Volume 21, Issue 2

Epistemic violence, an experience of oppression felt from the inside, is ever-present and thus present throughout the academy. This paper explores the experience of epistemic violence in practical theology, where we are given institutional authority to interpret and represent the lived experiences of others. I use the metaphor of ventriloquism to explore practical theologians as performers who, by virtue of our position, make dummies of those we are attempting to serve, including subjects of research, faith communities, and students.

The article analyses two interview extracts with the focus on the social and discursive position of Muslim students in German schools. With Pierre Bourdieu and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, the author asks if these Muslim students can “speak”. It can be demonstrated that the interviewed students do not have the opportunity to express in specific situations their perspectives and opinions within the hegemonic discourses in their school and in society, respectively. In his concluding remarks the author discusses consequences for schools as “safe spaces” and emphasises the duty of teachers to consider their position within hegemonic discourses and societal power relations.

The aim of this article is to discuss confirmation training from the perspective of mobile technology and social media. Previous research has focused on comparing confirmation training practices implemented in different Lutheran Churches. This article contributes to this research area by providing a new viewpoint to the discussion. Results indicate that (1) workers, in particular, received new ways of working with enthusiasm, (2) but the actual use of mobile devices and social media like Facebook proved to be low and not innovative, and (3) mobile technology cannot be integrated into confirmation training until new content and methods that are meaningful to young people have been developed.

The Passion is a musical practice staged in the Dutch public sphere and an example of how large, Christian musical forms in late-modern network societies moved from the church to the broader culture. Neither the classical discipline of hymnology nor the emerging discipline of Christian congregational music studies have developed theoretical concepts that serve to understand musical practices outside the ecclesial domain. The authors distinguish the emerging field of fluid ritual musical practices and reinvent the concept of sacro-soundscapes as a notion that contributes to the interpretation of these practices. They claim that, consequentially, the aforementioned disciplines are included in this field and therefore change, as well.

Anthropological premises of pastors significantly influence people’s experiences in worship services. Pastors’ perceptions of people’s basic situation, their understanding of people in relation to freedom, love and self-love, sin and repentance, influence the liturgy and the sermon. The implicit anthropology of many services relates to the way they rebuke those present for being human and specifically declare everything that constitutes living as human beings to be a problem. That makes the process of communicating the Gospel appear unconvincing. What matters is to reformulate Christian anthropology in a coherent and contemporary form by communicating with other sciences which raise the question of being human in relation to freedom, dignity and love.

This International Report on Practical Theology in Slovakia focuses on the case of practical theology in The Evangelical Church of Augsburg Confession in Slovakia, a religious minority in a mostly Roman Catholic country. Although the church dates to the Protestant Reformation, its understanding of practical theology is about one hundred years old. The article sketches the most important developments in the field since 1919, mainly induced by the far-reaching political upheavals after the two World Wars, as well as the opening of the Iron Curtain in 1989. After the period of repression of religion by the state during the communist era, the “velvet revolution” in 1989 opened an almost unlimited room for the churches’ mission in Slovak society: new possibilities and challenges for building church communities, developing congregational ministry, and involving the church in educational, cultural and social ministry. The venue in which practical theology has been developing is the Evangelical Lutheran Theological Faculty of Comenius University in Bratislava.

This report begins by introducing bioethics, outlining the history and present shape of the field, and making some brief remarks about its methods and approaches. The interactions of theology and religion with bioethics are briefly surveyed, and potential points of contact with practical theology are identified. Next, the ethics of reproductive medicine, in particular in vitro fertilisation (IVF), is used as a specific example of theological reflection on bioethics. The final section identifies some questions arising from this example, which may contribute to a research agenda in bioethics and practical theology.