Sunday, May 25, 2008. 10 AM
Theology in Action: King, Bonhoeffer, and You
The Sunday Forum: Critical Issues in the Light of Faith
The Very Rev. Samuel T. Lloyd III, host
Charles Marsh meets with Cathedral Dean Samuel T. Lloyd III to talk about “Theology in Action: King, Bonhoeffer, and You.”
Marsh leads the Project on Lived Theology at the University of Virginia, which he describes as “a means of bringing together academics and practitioners. It’s an attempt to bridge the gap btw the study of theology…and the practices of people in community.”
This approach is borne of Marsh’s pilgrimage as a southerner who came of age in the Jim Crow south, and who was “haunted” by early experience of a faith disconnected from the anguishes of life. As a child and youth in Alabama and Mississippi, Marsh watched his father, a Southern Baptist minister, gradually move away from the acceptance of segregation and eventually preach a sermon entitled “Amazing Grace for Every Race.” Marsh records his experiences in a memoir, Last Days: A Son’s Story of Sin and Segregation at the Dawn of a New South.
Marsh has also written extensively about the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, as well as fellow Mississippian Fannie Lou Hamer, a civil rights leader. His books include Reclaiming Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God’s Long Summer, and The Beloved Community.
His most recent book is Wayward Christian Soldiers, which Lloyd calls “almost too hot to handle.” The volume examines the nexus between the religious right and political power in recent years. Marsh expresses particular dismay at bellicose sermons preached in the run-up to America’s recent and lingering wars. “When Jesus makes an appearance, it’s almost as an uninvited guest,” he says. “It does seem that we lost our understanding that the first axiom of our faith and practice is following this new and costly path of Jesus of Nazareth.” Instead, he assesses, too many preachers explored arcane passages in the Old Testament, and made incomplete analyses of the theory of just war.
About Charles Marsh
Marsh leads the Project on Lived Theology at the University of Virginia, which he describes as “a means of bringing together academics and practitioners. It’s an attempt to bridge the gap btw the study of theology…and the practices of people in community.”
This approach is borne of Marsh’s pilgrimage as a southerner who came of age in the Jim Crow south, and who was “haunted” by early experience of a faith disconnected from the anguishes of life. As a child and youth in Alabama and Mississippi, Marsh watched his father, a Southern Baptist minister, gradually move away from the acceptance of segregation and eventually preach a sermon entitled “Amazing Grace for Every Race.” Marsh records his experiences in a memoir, Last Days: A Son’s Story of Sin and Segregation at the Dawn of a New South.
Marsh has also written extensively about the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, as well as fellow Mississippian Fannie Lou Hamer, a civil rights leader. His books include Reclaiming Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God’s Long Summer, and The Beloved Community.