulnerable, and grateful. Acknowledging and honoring the heart—both as organ and metaphor—is, he admits, an ongoing process. Nevertheless, his memoir is a beautiful reflection on the power of the body and its deep connection to our spiritual being.

Jeffrey Kosky has been a professor at Washington and Lee University since 2003. He earned his bachelor’s from William’s College and his PhD from the University of Chicago’s Divinity School. In addition to this novel, he has written “Arts of Wonder: Enchanting Secularity.

Reviews and Endorsements of this Publication include:

“Kosky has written a book unlike any other I know. In this meditation on having, losing, and regaining his heart, he sometimes wears his heart on his sleeve, sometimes scrutinizes it from a distance. He tells a philosophical story that creates a space in which you, too, can meditate on what happens to your heart for as long as it beats, until it stops.” – Lars Svendsen, author of A Philosophy of Hope

“Jeffrey L. Kosky has a congenitally hurt heart. When that hurt became acute, surgery saved him—but for how long, and to what end? He engages those questions with a blend of intimacy and unsparing introspection that recalls Augustine’s Confessions. Have you, like me, survived heart surgery? This is a book for us. And even if you haven’t, it will do your heart a world of good.” – Jack Miles, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of God: A Biography

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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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“Martin Luther King, Jr – Pastor, Theologian, Christian Critic” with Rev. Dr. Nathan Walton

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On March 18, 2025, Rev. Dr. Nathan Walton joined the UVA Kingdom of God in America in to talk about the life and theological formation of Martin Luther King, Jr. This undergraduate class on religion and social movements explores the influence of theological ideas and religious commitments on social movements in America. 

Excerpt: “[King] inhabited a long tradition of theologically informed social engagement and an embodied faith embodied faith. You can see themes of social engagement in the sermons and speeches and you can see themes of embodiment and everything from physically marching and boycotting to hearing the musicality of the sermons.”

Nathan Walton is  Co-Lead Pastor at East End Fellowship in Richmond, Virginia.  He most recently served as Executive Director of Abundant Life Ministries, a community development nonprofit in Charlottesville. Nathan holds a Master of Divinity degree from Duke Divinity School and both a B.A. and Ph.D. in Religious Studies from the University of Virginia.

Listen to the lecture 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.

“White Too Long” with Robert P. Jones

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On December 3, 2024, Robert P. Jones joined the UVA graduate seminar Theologies of Resistance and Reconciliation by Zoom to talk about his research on the theological and historical sources of white supremacy in the United States.

Dr. Robert P. Jones is the president and founder of the Public Religion Research Institute, a nonprofit nonpartisan organization dedicated to conducting independent research and driving conversations at the intersection of religion, culture, and politics. He is a frequent on-air guest on television shows, and his editorials and essays have been published in such places as The Atlantic, Religion News Services, Time Magazine, and other outlets. He’s frequently featured in major news media, such as CNN, MSNBC, NPR, The New York Times, and the Washington Post.

Dr. Jones is also a New York Times bestselling author. His most recent book is The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy, and the Path to Shared American Future. His book The End of White Christian America won the 2019 Grawemeyer award, which is given every year to the most influential book written in religion in North America, and this is quite an extraordinary honor. His talk today is based on an earlier book called White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity.

Watch the event here

Listen to the event 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.

“The World Can Be Different: The Theological Vision of Dorothee Soelle” with Sarah K. Pinnock

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On November 19, 2024, Professor Sarah Pinnock joined the UVA graduate seminar Theologies of Resistance and Reconciliation to talk about the life and thought of Dorothee Soelle. 

Dr. Sarah Pinnock is professor of contemporary religious thought at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. Sarah was born in New Orleans in 1968-67, where her father, a Baptist theologian and influential, evangelical thinker, Clark Pinnock, taught theology. When she was her family moved back to their native Canada, first to Vancouver, and later to Toronto. 

After undergraduate and M.A. studies at MacMaster University, Sarah began doctoral studies in philosophical theology at Yale University under the tutelage of Louis Dupree. During a research year in Germany, Sarah served as Dorothee Soelle’s assistant. 

Her research on Soelle and more broadly on Christian responses to the Holocaust, culminated in her doctoral dissertation, which led in turn to her first book, Beyond Theodicy, Christian Continental Thinkers Respond to the Holocaust.

Dr. Pinnock joined the faculty at Trinity University in 2000.  Her book The Theology of Dorothee Soelle is a stellar collaboration of essays  and the basis of her presentation this afternoon.

On the shape of Soelle’s thought, Pinnock writes: “Soelle’s mysticism and christology responds to critiques in modernity. God is not the explanation for scientific unknowns, or what Bonhoeffer calls ‘the God of the gaps.’ She also rejected the image of God as the ruler of history… Soelle proposed a nontheistic christology that opens up a vision of God in which God is dependent, and our actions represent God in the world. We are each unique contributors to the work of God in the world.”

Listen to the event here

Watch the event 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.

Robert P. Jones on the Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity

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The Project on Lived Theology presents a lecture with Robert P. Jones, New York Times Bestselling Author and Founder and President of the Public Religion Research Institute, titled “White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity.” The lecture will take place on Tuesday, December 3, from 3:30-4:45 EST. It is a virtual presentation and can be viewed at the following link:

ZOOM LINK

The lecture is part of Professor Charles Marsh’s Theologies of Reconciliation and Resistance fall seminar. 

The Project on Lived Theology at the University of Virginia is a research initiative that studies the social consequences of theological ideas for the sake of a more just and compassionate world.

Lecture in Lived Theology with Sarah K. Pinnock

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The Project on Lived Theology presents a lecture with Sarah K. Pinnock, Professor of Contemporary Religious Thought, Trinity University, titled “The World Can Be Different: The Theological Vision of Dorothee Soelle.” The lecture will take place on Tuesday, November 19, from 3:30-4:45 EST. It is a virtual presentation and can be viewed at the following link:

ZOOM LINK

The lecture is part of Professor Charles Marsh’s Theologies of Reconciliation and Resistance fall seminar. 

The Project on Lived Theology at the University of Virginia is a research initiative that studies the social consequences of theological ideas for the sake of a more just and compassionate world.