The state of the art: Practical theology yesterday, today and tomorrow

Abstract

Practical theology has undergone a number of significant transformations over the past 30 years, moving from the terminology of ‘pastoral’, with an emphasis on the personal cure of souls, to ‘practical’, in which questions of methods, sources and norms figure prominently as part of an enquiry into the dynamic interplay between the practices of faith and theological tradition. This article investigates further these characteristics of practical theology, including the ‘turn to practice’ and the ‘turn to experience’, or reflexivity, in which a sophisticated and critical attention to the positionality of the researcher forms a significant hermeneutical tool. Yet further challenges await: the enduring dilemma of the proper balance between received tradition and contemporary practice; and, in the face of religious and cultural pluralism, the question of how far practical theology should remain an exclusively Christian tradition.