Opening the Field of Practical Theology: An Introduction [Hardcover]

This valuable volume provides an introduction, 15 contextual essays, and a conclusion by experts in practical theology. The book succeeds in 'opening the field,' recognizing the discipline's provisionality and permeability as open-ended and conversational in nature. To aid comparisons, each chapter is structured with the same eight key features. These begin with historical context and proceed through themes such as norms and source of authority, views of the theory-practice relationship, interdisciplinary conversation partners, and areas of current and future research. . . .The editors identify 11 focal concerns that are characteristic of practical theology and that forge an overall unity for the field. Yet the ways practical theologians put these together result in numerous trajectories or approaches. As Stephen Bevans says, 'In practical theology one begins from an experience or a practice.' This perspective leads to the distinctive identities of the chapters, which cover practical theology as it pertains to African Americans, Evangelicals, feminists/womanists, Roman Catholics, and US Latinos/Latinas. This overview approach should be very helpful for readers at all levels. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-level undergraduates and above; general readers.With the publication of Opening the Field of Practical Theology: An Introduction, Kathleen A. Cahalan and Gordon S. Mikoski have deepened and expanded the tent with a superb collection of essays. The book deepens out understanding by inviting fourteen different authors to examine common features of practical theology from diverse perspectives in an accessible and systematic way. . . .The structure is genius because it makes it possible to read the book in a number of different ways. . . .The endnotes add to the aim of this excellent new resource: they open the field of practical theology.Opening the Field of Practical Theology offers practical theology students and teachers abundant access points into studying, teachilĂB