Welcome to the blog of Michael J. Iafrate.

I am a West Virginia native pursuing a doctorate in theology at the University of St. Michael’s College at the University of Toronto, Ontario. My master’s degree in theology is from Wheeling Jesuit University. I spent some time as a campus minister at Wheeling Jesuit University and West Virginia University. A basic C.V. can be found here.

In addition to this blog, I contribute to the blog of the Rock and Theology project (sponsored by Liturgical Press) and I was one of the founding members of Vox Nova which David Gibson named one of the ten best Catholic blogs and which was listed as a notable religion blog by The Immanent Frame.

I am also a singer-songwriter who has been performing for about 15 years in various bands such as The Minus Tide, COBRA, and M Iafrate & The Priesthood. An extensive (but probably not complete) discography is here.

My academic interests include contextual, liberationist, and post/decolonial theologies; official, local, ecumenical, and alternative ecclesiologies; liberationist and contextual christologies; Catholic social thought; the Catholic peace tradition; religion and social movements; theology and popular music; religiosity in/of secular culture(s); and Appalachian Studies. Through the lenses of liberationist and post/decolonial theologies I am researching movements of resistance and radical social change in Appalachia in response to human oppression and ecological devastation and am currently developing a dissertation proposal along these lines. Recent essays of mine have been published in the Journal of Postcolonial Theory and Theology and The Conrad Grebel Review.

Some of my theological influences include:
(in alphabetical order)
Gregory Baum, Michael Baxter, Tom Beaudoin, Daniel and Philip Berrigan, Leonardo Boff, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Walter Brueggemann, Michael Budde, William Cavanaugh, James Cone, Lee Cormie, Dorothy Day, Enrique Dussel, Henri de Lubac, Ignacio Ellacuría, Neil Elliott, Jacques Ellul, Gustavo Gutierrez, Stanley Hauerwas, Richard Horsley, Eugene McCarraher, Johann Baptist Metz, Ched Myers, Margaret O’Gara, Karl Rahner, Oscar Romero, Jon Sobrino, Kathryn Tanner, Mark Lewis Taylor, John Howard Yoder.

LICENSE

The text contained on this website (blog posts and essays) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Under this license, you are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work for non-commercial purposes so long as you attribute the work to Michael J. Iafrate and so long as you do not alter, transform, or build upon the text. View details of the license here.

CONTACT ME THIS WAY:

Facebook: click here
Academia.edu profile: click here
Correspondence and review inquiries: m.iafrate [at] utoronto.ca