The prophetic witness of Martin Luther King Jr. did not arise spontaneously, social ethicist Gary Dorrien argues in his new book Breaking White Supremacy. Instead, the activism and ministry of King and other civil rights leaders was part of a long tradition of the black social gospel. Read More

On Thursday, February 8, Professor Christopher S. Yates will present a guest lecture on Simone Weil’s “Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God.” Read More

The Project on Lived Theology is now accepting applications for the 2018 Summer Internship in Lived Theology, an immersion program designed to complement the numerous existing urban and rural service immersion programs flourishing nationally and globally by offering a unique opportunity to think and write theologically about service. Read More

Gundamentalism and Where It Is Taking America is the work of James Atwood, a retired Presbyterian pastor and an avid deer hunter for half a century who has also been in the forefront of the faith community’s fight for two constitutional rights: the right to keep and bear arms and the right to live in domestic tranquility, free of gun violence. This book details his learning of a lifetime in the struggle for reasonable gun laws in America. Read More

With the fiftieth anniversary of Martin Luther King’s death approaching in April 2018, University of Virginia’s Project on Lived Theology is pleased to announce a new, $30,000 initiative, Prophet with a Pencil: The Continuing Significance of Martin Luther King’s ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail.’ Read More

On January 3rd, Project Director Charles Marsh published his latest essay in Religion and Politics. The piece, entitled “The NRA’s Assault on Christian Faith and Practice,” traces the American response to the laws regulating and statistics surrounding gun ownership and examines their underlying ties with Christianity today. Read More

In Liberated Threads, winner of the 2016 Liberty Legacy Foundation Award, author Tanisha C. Ford explores how and why black women in places as far-flung as New York City, Atlanta, London, and Johannesburg incorporated style and beauty culture into their activism. Focusing on the emergence of the “soul style” movement, Liberated Threads shows that black women’s fashion choices became galvanizing symbols of gender and political liberation. Read More

On October 11, Stanley Hauerwas and Eugene McCarraher led a seminar discussion on Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Reinhold Niebuhr, entitled “Bonhoeffer and Niebuhr: Why They Still Matter.” Hauerwas focused on Dietrich Bonhoeffer, whose theological politics is best understood as the attempt to recover the church from the realm of invisibility known as religion. In contrast, McCarraher argued Niebuhr cannot provide what we need for our time. Read More

On November 29, civil rights leader and public theologian Ruby Sales traveled to Charlottesville to participate in a public conversation on social justice and spirituality hosted by Virginia Foundation for the Humanities (VFH). The event, Every One of Us: A Conversation with Ruby Sales on Race, Spirituality, and Public Life, featured a dialogue between Sales and Charles Marsh, engaging Charlottesville community members on critical issues of race, spirituality, and public life. Read More

In Church in Ordinary Time, author Amy Plantinga Pauw draws on the seasons of the church year and the creation theology elaborated in the Wisdom books of Scripture to explore the contours of a Trinitarian ecclesiology that is properly attuned to the church’s life amid the realities of today’s world. Read More