Joerg RiegerNobel Conference 52

Cal Turner Chancellor’s Chair of Wesleyan Studies and Distinguished Professor of Theology at Vanderbilt University Divinity School.

Lecture: What Does Jesus Have to Do with Wall Street?

Joerg Rieger is a constructive theologian who examines the relationship between theology and public life to probe misuses of political and economic power. His theology emerged as he came to understand systematic injustice, including economic injustice, and realized that neither the hardline, rules-based Christianity of the church in which he grew up nor the liberal theology of his early education could address the most serious forms of systematic oppression. Rieger’s work is based on the belief that more revolutionary and faithful visions of Christianity are needed in the world today, and that such visions are emerging from grassroots communities. He argues that, although religion has been one source of the problems of economic injustice, it might also hold one of the important keys for developing solutions.

Rieger received his PhD at Duke University in 1994, having earned an MDiv at the Theologisches Seminar der Evangelisch-methodistischen Kirche in Reutlingen, Germany in 1989.

Rieger taught at the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University beginning in 1994; he has just left that institution to join the faculty of Vanderbilt Divinity School. Author and editor of more than 20 books, Rieger’s work has been translated into Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, German, Korean, and Chinese.

Watch Dr. Rieger discuss the Occupy movement from a Christian perspective.