Explorations in American Protestant Liberalism

We are pleased to share new research from Professor Heather Warren, Associate Professor of Religious Studies at UVA, and The Rev. Dr. at St. Paul’s Memorial Church. Heather began with the hunch that the largely forgotten story of the Protestant Hour Radio Show offers important insights into the culture of mid-century Protestant liberalism in the United States. Read More

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In Praise of the Peculiar People

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July 6, 2023

“My name is Will D. Campbell. I am who my momma and daddy named me the night I was born. I live in Tennessee. I have three children. I am a preacher of the Good News. God was in Christ reconciling the world. Not will be, not perhaps, not just if we’re good boys and girls; but was, once and for all. We are now one people. We have been reconciled to God and each other. Racism is a violation of that fact. Nations are a violation; classes are a violation; joining the country club is a violation. I believe God was in Christ, goddammit, that’s what I believe!”

Will D.Campbell (1924 -2013), when asked by a group of white pastors in Georgia, in the early 1960’s why he opposed racial segregation Read More

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On the Christian Fear of the Psyche:
A Conversation with
Charles Marsh and David Dault

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May 3, 2023

I think there is a very strong parallel between the God of Jesus Christ as so rendered in those essays, and other essays of that period, and the God that emerges in the course of herapeutic work that requires the disentangling of our images of God from their finite sorts of references that have emerged because of family, through tradition, through culture. These essays are just like prose-psalms on speed, of the God who comes to humanity from the far country, from the far away country of the triune God, who calls us into the strange new world, who stands over our finite loyalties and our unceasing production of the false God, both in judgment and in grace. Read More

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Kelly Gissendaner and Jenny M. McBride

Jennifer McBride’s New Book on Kelly Gissendaner and Theological Friendships

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March 24, 2023

I’ve long admired Jenny McBride as a scholar who exemplifies civil courage and “honest patriotism” (in the words of the late Donald Shriver) in the vocation of public theologian. I’m delighted to commend her remarkable new book, You Shall Not Condemn: A Story of Faith and Advocacy on Death Row as a significant contribution to enterprise of lived theology. Read More

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“The Great Disturbance”: Meditations in Lent, Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Barcelona, 1928

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March 20, 2023

Compared with the formal rigors of the doctoral dissertation, the Barcelona sermons are both literary and uninhibited. Bonhoeffer found writing them a great liberation, for the exercise drew on his musical gifts and artistic intuitions. Indeed the lyrical and expressive expressive sermons from Spain are among his most beautiful writings. A mystical current guides the pen. He would say that he felt as if “a theology of … spring and summer” was replacing “the Berlin winter theology”. Read More

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“Are We Still of Any Use?” Dietrich Bonhoeffer on Christian Witness in a Perilous Age

February 10, 2023

Bonhoeffer declares to us anew the hope that bears the sorrows of the world: “Again and again in these turbulent times, we lose sight of why life is really worth living. In truth, it is like this: If the earth was deemed worthy to bear the human being Jesus Christ, if a human being like Jesus lived, then our life as human beings has meaning.” Read More

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The Katallagete Story

September 2, 2022

Katallagete — be reconciled! — is both the Greek word used by the Apostle Paul in his second letter to the Corinthians (“we pray you, be reconciled to God”), and the name of a small, luminous journal that espoused civil rights and Christian social activism during its publication run from 1964 until 1990. Read More

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Anxiety Seminar

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August 26, 2022

This fall, I am teaching a seminar at UVA titled “Anxiety: Religious and Theological Perspectives.

Anxiety is the affliction of most striving college students and the most common mental health disorder of our time. What are its religious and theological meanings, causes, and consolations?  Read More

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Theology Now! Podcast

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July 28, 2022

In this, the third in an occasional series of podcasts exploring major themes and resources from the Project’s 22-year history, we’re talking about the built environment. Our guest today is Dr. Timothy Gorringe, Emeritus Professor of Theological Studies at the University Exeter, in England. Dr. Gorringe was a keynote speaker at the Project’s Spring Institute in Lived Theology in 2006, a gathering called “Spaces for Reconciliation and Redemption: Theology and the Built Environment.” Read More

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Women in Christian Peacebuilding Movements

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June 29, 2022

In her groundbreaking paper, “Women in Christian Peacebuilding Movements,” Meghan Topp Goodwin argues that women’s leadership not only was crucial to the success of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement and to the movement to end the Second Liberian Civil War (1999-2003), but also is necessary for any lasting peace. Read More

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