This work seeks to address the absence of serious theological discussion in our culture and in our material society. McGaughey creates two new paradigms for the validity of faith and experience and discusses Christianity in the new century as a 'Faith Seeking Understanding.'

McGaughey's project rejects the "pragmatic" solution to the sceptical dilemma created by deconstruction and postmodernism. It is not enough to say that the absence of absolute knowledge permits our embracing traditional theological claims because they have worked. McGaughey argues that once we recognize the conditions that make any and all experience possible are as certain as the immediacy of self-consciousness, the "how" of our knowing instructs us that we can and do "know" even when we do not have access to the "things" we know. In other words, Practical Theology shifts the focus away from what merely "pragmatically" works to the "practical" conditions that enable any and all knowledge and understanding.