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Theory That Can Be Lived: In Conversation about (with) Lived Experience
Heather Walton’s recent Practical Theology Beyond the Empirical Turn presses practical theology to rethink what counts as theory.[1] Rather than treating theory as an abstract system or a critical tool applied from outside, she invites us to see it as something that condenses and circulates through shared stories, images, practices, and felt worlds. She argues that practical theology has overlooked the way that theory functions as “collective sentiment” and “shared narrative”.[2] Taking that provocation seriously, we place our research projects into conversation. One of us (Chris) works on liturgy and symbolic action. The other (Giorgio) studies LGBTQ+ Catholic identity. In both contexts, lived experience is treated not as illustrative material…
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Rethinking Religious Engagement Through Worship: Airport Prayer Rooms as Sites of Secular Hospitality
Air travel is often accompanied by heightened emotions and elevated stress levels, arising from a range of challenges—from carefully managing check-in times and adhering to airline baggage allowances to the anxieties about confined spaces, turbulence, the potential impact of flight delays and cancellations, or more sinister imaginings of how flights might go wrong. In recognition of the diverse needs of travellers—whether of any faith or of none—many airports now provide a designated prayer or quiet room. It is my own practice, where time and circumstance permit, to make use of these rooms when passing through airports. I do so with a dual awareness: first of a personal concern—whether or not…
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Rites of Passage in Pop and Faith: Lady Gaga and the Formation of Identities
‘Our life consists not only in being but also in becoming’: so runs a memorable line from the Marriage Liturgy currently authorised for use in the Scottish Episcopal Church.[1] Such rites of passage provide opportunities for taking stock of who and how we are in the world, and for reflecting on the ways – great and small, obvious and inconspicuous, collective and individual – we emerge and evolve. Behind this lies an understanding of identity as something dynamic: a transformative journey in which we negotiate what is found (being) and what is fashioned (becoming). Rites of passage is a term coined by the anthropologist Arnold van Gennep in a short…
