Anderson, Rays: The shape of practical theology: Empowering Ministry with Theological Praxis.

Anderson, Rays: The shape of practical theology: Empowering Ministry with Theological Praxis.

This paper will describe the way in which paradigms function at two levels in practical theology today, the level of pastoral and ecclesial practice and the meta-theoretical level of research and theory-construction in practical theology. This paper will identify the challenges confronting practical theology that were pointed by the author Anderson Rays in his book “The shape of practical theology: Empowering Ministry with Theological Praxis”, which either must be accommodated by prevailing paradigms or elicit new paradigms.

According to Anderson, the work of Pierre Bourdieu, Anthony Giddens and postmodern feminist theories of patriarchy are used to describe the ways in which practices of gender are reproduced, resisted, and changed. Practical theological theory involves both learning from and guiding transforming practices of gender in Christian communities. Practical theological theory is portrayed as reflection on the 'living human documents' of pastoral practice.

The historical roots of this paradigm extend back to the advent of modernity in America and the various challenges it posed to traditional, medieval patterns of life, including religion. In the context of modernity, it was not enough for Christian leaders simply to hand on the traditions and practices of the past. In both the church and academy, the challenge of developing new forms of Christian practice in a modernising world and providing good reasons to justify these practices was front and centre.

He describes the communicative praxis of the church as it bears testimony to the Gospel in words and deeds in a context of poverty. Here practical theological theory engages in clarifying and guiding the church's praxis of comfort, hope and social transformation. Ray, Dietrich Bonhoeffer's understanding of the interplay of Word and Spirit in congregations serves as the basis of his definition of Christo-praxis, the process by which Christ takes form in new contexts as congregations live as communities-for-others. Here, practical theological theory is viewed as reflection on Christo-praxis in dialogue with Scripture.

In this perspective, practical theological theory offers reflection on concrete counseling cases and clarification of the appropriate relationship between theology and psychology in pastoral counseling and ministry generally. It is, of course, impossible to summaries what this practical theologian has to say about the theory-praxis relationship in a few brief sentences. The point I want to underscore is how these different understandings of the theory-praxis relationship ...