You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Research in youth ministry has excelled and developed rapidly over the last four decades. Youth ministry is not just a church practice, but has become an emerging academic discipline, with a variety of methodological, theoretical, and contextual approaches. This academic handbook offers an assessment of contemporary youth ministry research to assist students doing bachelor, master, and doctoral research, and youth ministry scholars, in their studies of youth ministry. By examining youth ministry research through the lens of the following five fundamental questions, the reader is challenged to engage with state-of-the-art theory, methods, and findings from current youth ministry research: • Who are the youth in youth ministry? • Where is God in youth ministry? • What is the purpose of youth ministry? • Who is the youth minister in youth ministry? • How to research practices in youth ministry? The academic handbook is a must-read for everyone who is interested in systematic reflection on youth ministry and youth ministry research.
Society for Educational Studies Annual Book Prize winner: 2nd Prize This ground-breaking volume draws upon a rich and variegated range of methodologies to understand more fully the practices, policies and resources available in and to religious education in British schools. The descriptions, explanations and analyses undertaken here draw on an innovative combination of policy work, ethnography, Delphi methods, Actor Network Theory, questionnaires, textual analysis as well as theological and philosophical insight. It traces the evolution of religious education in a post-religious age from the creation of policy to the everyday experiences of teachers and students in the classroom. It begins b...
Thirty years ago John Hull wrote “What Prevents Christian Adults from Learning?”. This new book asks “What Prevents Christian Adults from Acting?” How has it come about that the Church appears to be so preoccupied with itself? What happened to the quest for the social justice of the Kingdom of God?
This book critically examines the concept of indoctrination within the Western liberal traditions and analyses case studies of indoctrination in some Muslim societies. It offers suggestions to counter religious indoctrination and highlights the key tensions, challenges and prospects of Islamic education in a modern and multicultural world.
In Taking on Practical Theology, Courtney T. Goto explores the regnant paradigm that shapes knowledge production and that preserves power, privilege, and historic communal injury even as scholars intend to enlighten and transform communities. Approaching “context” as a case study, Goto illumines how this commonly used, taken-for-granted concept is “idolized.” Though practical theologians are sensitive to context, researchers often fail to consider how their own assumptive world dictates and influences their practices of research, teaching, and engaging in scholarly conversations. These practices unwittingly validate scholars who enjoy the most social capital while inflicting harm on both communities they research and on colleagues and students who do not fit (or fit less well) the norms of the majority.
This book focuses on the question of how different contexts are relevant in the shaping and expression of individual spirituality spanning from early childhood to young adulthood. Past decades have witnessed a strong expansion of research on spirituality and spiritual education. This expansion has proved to have many advantages in understanding the experiences, values, identities and behaviours of individuals and communities. Such research has benefitted from different research disciplines and methods, from its openness toward different faith traditions and non-religious belief systems, and from the agility in adapting to diverse and evolving contexts. These aspects are essential in producin...
This volume was first published by Inter-Disciplinary Press in 2015. This book deals with the rapidly developing field of spirituality. Although having a singularity of focus, the chapters have been written by a cross-cultural and international set of researchers who discuss critical issues from an interdisciplinary perspective. Thus, while a broad range of critical aspects emerge, the chapters are threaded together by the concept of spirituality as a lone walk. While alone, the spiritual journey is also deeply connected to others. As a deeply human experience the chapters in this book therefore reflect the prismatic viewpoints that form the understandings and experiences of the spiritual walk. This book challenges the reader to start to understand the apparent ambiguity this appears to bring to researchers and practitioners. Rather than a roadblock to understanding, the multiple frames and facets this brings it is instead a rich field for the exploration of the human condition.
What do educated urban people think about God, and why? What factors--logical, emotional, experiential, or intuitive--incline them towards belief or towards unbelief? How do they balance these factors? Why do many seem to be "swing voters," comfortable sitting on the fence, unmotivated to move far either way? What common ground do they share with Christianity? What are their objections to Christian belief and practice, and their misunderstandings? Why do many people describe intuitive and emotional attraction to believing in God, but resist it intellectually? What apologetic approaches would make most sense, specifically to educated urban Australians? What media products do they enjoy and trust? And how should these insights influence apologetics? Grenville Kent asks these questions in one Australian demographic to help target Big Questions, a documentary film series for Christian apologetics. Anyone interested in apologetics, evangelical media, and the application of marketing research to evangelism will be interested in this study.
Written for readers deeply concerned for the future of the church, this book seeks to answer two questions: Why is the culture of the Catholic Church, despite Vatican II's emphasis on collegiality and transparency, still prone to covering up abuses of power? How can this culture change in order to move forward? A timely book on the sex abuse crisis by a scholar who is adept at weaving insights from the social sciences into a framework of practical theology.
In this landmark volume, internationally recognized scholars address key intellectual and practical conundrums that not only trouble practical theology but also reflect biases and breakdowns in the construction of theological knowledge in academy and religious communities at large. With critical facility and unheralded honesty that includes reflexivity about their own lives in the academy, the authors tackle complex issues that refuse easy solutions— racism, hierarchy of theory over practice, devaluation of small case studies, risks of interdisciplinarity to scholarly identity, inequities between Christian traditions, unreflective Christian-centrism, and tensions between the production of scholarship and public service. Outcomes of these issues will have serious implications for the discipline and the study of theology for years to come. Contributors include Tom Beaudoin, Eileen R. Campbell-Reed, Faustino M. Cruz, Jaco Dreyer, Courtney T. Goto, Tone Stangeland Kaufman, Joyce Ann Mercer, Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore, Phillis Isabella Sheppard, Katherine Turpin, Claire E. Wolfteich.