Christ Seminar Spring Colloquium on "Organizing, Movements, and Activism"
Joerg Rieger's Jesus vs Caesar: For People Tired of Serving the Wrong God

Description: 

The Christ seminar is honored to convene this colloquium on Joerg Rieger’s book” Jesus vs. Caesar: For People Tired of Serving the Wrong Religion.” This book, written for a broader audience, proposes that the problem of Christianity is not secularism, atheism, or other religions, but the elements of Christianity that identify with the dominant powers of empire. This insight calls progressives to look beyond the more episodic outrage of today's headlines, and to deepen their understanding of systems of power.  Fresh understandings of structures of injustice require more sustained conversations about what alternatives look like, which movements are most helpful, and where alternative power be most effectively organized.

Presenters and Respondents

Joerg Rieger, Distinguished Professor of Theology, Vanderbilt Divinity School

Siobhán Garrigan, Loyola Chair of Theology, Trinity College Dublin

Kwok Pui Lan, Dean's Professor of Systematic Theology, Candler School of Theology

Liz Theoharris, Executive Director of the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice

Joerg Rieger is Distinguished Professor of Theology, Cal Turner Chancellor’s Chair of Wesleyan Studies, and Director of the Wendland-Cook Program in Religion and Justice at Vanderbilt University. He is author and editor of 26 books, including Theology in the Capitalocene: Ecology, Identity, Class, and Solidarity (2022), Jesus vs. Caesar: For People Tired of Serving the Wrong God (2018), No Religion but Social Religion: Liberating Wesleyan Theology (2018). He lectures frequently nationally and internationally, and his works have been translated into Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Croatian, German, Malayalam, Korean, and Chinese.

Siobhán Garrigan is the first female Professor of Theology in Ireland, where she holds the Loyola Chair at Trinity College Dublin. Her early career involved living with people experiencing homelessness and themes of poverty and injustice and how they affect belonging characterize her work. She has a particular interest in the potential role of ritual in social transformation. Her last book was The Real Peace Process: Worship, Politics, and the End of Sectarianism, and her next is A Theology of Home in a Time of Homelessness.

Dr. Kwok Pui Lan is the Dean’s Professor of Systematic Theology at Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta. She is a past president of the American Academy of Religion and the author of The Anglican Tradition from a Postcolonial Perspective; Postcolonial Politics and Theology; and Postcolonial Imagination and Feminist Theology. She has also edited Women and Christianity in 4 volumes.

The Reverend Dr. Liz Theoharis is a theologian, pastor, author, and anti-poverty activist. She is the Executive Director of the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice and Co-Chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. Rev. Dr. Theoharis has been organizing in poor and low-income communities for the past 30 years. Her books include: We Cry Justice: Reading the Bible with the Poor People’s Campaign (Broadleaf Press, 2021) and Always with Us?: What Jesus Really Said about the Poor (Eerdmans, 2017) and she has published widely in the New York Times, Politico, the Washington Post, Sojourners and elsewhere. Rev. Dr. Theoharis is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA) and teaches at Union Theological Seminary. She has been awarded the Freedom Award from the National Civil Rights Museum, the Selma Bridge Award, the Women of Spirit Award from the Presbyterian Church (USA) and many others.