Derek Woodard-Lehman
I am Assistant to the Dean of Faculty and Lecturer in Theology and Ethics at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary (USA). I work broadly in the intellectual traditions of Western religion, with an emphasis on the intersection of Christian commitment with democratic social criticism and political activism. Drawing on modern global Protestant theologies, modern and contemporary philosophy, as well as postcolonial and critical race theory, I examine how religious commitments mobilize resistance to racial injustice in cases like the American Civil Rights Movement, the German Church Struggle, the South African Anti-Apartheid Movement, and the Movements for Black Lives.
I am currently working on three projects.
My first project,”Police, Prison, & the Justice of God” is a manuscript in draft about the criminal justice crisis in the United States. In it I draw together secular literature from critical legal theory, sociology, history, criminology, and jurisprudence with public theology and theological ethics in order to mitigate the tension between public safety and social justice. I integrate “dogma” and “data” in order to correct common misconceptions that misdiagnose the crisis and to construct faithful & workable interventions for the social witness of religious communities.
My second project, “Protest Theology: Barth, Barmen, and Belhar,” is a manuscript in revision that surveys modern Protestant resistance to Nazism and Apartheid. I revisit the German and South African Church struggles, and recover the Reformed dogmatic roots of their democratic politics. Doing so, I shed light on neglected connections between confessional theology and political theology, especially in relation to Karl Barth’s influence on the Barmen Declaration and Belhar Confession.
My third project, in development, is an edited volume on Karl Barth’s political theology in global perspective. I currently am soliciting contributors to this project which will appear in Rowman and Littlefield’s “Political Theology in a New Key” series.
My research and teaching have been supported by competitive grants and fellowships from The Duke Endowment, The Lilly Endowment, The Fund for Theological Education, and the Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies. I have presented my work at the American Academy of Religion, the Society of Christian Ethics, the Society of Jewish Ethics, the Global Network for Public Theology, and the Center for Barth Studies. My recent and forthcoming publications appear in journals like Modern Theology, Journal of Religious Ethics, Studies in Christian Ethics, Journal of Jewish Ethics, and Pro Ecclesia, as well as edited volumes with Oxford Univeristy Press, T&T Clark, Rowman and Littlefield, Palgrave Macmillan, and Zeitschrift für Theology und Kirche.
Phone: +1 (412) 924-1353
Address: Pittsburgh Theological Seminary
616 North Highland Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15206
USA
I am currently working on three projects.
My first project,”Police, Prison, & the Justice of God” is a manuscript in draft about the criminal justice crisis in the United States. In it I draw together secular literature from critical legal theory, sociology, history, criminology, and jurisprudence with public theology and theological ethics in order to mitigate the tension between public safety and social justice. I integrate “dogma” and “data” in order to correct common misconceptions that misdiagnose the crisis and to construct faithful & workable interventions for the social witness of religious communities.
My second project, “Protest Theology: Barth, Barmen, and Belhar,” is a manuscript in revision that surveys modern Protestant resistance to Nazism and Apartheid. I revisit the German and South African Church struggles, and recover the Reformed dogmatic roots of their democratic politics. Doing so, I shed light on neglected connections between confessional theology and political theology, especially in relation to Karl Barth’s influence on the Barmen Declaration and Belhar Confession.
My third project, in development, is an edited volume on Karl Barth’s political theology in global perspective. I currently am soliciting contributors to this project which will appear in Rowman and Littlefield’s “Political Theology in a New Key” series.
My research and teaching have been supported by competitive grants and fellowships from The Duke Endowment, The Lilly Endowment, The Fund for Theological Education, and the Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies. I have presented my work at the American Academy of Religion, the Society of Christian Ethics, the Society of Jewish Ethics, the Global Network for Public Theology, and the Center for Barth Studies. My recent and forthcoming publications appear in journals like Modern Theology, Journal of Religious Ethics, Studies in Christian Ethics, Journal of Jewish Ethics, and Pro Ecclesia, as well as edited volumes with Oxford Univeristy Press, T&T Clark, Rowman and Littlefield, Palgrave Macmillan, and Zeitschrift für Theology und Kirche.
Phone: +1 (412) 924-1353
Address: Pittsburgh Theological Seminary
616 North Highland Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15206
USA
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Journal Articles by Derek Woodard-Lehman
within the sectarian type itself.
Edited Volumes by Derek Woodard-Lehman
In order to, first, correct these scholarly misreadings and, second, construct a post-liberal trajectory that is more sensitive to the role of human reason in the reception and interpretation of revelation, contributors stage an encounter between post-Kantian analysis of rational self-determination and the Wittgenstinian turn to ordinary language. Drawing on Hegel, Hermann Cohen, Stanley Cavell, as well as Barth himself, they present a new understanding of the relationship between revelation and theological reflection that begins from the sitz im leben of human language and the interpretation of scripture through negotiation and testing of normative claims and confessional needs within religious communities.
CONTRIBUTORS:
Nicholas Adams – University of Edinburgh
Molly Farneth – Haverford University
Mark James – University of Virginia
Paul Nahme – Brown University
Randi Rashkover (ed) – George Mason University
Elias Sacks – University of Colorado at Boulder
Jonathan Tran – Baylor University
Derek Woodard-Lehman (ed.) – Lutheran Seminary at Philadelphia
Book Chapters by Derek Woodard-Lehman
This chapter gives the lie to these misinterpretations and gives new life to liberative readings of Barth, showing that his explicit theological critique of anthropocentric idolatry is also an implicit political critique of Eurocentric ideology. To do so, it rereads Barth's much neglected pre-war ETHICS lectures where he briefly—but explicitly—addresses issues of racism, capitalism, and colonialism. And it argues that any theology worthy of the name “Barthian” must, with James Cone, name silence in the face of white supremacy as theology’s greatest sin.
Presentations (Selected) by Derek Woodard-Lehman
within the sectarian type itself.
In order to, first, correct these scholarly misreadings and, second, construct a post-liberal trajectory that is more sensitive to the role of human reason in the reception and interpretation of revelation, contributors stage an encounter between post-Kantian analysis of rational self-determination and the Wittgenstinian turn to ordinary language. Drawing on Hegel, Hermann Cohen, Stanley Cavell, as well as Barth himself, they present a new understanding of the relationship between revelation and theological reflection that begins from the sitz im leben of human language and the interpretation of scripture through negotiation and testing of normative claims and confessional needs within religious communities.
CONTRIBUTORS:
Nicholas Adams – University of Edinburgh
Molly Farneth – Haverford University
Mark James – University of Virginia
Paul Nahme – Brown University
Randi Rashkover (ed) – George Mason University
Elias Sacks – University of Colorado at Boulder
Jonathan Tran – Baylor University
Derek Woodard-Lehman (ed.) – Lutheran Seminary at Philadelphia
This chapter gives the lie to these misinterpretations and gives new life to liberative readings of Barth, showing that his explicit theological critique of anthropocentric idolatry is also an implicit political critique of Eurocentric ideology. To do so, it rereads Barth's much neglected pre-war ETHICS lectures where he briefly—but explicitly—addresses issues of racism, capitalism, and colonialism. And it argues that any theology worthy of the name “Barthian” must, with James Cone, name silence in the face of white supremacy as theology’s greatest sin.