Download PDF: RV Spurrier, Fieldwork in Theology By Christian Scharen Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2015. 144 pages. $20.00 To speak about divine action from a perspective that is not God’s is an inherently audacious enterprise. Theologian Rowan Williams punctuates this difficulty
Download PDF: Karst, Itineraries In 1978, Victor and Edith Turner published their groundbreaking work Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture. Grounded in Victor Turner’s theories of symbolic anthropology, this text offered one of the first comprehensive theories of Christian pilgrim practice.
Download PDF: RV Daniels, Christian Theology in Practice Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012. 334 pages. $34.00 In Christian Theology in Practice: Discovering a Discipline, Bonnie Miller-McLemore offers a collection of her work in the fields of practical and pastoral
Download PDF: Pham and Barush, Swords to Shoes Abstract On June 2015, six years before the 500th anniversary of Ignatius’ pilgrimage, the instructors, Prof. Hung Pham, S.J. and Prof. Kathryn Barush, with a group of twelve graduate students, set off
RV MacDonald, Just Spirituality By Mae Elise Cannon Downers Grove, IL, InterVarsity Press, 2013. 208 pages. $16.00 In Just Spirituality, Mae Elise Cannon examines the connection between reflective spiritual disciplines and activist movements for social change. These two ways of
Since the fall of 2014, the staff of Practical Matters has focused on two questions. First, how can we make the scholarship of the journal accessible in more user-friendly ways? Second, what can we do to make the content of
Download PDF: Bremer, Worshiping at Natures Shrine Abstract Yellowstone National Park serves as a historical case study for considering the role of travel practices, sociocultural constructions of identity, discourses on authenticity, and consumerist orientations in the designation of particular places
Download PDF: RV Keefe-Perry, Theology and the Arts Ruth Illman and W. Alan Smith New York: Routledge, 2013. 230 pages. $125.00 In Theology and the Arts, Ruth Illman and W. Alan Smith have offered up a profoundly useful text which
Practical Matters is pleased to present our new online platform for the journal. In addition to providing new mediums for displaying and organizing content, the new website has several new functions designed to improve the user experience: Explore our Content! Users
The two issues on Worship, Ritual and Theory represent the first pass by this journal on ritual practices (particularly those labeled “worship”) as refracted through the methodological and theoretical lenses of multiple fields. Our first two articles, “What in God’s
Download PDF: Stephenson, I Have a Brick Abstract Church closure is a prominent phenomenon of the religious landscape in Europe and North America. Demographic and financial pressures, along with cultural changes, have led to the closure of scores of churches
Download PDF: Alcantara, Fail Better Abstract In recent years, educational theorists have focused greater attention on the ways that improvisational performance theory can enhance pedagogical practice. As a result, values endemic to improvisational performance such as play, collaboration, and experimentation are
Download PDF: Thompson, Now that’s preaching Abstract Communal expectations of preaching can reinforce narratives that limit preaching to particular tropes of performance, and in so doing, link preaching to certain bodies while excluding others. This essay explores how bodies of difference
Download PDF: McCray, Sweating Spitting Cursing Abstract Holiness does not always manifest itself in pristine ways. Sometimes profane vehicles open us to the holy. This essay explores three such occasions that surface in preaching. First, I consider the sweating preacher. Drawing
Download PDF: Pape, Preaching about Stewardship ABSTRACT In an earlier essay, I offered some reflections on preaching about stewardship from the Synoptic gospels along with a brief specimen of practice. That essay spoke to a particular homiletical scenario, but it opened
Download PDF: McCormack, What in God’s Name is the Point Abstract This essay examines the relationship between worship and theory in African American religious thought and practice. It situates this inquiry within long-standing debates among black intellectuals concerning the contested relationships
Download PDF: RV Ellis The Ecology of Spirituality By Lucy Bregman Waco: Baylor University Press, 2014. 198 pages. $29.95. There are many ways to illustrate the ubiquity of “spirituality” in contemporary American culture. Perhaps the most common way is to cite
Download PDF: RV Dennis The Good Funeral By Thomas G. Long and Thomas Lynch Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2013. 252 pages. $25.00. In their extraordinary collaborative effort to “redeem the funeral” from its “failed and falling ways” (28), acclaimed funeral