Public Theology
Today’s observance of the Memorial Day holiday in the U.S. has me thinking of the two past APT Biennial conferences on migration (2016) and on public theology (2014). We invite you to comment below about your thoughts on the intersection of practical theology and public theology: What might be a task of practical theology in […]
Dale Andrews on Martin Luther King, Jr.
“King’s nonviolent civil disobedience strategies to combat racism as well as poverty and militarism were shaped by an evolving critical theological methodology, which determined his four steps to any nonviolent campaign: collection of facts to expose injustice; mutual negotiation with one’s oppressor in seeking justice; perpetual self-purification to sustain the character of justice-making; and direct […]
Musical Practice and Practical Theology
One of the pleasures of practical theology for me has been the freedom to learn about practice in different environments and to bring that learning ‘into’ the theological estimations of practice ingredient to practical theology — and to experiment with how practical theological discourses, in turn, facilitate learning about the goods of life that ‘other’ […]
"Religious Practice" as a Legal Concept (and Practical Theology)
As a parent of a middle-schooler, I was interested to read our middle-school’s policies at the beginning of a new school year. I saw the nondiscrimination policy includes not only no discrimination on the basis of “religion” but also on the basis of “religious practice.” As a practical theologian, this got me interested, and I […]
Practices with Their Own Playlists
Recently, on the podcast Sound Opinions, I heard a news report about recent research into music listening practices that was funded by (and used streaming data from) Spotify. (You can hear it here at the front end of the podcast.) The hosts, Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot, interview Ajay Kalia of Spotify. The interesting findings […]
Was ist los, Stuttgart? Kirchentag! Part 1 of 2
I didn’t know that my recent visit to Stuttgart, Germany, would coincide with Kirchentag – because I had never heard of Kirchentag. But as soon as I stepped out of the train station, I saw people, young and old, sporting red stoles featuring Psalm 90:12, “damit wir klug werden” (“that we may become wise“). For […]
Representing Practice: An Assist from Dwight Conquergood, Part 3 of 3
Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here. What has been missing for me so far in Conquergood’s theory of the representation of practice through performance is a sufficiently subtle account of how the four traps that lay in wait for the performer (or read here: theologian) are not determinable in some objective way apart […]
Representing Practice: An Assist from Dwight Conquergood, Part 2
Part 1 is here. Conquergood provides four different ways of representing the practice of others, drawn in the service of a “moral mapping of performative stances towards the other” (p. 5). First is “The Custodian’s Rip-Off.” When we characterize practice in this way, we are taking away from others rather than being curious about them. […]
Representing Practice: An Assist from Dwight Conquergood, Part 1
I am just now learning about the work of ethnographer, performance theorist, and activist Dwight Conquergood. A friend who was one of his students at Northwestern University referred me to an article he wrote that she thought might intersect helpfully with practical theology, and I think it does. The article is “Performing as a Moral […]
The Ambiguity of (Religious) Practice, Part 4 of 4
Part one is here, part two is here, and part three is here. So I have been laying out (loosely) some elements of thinking about the ambiguity of (religious) practice especially in view of teaching such ambiguity. How do I treat this in the classroom? In the syllabus for my foundations course in practical theology, […]