Section 3 Traditions

The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Practical Theology, First Edition. Edited by Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore.© 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2012 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

CHAPTER 53

Mainline Protestantism

According to noted scholar of religious history Jaroslav Pelikan, “ Tradition is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living ” ( 1984 : 65).

In this view, a living tradition maintains continuity with the past while both demon-strating vitality in the present and exercising imagination for the future. Contemporary mainline Protestant practical theology in the North American context is part of a living, vibrant tradition. It is shaped by a past that stretches back to the Reformation of the sixteenth century and includes several dynamic developments in the twentieth century while creatively addressing present realities and future challenges.

The Protestant Reformation of the Sixteenth Century

For most of its history, theology has been understood as a practical endeavor. From the apostle Paul through the Protestant and Catholic reformations of the sixteenth century, theological refl ection focused on the life, witness, and proclamation of the church in service to the development of wisdom (Charry 1997 : 3 – 30). A signifi cant shift occurred with the rise of universities and rediscovery of Aristotelian philosophy in the medieval period (Pannenberg 1976 : 228 – 233). Over against the increasingly abstract and arcane systems of the medieval schoolmen, Protestant reformers like Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Martin Bucer emphasized the practical, transformative character of theology. For Calvin, saving wisdom consisted of the necessarily interrelated knowledge of God and knowledge of ourselves (Calvin 1960 : 1). Theological speculation abstracted from the existential conditions should be avoided. The proper aims of Reformation theology included building up the church, transforming lives and communities, and safeguarding the proper worship of God. Central Protestant themes like the primacy of scripture, effective preaching, rejection of established ecclesial structures, and the radi-cality of divine grace sought to make the gospel central in every aspect of life and to recover theology ’ s properly practical character in a dynamically evangelical mode.

Gordon S. Mikoski

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The Enlightenment

Following on the heels of the Reformation, the eighteenth - century Enlightenment pro-vided stimulus for further theological reorientation. The “ turn to the subject ” in Descartes set in motion a whole series of intellectual forces that resulted in a funda-mental revision of knowledge in general, and theological refl ection among Protestants in particular. This rethinking of the nature of knowledge reached its apex in the critical philosophy of Immanuel Kant.

Kant had set out to solve the problem of metaphysics (including theology) once and for all on the basis of a rigorous analysis of the possibilities and limits of human knowl-edge. His philosophy occasioned a seismic shift from an emphasis on metaphysical speculation to the primacy of practical reason. Instead of an object of purely specula-tive knowledge, God became a postulate of practical reason and moral duty (Kant 1996 : 240 – 241, 246) and was effectively moved to the margins of thought. Human freedom and its implied moral duty stood at the center. Kant ’ s infl uence can be seen wherever theological discourse is sidelined and human ethical responsibility receives pride of place.

Practical theology as an intellectual discipline distinct from dogmatic theology owes its origins to the Kant - inspired modernist endeavor to reclassify all knowledge, includ-ing theology. This project was hammered out at the fi rst modern university, the University of Berlin, where reformed and modernist theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher made a vigorous case for theology ’ s inclusion as necessary for developing leaders for the state church and strengthening society ’ s moral fabric. Schleiermacher proposed an organization of theological science into three interlocking components: philosophical, historical, and practical theology ( 1990 : 14 – 18). In a way that was resonant with Kant ’ s assertion of the primacy of practical reason, Schleiermacher ’ s scheme gave primacy to practical theology. It unifi es theological study and provides the necessary bridge between the academic research and ecclesial practice. Practical theology brings philosophical and historical research to bear on church leadership. Therefore, it enables leaders to apply insights from other branches of theology to ecclesial contexts in service to their fl ourishing and ultimately the moral fl ourishing of the state (Schleiermacher 1990 : 3 – 9). Even though Schleiermacher ’ s specifi c tripartite division did not become widely established, its basic features shaped theological education and practical theol-ogy until the mid twentieth century: practical theology as the application of other forms of theology, the summit of the theological enterprise, and the business of preparing effective church leadership (Farley 1983 : 87 – 88, 114 – 115).

Nineteenth - and Twentieth - Century North American Developments

German approaches to theological education only gradually supplanted more tradi-tional views in North America, which were composed of Protestant revival theology, Baconian - Newtonian epistemology, and Scottish “ common sense ” philosophy (Mikoski and Osmer, in press ). For much of the nineteenth century, North American Protestantism

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focused almost entirely upon transmitting doctrinal insights to future ministers in ways approximating geometric proofs, best practices, and clerical skills – all wrapped up in pious rationalistic exhortation by professors, many of whom had served as church pastors.

Toward the end of the nineteenth century, German approaches began to supplant – often with bitter confl icts – the more staid, rationally evangelistic Anglophile orienta-tion. The fundamentalist – modernist controversy was the most visible and publicized episode. The aftermath of this epic battle was a division in Protestantism between mainliners (who found ways to reformulate traditional beliefs through German schol-arship) and evangelicals and fundamentalists (who sought to hold onto Protestant rationalistic piety).

The late nineteenth - and early twentieth - century social gospel movement redefi ned the role of the mainline Protestant minister as a leader with responsibilities for the moral conditions of the society. Ministers were increasingly expected to provide leader-ship on pressing social issues, particularly with working conditions, immigrants ’ needs, and abuse prevention. The liberal Protestant theology behind the movement stressed God ’ s immanence over against a piously disengaged transcendental theology. This movement also coincided with growing concerns for professional standards for Protestant clergy (Holifi eld 2007 : 172 – 174).

In the aftermath of World War I and during the Great Depression, neo - orthodoxy emerged to challenge classical liberal theology. Its emphasis on divine transcendence and human sinfulness reinvigorated mainline Protestantism and reoriented practical theology. Karl Barth (1968) provided an example of how to remain faithful to scripture while engaging German academic methods. Paul Tillich ’ s (1967) greater attentiveness to human experience and culture gave rise to a correlational approach to theology in which revelation and experience are brought dynamically together. Many tensions between later approaches to practical theology can be traced to underlying allegiances to these differing theological visions.

Two American brothers, Reinhold and H. Richard Niebuhr, also contributed to the development of mainline practical theology. Neither completely subscribed to Barth ’ s theology, though they both identifi ed with his larger project of reaffi rming and updat-ing classical themes from the Protestant Reformation. Reinhold ’ s theological anthro-pology, social ethics, and study of group dynamics infl uenced mainline practical theology throughout the twentieth century (Niebuhr 1996, 2002 ). During the same period, the social sciences came into prominence. Practical theologians increasingly paid attention to them, particularly psychology and sociology, as vital conversation partners for reconstructing theology.

Development of Academic Societies

One way to trace the development of a discipline is through the growth of academic societies. In 1903 the Religious Education Association (REA) was founded to respond to a growing need for standardization, intellectual strengthening, and professionaliza-tion. Sunday schools often preceded church establishment in the American territorial

560 GORDON S. MIKOSKI

expansions and, despite the high level of lay commitment, there were abundant indica-tions of dilettantism, shoddy scriptural interpretation, and even dangerous theology. REA took its intellectual cues mainly from the social gospel and John Dewey ’ s progres-sive educational philosophy. One of Dewey ’ s friends, George Albert Coe, provided key leadership in the early decades of the association.

Another early and important infl uence on practical theology ’ s Protestant twentieth - century development was the clinical pastoral education movement. The CPE move-ment, which founded the Council for Clinical Training of Theological Students in 1932, was one of the fi rst rigorous efforts to professionalize ministry, drawing on a medical model. Anton Boisen ’ s contention that effective pastoral ministry involved reading the “ living human document ” alongside scripture and tradition has been extremely infl u-ential ( 1971 : 10). To read human documents involved attending closely to the human psyche. Boisen and others saw clinical training as necessary for competent ministry.

Under the infl uence of these organizations, practical theology moved away from a merely hortatory role toward clergy professionalization. The theme of professionaliza-tion at the inaugural session of the Association of Seminary Professors in the Practical Fields (ASPPF) in 1950 set the tone for the fi rst Protestant practical theology guild. The list of presenters and members in the 20 years of its existence is a veritable Who ’ s Who of mainline practical theologians in the North American at mid - century. This umbrella guild brought together scholars from homiletics, pastoral care, religious education, church administration, social ethics, liturgics, missions, and fi eld education. One of its founders and a key mid - twentieth - century fi gure, Seward Hiltner, argued forcefully for practical theology as a serious intellectual endeavor that contributes signifi cantly to the (re)construction of doctrinal theology ( 1958 : 15 – 29). In a way that is reminiscent of Aristotle ’ s mediating notion of phronesis , practical theologians would fall neither into the labyrinth of pure theological theory nor into the routine and shallow preoccupa-tions of ministerial technique. Further, practical theology would function as an inte-grating meta - discourse for various practical disciplines supporting rich conversations within disciplines, across them, and around overarching issues of common concern.

Even in the midst of practical theology ’ s newfound love for psychology, some expressed the need to attend to the social context of congregation and society. Several mid - 1950s ASPPF papers presaged engagement with sociology that developed in the 1960s and beyond. Earlier social gospel and liberal Protestant theology re - emerged in a new and more sophisticated form, supplementing and extending the predominant mode of practical theology at that time. In the 1960s, the domination of the clerical paradigm weakened and gave way to a more communal focus. The congregation, it was increasingly argued, is the primary context for research and theological meaning, not solely the pastor.

The ASPPF lost momentum in the 1960s. Some subdisciplines never really felt at home. Missiologists were the fi rst group to drop away, forming the Association of Professors in Mission in 1952. Similarly, the Society of Christian Ethics was formed in 1955. A new specialized guild for professors of religious education was formed under the auspices of the National Council of Churches of Christ. Although this solely Protestant guild dissolved in 1969, it was immediately refounded as the ecumenical and interfaith Association of Professors and Researchers in Religious Education. In

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1965 the Academy of Homiletics emerged out of participants in ASPPF who desired deeper conversation on homiletics. These developments refl ected the trend toward spe-cialization taking place across the academy during this era.

The lure of subdiscipline guilds became so strong that by the 1970 biennial ASPPF meeting, a fundamental reconceptualization was proposed and adopted as a way to revitalize the primary guild for practical theology in North America. The newly formed Association for Professional Education in Ministry broadened its base to include non-professorial members of theological schools. While this new incarnation attempted to respond to changing needs of theological education, it struggled with issues of purpose, leadership, and membership. In 1984, as academic interest in practical theology increased, the organization was reconstituted yet again with new leadership and intel-lectual vision as the Association of Practical Theology (APT).

For nearly two decades, APT has provided a forum for sharing research and teaching for mainline and newer Protestant denominations as well as Roman Catholics. In 2005 leaders of APT successfully established a new Practical Theology Group within the American Academy of Religion. The group sponsors cutting - edge research in practical theology and related fi elds while APT sessions at AAR continue the exploration of crea-tive and effective pedagogies in the fi eld. In 1993 several mainline Protestant members of APT joined forces with Protestant and Roman Catholic scholars from around the world to form the International Academy of Practical Theology. Practical theologians today have more established venues within which to present and debate scholarship than ever before.

Contemporary Mainline Protestant Practical Theology

Contemporary mainline Protestant practical theology has multiple trajectories. Drawing upon Kant, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Tillich, Don S. Browning (1991) combined liberal Protestant commitments with the hermeneutical theories of Hans - Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur to create a vision for practical theology aimed at urgent problems in the wider community. His constructive proposal for reconceptualizing theo-logical education as essentially “ fundamental practical theology ” seeks to recover the inherently practical character of all the theological departments (Browning 1991 : 7 – 8). The organizing center of his proposal is the ethical fl ourishing of society. This represents a “ correlational ” or “ hermeneutical ” approach to the fi eld (Osmer 2008 : 164 – 167).

Another trajectory draws on Barth and emphasizes God ’ s transformative power as represented by James Loder and Deborah Hunsinger ’ s “ transformational ” (Osmer 2008 : 167 – 170) approach. Growing out of traditional Protestant commitments, it emphasizes the centrality of revelation and transformation through Christ.

A third trajectory has developed within the communal paradigm. In reaction to clericalism, Craig Dykstra (1999) emphasizes the role of congregations and ordinary church members in making theological meaning and living as Christian witnesses. Drawing from Barthian neo - orthodoxy, postliberal theology, and the Aristotelian virtue ethics of Alasdair MacIntyre, Dykstra emphasizes religious practices. Practices such as

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hospitality, keeping the Sabbath, and testimony (Bass 1997 ) arise from the gospel, render practitioners open to God ’ s grace, and bear witness to deep commitment to the gospel. Practices are not antithetical to theory; they give rise to theoretical insight and are “ theory laden ” (Browning 1991 : 6).

Another trajectory in contemporary mainline Protestant practical theology involves use of the social sciences (including cultural anthropology) to inquire into the features, challenges, and transformative contributions of various social and identity groups. Practical theologians like Dale Andrews (2002) and Jeffery Tribble (2005) have probed the contours of African American religious experience in practical theological perspec-tive. Practical theologians like Elaine Graham (1996) and Bonnie Miller - McLemore (1994) have pursued practical theological investigation of various aspects of women ’ s experiences. Some use the social sciences to investigate the complexities of congrega-tions and particular communities. James Hopewell (1987) pioneered the use of cultural anthropology to study the deep structure of congregations. More recently, James Nieman (2008) has brought together ethnography and homiletics to further practical theological thought on preaching.

Ongoing Challenges

Several problems recur in the ever evolving conversation that is mainline Protestant practical theology. Since the nineteenth - century theological encyclopedia movement, practical theology has suffered from diffi culties in defi ning itself, particularly in relation to the other curricular areas of the theological school. While the fourfold curricular pattern of Bible, theology, history, and practical theology has reigned in Protestant thought for approximately two centuries, the actual underlying schema is twofold: theory and practice. Practical theology struggles with greater and lesser degrees of success in showing that it is about more than application of theory to practice.

As a cognate problem, practical theology has wrestled with the ways in which it is an authentically theological discipline. The Protestant emphasis on the authority of scripture has helped the fi eld avoid devolution into merely empirical social research into human experience of all things religious. Often, however, practical theology defi nes itself against the abstract and disconnected pontifi cations of systematic or dogmatic theology. In seeking to correct or supplement such theology by attending to lived con-texts, practical theology has often underdeveloped the theological dimension of its work.

Practical theology also perpetually struggles to delineate its own internal bounda-ries. This struggle has at least three aspects. First, practical theology continually debates which subdisciplines should be included in its internal circle. Preaching, pastoral care, and religious education have consistently played a major role. But in previous eras, such fi elds as church administration, social ethics, liturgics, and missions were included under the umbrella of practical theology. More recently, fi elds like congregational studies and spirituality have found voices at the practical theological table.

Second and related to the fi rst, Protestant practical theology has puzzled over the most compelling principle of integration among its various subdisciplines. For most of its history, the integrating principle was the core clerical functions. With the shift

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toward the communal and public paradigms, the organizing principle has had to be rethought. In the communal paradigm, the integrating principle seems to be the voca-tion of the baptized to witness to the love of God in Jesus Christ in every aspect and dimension of life. The public paradigm has as its integrating principle theological refl ec-tion and call for action in relation to pressing social issues or crises faced by contempo-rary society. To be sure, the communal and the public orientations of the fi eld do call for clergy to play important roles, just not the only or even the primary ones. The pas-tor ’ s job is to equip the faithful in the pews. But in reacting so strongly to the clerical paradigm, Protestant practical theologians downplay the clerical role. Some sort of dynamic equilibrium is needed between pastoral ministry and the wider community.

Third, practical theology struggles to negotiate its relationship with fi eld education with which it has a natural resonance. Field education puts students regularly into ministry contexts. It willingly participated in the wider conversations of practical theol-ogy until the formation of its own guild, the Association for Theological Field Education, in 1956. Both sides are diminished by the loss of regular engagement. Because fi eld education lies on the practice side of the theory/practice dimorphism, sustained inter-action with the theory departments proves elusive.

Mainline Protestant practical theologians also struggle with issues of method. Much scholarly argumentation over the past 30 years has focused on the most appropriate method to use to conduct practical theology research. The tendency to “ solve for X ” as if there were only a single appropriate method has occasionally distracted the fi eld from engaging in more substantive research.

Another challenge concerns appropriate pedagogies. Teaching practical theological subjects requires attentiveness to theory and practice. It is not suffi cient to teach about the idea of “ theory and practice. ” Some attention must also be given to learning the practice of “ theory and practice ” engagement with particular problems. In other words, sole reliance upon a method of instruction like the lecture violates the very character of the fi eld. Students must learn through active modes of engagement. Effective use of problem - based learning methods, fi eld studies, and guided performance must be inte-grated into courses in the area of practical theology. To do this in a manner consistent with practical knowledge requires considerable pedagogical imagination.

Another challenge is institutional survival. As the youngest area in the fourfold pattern, mainline Protestant practical theology struggles to maintain an equal place. Administrators and faculty from other departments often see practical theology as an intellectually inferior stepchild. No Protestant institution in its right mind would ever consider eliminating or staffi ng the Bible department with part - time adjunct faculty members. But in times of fi nancial stress, administrators sometimes seek to justify cutting faculty positions in practical theology by saying that it is not that intellectually rigorous and that the needed ministerial skills and tips can be taught just as well by part - time practitioner adjuncts.

At the same time, practical theologians have the problem of being overly intellectual for church members and ministers. They face the daunting task of fi ghting for intellec-tual respectability with academic peers while struggling to engage in a non - intimidating or imperialistic manner with ministers and committed laity. This also infl uences publica-tion. High prestige academic presses often fi nd the material by practical theologians

564 GORDON S. MIKOSKI

insuffi ciently theoretical; church - based publishing houses fi nds it too footnoted and technical.

A fi nal challenge is high turnover and memory loss. When reading through the minutes of practical theological associations, I am struck by the tendency for each generation to reinvent the wheel. The diffi culties of working at the intersection of theory and practice, subfi eld and umbrella levels, and interdisciplinary and herme-neutical engagement are compounded by the failure to pay attention to the achieve-ments of previous generations.

New Challenges

As a result of seismic shifts across the academy in recent decades toward hermeneutics, contextuality, lived experience, and practice, scholars in other areas are interested in topics and methods that were once primarily the province of practical theologians. While practical theologians applaud the “ turn to practice, ” it is frustrating to see col-leagues act as though they are the fi rst to discover ideas discussed at length in the past 60 or 70 years of mainline Protestant practical theology. This mixed reaction is softened somewhat by the interdisciplinary conversation these shared interests open up.

The turn to practice in other fi elds raises questions about disciplinary defi nition. Liberation theology, contextual theology, theological ethics, material history, and liturgical theology all overlap signifi cantly with practical theology. Field defi nitions depend as much on social as on purely intellectual factors. One ’ s guild allegiance and scholarly canon often determine whether one is a practical or, for example, a liberation theologian.

The challenge of the aesthetic dimension of practical theology has lain dormant for most of its mainline Protestant history. The discipline unfolded under the symbolic fl ag of Kant ’ s Critique of Practical Reason . Eschewing metaphysical speculation and prefer-ring to engage lived human experience, practical theologians have focused on practical reason and social transformation. They pay little attention to Kant ’ s third critique, the Critique of the Power of Judgment ( 2000 [1790]) and the realm of beauty, the sublime, and all things aesthetic. Worship and liturgy, for example, are treated as footnotes to preaching. One is hard pressed to fi nd sustained refl ection on the sacraments of baptism and the Lord ’ s Supper. Along with this has gone an inability to investigate mystery, transcendence, and paradox in human experience.

With postmodernity, Protestant practical theology faces the challenge of methodo-logical pluralism. No single method is adequate for every problem. Instead, practical theologians need to deploy several methods. The methods chosen may be determined as much by the nature of the problem as by one ’ s ideological presuppositions. Multiple paradigms of understanding will also need to be engaged simultaneously. Unlike a physical science in which one paradigm (e.g., the Ptolemaic or Newtonian) is supplanted by another (e.g., the Copernican or Einsteinian), paradigms in practical theology never really go away. In a real sense, the clerical, the communal, and the public paradigms continue to function alongside one another within practical theology. Perhaps a larger framework needs to be developed in which the clerical, the communal, and the public

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paradigms all have a meaningful place. One promising example of movement in this direction is offered by Craig Dykstra, Dorothy Bass, and the practical theologians who contributed to the recent volume For Life Abundant: Practical Theology, Theological Education, and Christian Ministry (Bass and Dykstra 2008 ). “ Life abundant ” for the life and healing of the world will arise from dynamic and deeply committed Christian con-gregations who engage in faithful practices of worship and witness and who are served by imaginative and energetic pastors. Such pastors are formed, in turn, by theological schools that have a sustained commitment to the development of pastoral excellence and that are staffed in part by intellectually robust and creative practical theologians who have engaged in rigorous doctoral research (Bass and Dykstra 2008 : 1 – 3).

Interreligious dialogue and lived faith represent another new horizon. In the latter half of the twentieth century, one of the challenges for Protestant practical theologians was engaging pastoral theologians from the Roman Catholic tradition. Bridges have been built at the subdisciplinary and wider guild levels. One of the central tasks for the future of Protestant practical theology involves dialogical engagement with scholars from other religious traditions. The potential for scholarly interface with Muslims, Jews, and Buddhists, for example, around issues of religious practices, the negotiations between sacred texts and lived faith, and the intersection of theory and practice has only recently begun.

The postmodern situation also calls for attention to the role of the practical theolo-gian in research and writing. Practical endeavors can no longer focus solely on an “ objective ” problem without also taking into account the specifi c theological and eccle-sial commitments, interests, and power dynamics of the practical theologian. To have credibility, contemporary practical theology will need to be responsibly self - implicating and refl exive.

Mainline Protestant practical theology in the North American context has had a rich and increasingly dynamic history, particularly since the early decades of the twentieth century. It has moved from pious exhortation about pastoral skills to an intellectually challenging theological investigation into the contours, challenges, and limits of reli-gious faith as lived by communities and individuals. It continues to pioneer effective ways to teach laity and clergy alike to function creatively at the intersection of divinity and humanity, past and future, and theory and practice. It works with ecumenical and interfaith partners to diagnose individual and social ills, to discern the signs of God in human life, and to work toward greater fulfi llment of God ’ s future for all of humanity.

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