Georgia O'Keefe, Black Cross, New Mexico, 1929
The changing face of graduate education in American religious history in recent years has redirected scholarly attention away from some of its traditional concerns.  Growing numbers of PhDs, emerging from American Studies, area studies, and departments of religion with a broadly comparative focus, are trained in cultural/historical and social/scientific models of religion. In these disciplines, religious history is typically disconnected from its referent to contemporary communities of faith, or to any conception of an ongoing tradition.  Put simply, many scholars are not accustomed to framing their work in ways that open it to dialogue with people of faith, or that highlight the relevance of the past to the present.  This project seeks to bridge that divide, and to encourage historians of American religious practice to engage in conversation with clergy, laity, and other interested publics about the practical implications of their work.  The different academic settings of the directors also embody precisely the kind of public conversation among clergy, intellectuals, and laity that we hope to foster.  Below, we describe the various initiatives the History of American Christian Practice Project hopes to institute in order to encourage these sorts of conversations.  These initiatives include:

working group of scholars on the history of american christian practice

We feel strongly that intellectual engagement is best facilitated by the creation of a cohort of scholars who can meet together informally over a several year period.  Accordingly, we have formed an ongoing working group of participants, who will continue to address such historical issues about the Christian life for years to come.  To facilitate this, the project will support three (four day) meetings with all of the participants, the purpose of which is to discuss each person’s work and raise issues of contemporary interest in it.  That is, these meetings will help us, as scholars, to conceptualize the practical import of our respective projects and shape our work to common concerns.
 

The meetings will also be used as seminars to establish a common core of readings for the working group.  These readings will focus on two issues, in particular:  First, we will concern ourselves with the broad, theoretical questions of what we mean by practice, why it is there has been such wide-ranging interest in this topic across several disciplines, and how it is these diffuse conversations might be more effectively pulled together.  Readings in this area will include Michel de Certeau’s The Practice of Everyday Life, Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue, Pierre Hadot’s Philosophy as a Way of Life, Arnold Eisen’s Rethinking Modern Judaism, and Catherine Bell’s Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice.  Second, we will read widely in the literature on American Christian practice, concentrating especially on studies of the contemporary scene.  Readings on this subject will include Dorothy Bass’s Practicing Our Faith, Robert Wuthnow’s After Heaven, Charles Hambrick-Stowe’s Practice of Piety, Richard J. Foster’s Celebration of Discipline, Wade Clark Roof’s Spiritual Marketplace, Edward Farley’s Requiem for a Lost Piety, and George Gallup’s The Next American Spirituality.

These summer seminar meetings will take place at different locations, which we chose in part through their connection to the larger terrain of spiritual retreat in North American culture.  For example, our June 2002 retreat took place in Santa Fe, New Mexico and our June 2003 retreat will take place in Portland, Maine.

conversations with pastors and practical theologians

During the course of the project we will involve a select group of pastors and practical theologians who will interact with our work, engage us in conversation about the shape of the project, and provide a further catalyst to consider the practical dimensions of our historical studies.  One of these contributors, Charles Hambrick-Stowe, is also on the senior advisory board and will specifically help to assess the project from the beginning.  We have invited three others, Rob Langworthy, Kathleen Cahalan, and Craig Townsend, to join the project participants at a special, two-day meeting in January 2003 in Key West, Florida.  This meeting will provide a further point of exchange between our work and issues of practice in the church today.  Ahead of the meeting, the project participants will give written summaries of their work to date.  During the meeting, a small set of common readings will provide material for a mini-seminar, which will give a forum for feedback, questions, and responses from these pastors and practical theologians.  We want to encourage an open conversation, in which contemporary issues, problems, and resources for Christian life are brought to the table in a realistic and compelling way.  These pastors and theologians will also participate in the final public conference and will help us evaluate the project as a whole as commentators on the final shape of our project.
 

public conference

Two products will result from the conversations of the collaborative group:  a public conference and an edited volume of essays.  The conference, to be held in October 2004, will feature papers by each of the participants on his or her work.  These papers will be designed explicitly to explore the contemporary implications of our historical studies; to this extent, the conference will allow presenters to connect their academic work to the church.  We will invite pastors, sociologists, practical theologians, and contemporary analysts to respond to these papers, and will include a keynote address delivered by a prominent commentator.  The conference will be held on October 21-22, 2004 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
 

edited volume on christian practices

The working group will also produce an edited volume on the topic of Christian Practice in History.  A crucial element of the ultimate success of such a work is the coherence of its subject matter.  In this respect, the intellectual continuity and collective accountability generated by the series of meetings must be carefully considered.  How can we best use the exchange between the project participants (and between the participants, clergy, and practical theologians) to shape our questions so that they address a common set of concerns?  Part of the task of the first meeting of the directors and senior advisors will be to discuss how to facilitate and direct the work of the group.  Which topics and issues demand particular attention and will yield the most fruitful discussion?  We envision this process to be ongoing as we guide contributors through conversations about specific books, themes, and our individual projects.

In our work as editors, the directors will be particularly attentive to ensuring that all the contributors address those governing concerns as they have emerged in discussion.  The chapters, while focused on distinct areas of religious practice, will therefore reflect the common conversations of the working group; in this respect, they can shape and inform future discussion of the subject among scholars, clergy, and laity.  It will be geared toward a broad readership, and will highlight relationships between historical studies and contemporary issues of Christian devotional life.
 

website

One of the most effective means of disseminating information about the Project will be through the maintenance of this website.  Throughout the three-year duration of the Project, we will continue to update and edit this site in order to:

• report on the research of the working group (including project summaries and links to related subjects)
• provide a bibliographic resource for those interested in the history and current state of Christian practices
• establish a discussion forum to facilitate discussion between working group members and interested readers
• collect course outlines on spirituality and devotional practice

further dissemination

In addition to our own public conference, website, and publications, we intend to publicize the Project through special sessions at the annual meetings of the American Society of Church History and the American Academy of Religion.  As the directors and Project participants present in these venues, there will be further opportunity for conversation and feedback.  Such opportunities would allow the questions of this project to shape wider academic exchanges in the years ahead.
 

projects of the directors

For more information on the work of the Project directors and other participants in the Project, follow the link to participants.