I am fairly certain all seven contributors to this issue of Practical Theology are publishing for the first time in our specific field, a couple of authors may have been published in other subject areas before, but one of the great gifts of who we are at this journal is to encourage new theological writers. This situation has partly come about because of the new BIAPT article prize which attracted four entrants in 2019 all of whom ended up being published after anonymous feedback from the judges. Any one of the articles might have been awarded the prize and it is very pleasing to see them all ‘winning’ by appearing in print. Thanks to the judges too for their hard work and decision making.
I write this editorial near the beginning of the worldwide ‘lockdown' in the face of the COVID-19 virus pandemic. As you will see below we are going to make our own response to this global crisis in the journal, but even in collating these articles there are some remarkable resources at hand for reflecting on the trauma of such a time as this. Two articles deal with the silences or ‘mutism’ which tragedy and death brings, another discusses approaches to suffering in Christianity and Islam and yet another how insiders and outsiders use language to make sense of a ‘natural’ disaster and its aftermath.
Other themes which emerge from across the UK, Canada, Haiti and Australia in this issue are approaches to conversion and the generation of theology in the local church through the very different approaches of Theological Action Research and creating art. It is also most encouraging to see some of the articles engage with poetry and pictures as ways into theology and at last we can celebrate the first small collection of poetry in the journal on a single theme.
Call for papers – reflecting theologically on COVID-19
Practical theologians are well-placed to respond to the current global pandemic involving the COVID-19 virus. Everything is changing and we know we haven’t been here before in responding locally and globally to such a threat to life. Theological reflection on our experience is vital and potentially life-giving in such a time. It seems only reasonable, therefore to dedicate an issue of the international journal Practical Theology before the end of 2020 to the current crisis. I am therefore sending out this call for papers to be shared as widely as possible. We are looking for original research, theological reflections and autoethnographies on any aspect of the crisis (e.g., suffering, trauma, isolation, mass death, healthcare practices, economics, working and worshipping solely online and the move to online teaching and learning in theology etc.) as well as poetry, art and even music.
The deadline for proposals of up to 500 words will be 31 May 2020. Authors will be informed within a week of that date whether their proposal is required for submission to peer review. Submission is no guarantee of eventual publication. All submissions must be completed by 31 August 2020.
Martin Howe, a UK-based doctoral researcher won the BIAPT article prize in 2019 for his work on Christian Addiction Recovery Programmes. What he presents here is a ‘classic’ piece of practical theology research in a small-scale pilot study with clear conclusions and implications for continuing practice. He theorises addiction psychologically and theologically and researches recovery programmes that are overtly Christian without being coercive around the question of the addicts finding faith. What is interesting to me is he is addressing a core question for all Christians today – how do we walk with adults of no or lapsed faith to a public identity in Christ without falling into the twin traps either side of some kind of ‘tight-rope’. On the one hand we tend to deny the agency of faith in our action in some form of ‘practical or pragmatic atheism’ and on the other we try too hard to convince others of our truth and the subjects see us coming and rightly, I suspect, run or hide. What Howe emerges from his research with is a set of tentative, but I suspect robust, aspects of Christian faith (the gospel we might even say?) that have helped his research participants on their journey to recovery and faith. Creating an imagination about the future that arises out of the Christian story seems to be key. And that surely is cause for celebration of what God might be up to amongst such people.
Staying on the theme of conversion (and introducing another theme of this issue; suffering) Daniel Tsoi won the BIAPT MA dissertation prize for his research, supervised through All Nations Christian College, looking into the question of theodicy with Iranian ex-Muslims embracing the Christian faith. We are fortunate that Daniel also submitted a version of his thesis to the article prize competition so that we can reproduce it here. The, seemingly global, movement of Iranians towards Christianity is a relatively new and under-researched phenomenon, though as a response the Church of England, for instance has recently published a Farsi liturgy for the Holy Communion for use in congregations with large numbers of converts. Tsoi’s intuition as part of such a congregation was that the question of theodicy may be a helpful point of connectivity, both for the new converts and in inter-religious dialogue. He therefore places Moltmann’s Crucified God alongside the suffering of the Muslim martyr Imām Husayn and interviews seven Iranian converts in the UK about their reactions to the two approaches to theodicy. The critically thought out results are original and nuanced, I don’t think I have seen anything quite like this research before and again it does seem to hold an important line, as Howe did, between remaining solely with dialogue or conversion to the exclusion of the other option.
Roger Abbott from The Faraday Institute for Science & Religion, Cambridge, UK has been researching the aftermath of terrible natural disasters through fieldwork for many years. In this article drawing on interview data from the post-earthquake situation in Haiti after 2010 he warns that Western sociological and theological categories used to describe indigenous people's experiences can be highly misleading. This raises the question of the relationship of language to culture and behaviour particularly around emic and etic perspectives. The question is, how suffering people on the ground rationalise such a deeply tragic and all-encompassing event such as a devastating earthquake. Outsider researchers are wont to write off local attitudes to what has happened as fatalism when the real situation amongst people of faith, Abbott discovers is much more nuanced. This really matters, not least since ‘natural’ disasters are on the increase given the facts of COVID-19 and climate change.
Over the years of attending BIAPT conferences I have come across many staff and students from McMaster Divinity College in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Phil Zylla and others have led the way in connecting and it is with pleasure I can introduce Lily An Kim’s first published work in this issue, which was also an entrant in the BIAPT article prize. Lily An is a doctoral student at McMaster and has been involved in Jewish-Christian dialogue as a Korean-Canadian Gentile and through that met and identified with Holocaust survivors. In what I think is another fairly unique piece of writing Kim integrates a post-colonial reading of the book of Esther from the Hebrew scriptures with verbatim accounts of the historical and current experience of her new Holocaust surviving friends. She describes the phenomenon of ‘spiritual mutism’ as an authentic reaction to profound suffering and trauma – a phenomenon she also finds within the biblical text; ‘the possibility that a concealment of the knowledge of divine love is the foreseeable outcome of trauma’. There is much more gold to be mined in Kim’s work than can be summarised here and I offer this article to add to the growing depth of engagement in using the bible in practical theology. That it also contributes to Holocaust literature from our field only further increases its value.
Ian Stirling from Scotland gained his DPT from Glasgow University in 2018. In his BIAPT prize article submission he beautifully summarises his research journey. We hear about the deep learning that he now embodies through engaging with the silence that comes from being with the dying as a hospice chaplain. There are clear resonances with here with Kim’s ‘spiritual mutism’, but we are also treated to a typology of silences from his own experience. Utilising poetry and pictures much of the journey he has taken has been about leaving a reductionist paradigm for hospice care and embracing a much thicker description of what it is to stay with someone without words. I feel I need not say more since this article needs to be contemplated with rather than explained.
James Butler, researches from Roehampton University in the UK and presents in his article the fruits of ‘Theological Action Research’ (TAR) in two Methodist congregations – a larger and a smaller one. The research question being addressed is focused on ‘ordinary Christians’ and their understanding/experience of discipleship. It is also possible to read the whole piece as going further than discipleship and addressing another of the most important questions of our day – how do we return theology to its proper source and locus in the local church? How do we do theology ‘in, with, to, for, under and against’ the local church as the hermeneutic of the gospel? The article demonstrates clearly that the very act of attempting TAR between the academy and the local church is generative of theology from the locus of the latter’s position. Butler discovers how these Christians participate in Christ through the Holy Spirit in their ‘long and winding’ journeys of faith. He suggests that in contrast to models of discipleship as heroic adventure (specifically as embodied in the discipleship course book Holy Habits by Andrew Roberts) what these Christians require in their discipleship is risk-taking in the ‘zone of proximal development’ and deep conversations which can connect them with each other, God and their public worlds in new ways. Along the way there is helpful reflection on the nature of action and reflection in TAR which breaks down traditional, mostly modernist, binary oppositions. This is an important article adding weight to the growing body of practical theology drawing on TAR methodology and a distinctive contribution to ongoing debates about the nature of Christian discipleship.
Laying Libby Byrne’s work alongside that of James Butler makes for suggestive connections between TAR and art-based research methodology in practical theology – readers may remember Clare Radford’s article in our previous issue on the latter. Byrne, an Australian theological researcher focusing on joy and ‘the good life’ in a research project is also a life-long artist. She becomes a one-person artist and researcher by taking herself into Church to draw privately while public worship continues. Over several weeks she notices who notices her drawing and records the conversations (alongside other personal interactions and reflections on art). Once again theological reflection of depth and breadth emerges from the engagement in church along with some interesting works of art. She connects the creating of art, discipleship and attentiveness to God and I notice the contemplative nature of her practice of ‘craft’ or poiesis in church which seems to elicit deep spiritual responses in its turn. This is also highly original work since there is not a substantial amount written on producing art within a worship service, and even less so on the particular practice of drawing. So, we have here a fascinating topic, which examines both practice and theology in a unique way. Byrne wishes to continue this research method on a larger scale and we look forward to the results of that in due course.
Speaking of poiesis I am pleased to include in this volume a small, but well-formed collection of poetry from Don Martin who hails from Canada and must be one of the few ‘poets-in-residence' in a Christian seminary – he also works in McMaster Divinity College. We are always open to this kind of contribution and would like to see more of them.
Finally, can I say a warm welcome to Courtney Goto who joins the Editorial Board with this issue of the journal. Courtney was a keynote speaker at the 2019 BIAPT Conference and is therefore published in the journal. Her book critiquing context in theology was also reviewed in the previous issue.