Lived Theology contains the work of an emerging generation of theologians and scholars who pursue research, teaching, and writing as a form of public responsibility motivated by the conviction that theological ideas aspire in their inner logic toward social expression. Written as a two-year collaboration of the Project on Lived Theology at the University of Virginia, this volume offers a series of illustrations and styles that distinguish Lived Theology in the broader conversation with other major approaches to the religious interpretation of embodied life. The book begins with a modest query: How might theological writing, research, and teaching be expanded to engage lived experience with the same care and precision given by scholars to books and articles? Behind this question lies the claim that theological engagements and interpretations of lived experience offer rich and often surprising insights into God's presence and activity in the world. Answers to, and explorations of, this question form the narrative framework of this groundbreaking volume. Lived theology is shown to be an exceedingly curious enterprise, transgressing disciplinary boundaries as a matter of course, examining circumstance, context, and motivation, and marshalling every available resource for the sake of discerning the theological shape of enacted and embodied faith. Understanding the social consequences of theological ideas is a task with wide ranging significance, inside the academy and in the broader forums of civic discussion. Contributors consider Lived Theology from a diverse array of experiences and locations, including towns in Mississippi struggling with histories of racist violence and murder; a homeless shelter in Atlanta; churches in the Democratic Republic of Congo; faith based volunteer organizations in Columbus, Ohio; and a college classroom in the Midwest. This innovative work offers a fresh and exciting model for scholars, teachers, practitioners, and students seeking to reconnect the lived experience of faith communities with academic study and reflection. "I recommend this book to theologians attracted to ethnography, and vice versa, as a varied and thorough exploration of the gifts and challenges that dwell at the intersection of those endeavors. Theological educators may take an interest as well; the theme of integrating community engagement into theological study runs throughout the book. Many of the questions of scholarly subjectivity and research ethics raised herein are familiar for those trained in ethnography. However, the project is clearly breaking new ground in raising these questions in the context of theological scholarship, a development to be celebrated."-Miranda Hassett, Anglican Theological Review "[T]his diverse work should prove engaging for any theologian interested in practices. It coheres through shared conviction that the lived realities of faith constitute a rich and primary focal point for theological inquiry. Together, the authors illustrate and explore this conviction well. I sensed an implicit camaraderie in their loosely united contributions. Their diversity provides a broad and engaging introduction to the work of lived theology while gesturing toward a much larger conversation."-- Reading Religion " Lived Theology is a book that is more than the sum of its parts. It is more because under the insightful direction of Charles Marsh, Peter Slade, and Sarah Azaransky these essays offer a theological alternative we have so desperately needed. In the very least, this book should end the unhappy tension between academic and popular theology." --Stanley Hauerwas, author of The Work of Theology " Lived Theology is essential reading for students, activists, pastors, and scholars who are attentive to present and future opportunities for theological engagement and witness in the public square. These essays establish the importance of lived theology as a rationale and methodology for analysis of the primary source data of social change, such as field reports, position papers and oral histories, in order to discover vital theological conversations, convictions and commitments." --Cheryl J. Sanders, author of Saints in Exile "Lived theology has been among the most vivifying and necessary scholarly movements of the last decade and a half. In illustrating how to read the texts of people's lives for clues about God, this book inspires, tempts, informs, and provokes." --Lauren F. Winner, Associate Professor of Christian Spirituality at Duke Divinity School Charles Marsh is Commonwealth Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia. Peter Slade is Professor of Religion at Ashland University. Sarah Azaransky is Assistant Professor of Social Ethics at Union Theological Seminary.