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 47

The United States

Bonnie Miller - McLemore (2010) rightly notes that practical theology can be under-stood in four ways: as an activity of believers seeking to sustain a life of refl ective

faith in the everyday, as a method or way of doing theology used by religious leaders, as a curricular area in theological education focused on ministerial practice, and as an academic discipline pursued by a smaller subset of scholars to support and sustain the fi rst three. My chapter focuses primarily on the third and fourth of these areas, tracing the history of practical theology as a curricular area and academic discipline in Roman Catholic and Protestant theological education.

Pastoral Theology in Early American Theological Education

Theological education has proven to be a key context in the emergence of practical theology as a discipline in the United States. Roman Catholics and Protestants brought from Europe different models of theological education. The migration of Protestants from Europe to the American colonies is a story that is well known. Less known is the story of Roman Catholic Jesuits and Franciscans who were missionaries during the colonial period in areas that later became Florida, Louisiana, New Mexico, and California. English Jesuits under the leadership of Bishop John Carroll, moreover, were missionaries in Maryland and established the fi rst seminary in America in 1791, St. Mary ’ s Seminary in Baltimore. Seventeen years later, in 1808, the fi rst Protestant seminary, Andover Theological Seminary, was founded. Shortly thereafter, Princeton Theological Seminary was established in 1812, followed by General Theological Seminary in 1817, Yale College ’ s formation of a separate Department of Divinity in 1822, and Union Theological Seminary, New York, in 1836.

As Kathleen Cahalan notes, Catholic seminary education followed a pattern initially shaped by Jesuit educators after the Council of Trent in the sixteenth century ( in press :

Richard R. Osmer

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4 – 5). It was organized into three parts: doctrinal, moral, and spiritual theology. The duties of the priest were a part of moral theology and focused on the sacramental life, teaching priests the art of casuistry so they might apply moral and canon law to par-ticular cases in the assignment of penance as confessors and in other priestly duties. This pattern dominated Catholic theological education until Vatican II (1962 – 1965). It was only after this Council that scholars slowly began to adopt the categories of pastoral and practical theology to designate areas in the seminary curriculum and distinctive forms of theology.

Within the older pattern of Catholic seminary education, precursors of pastoral and practical theology were present. In the context of moral and doctrinal theology, explicit theological attention was given to ecclesiology, the duties of the priest, and the sacra-mental life. Moreover, casuistry, at its best, equipped priests to learn how to move from general principles to particular cases, a key skill in practical theological reasoning. Spiritual formation was also an important part of seminary education, an emphasis that Protestants have begun to appreciate only in recent decades in both theological education and practical theology. However, the roles of contextual analysis, refl ective practice, and skillful performance in leading the practices of the Christian life were underdeveloped. These have become very important in contemporary American practi-cal and pastoral theology. Notably, these dimensions were also underdeveloped in American Protestant theology throughout the nineteenth century, a period in which Protestant orthodoxy and evangelicalism were dominant.

In Protestantism, preparation for ministry unfolded initially along three lines, which were somewhat different than Catholicism (Lynn 1981 : 119 – 121). A person aspiring to ministry would study as the apprentice of a minister, who assigned readings and met regularly with the individual. Alternatively, following college, a student would stay on for an additional year to study with the college president, often a former pastor, or with a professor of divinity. In a third trajectory, ministerial candidates would follow a course of study set up by church bodies like presbyteries or annual conferences, which would examine them prior to ordination. This pattern was particularly common on the south-ern and western frontiers.

In all three trajectories, preparation for ministry included an introduction to the exegesis of scripture and a denomination ’ s theological system, the study and perform-ance of sacred rhetoric and preaching, and an overview of the pastor ’ s various respon-sibilities. In Europe, a robust literature on preaching and other clergy responsibilities already existed and American scholar - pastors soon contributed their own texts to this literature. Such texts were sometimes referred to as pastoral theology , drawing on the etymology of the word pastoral to indicate the minister ’ s role as a “ shepherd of the fl ock. ”

With the advent of Protestant theological education during the fi rst part of the nineteenth century, practical theology and pastoral theology gradually came to be used interchangeably to refer to courses in the seminary curriculum that had to do with the purpose and practice of the pastor ’ s various responsibilities. Since faculties were quite small and, commonly, were composed of former pastors, professors offered courses in practical or pastoral theology, even though their primary teaching responsibilities were in other areas. At Andover, for example, pastoral theology was taught by a professor of

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ecclesiastical history (Holifi eld 1983 : 118) At Princeton Theological Seminary, the fi rst two members of the faculty, Archibald Alexander (didactic and polemic theology) and Samuel Miller (ecclesiastical theology), taught courses in pastoral theology and sermon composition and delivery, respectively. Only gradually were special chairs established. Harvard, for example, established a chair of pulpit eloquence and pastoral theology in 1819 and Yale ’ s Department of Divinity, a chair in practical theology in 1839 (Holifi eld 1983 : 118). Princeton Theological Seminary did not establish a full - time chair in prac-tical theology until 1906, continuing the practice of using professors in various fi elds to teach courses on the pastor ’ s different responsibilities.

Practical Theology ’ s Emergence as a Curricular Area and Field of Scholarship

The most important catalyst in the emergence of practical theology as a curricular area and fi eld in theological education was the migration of the theological encyclopedia from Europe to the United States. During the middle of the nineteenth century, a sig-nifi cant number of young American theologians studied in Europe, particularly at the universities of Halle and Berlin. Here, they encountered a new “ scientifi c ” approach to theology that had emerged in the modern European research university. Theology was now viewed as composed of four specialized fi elds: biblical studies, dogmatic theology, church history, and practical theology. Each fi eld was conceptualized along the lines of a modern research discipline, using “ scientifi c ” or scholarly methods to generate new knowledge. Upon returning to America, these theologians began to raise critical ques-tions about the state of theological education and scholarship and, over time, were successful in reorganizing education along the lines of the encyclopedia. A number of popular European encyclopedias were translated into English: Schleiermacher ’ s Brief Outline of the Study of Theology (1850) , Karl Hagenbach ’ s Theological Encyclopaedia and Methodology: On the Basis of Hagenbach (Crooks and Hurst 1884 ). They were followed by encyclopedias written in English by Philip Schaff (1893) , Alfred Cave (1896) , and others.

The net result of the migration of the theological encyclopedia to the United States was to heighten the importance of academic scholarship among American theologians and to reorganize the curriculum of theological education along the lines of the stand-ard four departments. Practical theology was now a clearly demarcated area in the curriculum. Yet its subject matter and methods as a fi eld of modern scholarship were less clear.

Much of this had to do with the problematic role of practical theology in the ency-clopedia. Commonly, biblical studies, dogmatic theology, and church history were viewed as “ fully scientifi c ” fi elds, which employed the methods of cognate disciplines. Church history and biblical studies, for example, could use the approaches of historical studies to carry out research on their specifi c subject matters, the history of the church and the Bible, respectively. Practical theology, in contrast, was portrayed as the “ practi-cal ” fi eld, charged with relating the scholarship of the other disciplines to the life of the church. Moreover, the social sciences had not yet emerged, making it diffi cult to argue

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that practical theology had a cognate partner comparable to history, philosophy, or other fi elds in the university. As departments began to require faculty to have special-ized backgrounds and Ph.D.s, the faculty members of practical theology were com-monly hired because of their extensive ministerial experience and excellence as refl ective practitioners.

Practical Theology and Modernization

The period following the American Civil War (1861 – 1865) through the fi rst two decades of the twentieth century marks the transition of the United States to an indus-trialized, urban, and increasingly religiously diverse society. Changes in education fol-lowed growth in industrial production. In 1875 fewer than 25,000 Americans graduated from high school; by 1900 over 500,000 did. Between 1870 and 1900 the number of college students grew fi vefold. This period also saw a large infl ux of Roman Catholic immigrants to America, some 20 million between 1870 and 1900, largely from Germany, Poland, Italy, and various eastern European countries. This period of rapid social change resulted in both innovation and polarization in theological educa-tion, with important implications for practical theology.

Innovation was largely initiated by university - based divinity schools, which took the lead in nondenominational, academic research and new approaches to theological education (Cherry 1995 ). Perhaps the most innovative and infl uential approach emerged at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago under the presidential leadership of William Rainey Harper and deanship of Shailer Mathews. Harper was determined to “ modernize ” theological education and bring it in line with the same high standards of professional education in law, medicine, engineering, and teaching. He argued that modern professional education gives attention to both theory and prac-tice and does so in a way that allows them to be integrated (Harper 1899 ). The modern professions are based on specialized bodies of knowledge grounded in research and expertise in applying this knowledge in professional practice. Harper believed theologi-cal education must include both a strong graduate education based on specialized knowledge of the theological disciplines and supervised practice and fi eldwork, compa-rable to the case study approach in law schools and internships in medical schools. He also argued that theological education, like other forms of professional education, must prepare students for specialized roles. The “ modern ” church is more complex and includes ministries specializing in religious education, social service, music, and admin-istration, in addition to the general role of the pastoral leader. By 1912 Chicago ’ s Divinity School curriculum accommodated 18 ministerial vocations with specialized tracks.

This innovative model of professional education impacted practical theology. Chicago created a specifi c department of practical theology in 1907 – 1908, and a year later, the department projected three tracks for students majoring in the fi eld while getting a bachelor of divinity: homiletics, pastoral duties and liturgics, and religious education. By 1920 tracks in practical theology were even more fl exible, allowing students the freedom to plan a “ sequence of courses with a rational unity . . . to meet the special

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needs of the student ” in one of three areas: preaching and parish ministry, missions, and religious education (University of Chicago, n.d. : 325).

The addition of religious education to the curriculum refl ects the increasingly wide-spread infl uence of the religious education movement, which established a professional organization in 1903. In dialogue with liberal theology and the emerging social sci-ences, this movement sought to redefi ne the purpose of the educational ministry of the church and to professionalize its leadership. It was deeply infl uenced by the philosophy and educational proposals of John Dewey, which afforded it a dynamic understanding of the theory – practice relationship. Accordingly, at Chicago and elsewhere, the goal of religious education was not merely to hand on Christian beliefs and practices but to help people reshape these traditions to make sense of their life situations in the modern world. In seminary curriculums, the religious education area introduced new courses in the psychology and sociology of religion and new pedagogies making use of lab schools and empirical research to understand individuals and society.

Ironically, the leaders of this movement did not describe their scholarship as a form of practical theology. In their minds, practical theology still connoted applied theology. Yet they exerted a major impact on the long - term development of the fi eld. If the theo-logical encyclopedia left practical theology with an ambiguous understanding of its subject matter and methods, the religious education movement introduced forms of teaching and scholarship that became central to the discipline in future years: empirical research, engagement of the social sciences, and a dynamic understanding of the theory – practice relationship in which theology is constructed in dialogue with experi-ence and practice and not merely applied to them.

The Kelly (1924) study of theological education documents the widespread infl u-ence of innovators like Chicago and the religious education movement. During the early decades of the twentieth century, theological schools began to place greater emphasis on practical and historical theology, specialized curricular tracks, and new courses in psychology, sociology, and religious education (Kelly 1924 ). However, these innovations were not welcomed everywhere. Indeed, this period of modernization in American society was a time of polarization between liberals and conservatives in Protestantism. Conservatives resisted change in theological education, and practical theology was often a lightning rod of their dissent.

Princeton Theological Seminary is a good example. The faculty majority strove to protect a nineteenth - century scholastic approach in which the Bible was viewed as teaching a revealed system of truth, given defi nitive expression in the Westminster standards of the Presbyterian Church. Expanding electives, offering courses in religious education and practical theology, and introducing fi eld education were all opposed by the faculty majority. The curriculum was revised only when the General Assembly intervened in 1929, leading some members of the faculty and board to leave PTS and found a new seminary in Philadelphia.

The bitter confl ict at PTS is indicative of deep divisions across Protestantism during this period. Pentecostal, orthodox, evangelical, and fundamentalist theologians viewed the new, more dynamic understandings of practical theology with deep suspicion, as part of liberalism ’ s accommodation of Christianity to modern culture. To a large extent, models of “ applied scripture ” or “ applied dogmatics ” were dominant among theological

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conservatives for the remainder of the twentieth century. It was not until Fuller Theological Seminary ’ s Ray Anderson engaged the practical theology discussion in the 1990s that conservative Protestants began to develop their own approaches to this fi eld (Anderson 2001 ).

Practical Theology and the Critique of Modernity

Historians of American theological education commonly point to the period between the world wars as the time in which a paradigm shift took place in mainline Protestant seminaries. World War I, the collapse of the stock market in 1929, and the Great Depression of the 1930s created a social context in which the optimistic assessment of modernity identifi ed with nineteenth - century liberal theology was severely challenged. New theological voices in Europe (neo - orthodoxy) and in the United States (Christian realism) argued that the task facing the church was not simply to help people adapt to the modern world but to develop a critique of modernity and the crises of industrializa-tion, urbanization, mass culture, and global warfare.

This critique provided students not only with a framework to guide their future ministries, but also with new impetus to interpret the contemporary world in light of the gospel. This shift in perspective was present in seminaries as diverse as Princeton Theological Seminary and Union Theological Seminary, New York, which in previous decades had been bastions of reformed orthodoxy and liberal theology, respectively. Reinhold Niebuhr joined Union ’ s faculty in 1928 and Paul Tillich in 1933. Emil Brunner gave lectures at PTS in 1928, and the faculty soon included many members sympa-thetic to neo - orthodoxy and Christian realism, like Elmer Homrighausen, Otto Piper, Hugh Kerr, Paul Lehmann, and George Hendry.

How did these new theological voices and this paradigm of theological education impact Protestant practical theology? In a study of theological education during this period by H. Richard Niebuhr, Daniel Day Williams, and James Gustafson (1957) , the authors found a return to an emphasis on the classical theological disciplines, presum-ably in an attempt to support the Christian critique of modernity. At the same time, they also found an expansion of courses in practical theology and increased attention to fi eld education (Niebuhr et al. 1957 : 21 – 22). Clearly, as a curricular area, practical theology fl ourished. Moreover, as a fi eld of scholarship, this period fi nds the fi rst exam-ples of American practical theologians who refl ected on their fi eld in a methodologically self - conscious fashion.

Three dynamics infl uenced this disciplinary refl ection. First, this period was charac-terized by a higher degree of theological diversity and less denominationalism than in the past. Some practical theologians were infl uenced by Karl Barth (e.g., Elmer Homrighausen and James Smart); others by Reinhold Niebuhr (e.g., Shelton Smith) or Paul Tillich (e.g., Lewis Sherrill and Seward Hiltner). Still others unabashedly continued to affi rm liberal theology (e.g., Harrison Elliott and Sophia Fahs) or learned from process thought (e.g., Alan Moore). This sort of theological diversity forced practical theolo-gians to be more forthright about their commitments and methods. Second, the emer-gence of the social sciences afforded practical theologians a rich and diverse array of

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dialogue partners. Psychology included radically different options like psychoanalysis, functional psychology, and Rogerian psychology, to name but a few. Practical theolo-gians were thus confronted with the need to give explicit justifi cation for their choices on theological and social scientifi c grounds. Third, the increased importance of fi eld education and supervised ministry gave practical theologians the opportunity to develop courses and refl ection groups designed to help students analyze particular situ-ations, refl ect on them theologically, and consider possible ministerial responses.

Theological education, thus, served as an important context in which practical theo-logians began to develop greater sophistication about the methods and subject matter of their fi eld. In many ways, however, it was the clinical pastoral education (CPE) move-ment, emerging outside of seminary education, that served as one of the most impor-tance catalysts of creativity during this period (Stokes 1985 ). CPE began in small training programs in hospital settings under the leadership of Richard Cabot, Russell Dicks, and Anton Boisen. Students were directly involved in ministry of some sort – commonly as chaplain interns – and invited to refl ect on their experiences through case studies, verbatims, personal supervision, and groups of fellow interns. In Boisen ’ s (1930) famous phrase, students learned by refl ecting on “ living human documents, ” which were every bit as important as the written texts studied in biblical studies, church history, and systematic theology.

From these small beginnings, the movement grew dramatically during the 1940s and 1950s. By the end of the 1950s, CPE was established in 117 centers with relation-ships with over 40 schools of theology (Holifi eld 1983 : 271). It impacted theological education as well. As late as 1939, few schools of theology offered courses in pastoral counseling; by the 1950s, almost all did. Pastoral theology now was used to refer to the ministry of pastoral care and healing, not the general duties of the pastoral leader. By the mid - fi fties, moreover, seven universities had established graduate programs in theol-ogy and personality, pastoral psychology, pastoral counseling, and pastoral theology.

The most important impact of CPE on practical theology was to help it become clearer about its methods and subject matter as a distinct fi eld. Theological refl ection on present practice was viewed as having epistemic weight, yielding knowledge that could not be gained simply by refl ecting on sacred or academic texts. Such refl ection on practice, moreover, was inherently interdisciplinary , bringing theology into dialogue with psychology to make sense of particular cases and contexts. It also sought to shape the fi eld it studied, guiding pastoral responses to particular situations. In retrospect CPE may be criticized as too dominated by an individual - therapeutic perspective, but its contribution to practical theology ’ s development was great. Drawing on the insights of the movement, Seward Hiltner ’ s Preface to Pastoral Theology (1958) was a widely infl u-ential attempt to describe the unique approach of pastoral theology as a distinctive form of theology.

Ecumenicity and Diversity in Contemporary Practical Theology

Social commentators commonly portray the 1960s as a watershed in American history. Not only was this a decade of political and cultural turmoil, but it was also the

502 RICHARD R. OSMER

beginning of the transformation of long - standing institutional patterns of work, family, religion, education, sexual identity, and the nation state. A variety of social movements arose: civil rights, feminism, ecological concern, anti - war protest, and gay and lesbian rights, followed by the resurgence of evangelicalism, Pentecostalism, and the religious right during the 1970s. These altered the landscape of American religion, with important implications for theological education and practical theology. Larger numbers of women and second - career students began entering seminaries. Student bodies also began to include greater racial, ethnic, denominational, and international diversity.

From the 1960s to the present, schools have experimented with a variety of curricu-lar patterns to respond to changes in their students and American religion. No single pattern has emerged as dominant. Indeed, seminary faculty and administrators are, perhaps, more aware than ever that theological education today must develop patterns that take account of the particularities of a seminary ’ s denominational history, the diverse needs of students, and the challenges its congregations face in changing social contexts.

It is no accident that American practical theology as a curricular area and theologi-cal discipline has come into its own during this period. For almost a century, Protestant practical theologians have struggled with many of the issues that theological education as a whole faces today: teaching the members of a diverse student body how to draw on the resources of their own theological tradition in order to refl ect on and guide dif-ferent contexts of ministry, bringing theology into dialogue with other fi elds with inter-disciplinary integrity, and understanding the dynamic relationship between theory and practice in theology. In these areas and others, practical theology has something to offer seminary education. At the same time, practical theology has developed a much higher degree of methodological sophistication in relation to its own subject matter and methods as a result of two major developments.

First, Roman Catholics made important contributions to the fi eld following the Second Vatican Council. The latter gave rise to new thinking about the meaning of the church ’ s pastoral mission. This was evoked especially by the “ pastoral ” constitution of the Council, Gaudium et spes , which explored the church ’ s various relations to the modern world (Sweeney 2010 ). It signaled a spirit of openness and dialogue, leading to new developments in theology, seminary education, lay ministries, ecumenical rela-tionships, and the church ’ s engagement of the arts and sciences.

In the wake of Vatican II, Catholic scholars in Europe and North America began to explore what pastoral and practical theology might look like in the Catholic tradition, sparking a new spirit of ecumenicity in these fi elds. Protestants learned from Catholics like Thomas Groome, James and Evelyn Whitehead, Robert Schreiter, Robert Kinast, Bernard Lee, Claire Wolfteich, and Kathleen Cahalan, to name but a few. The list could be widened signifi cantly if we included European Catholics, like Johannes van der Ven, and South American liberation theologians, like Gustavo Gutierrez and Juan Luis Segundo. Moreover, the one contemporary systematic theologian to give a prominent place to practical theology in his depiction of different forms of theology is the Roman Catholic scholar David Tracy. At the same time, Catholics learned from Protestants like James Fowler, Don Browning, Bonnie Miller - McLemore, Rebecca Chopp, James Poling,

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Daniel Schipani, and many others. The fi eld of American practical theology is one of the richest arenas of ecumenical conversation in the world today.

This has led to a second development, the emergence of competing paradigms of practical theology supported by vibrant academic guilds, journals, and research pro-grams. These paradigms are not based exclusively on Catholic or on Protestant theology but are shaped by different understandings of the theory – praxis relationship, models of interdisciplinary work, and other methodological decisions. We can identify at least fi ve paradigms of practical theology in contemporary American practical theology, which cross ecumenical lines: (1) a postmodern transforming practice approach (Mary McClintock Fulkerson, Bonnie Miller - McLemore); (2) a hermeneutical approach (Charles Gerkin, Thomas Groome, James Fowler, Don Browning); (3) a Christo - praxis approach (Ray Anderson, Andrew Root, Richard Osmer); (4) a neo - Aristotelian prac-tices approach (Dorothy Bass, Craig Dykstra); and (5) a neo - Barthian approach (James Loder, Deborah Hunsinger). This sort of robust pluralism is a sign of strength in the fi eld. It is also indicative of the increased strength of academic guilds like the American Association of Practical Theology, the International Academy of Practical Theology, and the International Society of Empirical Research in Theology, as well as journals like The International Journal of Practical Theology and The Journal of Empirical Theology .

As we look at the history of American practical theology, two things are evident. First, seminary education has been a key context in the development of the fi eld. Second, movements within and beyond the church have sparked new thinking about practical theology ’ s subject matter and methods as an academic discipline. In recent decades, practical theology has achieved greater academic acceptance. But history tells us that practical theology is likely to continue to develop in the future. This is only fi tting for a fi eld that takes the mediation of theology, context, and action so seriously.

References

Anderson , R. ( 2001 ). The Shape of Practical Theology: Empowering Ministry with Theological Praxis . Downers Grove, IL : InterVarsity Press .

Boisen , A. ( 1930 ). “ Theological Education via the Clinic . ” Religious Education 25 : 35 – 39 . Cahalan , K. (in press). “ Locating Practical Theology in Catholic Theological Discourse and

Practice . ” International Journal of Practical Theology 15 ( 1 ). Cave , A. ( 1896 ). An Introduction to Theology: Its Principles, Its Branches, Its Results, and Its Literature ,

2nd edn. Edinburgh : T. & T. Clark . Cherry , C. ( 1995 ). Hurrying toward Zion: Universities, Divinity Schools, and American Protestantism .

Bloomington : Indiana University Press . Crooks , G. , and Hurst , J. ( 1884 ). Theological Encyclop æ dia and Methodology: On the Basis of

Hagenbach . New York : Phillips & Hunt . Harper , W. R. ( 1899 ). “ Shall the Theological Curriculum Be Modifi ed, and How? ” American

Journal of Theology 3 ( 1 ): 45 – 66 . Hiltner , S. ( 1958 ). Preface to Pastoral Theology . Nashville : Abingdon Press . Holifi eld , E. B. ( 1983 ). A History of Pastoral Care in America: From Salvation to Self - Realization .

Nashville : Abingdon Press .

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Kelly , R. ( 1924 ). Theological Education in America: A Study of One Hundred Sixty - One Theological Schools in the United States and Canada . New York : George H. Doran .

Lynn , R. W. ( 1981 ). “ Notes toward a History: Theological Encyclopedia and the Evolution of Protestant Seminary Curriculum, 1808 – 1868 . ” Theological Education 17 : 118 – 144 .

Miller - McLemore , B. ( 2010 ). “ Practical Theology . ” In Charles Lippy and Peter Williams , eds., Encyclopedia of Religion in America , vol. 3 . Washington, DC : Congressional Quarterly Press , pp. 1739 – 1743 .

Niebuhr , H. R. , Williams , D. D. , and Gustafson , J. ( 1957 ). The Advancement of Theological Education . New York : Harper & Brothers .

Schaff , P. ( 1893 ). Theological Propaedeutic: A General Introduction to the Study of Theology . New York : Charles Scribner ’ s Sons .

Schleiermacher , F. ( 1850 ). Brief Outline of the Study of Theology . Edinburgh : T. & T. Clark . Stokes , A. ( 1985 ). Ministry after Freud . New York : Pilgrim Press . Sweeney , J. ( 2010 ). “ Catholic Theology and Practice Today . ” In J. Sweeney , with G. Simmonds

and D. Lonsdale , eds., Keeping Faith in Practice . London : SCM Press , pp. 11 – 25 . University of Chicago (n.d.). Annual Register. Hathi Trust Digital Library . At http://catalog.

hathitrust.org/Record/000051072 (accessed Mar. 23, 2010).

Further Reading

Bass , D. , and Dykstra , C. , eds. ( 2008 ). For Life Abundant: Practical Theology, Theological Education, and Christian Ministry . Grand Rapids, MI : Eerdmans .

Browning , D. ( 1991 ). A Fundamental Practical Theology: Descriptive and Strategic Proposals . Minneapolis : Fortress Press .

Fulkerson , M. M. ( 2007 ). Places of Redemption: Theology for a Worldly Church . New York : Oxford University Press .

Gerkin , C. ( 1984 ). The Living Human Document: Re - visioning Pastoral Counseling in a Hermeneutical Mode . Nashville : Abingdon Press .

Miller - McLemore , B. ( 1994 ). Also a Mother: Work and Family as Theological Dilemma . Nashville : Abingdon Press .

Miller - McLemore , B. , and Gill - Austern , B. , eds. ( 1995 ). Feminist and Womanist Pastoral Theology . Nashville : Abingdon Press .

Osmer , Richard ( 2008 ). Practical Theology: An Introduction . Grand Rapids, MI : Eerdmans . Poling , James ( 1991 ). The Abuse of Power: A Theological Problem . Nashville : Abingdon Press .