Lately, we’ve been posting a lot about John Perkins and the new PLT book about his life and work, Mobilizing for the Common Good: The Lived Theology of John M. Perkins. If you missed it, you can catch up on the CCDA conference and book launch news, or read Pete Slade’s blogs about the CCDA launch and an additional book event at the Old Capitol in Jackson, Mississippi. Read More

On Thursday, October 10th at 3:30pm the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture welcomes Jonathan Rieder, author of Gospel of Freedom: Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Letter from Birmingham Jail and the Struggle That Changed a Nation. Rieder will deliver a lecture titled: “The Prophet Unbound: From Diplomacy to ‘Telling the Man’ in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail.'” Find the event details and learn more about Rieder here. Read More

This is the fourth (and final) in a series of blog posts with reports and reflections by Peter Slade on his two-week lived theology road trip from New Orleans to Memphis in September 2013.

Paris Yates Chapel

From Jackson I drive north to Oxford, home of the University of Mississippi and a number of my old friends. That Wednesday evening, I slide in to a pew at the back of the campus chapel for the weekly gathering of the Reformed University Fellowship (RUF). The new chapel building is rapidly filling with conservative white Presbyterian youth. Women in shorts, makeup and silk-screened T-shirts reading, “Tri Delta Crush Party” and “Alpha Gamma Delta Swap” pass me as they find their seats. The men are wearing a uniform of baseball caps and check cotton shirts. Read More

Twenty years ago, Virginia Seminar member Russell Jeung moved into Oak Park apartments in Oakland, California, hoping to make a difference. Looking back, he realizes that he is the one who has been changed. Read his story in this Christianity Today article, and stay tuned for more on Russell’s life and work at Oak Park in his Virginia Seminar book. Read More

This is the third in a series of blog posts with reports and reflections by Peter Slade on his two-week lived theology road trip from New Orleans to Memphis in September 2013.

I arrived at Redeemer Presbyterian Church at 9:30 in time for Sunday school. Redeemer is a young, vibrant, interracial church in Jackson, Mississippi. As I waited in a corridor for the first service to let out, I saw an older African American gentleman in a light brown suit sitting patiently. I realized that I was waiting for Sunday school with James Meredith, the man who integrated the University of Mississippi back in 1962. I told him how much I had enjoyed reading his recent book A Mission from God: A Memoir and Challenge for America. Read More

This is the second in a series of blog posts with reports and reflections by Peter Slade on his two-week lived theology road trip from New Orleans to Memphis in September 2013. Read More

This is the first of a series of blog posts with reports and reflections by Peter Slade on his two-week lived theology road trip from New Orleans to Memphis in September 2013.Sign reading: Laisez Le Bon Temps Roulez

I flew to new Orleans to attend the annual conference of the Christian Community Development Association (CCDA). The CCDA is a network of churches and ministries working in the impoverished, mostly urban, neighborhoods– the so-called “forgotten places of empire.” Its guiding principles are crystallized in John Perkins’s three Rs of Relocation, Redistribution and Reconciliation. I was one of around nearly 3,000 who arrived in the city for what Charles Marsh has described as “a mix of mass meeting, Billy Graham crusade, and SNCC planning session circa 1963” (The Beloved Community, 2005, 185). Read More

On Wednesday, September 18, Dr. Marie Griffith will give a lecture entitled, “Christians, Sex, and Politics: An American History.” Dr. Griffith is a U.Va. alumna, director of the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics, and John C. Danforth Distinguished Professor in the Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis. Read More

As mentioned in our last news post, the Project on Lived Theology is celebrating John Perkins through the launch of a new published work Mobilizing for the Common Good: The Lived Theology of John M. Perkins, edited by Peter Slade, Charles Marsh, and Peter Goodwin Heltzel.

On July 11 of this year, the essays written for the 2009 Spring Institute for Lived Theology were published in Mobilizing for the Common Good. Peter Slade describes the work as an exploration of “the life and legacy” of John M. Perkins, influential community organizer, minister, speaker, writer, and Civil Rights activist. Read More

On September 11, the 25th annual Christian Community Development Association National Conference convenes in New Orleans. The conference runs four days, and is packed with workshops, plenary sessions, Bible studies, and exhibits, one of which is a book launch for Mobilizing for the Common Good: The Lived Theology of John M. Perkins. Read More