Starting in the 1940s, Clarence Jordan tried to put Christianity into practice in the South, which was flouting segregation and inequality. Despite having a PhD, he made an impact not by being a lofty intellectual but by founding Koinonia- an interracial Christian farming community- and serving as a formative influence on Habit for Humanity. Read More

On April 24, the Project on Lived Theology welcomed Patricia Hampl to UVA Grounds to speak on her new book, The Art of the Wasted Day (Viking, 2018). Hampl spoke in Project director Charles Marsh’s afternoon class about nonfiction personal narrative writing, and in the early evening, she read from her book at the Bonhoeffer House. Both events were open to the public. Read More

Pulling down statues symbolizes regime change. Statues of Lenin fell across Eastern Europe during the revolutions of 1989 and statues of Saddam Hussein tumbled in Iraq after the US invasion in 2003. It seems reasonable, then, to consider that the current struggle to remove Confederate monuments is symbolic of a struggle to change a regime here in the United States of America. Read More

On April 18th, PLT alum Kelly West Figueroa-Ray successfully defended her dissertation entitled Beloved Community in Multicultural Contexts: The Lived Theology of Pastor Miguel Balderas. This study is a hermeneutical ethnography that situates Pastor Miguel’s approach to multicultural ministry within the lived theological tradition of Beloved Community. Read More

Two UVA students recently attended the Clarence Jordan Symposium at Koinonia Farm, an event focused on honoring Jordan by increasing peace, community, and racial justice in the world today. Megan Helbling and Isabella Hall traveled down together with the support of the Project on Lived Theology. Read More

Donald Shriver, Jr. has had a distinguished career. Trained as a minister and a Christian ethicist, he won the Grawemeyer Award in Religion for his 2005 book Honest Patriots and served for 16 years as president of Union Theological Seminary in New York. In his memoir, On Second Thought, Shriver offers his insights on a variety of topics and his hopes for the future. Read More

Professor Hartman of Columbia Theological Seminary recently taught a class entitled “Theology and Community: A Lived Theology Approach,” which studied the social consequences of religious belief by examining famous historical figures such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bonhoeffer. Read More

In the introduction to The Radical King, Cornell West declares that this new collection of King’s writings presents “a radical King that we can no longer sanitize.” West argues that King was a revolutionary figure, one who called for “a reevaluation of our values, a reinvigoration of our public life, and a fundamental transformation of our way of thinking and living that promotes a transfer of power from oligarchs and plutocrats to everyday people and average citizens.” Read More

On Tuesday, March 27th, Charles Marsh and PLT contributor John M. Perkins presented a feature entitled “Does God Care About Justice?” at the Veritas Forum at Pepperdine University. The Veritas Forum is an organization that facilitates conversations between students and faculty on a range of beliefs and life’s hardest questions in pursuit of truth. Read More

This year marks the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination. While thousands will gather on April 4th to commemorate his legacy and witness worldwide, Clayborn Temple in Memphis is planning a special tribute to the civil rights legend with three showings of “Union: A Musical” and a community-wide dialogue focused on the work of democracy in the city and country as a whole. Read More