<\/p>\n
Welcome to\u00a0Practical Matters<\/em>.\u00a0 In this journal you will find digital scholarship that utiliz\u00ades the capacities of the internet to ask and provoke new questions about religious prac\u00adtices and practical theology.\u00a0 You will also find here a variety of content: peer-reviewed scholarship in several media and genres, reflections and essays by practitioners and teachers, video and audio interviews with scholars, reviews of current work in religious practices and practical theology, musical performances, photographic essays, and more.<\/p>\n Since we first began imagining this journal in the spring of 2007, we have spent many hours talking about our hopes and aims for\u00a0Practical Matters<\/em>\u00a0and the questions and commitments that shape our enterprise.\u00a0 In this editorial, we sketch the broad contours of those conversations as a way of introducing\u00a0Practical Matters<\/em>\u00a0and inviting you to join us in the debates, reflections, and exchanges unfolding in these pages.<\/p>\n The emergence of \u201cpractice\u201d as a theoretical paradigm in a number of fields in the humani\u00adties and social sciences has deeply affected religious studies.\u00a0 In research and teaching, scholars increasingly focus on lived and popular religion, material culture, and religious life and lives \u201con the ground\u201d in particular social and cultural contexts.\u00a0 This interest has been matched by the resur\u00adgence since the 1970s and 1980s of conversations about \u201cpraxis\u201d and \u201cpractical\u201d theology\u2014that is, a theology that responds to lived conditions and situations, and in turn shapes the way that com\u00admunities, institutions, and people live.[1]<\/a><\/p>\n A new dialogue between theologians and religious studies scholars is emerging around this convergence of \u201cpractical\u201d interests.\u00a0 This generative and exciting conversation is bubbling up par\u00adticularly from doctoral programs training new generations of scholars in religion and theology for whose work practices are foundational.\u00a0 One of these doctoral programs is the Graduate Division of Religion at Emory University, with its Initiative in Religious Practices and Practical Theology, a project undertaken with the collaboration and support of Lilly Endowment, Inc.<\/p>\n These doctoral programs mark new interest in (1) religious traditions as \u201cways of life\u201d in which convictions are embodied in religious practices; (2) methods, including ethnography and other critical tools of anthropology and cultural studies, and their application to research questions in scholarship that emerges in and for religious communities; (3) theories, particularly theories of practice; and (4) structures, especially structures of scholarship that allow for more robust interac\u00adtions between academic institutions and religious communities and practitioners.<\/p>\n Currently, there is no other journal that seeks to nurture this conversation about religious prac\u00adtices among scholars of religious studies and practical theologians.\u00a0 Religious studies scholars generally publish in journals that address religious studies broadly or in journals of their various scholarly sub-fields.\u00a0 Practical theologians tend to publish in the journals of their scholarly sub-disciplines or in publications within their religious communities.\u00a0 Almost never do practical theo\u00adlogians and religious studies scholars publish in the same venues.\u00a0 Despite a convergence of inter\u00adest in practice, the boundary between religious and theological studies remains heavily guarded.<\/p>\n This situation often obscures the fact that many generative tensions\u2014between descriptive and constructive modes, fact and value, explanation and interpretation, theory and practice\u2014are pres\u00adent in work across both fields, albeit in different ways.\u00a0 The work of practical theologians is con\u00adstructive, but it grows from adequate description.\u00a0 Work in religious studies, on the other hand, foregrounds description, but is nonetheless shaped by values and commitments that animate the field as a whole.\u00a0 Moreover, many of these same tensions are echoed in conversations across the human and social sciences, where there is a renewed interest in questions about the place of com\u00admitment in scholarly life, the role of scholars in wider publics, and the ethical impulses that shape research questions and methods.[2]<\/a><\/p>\n It is with these questions and concerns in mind that we have launched\u00a0Practical Matters<\/em>.\u00a0 We publish work by and for scholars, practitioners, and teachers across religious, scholarly, and meth\u00adodological traditions.\u00a0 In addition, we welcome work by artists, documentarians, and journalists.\u00a0 Some pieces are more analytic in nature.\u00a0 Others point more directly toward the enrichment and reform of religious communities.\u00a0 Still others feature the thoughtful reflections of teachers and practitioners.\u00a0 In these pages, we hope to cultivate transdisciplinary conversations that engage both religious practices and practical theology in expansive as well as rigorous ways.<\/p>\n We also understand\u00a0Practical Matters<\/em>\u00a0as a contribution to emerging models of scholarly com\u00admunication shaped by new technologies, new ideas, and new financial and institutional pressures.\u00a0 We publish only online.\u00a0 This makes good financial sense, of course, but it also makes\u00a0PM<\/em>\u00a0more rapidly accessible to more people globally, helping to break down some of the barriers to truly transnational scholarly exchange.\u00a0 We are committed to the principles of open access because they respond creatively to concerns about systemic problems in the world of academic publishing and the changing economy of information.\u00a0 The platform that supports\u00a0PM<\/em>\u2019s model of multimedia scholarly publishing will be made available as open source software when it is fully functional.\u00a0 We hope that this journal will inspire others to experiment with new models of scholarly publish\u00ading and that the availability of this software will make it easier for them to do so.[3]<\/a><\/p>\n Inspired by innovations in the digital humanities and visual scholarship, we also decided early on to develop a journal in which text-based scholarship and scholarship in other modes\u2014film, dig\u00adital video, images, audio, new media, data sets, and so on\u2014could be published and engaged side by side.\u00a0 The goal is not to replace traditional textual scholarship but to displace it as the only kind of intellectual work valued as scholarship.\u00a0 By developing peer-review standards for non-textual scholarship and providing a venue for publication of these new forms, we hope to contribute to an expanded understanding of \u201cwhat counts\u201d as scholarly work.[4]<\/a><\/p>\n Notwithstanding all the ways we intend to be innovative, we have held on to some of the best conventions of scholarly journals.\u00a0\u00a0Practical Matters<\/em>\u00a0has established an\u00a0Editorial Board\u00a0of scholars and scholar-practitioners from many institutions, traditions, and methodological approaches who share our vision for innovative scholarship and new models of scholarly publishing.\u00a0 At Emory, a\u00a0Faculty Advisory Board\u00a0guides our work.\u00a0 Moreover, each issue is shaped by Emory faculty and doctoral students with particular expertise in the theme.<\/p>\n The day-to-day operations of the journal are handled by a\u00a0staff\u00a0of doctoral students in Emory\u2019s Graduate Division of Religion.\u00a0 Our work on\u00a0Practical Matters<\/em>\u00a0is helping to establish new forms of scholarly communication that honor innovative models of research and teaching.\u00a0 As a collab\u00adorative enterprise involving both faculty and graduate students, the journal is also shaping the next generation of scholars.\u00a0 Such collaborative opportunities are rare in graduate education, and this critical involvement of students highlights another aspect of our aim to generate new conversa\u00adtions with fresh language and perspectives.<\/p>\n At least initially, our issues will be thematic and rooted in face-to-face consultations hosted by the Initiative in Religious Practices and Practical Theology at Emory.\u00a0 Some themes will lean toward the traditional concerns of practical theology, others to concerns more closely associated with religious studies.\u00a0 In all cases, we hope to push beyond traditional boundaries, illuminating each of these areas and the connections between them.\u00a0 The inaugural issue explores the theme of Imagination, the topic of our initial consultation in October 2007. The second issue on Youth (Summer 2009) grows out of a consultation held at Emory in October 2008, and a March 2009 consultation on Ethnography and Theology will lead to our third issue (Spring 2010).<\/p>\n As this first issue of\u00a0Practical Matters<\/em>\u00a0and our permanent web site entered the final stages of preparation, one of the professors most supportive of our digital publishing endeavor began the last chapter of her life.\u00a0 In gratitude for her keen intellect, her mentoring spirit, her innovative ap\u00adproaches to qualitative methods, and the many varied ways she participated in the scholarly forma\u00adtion of many members of the journal staff and numerous other doctoral students in Emory\u2019s Gradu\u00adate Division of Religion, we dedicate this inaugural issue of\u00a0Practical Matters<\/em>\u00a0to the memory of Nancy Lynn Eiesland (1964-2009).<\/p>\n Feature Image in Public Domain, CC0.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n [1]<\/a> For overviews of these trends, see Mary McClintock Fulkerson, \u201cTheology and the Lure of the Practical: An Overview,\u201d\u00a0Religion Compass<\/em>\u00a01\/2 (2007): 294-304; Heather Levi, \u201cPractices,\u201d\u00a0New Dictionary of the History of Ideas<\/em>, ed. Maryanne Cline Horowitz (NY: Charles Scribner\u2019s Sons, 2005); and Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp, Leigh E. Schmidt, and Mark Valeri, eds.\u00a0Practicing Protestants: Histories of Christian Life in America, 1630-1965<\/em>\u00a0(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 2006).<\/p>\n [2]<\/a> See Linell E. Cady and Delwin Brown, eds.\u00a0Religious Studies, Theology, and the University: Conflicting Maps, Changing Terrain<\/em>\u00a0(Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002). For a discussion of similar issues across the academic disciplines, see Richard Wightman Fox and Robert B. Westbrook, eds.\u00a0In Face of the Facts: Moral Inquiry in American Scholarship<\/em>\u00a0(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), including Robert Orsi\u2019s essay, \u201cSnakes Alive: Resituating the Moral in the Study of Religion,\u201d 201-226.<\/p>\nA Practical Convergence<\/h3>\n
The Practice and Matter of Scholarship<\/h3>\n
Practical Matters<\/h3>\n
Dedication<\/h3>\n
\nNotes<\/h4>\n