Over a year after we found ourselves in the midst of a pandemic, we are still struggling to get things together as “normal” as possible in an extraordinary situation. The present thematic issue is one example of that. Delayed as it is, it has its origin in a roundtable in Oslo, November 5, 2019. Scholars from the Nordic countries were invited by the board of the journal to reflect over the increasing interest in practical theology, broadly speaking, that can be registered over the last two decades or so.Footnote1 The result of the conversations on that pre-pandemic November day – and the (dis)continuous dialogue on this theme over more than a year and a half – is now finally documented in this issue as five research articles from scholars representing five Nordic departments of theology.
The theme of the roundtable in Oslo was “Practice and Praxis in Theology and Religious Studies.” However, when considering the result as it comes forth in the five articles of this issue, it is obvious that “praxis” has been more or less left aside. It seems that “practice” is what really concerns the authors. This is interesting in itself. If “praxis” has long represented the academic discourse on practical matters, leading to theorized ideas of the practical, we appear now to have entered an era of studies of “lived religion” that opts for a more pragmatic notion of the study of practical things. Furthermore, compared to the praxis-paradigm, the concrete practices that comes forth in many contemporary research efforts are understood in a more elaborated and multifaceted way through the methodological development that has been labelled “the empirical turn in theology.” This does indeed not mean that theory is absent in the contemporary reflection. The opposite is in fact true, as will be seen in several contributions. But it means that the mixed method-approaches that are abundant today have other theoretical implication than traditional reflection on praxis. Hence, in the end, it seemed more adequate to entitle this issue “Practice in Contemporary Theology and Religious Studies.” This title signals that the focus is on precisely those profound practical aspects of religious life and of religious studies that were forgotten in an older intellectualist paradigm of academic theology, including the explosive methodological development in the contemporary discussion.
A common denominator of the contributions in this issue is the idea that practice is a way to knowledge. It is not just something that we describe and study at a distance, aside from doctrinal truth claims. Religious practice is “potentially also […] sites of knowing,” as one of the authors puts it. This way of conceiving of knowledge demands new epistemological perspectives, and it is clear from the contributions in this issue that a radicalized epistemological discussion is at the heart of the study of lived religion today. But this does not only mean a renewal of traditional understandings of epistemology, but it also entails an interest in the forms and practices of academic education itself. In three of the contributions, we learn about the actual processes of rethinking that occur today in contemporary theological education at the universities. The articles thus identify a sector of theological research and education in the Nordic countries that is in a dynamic phase of renewal, both institutionally and theoretically. Moreover, the experience of the pandemic is inscribed in some of the reflections, both as a matter of fact and as something that may change the understanding of practice as such.
A further note of interest is the fact that the new approaches to practice registered by the contributions in this issue, as well as in many other contemporary research projects, challenge the modern divide between theology and religious studies. This divide is challenged from “both sides” as it were. On the one hand, the lingering idea that theology ultimately is an engaged confessional activity, while religious studies is an academic form of activity without religious bias, is heavily challenged by the insight into the practice-aspects of all human endeavour, including the interface between religious practice and the study of religion. No site of practice, not even the academic and scholarly activity, is free from particular social commitments, which makes it deeply problematic to draw too sharp of a line between discourses and fields of practices. But on the other hand, it becomes difficult to argue for a study of religious practice exclusively with a view of a certain privileged confession, which has obviously been the case in Nordic theology over the years. The plurality of religion that is present in society today is one of the present forces that drives the development to new methodological and theoretical gestures in the first place and, as a consequence, the Nordic tradition of academic theology is displaced. Thus, theology must learn from religious studies to be careful in qualifying its study area and the particular premises in each case, being attentive to the ways bias is built up in different practices and their intermediary zones.
In the first article, Geir Afdal, MF Norwegian School of Theology, Religion and Society, Oslo, sets the stage theoretically by introducing an analytic (not ontological) distinction between two concepts of practice, “weak” and “strong.” According to Afdal, weak conceptions still dominate in practical theological research, although new developments seem to call for stronger notions of practice. A strong notion of practice underscores that nothing in the social sphere can be separated from the overarching social processes. Everything is embedded in a practical negotiation, including all forms of scientific theories and epistemological claims. If a weak conception tends to produce knowledge by applying a theory of religion on different religious practices, a strong conception of practice leads to a kind of social ontology in which human existence is understood as thoroughly social and involved. Afdal then analyses two examples from theology and religious studies which are typically weak. The last part then argues that a strong conception would have the potential to change the field of study by focusing on the porous divisions between religious and other practices. Religion is not only one practice among others, but part of a broader social co-creation that represents the religious in a multifaceted way.
In the second article, Ulla Schmidt, Aarhus University, also pulls in the direction of giving practice a more pivotal role than is usual, claiming that practice is “epistemologically generative.” In a way that has connections to Afdal's notion of strong approaches to practice, she goes through a series of practical theologians and philosophers of religion which points in the direction of a theory of practice as a way of thinking. Her perspective is then applied to funerary practices in Denmark. Schmidt is looking for these practical arenas as an example of a place where knowledge and understanding of death and mortality take place. She bases this on an observation study from 2018–19. Schmidt uses conceptual metaphor theory to go through several aspects, such as the physical interaction with the coffin, the role of silence, and spatial aspects. The conclusion is that knowledge is produced as a social phenomenon, not something that is entirely interior to the mind of the knower. The religious traditions are sites of meaning of a radically social nature.
In the next article, Auli Vähäkangas, University of Helsinki, starts out with a discussion about the relationship between theory and practice, as she tries to move away from a traditional notion of practical theology in which this discipline has been seen a mere application of the results of “real” theology. Essential to this is stressing the mutual relationship: how theory functions in practice, and how practice produce theory. From this follows that theology has a role both in theory production and in various practices. This leads Vähäkangas to her own contribution in practical theology, called “Theology of Encounter,” which is a model for studying counselling in the domain of pastoral theology. She theorizes about experience from an actual university course at the Faculty of Theology, Helsinki, labelled “Theology of Encounter.” She relates it first to crucial concepts such as relationality and embodiment, and second, to a Trinitarian point of departure. The point is to study the practice of counselling by means of theology as theory.
The following article from Anne Hege Grung, University of Oslo, is also a reflection on an educational module, now at the Faculty of Theology in Oslo, more precisely a six-week internship module that was established in the framework of a new master programme in leadership, ethics and counselling. The leading concept behind the internship module is co-formation of relations in the learning processes. However, since the pandemic came just as the module was to be launched, the scene was displaced, and the article reflects on the dilemma of trying to practice counselling, chaplaincy and leadership while being home behind computer screens instead of actually moving into actual internship: “what happens to internship when the spatial circumstances for professional practice is changed into obligatory physical distancing?” The article narrates some of the original aims of the module and the sudden change that came with the sudden lock-down, how this initial shock was later transformed into a new way of practicing practical theology.
In the last article, Malin Löfstedt and Katarina Westerlund, Uppsala University, draw the attention to a particular tool for developing practical research that has been tried out at Uppsala University, especially in relation to educational research: research circles. This form for research and reflection on research is then placed in the framework of the development, since 2016, of a new practical and empirical research area at the Faculty of Theology in Uppsala. The reforms at the Faculty are explained as a necessary move in relation to cultural and societal transformations and the changed status of religion in various arenas. The research circle is then explained in some detail as it includes a practical and participator ground for a new relational form of research that may open ways to new forms of collaboration with important actors in society outside the university. As the experience mainly comes from educational research, the main examples of non-academic participation are from the interaction between school and university, but the hope is that the method can be extended to areas such as church ministry or deaconry.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 The roundtable was arranged on the initiative of the editorial board of the journal. At the time, I was still editor-in chief and chairman of the board, hence my responsibility as the guest editor of this thematic issue.