The Emmaus narrative and contemporary Christian followership – An empirical case study

This article aims to explore a ‘lived discipleship’ by determining whether and how contemporary communities of faith could implement the norms and principles reflected in the Emmaus narrative of Luke 24:13–35 within a plausible epistemological framework that might facilitate a fresh understanding of Christian followership as discipleship. This was done through an empirical case study using two focus groups as co-researchers, in order to actively listen to their respective understandings of lived theology in their unique South African contexts. The two focus groups consisted of (1) a contemporary Christian grouping of Afrikaans-speaking, active churchgoers situated in Hazeldean, a suburb in Pretoria East, Tshwane, Gauteng and (2) a contemporary Christian grouping of African, active churchgoers situated in Ivory Park, a suburb in Tembisa, Ekurhuleni, Gauteng. This article concluded that Luke 24:13–35 nudged the co-researchers to re-evaluate their contemporary understanding of discipleship and moved them to additional and new perspectives in terms of practical expressions thereof that can be best described as ‘lived followership’. A shift from perceiving Jesus in terms of an ‘act to follow’ by gaining the correct knowledge, to following Jesus as ‘a performative act’, a shift from ‘theoretical knowledge’ to ‘heart knowledge’.Contribution: This article is a part of the Festschrift for Prof. Stephan Joubert. This article plays into similar creative interdisciplinary relationship as seen in the work of Prof. Joubert, by looking at the relationship between New Testament and Practical Theology in order to improve practices of faith that is rooted in a biblical understanding of Jesus.

Lectio Divina: Reading in The Rule of St Benedict

Classical traditions of reading lie at the origins of Lectio Divina, a characteristic practice of the Christian monastic tradition. The article is based on an analysis of the Prologue of the Benedictine Rule as a performative text, exemplifying the dynamic of the relationships between the human text and reader, as well as the sense of its authority in terms of divine authoriship as word of God, and how this dynamic creates a community of listeners and speakers. Lectio divina is thus presented as constitutive of the monastic community and the structures of authority that sustain it; the article shows how the Bible forms a monk's sense of time and existence. Finally it considers the Rule's understanding of contemplation in a lived theology of reading.

Praktisk teologi i ny skepnad

The article takes its starting point in the return of Practical Theology as a specialization at the Faculty of Theology at Uppsala University in 2020, half a century after the discipline was replaced by ecclesiology. The question that the author wishes to answer is how the return may be interpreted. The return of Practical Theology has to do with a reform of both study programmes and organization of research at the faculty, resulting in a new research subject called Empirical-Practical Studies of Religion and Theology. Practical Theology is one of two specializations within the new subject area, the other being Sociology of Religion. Both specializations are possible to study with a profile in Didactics of Religion. The empirical turn in theology and humanities at large is a major driving force behind the creation of the new research subject. Lived religion and lived theology are increasingly at the forefront of studies in Sociology of Religion as well as in Ecclesiology, two former research subjects that now are merged. What unites the previously separate disciplines is a common interest in theories and methods for studying practices in a new multireligious Swedish context, where traditional confessional and religious boundaries are increasingly blurred. The special contribution of Practical Theology is the theological perspective, which consciously brings issues related to belief in God into the discussion.

Documenting and Describing the Transcultural

Qualitative methodological approaches have become increasingly important for theological research, as lived theology and ecclesiological practices are recognized as being a relevant part of the theological information ecosystem. These new approaches require attention to how field research in theology is documented and described. Evan Kuehn (North Park) will discuss the transculturality of theological research and the relevance of qualitative approaches to theological librarianship. Hadje Sadje (Leuven) will share about his research on the political theology latent in the practices of Oneness Pentecostal congregations in the Philippines and the role that documentation and description play in this research. Matthew Ryan Robinson (Bonn) will discuss the nature of non-textual theological artifacts by focusing on two case studies—a painting from Ethiopia and a devotional cross from the Philippines—as objects that present challenges and opportunities for extracting, coding, and analysis.

The Ethiop’s Verse

This chapter argues that Phillis Wheatley engaged and contested the tradition and history of revival poetics that the first three chapters trace. Wheatley’s poetics entail subtle yet poignant critiques of both the limitations of the personae of white women poet-ministers built upon affective espousal devotion and of the political impotence of an anthropology based in evangelical harmony and appeals to the plainest capacity. Wheatley invented a new woman poet-minister persona, the Ethiop, which introduced the tensions of political freedom and chattel slavery into the Calvinist couplet and lived theology. Through her classicalism she practiced a politics of respectability at the same time that her Ethiop persona engaged in a politics of refusal that exposed white feminine sentimentalism and the domestic at the center of revival poetics, which helped structure the capacities of liberal rights-bearing subjects. Recognizing the ways that Wheatley critiqued revival poetry brings into view how enslaved femininity became a site of dynamic exchange between religious and secular aesthetics and epistemologies. A history of revival poetry, then, not only reveals the full import of Wheatley’s poetic choices in relation to slavery, but also how revivalism was integral to the often secularized story of the invention of race science.