Essay Instructions: The book that will be used in this paper is Elaine Graham’s Transforming Practice: Pastoral Theology in an Age of Uncertainty (New York: Mowbray, 1996)
Overview:
This paper will examine and offer a critical evaluation of Elaine Graham’s transforming practice approach to practical theology.
This paper should consist of two parts. Part one is a summary of this book or of her approach (8 pages). Part two is a critical evaluation of her approach (12 pages). To do this, the writer must look specifically at four main criteria: 1) her interdisciplinary method, 2) sources of justification, 3) the theory-praxis relationship, and 4) theological rationale.
Notes:
1. In Transforming Practice, Elaine Graham argues that practical theology must face up the challenges of a postmodern context characterized by a high degree of pluralism, fragmentation, and skepticism. It is a context of uncertainty in which it is no longer possible for theology to build on a consensus of values in society. Nor can theology take for granted the authority of traditional sources and norms of the church. It must find new ways of developing truth claims and values that will be persuasive to a skeptical postmodern world.
2. Graham develops an approach to normativity that can help the church and society move beyond the oppressive legacy of patriarchy, which defines human nature by assuming that maleness and masculinity are the norm.
3. Graham argues that normativity must be approached reflexively, not prescriptively, as dialogue and reflection on the practical wisdom emerging in communities of transforming practice. As she puts it: “Principles of truth and value are not to be conceived as transcendent eternal realities, but as provisional—yet biding—strategies of normative action and community within which shared commitments might be negotiated and put to work. Ethics and politics therefore become processes and practices, rather than applications of metaphysical ideals.” (pp.6-7)
4. Over the course of her book, Graham develop three central arguments about transforming practice in the Christian community:
4.1. Transforming practice generates new knowledge and values that cannot be formed in any other way;
4.2. Such practice is oriented to human freedom and love and struggles to overcome structures of domination, including the oppression of women;
4.3. Transforming practice discloses God and offers a model of transcendence that is compelling to many people in our postmodern context
5. Graham’s three criteria to assess transforming practice:
5.1. Transforming practice must contribute to liberation praxis. While this does not provide specific morns to guide particular actions, it does give guidance about the basic intent of transforming practice. Such practice contributes to the struggle both inside and outside the church to liberate people from social and economic oppression. Good practice is liberating.
5.2. Transforming practice must give special priority to and make space for women’s experience, leadership in an effort to form new practices of gender identity, relationships, and roles.
5.3. Since the diversity of women’s experience makes it impossible to posit a single norm for all transforming practice, such norms must emerge reflexively out of particular, local practices that embody new patterns of gender in a specific Christian community. Transforming practice opens up a space for conversation in which people reflect on the values and meanings that are emerging out of their experience.
6. In Graham’s approach, transforming practice is pivotal. It is the generative source of new knowledge, values, and social patterns. She offers three criteria with which to guide and assess transforming practice in the church:
6.1. Does it contribute to human liberation as an expression of the Christian commitment to freedom and love?
6.2. Does it attend to women’s experience without “essentializing” this experience?
6.3. Does it support the reflexive consolidation of practical wisdom emerging out of practice, within a commitment to alterity.
Near the end of her book, she draws on these criteria to assess several examples of feminist transforming practice.
7. While I appreciate Graham’s recognition of the importance of women (as well as other powerless groups) and the diversity of their experience, her work does not clearly explain how the Bible, the Christian story, and Christian tradition fit into her version of practical theology. Her theology is not very specific about how to actually go about discerning communal performative truth claims. For me, a practical theological approach must be grounded in theological reflection, and identity for Christians should be rooted in the Christian story whose central theme is the activity of God at the core of human experience. Furthermore, it also seems that Graham too fully embraces postmodern cultural relativism and non-realist views of God in her work.
8. Concerning interdisciplinary method, Graham develops her approach of transforming practice by entering into a dialogue with two European sociologists, Anthony Giddens and Pierre Bourdieu.
9. In terms of her sources of justification, Graham give special attention to women’s experience in their particular situations as their main source of justification over tradition, reason, and Scripture.
10. Concerning the issue of the theory-praxis relationship, Graham claims the particularity of both the theory of divine and human action and the situation where they are related; acknowledge that a theory is built upon some generalizations and note the need for contextualization; work at the metatheoretical level—creating ways to guide the development of a theory of practice that takes seriously the diversity of people and the importance of particularity in pastoral ministry. Graham follows the lead of liberation theology and feminist theology in developing her approach to practical theology.
11. To consider theological rationale, Graham claims that God’s presence is found in specific and concrete situations. In other words, God works incarnationally—in the particular and in the concrete. This means not only that the particular groups of women will have different experiences but that all experiences will be distinct. It also means that our incarnational God discloses Godself to us through our real-life issues, common experience, and practice.