Practical Theology and Qualitative Research

John Swinton

Description

Practical Theology and Qualitative Research examines methodologies of the social sciences and questions how they can enable the task of theological reflection. The authors offer the latest thinking on how to use theological learning in practical situations.

Informations

• Publié par: Hymns Ancient & Modern
• Date de parution: 03 novembre 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780334049906
• Langue: English

Extrait

Practical Theology and Qualitative Research
Second edition
John Swinton and Harriet Mowat






© John Swinton and Harriet Mowat, 2006, 2016
First published in 2006.
Second edition published in 2016 by SCM Press
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, SCM Press.
The Authors have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the Authors of this Work
British Library Cataloguing in Publication data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
978 0 334 04988 3
Typeset by Regent Typesetting
Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon




Contents
Acknowledgements
Preface to the Second Edition
Introduction
Part 1: Theoretical Foundations
1. What is Practical Theology?
2. What is Qualitative Research?
3. Practical Theology and Qualitative Research Methods
Part 2: Research Projects
4. Researching Personal Experience: Depression and Spirituality
5. Researching a Local Church: Exploring an ‘Emergent Church’
6. Researching Ministry: What do Chaplains Do?
7. Researching Pastoral Issues: Religious Communities and Suicide
8. Participatory Research: Researching with Marginalized People
9. Action Research: Researching the Spiritual Lives of People with Profound and Complex Intellectual Disabilities

Conclusion: Practical Theology as Action Research
Appendix 1: The Practice of Research: Analysing Data
Bibliography




Acknowledgements
Writing a book is a bit like raising children. You spend years of blood, sweat and tears bringing it into existence and trying to make sure it is shaped and formed in ways that are healthy and good, and then you send it out into the world to fend for itself. You are never quite sure how the world is going to react to it. Will it be loved? Will people criticize it? What kind of a future will it have? Will it be able to stand up for itself? Have I nurtured it in a way that will make it a good citizen in the world of theological reflection? Are all of the flaws in it down to my incompetence! Of course, just like your children, books find their own way, make their own friends and encounter their own enemies. But in the end you are always proud of your kids, no matter what others might think. Our book on Practical Theology and qualitative research has made many friends along the way, and although not everyone loves it, it has done well enough to merit a second edition, which is something that we feel both pleased and blessed about.
There are of course many people we should thank and acknowledge in relation to both editions of the book. This book is fundamentally about God and human experience in that order. So we must begin by thanking God for God’s mercies. It is our belief that Practical Theology is a contemplative discipline that has at its heart the desire to enable people to love God more fully and to enjoy God for ever. If this book contributes to such a spiritual dynamic, we will be more than satisfied.
We would also like to thank those people with whom we have engaged and worked alongside as we have learned the skills and engaged in the practices of Practical Theology and qualitative research. It is a great privilege to be given access to the intimate regions of people’s experiences and to be gifted with stories that have the power both to challenge and transform. We also want to thank our friend and colleague Cory Labanow for his contribution to Chapter 5 of this book. His thoughtful research and challenging perspectives have helped us to understand important dimensions of ethnography. In this second edition of our book we are particularly grateful to students, colleagues, friends and strangers who have found this book to be useful, challenging or/and annoying! Your comments, criticisms and feedback have been invaluable, encouraging and constructively challenging. We hope that some of the modifications, innovations and changes we have made in this second edition will enable people to look even more carefully and even more faithfully at God’s world. We are also thankful to those who gifted us the various stories and perspectives that run throughout the book. Trusting researchers to tell your story well is not an easy thing to do, so we very much appreciate your confidence in us. Of course, we are forever grateful to our long-suffering spouses, Donald and Alison, for loving us even in the midst of our psychological and physical absences.
We hope this book is a contribution and a blessing to the field of Practical Theology and that all who read it will be challenged to engage in the fascinating and transformative journey that is Practical Theology. It matters how we look at God’s world. We hope that through this book our looking can be a little more faithful.



Preface to the Second Edition
Since we first wrote Practical Theology and Qualitative Research , which was published in 2006, there has been a significant growth in the number of practical theologians undertaking empirical research, notably among those embarking on professional doctorates in Practical Theology. These degrees are now offered in universities across the United Kingdom and have empirical work central to their endeavours. This, combined with the development of Pete Ward’s Ecclesiology and Ethnography Network ( http://www.ecclesiologyandethnography.com/ ), an organization dedicated to exploring and bringing together theology and qualitative research methods, has made the field both rich and topical.
As our book seems to have proven useful to people as they explore the complex interface between Practical Theology and qualitative research, SCM Press have asked us to write a second, updated edition of our book, which further addresses some of the theological and practical issues that surround the effective and authentic usage of qualitative research methods within practical-theological research. This second edition remains essentially a structured account of research and practice in the field of Practical Theology. We have made a number of modifications from our original text and we have included one new chapter and an appendix focusing on analysis. The book has three sections. Part 1 looks at the relationship between Practical Theology and qualitative research. Part 2 discusses various pieces of research, picking up on the issues raised in Part 1 and showing how the various stages of a piece of research interweave and take on more or less importance depending on the topic. There is one new piece of research included, focused on the process of action research. The Conclusion focuses on developing an understanding of Practical Theology as action research. Here we draw out some important theological and methodological issues that indicate that Practical Theology may be a quite particular kind of action research. Readers will be aware that this is a second edition of our book. While we have updated some of our references, we have not updated them all. However, people should not be distracted by the dates of particular references. It is the method and approach which is the thing to focus on. Don’t let the dates of references fool you into making assumptions about the value of what is being said!
We are very pleased that the book has been sufficiently interesting to warrant a rerun and we hope that this new edition will be of use and interest. Our students, as ever, are the ones who make us think and push us to new and creative ways of doing practical-theological research. We hope this book helps all of you do the same.




Introduction
Practical Theology is an intricate and complex enterprise. It is a rigorous theological discipline which, while retaining a unique approach to theology and theological development, continues to offer a significant contribution to the wider field of theology and the practices of the Church and the world. It is stating the obvious to observe that Practical Theology is theologically diverse. It spans the breadth of the theological spectrum from liberalism to conservatism and its practitioners inhabit a diversity of methodological positions. There is no single standardized way of doing Practical Theology and it is not owned by any particular wing of theology ( Miller-McLemore 2012 ).
Nevertheless, while there is diversity, there remains a good deal of continuity and commonality. Irrespective of the theological and methodological positions, the common theme that holds Practical Theology together as a discipline is its perspective on, and beginning-point in human experience and its desire to reflect theologically on such experience. Practical Theology seeks to explore the complex theological and practical dynamics of particular situations in order to enable the development of a transformative and illuminating understanding of what is going on within these situations. A key question asked by the practical theologian is this: is what appears to be going on within this situation what is act