Practical Theology in the United States

Rather than simply an academic discipline, practical theology in the United States today functions more like a hub of intersecting activities amidst distinct but overlapping ecclesial trajectories. It exists in a cloud of ambiguities! The mainline Protestant theologian Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore calls practical theology in the U.S. context “at least four distinct enterprises with different audiences and objectives.” It is at once (1) “an activity of believers seeking to sustain a life of reflective faith in the everyday, (2) a method or way of understanding or analyzing theology in practices used by religious leaders and by teachers and students across the theological curriculum, (3) a curricular area in theological education focused on ministerial practice and subspecialties, and, finally, (4) an academic discipline pursued by a smaller subset of scholars to support and sustain these first three enterprises.”1 What these activities have in common, especially since the emergence of U.S. practical theology as an academic discipline in the 1980s, is (1) a habitual and critical consideration of everyday Christian practices, and (2) a ever-present self-consciousness about methodology, that is, about the disciplined ways we go about reflecting on everyday life in the light of religious traditions, whether the “we” be believers, ministerial teachers and practitioners, or theological scholars.