Praktische Theologie im Wissenschaftsdiskurs

The author approaches the phenomenon of 'religious experience' through a qualitative study in which young, urban people from Europe and the USA are empirically examined. It becomes clear that individuals themselves are constructive agents of experience and theology. Religious experience manifests itself as a transformative perspective of hope in the lives of young people.

How might practice theories and engagement with practice contribute to and advance theological study of religion and religious life and practices?
This volume explores and discusses how theological engagement with practice, theoretically as well as empirically, might profit from theories of practice developed in disciplines such as philosophy, sociology, education and organisational studies during the recent decades, but so far scarcely employed within theology.
In part I, the volume unfolds key components of practice theory, especially as they have more recently been developed within sociological practice theories, reflect on their significance and potential with regard to theology. In part II, these perspectives are employed in the study of concrete religious practices - established as well as experimental religious practices, and collective as well as individual ones.
By unfolding connections between theology and practice theories, and reflecting on practice theories' analytical and theoretical potential for theological study of religion, the book will be of interest for any scholar in the study of contemporary religion and practical theology.

"Theology" and "economics" are two opposing logics of action in conflict with one another that collide in some Christian actors. This volume defines their relationship and makes a confessionally influenced suggestion for their integration within the scope of a theological economics.

Relatives provide most home care required but they are often ignored in terms of their own needs and burdens. Theological and psychological theory underpins the empirical long-term study that shows that religion may be an ambivalent and dynamic phenomenon in dealing with a radical life event and evokes the need for a differentiated experience of religion.

The concept of “interpretative power” is a response to the latent “power amnesia” of the hermeneutic tradition and is meant to show the interrelationship between interpretation and power. The essays in this volume address both the conditions of religious and ecclesiastical communication and their specific manifestations in various fields of activity such as mass, church ceremonies, pastoral care, religious education, and service to others.

What role does speaking of truth, certainty, and evidence play in the communicative contexts of practical theology, and what are the implications for liturgical and scholastic learning processes? Essays from different disciplines reflect on the conditions for communicating truth, and essays on practical theology focus on the communicating “experiences of certainty” and “experiences of evidence.”

Do the phenomena of implicit religion make church Christianity obsolete? This book offers the first comprehensive theory of theological cultural hermeneutics. Based on Tillich’s cultural theology, it proposes the preconditions and implications for this paradigm of practical theology and interprets them philosophically. The church is not obsolete, but instead, faces an identity conflict that practical theology can help resolve.

Understanding the relationship between church and the public today demands reflection on the transformation processes unleashed by modern media. This study explores how changes in communicative behavior have shaped public discourse and the genesis of social formations. The empirical part of the study on online religious communication underscores a required activity in today’s church life.

How can one describe the pluralisation of the religious realm, which is of such significance for processes of social change? How can it be done from an international perspective? The book sharpens the idea of religious pluralisation by elucidating it against the backdrop of specific religious phenomena and practices. Concepts and interpretations of religious praxis are correlated here in a way that has proven most fruitful in the field of Practical Theology.

We take a closer look at twelve highly relevant topics that are formative for the practical-theological discourses in South Africa and Germany: poverty and wealth, education, transitional rites and passages, health, religious community formation and the future of the Church, beginning and end of life, transformation of the media, migration and interculturality, populism and radicalisation in religion and knowledge, processing of the past, communal living.

Each topic will be introduced by one scholar from a certain country and commented on by another. The conversational procedure contributes to a contextual theology that understands theology essentially as dialogue. In all contributions pluralisation is the overarching topic. It shall be developed as a conception and theory respectively, both of which are not self-evident their theoretical implications must be explicitly unfolded.

This study explores an aesthetic paradigm for pastoral care that turns practical theology into a science of perception. Using Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory and Umberto Eco’s semiotics, the study develops a coherent theoretical framework for pastoral care, which accurately encompasses the multidimensional processes of communicative events in pastoral care.

Church buildings often represent major local religious, cultural, and historical spaces. The continued survival of many church building in urban German-speaking areas is threatened by reform effects. This study examines the different contexts for the existence and experience of church buildings and shows that access to the symbol of the church can be traced back to different perspectives and perceptions.

Within mass media, one can rarely hear the voice of the Church. There is no lack of empirical attempts to solve the problem by means of the usual PR and advertising techniques, but they appear to have been of limited success. This study seeks a new approach. The likelihood of communication reaching its intended target audience can be improved by using a systems theory based calculus.

At a burial, death is placed within an interpretive existential framework and solemnized in ritual. The life that was lived is comfortingly evoked by means of culturally specific symbols. This volume examines the practical-theological perception of current burial practices using the interdisciplinary framework of cultural studies.

This book compares three approaches to public reason and to the public space accorded to religions: the liberal platform of an overlapping consensus proposed by John Rawls, Jürgen Habermas’s discourse ethical reformulation of Kant’s universalism and its realization in the public sphere, and the co-founding role which Paul Ricoeur attributes to the particular traditions that have shaped their cultures and the convictions of citizens.
The premises of their positions are analysed under four aspects: (1) the normative framework which determines the specific function of public reason; (2) their anthropologies and theories of action; (3) the dimensions of social life and its concretization in a democratic political framework; (4) the different views of religion that follow from these factors, including their understanding of the status of metaphysical and religious truth claims, and the role of religion as a practice and conviction in a pluralist society. Recent receptions and critiques in English and German are brought into conversation: philosophers and theologians discuss the scope of public reason, and the task of translation from faith traditions, as well as the role they might have in the diversity of world cultures for shaping a shared cosmopolitan horizon.

One step along the path toward overcoming the crisis of Christian faith has been a hermeneutic transformation of Christian dogmatics. To accomplish this aim, this book brings empirically derived life interpretations into dialogue with a hermeneutic interpretation of the theology of Karl Barth. By combining empirical, hermeneutic, and dogmatic methods, one can derive a critical impetus for a hermeneutical (re)orientation of Christian theology.

This study examines the meanings, patterns, and structures of religion as experienced by the elderly. Its focus is on questions related to the meaning of life. In addition to identifying dimensions of meaning in old age, the work also seeks to develop a suitable research design for the empirical study of this question. It is sure to be of considerable interest to researchers studying religion in the elderly as well as researchers of practical theology.

Persons with dementia present a challenge for theology and pastoral care. In a dialogue with traditional theological, medical, social psychological, and nursing science approaches, this work develops a practical theological method for describing and counseling persons suffering from dementia. It then elucidates specific forms of appropriate pastoral care for persons with dementia, including religious worship, biography work, bibliodrama, pastoral care for the body, and spiritual care of the dying.

The process of European integration is presenting the churches of Europe with new challenges. Applying a combination of social-scientific, historical and theological methods, the author investigates the self-understanding and the Europe concept of Christian and Islamic organizations within European civil society. The study points towards an ecclesiastical concept that enables a combination of fundamental Protestant concerns and societal conditions in Europe.

The study received the award Wissenschaftspreis of Hanns-Lilje-Stiftung 2013 (Link).

In the counseling field, a type of consultation is increasingly being offered that focuses on spiritual topics, generally known as “spiritual guidance”. This study explores various guidance models and discusses which aspects can support spiritual processes particularly effectively in our postmodern world. As basis for this analysis, the author explains and interprets Dietrich Bonhoeffer's letters from prison in today's context.

The marketability of the popular church, its growth, criticism and theological legitimacy have been the subject of an ecclesiastical discourse since the early 1990s. This study not only deals with the subject matter itself, but also looks at how it is addressed in the discourse. Michel Foucault’s concept of subject and power and its current reformulation in governmentality studies form the basis and framework of the analysis. In this way scholarly self-enlightenment provides a well-focussed mirror for the current ecclesiastic discourse.

Religion as a cultural interpretative system is not conceivable without reference to the phenomenon of “life”, which is articulated and displayed in the most diverse life styles. Life as it is being lived is always presupposed, and this fact has a profound impact on religious interpretations. However, the controversial dynamics of developments in the fields of science called the “life sciences” are now leading to significant changes in cultural perception and interpretation, which also demand new interpretation efforts in the theological perspective. This book seeks to meet this challenge.

A church service is concerned with the renewal of life. Thus art, e.g. music, plays a central role: it gives scope to deal with different perspectives on life and reaches beyond every-day experience to transcendental experience. In its own way, music achieves the objective at which the gospel of the crucifixion and resurrection aims: the worshiping community is "enchanted" into becoming alive and human. The model of incantation demonstrates how music and words can combine in liturgy to achieve this goal.

Current discussions on the meaning and objective of religious education in schools are also debating the denominational profile of such education. This study aims to determine this profile more precisely by defining religious didactics as part of the exercise of Christian faith. Thus, the study not only links religious learning with the Christian practice of faith but also provides guidance in determining and ascertaining this practice of faith in learning processes. In doing so, the study makes a statement from a Catholic perspective on the learnability of faith.

Since 11th September 2001, religious formation and education have again been up for discussion. The challenges of contemporary society not only demand enlightenment in religious matters, but also require education in practical tolerance for dialogue to take place between religions, without suspending the issue of truth. In a critical evaluation of PISA and other studies, the book establishes how much latitude there really is in the relationship between Church and State under European law and the laws of the member-states, and puts forward proposals for a “religious literacy” in Europe.

Virtual realities are computer-mediated communication spaces. They are also to be found in religion. In its first part, the volume contains contributions to a practical theological understanding of virtual realities. The second part is concerned with liturgy and preaching from the perspective of media theory. The volume demonstrates how closely media and religion or faith are related to each other where the perception of reality is concerned. Christian religion and Christian faith deal with reality in a constructive manner.

The papers in this volume on the practical theology of aging aim to engage with fundamental discourses in gerontology to reflect on central aspects of aging such as corporality, wisdom, memory, perception of time, generation, places, reality of media. In addition, the disciplines of practical theology are interrogated about their ability to increase their competence in perceiving, interpreting and acting upon the specific problems posed by aging. Here they engage in debate with neighbouring disciplines in the human sciences.

• Enters an up-to-date and fundamental discourse in gerontology
• Multi-perspective approach
• Of interest to scholars as well as people 'working directly in the field'

The study uses historical models from systematic theology with reference to Biblical traditions and draws on philosophical concepts to demonstrate how the concealment of God is a necessary correlate of his revelation, but one which must be overcome. It becomes clear that the dialectic of God's invisibility and visibility is related both to the inner relationship of God and man, but also to their relationship to each other. When invisibility is transformed into revelation, God and Man are realised in and with each other. This happens especially in liturgy.

For some years now there has been talk of phenomenological approaches in the discussions around religious education and practical theology. Multi-faceted concepts such as lifeworld (“Lebenswelt”), everyday or perception have been mobilised to point the formation of theory in a new direction. The motif of “closeness to life” (“Lebensnähe”) plays a central role in this. But what are we to understand by phenomenology? Contemplating the philosophical origins of the concept, this study reflects on the opportunities and limitations of phenomenological conceptions and their significance for religious education.

Martina Kumlehn undertakes the first study of the chequered history of the reception accorded to St John’s Gospel in 20th century conceptions of religious education; in five individual studies she describes an arc from liberal religious education to symbol didactics. The sixth study proposes its own approach to bible didactics which engages with Paul Ricoeur’s narrative theory to take up the particular narratology of St John’s Gospel and reflect on it didactically. Placed within the area of conflict between phenomenology and semiotics, St John’s Gospel is presented as a school of perception and a catalyst for pluralist readings.

Einsamkeit und soziale Isolation sind in jüngster Zeit verstärkt in den Fokus öffentlicher Debatten gerückt. Zugleich sind sie ein dauerhaft ebenso relevantes wie brisantes Thema diakonischer und seelsorglicher Praxis. In diesem Problemfeld treffen gesellschaftliche Diskurse und Kulturdiagnosen auf sozialstrukturelle Problemlagen wie Ungleichheit, Stigmatisierung und Ausgrenzung sowie auf individuelle Lebenssituationen und Muster des sozialen Verhaltens. Der interdisziplinäre Band versammelt aktuelle Perspektiven aus Praktischer Theologie sowie Human- und Sozialwissenschaften zur komplexen Herausforderung der Einsamkeit.

Einsamkeit wird als multiple Herausforderung für die Praktische Theologie begriffen: Für den Religionsbezug ebenso wie für den Gesellschafts- und Handlungsbezug des Faches. Praktisch-theologische Disziplinen wie Poimenik, Diakonik und Religionspädagogik aber auch Perspektiven aus Soziologie und Psychologie diskutieren insbesondere folgende Fragen: Wie kann Einsamkeit verstanden werden – als Emotion, als individuelle Lebenssituation, als psychologisches Phänomen und als gesellschaftliche Struktur? Welche religiöse Valenz kommt der Einsamkeit zu und welche Rolle kann Spiritualität im Umgang mit Einsamkeit spielen? Was können Diakonie, Kirche und Seelsorge zur Prävention und Bewältigung von Vereinsamung beitragen?

Der Band entwickelt im interdisziplinären Austausch ein praktisch-theologisches Verständnis von Einsamkeit und sozialer Isolation und entwirft handlungstheoretische Grundlagen einer einsamkeitsbezogenen Praxis von Seelsorge, Religionspädagogik und Diakonie auf aktueller wissenschaftlicher Grundlage.

The climate crisis is the fundamental litmus test for any theory about the relationship between nature and religion. This conference volume explores the climate crisis as a foundational and cross-cutting challenge for the academic disciplines of practical theology and religious studies. Contributors from around the world address pressing questions related to epistemology and methodology, such as religious anthropocentrism and eco-spirituality. Other topics include religious environmental ethos and its connection to nature experiences, contextual knowledge of nature, the role of religious communities in the face of climate change, and the significance of the environmental crisis for religious education, pastoral care, liturgy, and preaching.

As an ambivalent factor, religion can strengthen environmental awareness and activism, but it can also ideologically reinforce human domination and exploitation of nature. The interdisciplinary dialogue between practical theology and religious studies addresses conceptual and action-theoretical questions from a global perspective. Through the comparative analysis of various forms and contexts of religious practice using theoretical and empirical approaches, this volume contributes to the public debate on one of the most pressing challenges facing humanity today from the fields of practical theology and religious studies.

Belief systems can have positive or negative effects on health. What does that mean for pastoral care? This volume brings religious psychology studies and psychotherapeutic approaches together with theological perspectives on belief and health. It proposes a form of integrative pastoral care that aims to strengthen beliefs that are life-affirming and mindful of reality in various situations.