Peter SladeVirginia Seminar Project: Singing Church

Peter Slade teaches courses in the history of Christianity and Christian thought at Ashland University, Ohio. Slade’s current research focuses on justice, reconciliation and the practices of congregational singing: the ways that singing shapes—and is shaped by—the lived ecclesiologies of different congregations and communities.

To read Pete’s blog, click here.

For Pete’s academic page at Ashland University, click here.

Peter Slade teaches courses in the history of Christianity and Christian thought at Ashland University in Ohio. He received a doctorate in religious studies from the University of Virginia. Prior to studying at UVA, he earned a master’s degree in Southern studies from the University of Mississippi and a B.D. with honors in Christian ethics and practical theology from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. He also studied community work at Ruskin College, Oxford in Oxford, England.

Slade’s scholarship and teaching is grounded in his work and life in the church. He served as a preacher for Mt. Olivet Church (UCC), a small chapel in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains, and worked for several years as a community development worker for the Church of England in Blackburn and Aylesbury. His interest in the lived ecclesiologies of Christian communities led to his first book, Open Friendship in a Closed Society: Mission Mississippi and a Theology of Friendship (Oxford University Press, 2009), an interdisciplinary study of an ecumenical racial reconciliation initiative in Mississippi. He is co-editor and contributor in two volumes connected with the Project on Lived Theology: Mobilizing for the Common Good: The Lived Theology of John M. Perkins (University Press of Mississippi, 2013) and Lived Theology in Method, Style, and Pedagogy (Oxford University Press, 2016).

Pete’s current research focuses on justice, reconciliation and the practices of congregational singing: the ways that singing shapes—and is shaped by—the lived ecclesiologies of different congregations and communities.

What is your favorite book (or two, or few)?
Will Campbell, Brother to a Dragon Fly
Rian Malan, My Traitor’s Heart

What is your favorite book to require for classes you teach?
Lillian Smith, Killers of the Dream

What are some of your favorite classes to teach? Why?
REL 106 Exploring the Bible, because the students—particularly those who grew up going to Sunday school—have no idea what is waiting for them in the text.