The Practical Reality of Practical Theology

This paper was written collaboratively by postgraduate students and staff at the University of Aberdeen during a research seminar in Practical Theology. Contributors are listed at the end of the piece with a brief summary of their research. Click here for details on studying Divinity at Aberdeen.

Introduction

The field of Practical Theology (PT) is thriving at the University of Aberdeen. During the postgraduate Practical Theology research seminar in the Autumn term (September to December) of 2022, we, a group of postgraduate students and academic staff, carried out a collaborative writing exercise, seeking to define and understand Practical Theology. This was inspired by our shared reading of Collaborative Practical Theology by Henk de Roest.

Many voices have contributed to this piece of writing and our bibliography lists a number of those who participated. All participants belong to the University of Aberdeen – some resident students, and others studying at a distance. This article reflects on our process, and some of the conclusions we drew and represents a snapshot of what Practical Theology means to our cohort at Aberdeen, including the challenges we face in attempting to find a single, unified definition.  The reality was that it showed the diverse and often incredibly personal understandings of our discipline. The following words describe the process of writing this article, and our reflections on our results. It will include sections of our collaboratively produced text, but they are most usefully shared in conjunction with the reflexive work undertaken afterwards, as evidenced at the end.

Method

This activity had three key stages. Firstly, key topics of discussion were drawn as conversation starters from de Roest’s Chapter Six (on ‘knowledge transfer’) and added to the idea-sharing platform, Padlet. These were shared with the seminar participants online ahead of the first session. The topics were:

• The prominent portrayal of Practical Theology as a Christian endeavour.
• The role of emotions in Practical Theological research.
• Collaboration with communities.
• Interdisciplinary research.

During the first two-hour session, we split into breakout groups to make notes on one of the four topics. We then put some of these ideas into a short paragraph response to the prompt on a Microsoft Word document and swapped these with another group for feedback. On return of our initial document, each group had time to act on the feedback given. The resulting text was a mixture of paragraphs and bullet point notes for further discussion.

These were collated into key themes and uploaded as a new document, which was made available for two weeks for collaborators so that they could make notes and suggestions to the text. We endeavoured to maintain respect for fellow authors and recommended editing the live document with the ‘track changes’ feature enabled. Furthermore, we suggested that deletions not be made at this stage but rather, that issues be indicated in a comment for reflection. While it was an imperfect process, it allowed us to share in the editing experience.

Our second two-hour session saw us split into new groups to edit the document in a more focused way. We created various groups: editing to refine the overall ‘voice’ of our writing; working on linking sections together; creating an introduction and a conclusion; and offering a consideration of reflexivity.

It is this last point that became the real focus of our time together, and the ultimate result of the exercise. In our final session together, attendees gathered on our MS Teams platform to discuss the experience of writing and editing collaboratively in a virtual space. This allowed us time to be reflexive about the work we have carried out. Throughout the project, it became very clear that our situatedness as researchers is particularly important in Practical Theology. While this is incredibly relevant to our respective projects in the first instance, it is also formational in this collaborative writing exercise and is demonstrated through the following text.

Our Results: Thoughts on Practical Theology

It can be difficult to define Practical Theology and to say why it is different from other fields of academic research – many of which would also lend themselves well to addressing our research questions. In particular, PT often has much in common with the social sciences. We identified, as de Roest demonstrates, that PT was once more concerned with ministerial training and has much in common with Pastoral Theology, with an emphasis on the caring role of chaplains in many community settings. Together, we reflected:

It seems that Practical Theology mostly began in Christian theological contexts, and mostly Christian theologians working and writing in the field broadly, though not exclusively, especially at Aberdeen.  It is worth acknowledging how this history has shaped the guiding values and practices of the research field itself. […] A lot of the research does focus on church practices or Christian ministries, so to an extent, that statement is true of research at Aberdeen.

It became clear, that for some of our researchers, the Christian experience is at the heart of their research. This led to an interesting dialogue within our writing as we attempted to cohesively situate ourselves as researchers, as a number of our group are researching non-Christian faiths, or were non-religious:

There is also some research [and there are some researchers] that sits at the boundaries of Christian faith and practice, and others that are arguably positioned outside it. This makes Practical Theology open to an approach that considers different practices, from whatever faith, as long as there is an understanding of the faith in the practice that you are studying. As long as you have a theological understanding of practices, Practical Theology research doesn’t have to be specifically Christian.  

A common theme in our collaborative work was that PT is unique in that it has shifted towards examining and exploring the lived experiences of those communities. Together, we wrote the following:

In Collaborative Practical Theology, de Roest emphasises practical theological research undertaken in communities. He considers the role(s) of theologian and practitioner, including extensive examples of and insights as to the relationship the two might have. While he recognises that some ‘retreats’ to the ‘ivory tower’ of academia by the theologian may ultimately bolster research projects, de Roest ultimately presents a compelling argument for partnering with those beyond the academy in order to conduct theological exploration.

Our research also takes us into communities worldwide, and draws inspiration from our own and others’ experiences, including those of people whose voices might otherwise be marginalised. We also echo de Roest’s commitment to impactful research, which facilitates reflection and change in practitioner communities, creating outcomes that go beyond academia and benefit those communities who have contributed. This ‘valorisation’ of knowledge has come to widely characterise contemporary practical theological scholarship in recent decades.

As researchers in this field, we agreed that it is important not to limit ourselves to working solely within a traditional theologically academic framework. Engaging with a variety of other disciplines, including sociology, psychology, and anthropology, facilitates fruitful, broad engagement which attends to intersectional issues of, for example, gender, race, disability. This is particularly exemplified in our work with marginalised groups:

a lot of the research is being conducted by people on the ‘inside’, or members of, the groups which they are studying. The Practical Theologians within Aberdeen speak to and uncover truths which may otherwise be ignored or hidden.  PT allows us to bring attention to marginalised communities, conducting intersectional research. We seek to ensure that our research benefits community through appropriate methodologies and outcomes – not just with the people but for the people.

It is this spirit of collaborating to strive for better and more rigorous research that comes through most strongly when we wrote together:

A true collaboration theological practice and research changes/affects both the researcher and those research subjects / knowledge generators / participants in the research.  We are co-collaborators with those we study for the goal of all benefitting from the research, knowing that we ourselves are emotionally and spiritually connected and that our own reflexivity generates elements of the research.

We were also mindful of the role emotion plays in our research:

Practical Theology tends to address real-life issues, so emotions are a part of everyday experiences. We come to our research with our own emotional knowledge from our particular context and we often listen to tears, laughter, joy, anger, and other profound emotional reactions when people disclose frustration, sadness, hopes, and deep emotions.

We connect and feel the emotions of those who are willing to share their deep spiritual experiences with us, even as we strive for professional research boundaries and behaviours.

It is perhaps this note that resonates most strongly throughout the collaborative project we shared. Reflecting on the work we do as Practical Theologians allows space to express and share those emotions, acknowledging the difficult parts of our research and their impact on us as researchers too. It was also noted the emotionally transformative potential of practical theological research on the researcher themselves, as they connect with, and are changed by, the work they are undertaking. 

Reflection

The paragraphs above represent a series of rich discussions we participated in. We felt, however, that the most critical point of the process was recognising what we all bring to the table, and even more importantly, who was missing from the conversation.

This project was led by Paula Duncan, a research student in the UK, inviting collaboration from a cohort of students from multiple countries but largely within the global North. Collaborators were of mixed age groups, predominantly white, and most were women. A significant number of the group identified as Christian, but many of our collaborators hold other or no religious beliefs.

We also considered the accessibility of our project; there were challenges associated simply with the virtual learning environment necessitated by a global cohort of students. These ranged from malfunctioning hardware, software, and difficulties with interface of Padlet or live Word documents.

Furthermore, larger whole-group discussions made it difficult to proportionately hear from all participants, but the smaller breakout groups sometimes struggled to find momentum. Restrictions on our time meant that we often felt we needed more time in smaller groups, but it was difficult to communicate between groups during this period. An entirely virtual collaborative space, we reflected, could feel cold and distant and this curtailed natural conversations. We were concerned that, at times, the voices of those who are more comfortable with the technology – from the MS Teams, Padlet, Microsoft Word – might come through more strongly than others, creating a tech-literate bias in our project. 

We were also conscious of variations in our learning styles, and that some of our cohort live with disabilities or learning differences. Significantly, such a condensed period of activity was challenging for those who might prefer longer to process their thoughts.

The final point we acknowledged was that our various schedules, time zones, and other commitments meant that we had different attendees in each session. While some were present every week and had time to access the working document between sessions, others could only join us for part of the project. We are, therefore, conscious that there are voices who might not come through as strongly in this piece.

With this in mind, we moved to consider the positive aspects of the experience, and the ways in which we were able to use creative problem solving to overcome some of our barriers. Considering each point in turn, the virtual platform – and working in small groups in particular – allowed us to get to know others in our cohort, especially as we often used randomised group allocation. This was particularly important to our distance and/or part-time students who often do not experience the on-campus collegiality enjoyed by students local to Aberdeen.

We also enjoyed the fact that we had an opportunity to play to our strengths and to support one another to engage with the activity. One breakout group in week three offered their example of collaborative working: one person dictated, another transcribed, and the third member of the group re-read the material aloud during revisions. Furthermore, we reflected that having a project leader to direct and facilitate the collaborative work was an advantage.

On the whole, we concluded that it was a valuable experience and that the problems we found were useful indicators of wider challenges to online learning, and shared projects.

Conclusion

One thing has become clear during the course of this project: the time that we spend together strengthens our research. As outlined in the introduction, this piece does not aim to definitively offer an answer to this question, but rather to reflect a shared discussion held in response.

Another thing that has become clear in this process is that Practical Theology can be a rich process of collaboration and including all voices. It can, does, and should represent our diverse communities, backgrounds, and interests. This is, we concluded, the practical reality of Practical Theology.

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Bibliography

Roest, Henk de. Collaborative Practical Theology: Engaging Practitioners in Research on Christian Practices. Leiden: Brill, 2020.

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Contributors

Bouton, Brent: PhD research student, identifying factors that contribute to racial self-awareness for White Christians.

Carroll, Hazel: PhD research student, researching knowing God when you have intellectual disabilities.

Crawshaw, Cody: PhD research student, utilising phenomenology to explore the Christian experience of Anxiety and Chronic Worrying.

Cross, Katie: Lecturer in Practical Theology, currently researching church-leaving, “othering,” and trauma.

Cundill, Helena: PhD research student, using theological Action Research to explore how autistic people experience prayer and anxiety and what they perceive to be the relationship between the two.

Curtius, Iona: PhD research student, embodiment and truth.

Douglas, Sarah: Masters research student, looking at autistic experiences of spiritual abuse

Duncan, Paula: PhD research student, exploring faith and OCD. Lead collaborator and writer on this project.

Horn, Beth: PhD research student, studying the spiritual formation of children who have experienced trauma.

Galbraith, Eilidh: Research Fellow,working on silence, embodiment, and trauma in the context of the gender pain gap.

Garske, Jessica: PhD research student, researching understandings of disability and experiences of shame in the Korean cultural context.

Gibbins, Harry: PhD research student, studying the intersection between autism and Christian ministry.

Nordhues, Robin: PhD research student, researching middle age as an important pivot point for women in the church.

Pitt, Karen: PhD research student, undertaking autoethnographic research into misfitted leadership in the Anglican Communion.

Riley, Jennifer: Research Fellow, working to get the voices of people living with dementia into the curriculum design stage, not just as eventual ‘end users’. Suggested the perfect title and closing statement for this piece.

Sanders, Elizabeth: PhD research student, examining spiritual formation in a cognitively- and spiritually- diverse intentional community.

Stoessel, Katja: PhD research student, conducting an ethnographic study regarding the understanding of church before, during, and after the Corona-related lockdowns.

Strong, Zoe: PhD research student, researching what it means for dyslexic people to engage with the Bible.

van Ommen, Léon: Senior Lecturer,researching autism and liturgy/worship.

Wesly Sam, James: PhD research student,exploring hope and flourishing amidst the experience of loss/blindness.   

Whitcombe, Grace: PhD research student, researching the prevalent issue of racism in Cricket through a theological lens, centring on the notion of the ‘Spirit of Cricket’, aiming to demonstrate that this can engender greater inclusivity and equity within the game.

Zimbrick-Rogers, Emily: PhD research student, the lived faith of American Anglo-Catholics in a Latin mass parish.

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© Paula Duncan et al., 2023.

This work is licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).

Cover Image taken by the author.