The Ambiguity of (Religious) Practice, Part 1

In practical theology and related fields, when we write about practice we tend to write about the kinds of practices that build up (religious) communities, that correspond deeply, somehow, to what is taken to be essential to a religious/spiritual/faith/etc tradition–in a more or less strongly positive way.
In some of my recent writings — from Witness to Dispossession: The Vocation of a Postmodern Theologian (Orbis, 2008), to my chapter on “Postmodern Practical Theology” and my co-authored chapter (with Dr. Katherine Turpin) on “White Practical Theology” in the recent book Opening the Field of Practical Theology: An Introduction (edited Kathleen Cahalan and Gordon Mikoski (Rowman and Littlefield, 2014) — I have tried to outline some of the techniques with which practical theologies advocate for the practices they present, and tried to specify the ambiguities within those advocated practices.
A corollary to that, I have suggested, is the silence of the (religious) practices that are more evidently ambiguous or destructive, and are often backgrounded in theological/religious work on (religious) practices. There is something in the field that has not been able to face the full ambiguity of (religious) practice. How do you deal with this in your own work? I will put up a few more posts on this topic in the coming weeks.
Tom Beaudoin, Brookline, Massachusetts