How I define Practical Theology
I define Practical Theology as an activity of people of faith and an academic method used by scholars as a critical theological approach to understanding religious practices, traditions, and experiences. Practical Theology explores the interrelationship between practice and theory (in that order) from a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary perspective. It is a process of examining, recognizing, describing, analyzing, evaluating, and questioning the theological practices of religious communities, leaders, believers, traditions, and liturgies. Furthermore, from a sociological perspective, which is the portion of this definition that is most important for this blog, I will later argue, that Practical Theology is a form of theology that leans heavily on sociological methodology while capturing and discovering the questions that Practical Theology brings to classical theology. Practical Theology concentrates on investigating, appreciating, visualizing, understanding, illuminating and even critiquing the current social, cultural and ecclesial practices of communities which are nestled within social contexts. In my development of this working definition, I draw on the following authors: Cahalan and Nieman, Bonnie Miller-McLemore, Don Browning, Elaine Graham, and Claire Wolfteich. These authors represent diversity of the field of Practical Theology. Through their differences, I will explore how they were instrumental in developing my working definition for Practical Theology.
According to Browning, Practical Theology draws upon several complementary disciplines.[1] These disciplines function within various practical theological methods. Browning was honest about looking for ways to bring various psychologies and sociologies into conversation with theologies. He was committed to evaluating philosophy and social science for practical theology and as a result, his work was grounded in multiple disciplines. Browning was trained in the field of Religion and Psychological Studies and “was interested in how theology and the modern psychologies could relate to inform the care exercised by the church and the care disciplines of secular society such as psychotherapy, social work, and psychiatry.”[2] Browning, using social sciences, focused on measurable behaviors and used a backwards model to arrive at theological or philosophical premises.
Browning argues that Practical Theology carefully describes the individual and social realities of a community and it defines the worldview within which the inner core of practical reason works.[3] Browning uses five dimensions of descriptive theology to thoroughly describe and guide the process of critical thinking about religious situations and communities. The obligational dimension mediates between our implicit theories of premoral good.[4] The tendency-need dimension is an extension of the obligational dimension because it provides implicit and or explicit theories and hierarchies about the premoral goods of life.[5] The environmental-social dimension reveals the limits within which the moral ordering of goods must take place.[6] And the rule-roles are the settled results of reflection at the higher levels.[7]
From a different perspective, but still connected to my working definition, Kathleen Cahalan and James N. Nieman, Christian practical theologians, understand Practical Theology as a form of theological conceptualization that occurs in three different methods: (1) the means by which Christian believers become faithful in their walk with God, (2) the ways in which pastors, ministers, and church lay leaders act and think theologically, (3) and the methodology of educators in seminaries and universities.[8] When Cahalan and Nieman describe Practical Theology as the means by which Christian believers become faithful in their walk with God, they are conceptualizing Practical Theology as a sort of promoting of Christian discipleship.[9]
For Cahalan and Nieman, Practical Theology is rooted in the Christian tradition.[10] They believe that it singularly focuses on the ecclesia, those who follow Jesus and his teaching. Methodologically, they approach the field of Practical Theology from a Christological point of view. For them, Practical Theology only engages Christian forms of being in Christian leadership. Cahalan and Nieman, as stated above, understand Practical Theology as a form of Christian discipleship whereby people share in a communal reality by knowing God through the witness of Jesus Christ.[11] In order to be a disciple, persons must be a part of a Christian community where there is a distinct type of theological discourse happening that is rooted in the Christian tradition. They argue that discipleship, which they define as the first part of Practical Theology, is an enactment of practices that unit the thinking and behavior of believers.[12] They understand discipleship to be the orientation that one must go through in order to participate in Practical Theology. Without this type of orientation, Cahalan and Nieman claim that the lives of believers and clerics will be aimless.
Cahalan and Nieman’s argument about a discipleship oriented Practical Theology is extremely problematic for a liberal and progressive person like myself because it describes Practical Theology as an explicit Christian enterprise with no respect for any type of interfaith relations or dialogue. Although Cahalan and Nieman have helped me in cultivating my definition of Practical Theology, I am forced to take their definition a bit further into the realm of interfaith discourse. For this reason, I intentionally avoided using the word “Christian” in my definition of Practical Theology that was previously stated. Instead, I used the word “religious”. I see Practical Theology as a critical theological approach to understanding the religious practices, traditions, and experiences of any religion upon which the discipline is applied.
I lean on the works of Bonnie Miller-McLemore in order to substantiate my desire to talk about Practical Theology in more post-modern, religiously pluralistic, non-catholic, non-pastoral context. Miller-McLemore seeks to separate the disciplines of Pastoral Theology and Practical Theology. She begins talking about Practical Theology by defining it as an activity of believers and an academic method used by scholars.[13] She describes Practical Theology in four different ways: (1) a way of life that shapes the faith of believing people, (2) a method of studying theologies that are presently in practice, (3) an educating curriculum for ministries, and (4) a discipline.[14]
The first portion of Miller-McLemore’s definition of Practical Theology, (1) a way of life that shapes faith among believers, is quite similar to Cahalan and Nieman’s understanding of Practical Theology. Both of them explore a particular way of living. However, Miller-McLemore does not focus explicitly on Christian disciples. She argues that Practical Theology must be a relevant theology that speaks to everyday life and everyday faith. Without this, she argues that Practical Theology has no meaning or relevance.[15] Additionally, she points out that Practical Theology is activity-oriented and it deals with religious meaning, religious formation, and transformation in the everyday. She explores Practical Theology in suffering, laughing, playing, loving, eating, walking, and being because it is in these everyday practices that people experience God.[16]
The second portion of her explanation of Practical Theology is in her discussion on method. She describes this portion as the techniques used by both scholars and preachers to understand the dynamics of practices of faith. She talks about studying theology through methods in order to understand the practices and experiences of faith. She debates about the methods of social change, course of formation, teaching, research, congregational studies, and development to name a few.
The third portion of her explanation of Practical Theology is in curriculum. She talks about the need for a multidimensional academic and clerical movement. She argues that all theological disciplines benefit from the aspects of a practical theological enterprise. Finally, Miller McLemore looks at the aspects of discipline and understanding practical theology from a global context.
In contrast to Miller-McLemore, Claire Wolfteich, a Catholic practical theologian, influences an important portion of my definition of Practical Theology. She defines Practical Theology as an interrelationship between practice and theory that is based on a theory-laden character which focuses on the dimensions of practice as the beginning point of the discussion and not theory.[17] She does not understand Practical Theology as the implementation of theory, but as a theoretical reflection on a current religious practice. She also believes that the practical theological aspects of theory and practice are intricately interwoven and interrelated in a complex way.
At this point I want to lift up my second issue in the discipline of practical theology through the lens of Cahalan and Nieman’s research. What troubles me is that Cahalan and Nieman do not explicitly talk about practice. Although they begin their definition by discussing a disciples “way of life”, which could, in and of itself, be thought of as a practice, Cahalan and Nieman do not define nor talk about it as such. In their discourse on discipleship, Cahalan and Nieman discuss that practice has a practical aspect, but they are speaking in a more metaphorical sense than an actual sense of examining the actual aspects of discipleship as a discipline. Their argument is that a Christian practicing practical theology must do certain practices. However, Cahalan and Nieman neither examine nor discuss the implications of these practices on the individual. Even when Cahalan and Nieman talk about ministry, academic research in universities/seminaries and teaching, they never address the roles of practice in these subject matters.
It is important to me that Practical Theology includes a discussion about practice. When one thinks and reflects theologically on a practice, it becomes praxis. Praxis is a sort of arguing for an explicit theological reflection on a practice. Thus, when praxis is formed it then further informs the practice. And this, I will argue later, is best examined using sociological methodology or what Browning calls Descriptive Theology. Since practice is what we tend to do in a tradition, we need praxis in order to explore why we do what we do.
I find the absence of a discussion about practice to be very important because without the consideration of practice, one could argue that Cahalan and Nieman’s methodology for doing practical theology is a theory to practice model and not a practice to theory. If that is the case, then I must ask, what is the theory that they are beginning with in order to discuss practical theology? One could assert that their theory is Christian discipleship and conversion or perhaps Christian living and witnessing. At this juncture I lift up the works of Claire Wolfteich in order to fully discuss the aspects of practice in practical theology because uses practice as a source of theological knowledge.
Claire Wolfteich further breaks down her discussion of Practical Theology by bringing up the topic of practice. She defines practice as an explicit application of theory.[18] Her aim in defining these intricate aspects of Practical Theology is to reveal that the understanding of practice verses theory, and vice versa, is not a simple enterprise. Her main focus in her work is the discovery of the role of spirituality in Practical Theology. For this reason, her explanation of the function of spirituality is grounded in her attempt to uncover a practical theological understanding of spirit. Her argument is that a practical theological approach to spirituality is basically an attempt to understand the role of the spirit in the world at-large[19]. In other words, for Claire Wolfteich, Practical Theology examines the practices and movements of the spirit as the beginning point for discussing the spirit’s role in the lives of people and the world at-large.[20]
On the other hand, Elaine Graham defines Practical Theology as a form of theology that begins with a practice. I am interested in Elaine Graham's framework because she draws on complementary disciplines like sociology and philosophy to do Practical Theology. She uses Weber, Bourdieu, and MacIntyre to define practice as a structured behavior that follows certain rules or patterns. Graham’s work will be beneficial in assisting me to answer my research questions because she is straightforward in connecting and grounding her concepts and definitions of Practical Theology and practice in Sociology. According to Graham, a practice is “something which mediates between structure and agency, seeing culture as a human creation which nonetheless persists over time.”[21] She traces the critical attention to practice back to the works of Max Weber, a sociologist who, amongst other things, was interested in the “psychological sanctions, which, originating in religious belief and the practice of religion, gave a direction to practical conduct and held the individual to it.”[22] For instance, in The Protestant Ethic and The Spirit of Capitalism, Weber reflects on the practice of Communion and the role it played during the seventeenth century. The practice of the Eucharist developed a reformed doctrine outside of Pietism that granted individuals the opportunity to ascertain a state of grace, which thereby determined their social standing.[23] Graham uses Weber as a platform to begin the discussion about practice because as one of the most important theorists of social action who went against the structural-functionalist models, his “methods drew attention to the influence of human interpretation and agency to the maintenance of social order and the creation of social relations.”[24]
Graham continues her pursuit to define practice by linking Weber’s work with the work of Anthony Giddens who perceives structuration as an amalgamation of structure and action.[25] Graham’s interpretation of Giddens is that social systems endure because they persist through structures, which are then reinforced by human agency via everyday practice.[26] These rituals and actions that humans perform to reinforce the established structures are what Graham describes as practice. She says, “Practice is therefore structured behavior which follows certain rules or patterns.”[27] However, Graham contends that the preexisting structure, which she defines as a pattern of social relations that are formally enshrined over a period of time[28], is not external but rather something that is internalized by human participants. For this reason, a practice, which is a ritual or action that humans perform to reinforce the established structures, “is also the medium by which moral values are articulated and enshrined.”[29]
Thirdly, Graham uses Alasdair MacIntyre’s concept of practice to further examine the ways in which human action bears a consistent and historic system of values.[30] According to MacIntyre,
By a 'practice' I am going to mean any coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity, with the result that human powers to achieve excellence, and human conceptions of the ends and goods involved, are systematically extended.[31]
Graham uses MacIntyre to assert that practice is a state of inhabitation whereby a person becomes one with the communal conventions, rules, and systems of meaning that were formed historically. Graham adds to MacIntyre’s definition of practice the idea that virtues, values, and morals may be built into practice but they are not the totality of practice. She asserts that practice is a sort of re-enactment of virtues, values, and morals that has a creative and epistemological status as well.[32] Furthermore, Graham contends that when one engages in practices it opens up the possibility to discover new knowledge that can deepen ones level of meaning and experience.[33]
The last definition of practice that I wish to glean from Graham’s research is that of Pierre Bourdieu. According to Graham, Bourdieu’s understanding of practice is an attempt to rise above the clash between objectivism and subjectivism. Objectivism denies the role of human agency in culture and language. It sees the social world as external and pre-existing, thereby defining practice as the enactment of scripts.[34] On the other hand, “subjectivism regards all action as the outworking of individual consciousness, failing to realize that experiential and phenomenological meaning is always already socially constructed.”[35]
Bourdieu does not regard social reality as determined by impersonal structures beyond human control, nor as an expression of individual consciousness.[36] He transcends this dichotomization by arguing, “habitus is thus conceived as the residuum of past actions, a deposit of past knowledge and practice, but which is always available as the raw material for creative agency, or ‘regulated improvisations.’”[37] For him, “the teleology of structuralism must not be allowed to predetermine the complexities of human practice.”[38] According to his understanding of habitus, “a system of structured, structuring dispositions …constituted in practice and….always oriented towards practical functions”[39], practices are symbolic strategies with layers of meaning. He argues that if one denies the role of human creativity and the freedom to act, he or she is supposing that human action can be disregarded by epiphenomena of social laws. According to Graham, Bourdieu’s analysis is transcendent because it avoids idealism and uses practical sense and habitus to reveal that practices have meaning that is implicit and inseparable from the practice itself.[40]
And lastly, for Don Browning, the practical theologian referenced earlier, Practical Theology begins with the practices and influences of faith. For him, Practical Theology leads to an understanding of the “reasons and justifications” behind the actions and traditions of faith communities.[41] His view of theology differs from the Barthian view because he understands theology as being practical. Barth understood theology to be a systematic understanding of God’s self-disclosure that is independent of human understanding and practice. Browning contends that theology is not singularly a configuration of biblical studies, church history, and systematic theology. He argues that theology is a process of understanding that goes from “present theory-laden practice to a retrieval of normative theory-laden practice to the creation of more critically held theory-laden practices.”[42]
Browning’s purpose in arguing for the reorganization and reconceptualization of how we intellectually perceive theology is because “how we solve problems about the organization of theology makes a difference in how we think and act at the most concrete levels of our lives.”[43] Browning argues that theology should move from practice to theory and perceives this to be the most sensible formula because it follows the nature of human thought.[44] He suggests that his work could be viewed as a systematic statement about the nature of Practical Theology because he uses Christian education and congregational care to demonstrate descriptive theology, historical theology, systematic theology and strategic Practical Theology. His conclusion is that educators, counselors, pastors, organization consultants and theologians alike should turn to his new understanding of a fundamental Practical Theology in order to care, educate, worship, preach and to provide social services.[45] But the question becomes how does he get to his conclusion?
Browning begins on his journey to achieving his set goal by asking several central questions like: (1) Can religious communities be seen as carriers of practical reason? (2) What do their religious identities contribute to this practical reason? (3) In what way should religious communities be understood as bearers of practical rationality? (4) Is it justifiable to say that Christian communities are sanctioned by the ideals and norms of the Judeo-Christian tradition to be carriers and implementers of practical rationality? And (5) in what ways are these communities carriers of practical reason although they may not always exercise it well and faithfully?[46] These questions are important for his intellectual journey throughout his book because he places these implicit questions in critical dialogue with “the explicit answers of the Christian classics and the explicit questions and implicit answers of contemporary cultural experiences and practices” of tangible congregations: the Wiltshire congregation, the Covenant Congregation, and the Apostolic Church of God.[47] This, as I will suggest later, is where Browning’s usage of sociology to substantiate his practical theological claims is extremely evident. Browning identifies this questioning, which I see as sociological, as central questions that interprets as a hermeneutical act.[48] In other words, it is Browning’s hermeneutical act of asking questions that helps him in constructing a fundamental practical theology that is strong enough, from a theologically descriptive point of view, to be used as a guide for normative reconstructions and for establishing norms of praxis.[49] For this reason, I see Browning’s book as a practical theological framework for both understanding theological education and the ways in which Practical Theology uses sociology as an interdisciplinary tool. Browning describes fundamental Practical Theology as a critical reflection on the church’s dialogue about experiences and practices within community.
In this portion of the blog, I have used Browning and Wolftiech to argue that Practical Theology explores the interrelationship between practice and theory (in that order) from a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary perspective. With the help of Bonnie Miller-McLemore, I conclude that Practical Theology is as an activity of people of faith and an academic method used by scholars as a critical theological approach to understanding religious practices, traditions, and experiences. Then, Claire Wolfteich helps to reveal that Practical Theology is a process of examining, recognizing, describing, analyzing, evaluating, and questioning the theological practices of religious communities, leaders, believers, traditions, and liturgies. In the fourth section, I will make the stronger argument that Browning’s understanding of the aspects of descriptive theology in Practical Theology is a form of theology that heavily leans on sociological methodology to capture and discover the questions that Practical Theology brings to classical theology. It could be argued that I am settling in on the notion that Browning best defines my understanding of Practical Theology since I have and will continue to utilize his works in this blog to make my latter claim for the presence of sociology in Practical Theology. However, the most important aspect of my working definition of Practical Theology that will serve as the crux of my argument at the end of this blog is centered on idea of practice and praxis. Browning alone does not aid me in my pursuit to connect the theological understanding of practices with sociological methodology. Therefore, Cahalan and Nieman, Bonnie Miller-McLemore, Don Browning, Elaine Graham, and Claire Wolfteich are all equally important to my working definition of Practical Theology even though I lean heavily on Browning.
[1] Don S. Browning, A Fundamental Practical Theology: Descriptive and Strategic Proposals. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991, p 98
[2] Ibid, p 98
[3] Ibid, p. 106-107
[4] Ibid, p. 107
[5] Ibid, p. 107
[6] Ibid, p. 107
[7] Ibid, p. 107
[8] Cahalan, Kathleen and Nieman, James. “Mapping the Field of Practical Theology.” in Dorothy C. Bass and Craig Dykstra, eds., For Life Abundant: Practical Theology, Theological Education, and Christian Ministry (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2008). Pp. 62
[9] Ibid, p. 70
[10] Ibid, p. 65
[11] Ibid, p. 78
[12] Ibid, p. 78
[13] Miller-McLemore, Bonnie, editor. The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Practical Theology. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012. Introduction p. 1
[14] Ibid p. 1
[15] Ibid, p. 5
[16] Ibid, p. 9
[17] Wolfteich, “Animating Questions: Spirituality and Practical Theology.” International Journal of Practical Theology, vol.13 (2009): 121-143. ------------- “ ‘Practices of Unsaying’: Michel de Certeau, SJ, Spirituality Studies, and Practical Theology.” Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality, Fall 2012.
---------------“Introduction.” In Wolfteich, ed., Invitation to Practical Theology: Catholic Voices and Visions (forthcoming, Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist Press, 2014).
[18] Wolfteich, “Animating Questions: Spirituality and Practical Theology.” International Journal of Practical Theology, vol.13 (2009): 123
[19] Ibid, p. 125
[20] Ibid, p. 130
[21] Elaine Graham, Transforming Practice: Pastoral Theology in an Age of Uncertainty, WIPF & Stock, 2002, p 97.
[22] Max Weber, "The Protestant Ethic and The Spirit of Capitalism" (Penguin Books, 2002) translated by Peter Baehr and Gordon C. Wells, p 40
[23] Ibid, 48
[24] Graham, Transforming Practice: Pastoral Theology in an Age of Uncertainty, p 97.
[25] Ibid, 97
[26] Ibid, 98
[27] Ibid, 98
[28] Ibid, 98
[29] Ibid, 98
[30] Ibid, 99
[31] Ibid, 99
[32] Ibid, 99
[33] Ibid, 99
[34] Ibid, 100
[35] Ibid, 100
[36] Ibid, 102
[37] Ibid, 103
[38] Ibid, 101
[39] Ibid, 101
[40] Ibid, 103
[41] Don S. Browning, A Fundamental Practical Theology: Descriptive and Strategic Proposals. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991, p 3
[42] Don S. Browning, A Fundamental Practical Theology: Descriptive and Strategic Proposals. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991, p 7
[43] Ibid, 9
[44] Ibid, 9
[45] Ibid, 30
[46] Ibid, 9
[47] Ibid, 46
[48] Ibid, 94
[49] Ibid, 94