After an all-to-lengthy excursion into interdisciplinary method, it’s time to get back into the four core tasks of practical theology. Having been through the descriptive and empirical moments, the third moment of PT is the normative moment. It is now, after gathering data and using the best of several disciplines to interpret that data, that the practical theologian makes normative claims for the life of the church. Often, practical theology is in conversation with the other volumes of the “theological... Read more

OK, this is the final part of what was meant to be a brief tangent. But Jimmy brings up an important caveat in his comment below. My not-so-hypothetical situation of a troubled teen in the school counselor’s office was sanitized of the real-life complications of power. Being a trained social worker, and a special ed. teacher, Jimmy knows the power dynamics at work in a situation like this. It should come as no surprise that the pediatrician will come out... Read more

OK, I’ll start with a concrete situation in order to illustrate the promise of “tranversal rationality.” [UPDATE: This is a hypothetical situation; the “boy” is meant to represent a concrete situation or problem. Another analogy could be, for instance, all the people who together had to decide what to build on the site of the World Trade Center.] You’re a youth pastor, and you get a call from the guidance counselor at the local public high school; she wants you... Read more

I’ve posted on that question over at Religion Dispatches. We’re at a turning point, right now, because of a confluence of two events: 1) the MSM has finally figured out that 3/4s of American’s are religious, and 2) the Religious Right has lost its monopoly in the public square. Read the rest. Read more

How does one navigate the pluralism of our world today? There’s a lot at stake in this question. Currently, there are only a few options available to Christians in a globalized/pluralistic/postmodern society: liberal accomodationism, conservative retreatism, Hauerwasian sectarianism, and the newcomer: Milbankian (Radical Orthodoxy) withdrawal into the liturgy. (more…) Read more

OK, I was all brewing up a great intermezzo post with a provisional definition of PT, then I got this anonymous comment that blew me away: Practical theology is that theological discipline which is concerned with the Church’s self-actualization here and now – both that which is and that which ought to be. That it does by means of theological illumination of the particular situation in which the Church must release itself in all its dimensions. This practical theology is... Read more

Practical Theology is a self-consciously hermeneutical enterprise. Now, if you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know that I think that all of life is, essentially, a hermeneutical endeavor. Each of us is an interpreter, of our surroundings, our traditions, our conversations, the media we engage, etc. In the words of one philosopher, “Interpretation goes all the way down and all the way back up.” PT engages hermeneutical theory constantly, especially in an effort to mediate between the empirical-descriptive... Read more

Practical theology (PT), as a discipline, takes a great deal of interest in empirical information. In fact, there is an entire school of thinking within PT — found mainly in the Netherlands and Germany — that’s called “Empirical Theology.” Practical theologians, because of the importance of the groundedness of the discipline, are often well-versed in a social science, the way James Fowler was in developmental psychology when he developed his Stages of Faith Development. (An aside: to all of you... Read more