Emory Initiative in Religious Practices and Practical Theology<\/a>. Thanks to a grant from the\nLilly Foundation and the faithful and creative shepherding of Emory faculty, it\nmade the study of practices an intrinsic part of the programs of formation for\nPhD students in the Graduate Division of Religion and ministry students at the\nCandler School of Theology. The initiative also sparked new lines of scholarly\nresearch and programmatic initiatives. The conference brought together scholars\nacross disciplinary lines, many of whom had participated in the program at each\nof its stages, to gather insights on the state of religious practice and to\nnurture creative conversations with an eye toward opportunities for research\nand practice in the academy and church over the years ahead. <\/p>\n\n\n\nAsking the provocative question:\n\u201cWhat\u2019s your big idea?\u201d the initial session set the tone for the conference\u2019s\nfocus on the broader cultural landscape and compelling approaches to\ncomplicated problems. Brendan Ozawa-de Silva, Jennifer Ayres, Gregory Ellison,\nand Amy Levad each offered brief TED-style talks, putting forward their \u201cBig\nIdea\u201d for practical theology and religious practices. Ed Phillips, the program\ndirector, framed the project well as an exploration of the kinds of practices\nthat will build up vibrant communities of faith amidst the shifting norms and\nchallenges of American culture. These practices, we learned, will demand a\nfocus on constructive and often non-traditional imagination of the future. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jennifer Ayres, of Emory, made the\ncase for a beginning to the project rooted in a sense of personal identity and\nlocation. She convincingly argued that only through the experience of \u201clove,\nprofoundly located\u201d could meaningful religious practices authentically arise.\nAnd that through these practices it becomes possible to live deeply and well.\nWorldview, affection, and commitment are all part and parcel of participating\nin practices. Cultivating a desire to live well is at the root of humanly re-inhabiting\nour places and engaging them through practice. Her use of personal narrative, with\nreal locations and relationships evocatively conveyed the sense and purpose of\npassion in the process of personal and communal formation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Brendan Ozawa-de Silva, of Emory and Drepung\nLoseling Monastery, asked from a primary and secondary educator\u2019s viewpoint:\n\u201cCan we teach human values?\u201d He observed that through the repetition of\npractices we shape who we are, even alter our very brain structures. In this\nlight, he stressed the importance of social and emotional learning throughout\nchildhood, giving children access to sources and resources for wellbeing, and cultivating\nthe moral emotions necessary for a good life. We are shaped, he taught, by the\nexperience of moral emotions, as much as other practices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Amy Levad, of the University of St. Thomas, brought her study of incarcerated persons and the profound collateral effects on their families. Leveraging her personal experience, she gained particular insight on a widespread yet often hidden problem in an era of mass incarceration. Shame and embarrassment in families degrade family life. Churches ought to be in a place to perform a reconciling function, but they do not always succeed in this way. In prison settings, Levad studied practices including ministry, education, and community organizing, assessing how each practice had the potential to reinforce the others. Traditional forms of prison outreach often got the relationships among these practices wrong. A new generation of practices must start with self-transformation (changing congregational culture around \u201cmercy, forgiveness, and restoration\u201d). Such regrounded approaches offer the chance for reconciliation and relationship rather than reinforced isolation. Offering a hopeful note, Levad argues that the church needs to re-center and transform itself to engage in necessary practices by building coalitions that disregard historical boundaries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Greg Ellison, a former post-doctoral fellow, invoked the words of William James in the sensation of being \u201ccut dead by non-recognition.\u201d The sense of belonging is fundamental. As he states, \u201cThe unacknowledged are all around us,\u201d which brings light to the painful and common experience of feeling invisible, unseen, and excluded. Practices of recognition are needed to weave communities together. Powerful common themes emerging from these theologians included the idea that good practices begin with a new awareness of who we are, where we come from, what we love, and who is beside us that we have not seen sufficiently before. This new awareness is the ground of the formation of practices. And practices are the root and road to a good common life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The \u201cPractices of Vibrant Faith\nCommunities\u201d were explored in a panel including Abdullah Antepli, Diana Butler\nBass, and Brian McLaren, with Robert Franklin moderating the conversation. The\nsenescence of traditional religious communities was a common diagnosis among\nthe panel that simultaneously entailed ambitious ideas for the future of\nrenewed forms of religious practice. It is noteworthy that none of the\npanelists speaking of the future of faith communities are themselves currently\nleading faith communities in congregational setting, so perhaps it is expected that\nthe future they envisioned is outside the traditional church setting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Brian McLaren delivered a\nkeynote by declaring that religion plays the part of either destroying or\nsaving the world. The difference depends on our collective capacity to engage\nconstructively in new practices of resistance. He challenged us to accept radical\ndiscontinuity, to turn toward the common good, and to \u201cjudge religion by the\nbenefits it brings its non-adherents.\u201d He reinforced a call for a new awareness\nof mutual interdependence and a necessary concern for the most vulnerable. We need to look\nfor opportunities to reframe our faith to become more expansive and generative\nof the transformative liturgies of daily life. We have the power and\nimagination, urged McLaren, to create new liturgies that speak to the stages of\nspiritual development throughout life. We can regain a necessary capacity for\nstorytelling. In these projects, curiosity is a root virtue in the world ahead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Diana Butler Bass leaned into the\ntheological consciousness of the community through the metaphor of a religious\ncommunity facing literal rising waters and the way practices of reflection and\nhospitality can be key in achieving a greater collective \u201cspiritual buoyancy,\u201d\nwhich refers to living more connected and more grateful. She counseled us to focus\non the Earth because it sustains everything else. Her words resonated with a\ncore theme of the conference\u2014the need to return to that which is real and\nfundamental, in order to go forward in developing new ways of being together.\nShe took up the work of McLaren, joining him with the sense of breadth and critical\nimportance of the renewal of religious life right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Against this backdrop of global urgency,\nAbdullah Antepli challenged the group by declaring that the Sunday morning model\nis not working any more, reminding us of \u201cGod telling David, sing me some new\nsongs.\u201d We need to get unstuck and learn new practices as the old ones are in\nevident decline. There has been a generational shift such that younger\ngenerations have far less appetite for membership and are not looking to be\nheld captive. We need to extend the tradition ambitiously and reach into\nsecular spaces; traditions must confront a new pluralistic reality. An important takeaway is the necessity for re-grounding\nin the commonplace activities of daily life and reorienting to an interfaith\ncontext as a new cultural given. He called for expanding the scope of religious\nconcern beyond the church into secular spaces of everyday life and stretching beyond\nthe tight confines of ritual time to pervade ordinary time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Imagining religious practices and the\nformation of practical theology in the University setting is helpful in that it\ncreates a coherent and cohesive yet pluralistic community of people engaged in\ncertain common practices with a range of common resources. It does not, in\nthose regards, reflect the backdrop of American society as a whole, and it is therefore\na compelling but perhaps occasionally misleading laboratory for the study of\npractices. A key question lingering in the background of many of these\nconversations, and perhaps the basis for another conference, is whether vibrant\nand innovative faith communities also need durable institutions. What do the\ninstitutional structures of the church, including its economic models and its learned\nclergy, need to look like in order to support the faith communities of the\nfuture? Can the community-based religious institutions as we know them take a\nform that meets the call of these bold and boundary-dissolving visions of the\nbeloved community?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Moving from ideas and ideals to\nconcrete practice, the conference turned in its latter half to case studies of\nformation in religious practice and approaches to the pedagogy of practice.\nGood examples of these conversations could be seen in projects at Emory on the\nformation of future scholars in the GDR\u2019s PhD program and the advancement of theological\neducation of high school students and incarcerated women. Ted Smith explored\nhow teaching practices is about the formation of habits. Returning to the difficult\nquestion that Ozawa-de Silva explored with regard to the education of young\npeople, Smith asked whether a habitus<\/em>,\nin Bourdieu\u2019s sense of the term, can actually be taught. Smith offered\nperspectives on the innovative pedagogies at work in the Emory GDR practices\nclass, with the central example of doing close readings as a pedagogical method\nand collaborative practice of habit formation. In the business of ensuring that\npractices are shared, Smith prescribed taking advantage of every chance for\nmimesis, learning through imitation, arguing that \u201cPractices are better caught\nthan taught.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\nIn a separate session, Elizabeth\nBounds picked up on themes presented earlier by Levad in sharing about the\nTheological Studies program and its evolution at the Arrendale State Prison.\nShe reinforced the power even within captivity through religious learning and\npractice to open space for a very different and liberated kind of life. A pedagogy of respect and care is a central\ntouchstone to practices within the Arrendale program, this pedagogy counteracts\nthe systemic exclusion and degradation that are often the baseline for these\nstate institutions. This transgressive attitude of universal dignity is a core\nfeature of the program’s success in building relationships and offering\ntransformational opportunities in the incarcerated learners\u2019 lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the main sessions and break-out\nconversations among scholars, the conference succeeded in creating an unusual\nkind of space, resting at the intersection of the church and the academy,\nscholars and practitioners, tradition and possibility. Values and themes that\nresonated through many of these sessions included cognizance of location,\ngroundedness in place, and experience that equips one (and the many) to engage\nin and develop authentic and creative religious practices. This sort of\ngrounding is necessary for achieving a second major theme of relationality, which\nis tied to principles of interdependence, mutuality, and reciprocity that must\nbe part of creating communities of practice. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The work within the Emory initiative and by the scholars present particularly showed how generative and durable communities of practice can be formed across old lines of division. With the benefit of new forms of religious practice and the adaptability needed to shape them, religious life can render denominational divides obsolete, penetrate into secular spaces, and bridge differences in education, wealth, class, and race in novel ways. The development of such ambitious forms of religious practice will depend on our capacity to create ongoing spaces for the gathering of diverse community and our willingness to enter into the conversation and experimentation that this conference so well modeled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Feature Image by John Price on Unsplash. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Download PDF: Messner RV, Practical Matters Conference The Emory Practical Matters Conference was a culminating event following 15 years of intellectual and practical community engagement through the Emory Initiative in Religious Practices and Practical Theology. Thanks to a grant from<\/p>\n
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