Written by significant researchers and practitioners within the field, this collection of key texts introduces the reader to practical theology. It critically explores the way in which the spiritual dimension of pastoral care has entered into constructive dialogue with other disciplines and ways of thinking, including psychiatry, psychology, counselling, intercultural studies, educational methodology, narrative theory and political studies.;Set within this multidisciplinary context, the individual contributions ( a selection of articles from a leading journal of pastoral theology, "Contact: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Pastoral Studies") cover a wide range of practical and theological issues that alert the reader to the spiritual dimension of pastoral care, such as bereavement, sexuality, ethics, learning disabilities, infertility, the meaning of pain, sickness and suffering and the nature of theology as a practical discipline. The book should be of interest to practitioners, researchers, students and all who have an interest in the ways in which a spiritual dimension can enhance caring practices within a multidisciplinary context.

Postcolonializing God examines how African Christianity especially as a practical spirituality can be truly a postcolonial reality. The book offers thoughts as to how African Christians and by that token others who were colonial subjects, may practice a spirituality that bears the hallmarks of their authentic cultural heritage, even if that makes them distinctly different from Christians from the colonizing nations. There are themes in both the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Scriptures in which God's activities result in shattering hegemony, overthrowing the powerful, diversifying communities and affirming pluralism. These have by and large been ignored or downplayed in the formation of Christian communities by western and westernized Christians in Africa. The effect of this is that much of the practice of African Christians imitates that of a European Christianity of bygone times. Postcolonializing God charts a different course uplifting these ignored readings of scripture and identifying how they are expressed again by Africans who courageously seek through the practices of mysticism and African culture to portray a God whose actions liberate and diversify human experience. Postcolonializing God seeks to express the human diversity that seems to be the Creator's ongoing desire for the world and thereby to continue to manifest the manifold and diverse nature and wisdom of God. It is only as humans refuse to be created in the image of any other human beings, that the richness and complexity of the divine image will be more closely viewed throughout the world.

Sensing Sacred is an edited volume that explores the critical intersection of "religion" and "body" through the religious lens of practical theology, with an emphasis on sensation as the embodied means in which human beings know themselves, others, and the divine in the world. The manuscript argues that all human interaction and practice, including religious praxis, engages "body" through at least one of the human senses (touch, smell, hearing, taste, sight, kinestics/proprioception). Unfortunately, body-and, more specifically and ironically, sensation-is eclipsed in contemporary academic scholarship that is inherently bent toward the realm of theory and ideas. This is unfortunate because it neglects bodies, physical or communal, as the repository and generator of culturally conditioned ideas and theory. It is ironic because all knowledge transmission minimally requires several senses including sight, touch, and hearing. Sensing Sacred is organized into two parts. The first section devotes a chapter to each human sense as an avenue of accessing religious experience; while the second section explores religious practices as they specifically focus on one or more senses. The overarching aim of the volume is to explicitly highlight each sense and utilize the theoretical lenses of practical theology to bring to vivid life the connections between essential sensation and religious thinking and practice.

Sensing Sacred is an edited volume that explores the critical intersection of "religion" and "body" through the religious lens of practical theology, with an emphasis on sensation as the embodied means in which human beings know themselves, others, and the divine in the world. The manuscript argues that all human interaction and practice, including religious praxis, engages "body" through at least one of the human senses (touch, smell, hearing, taste, sight, kinestics/proprioception). Unfortunately, body-and, more specifically and ironically, sensation-is eclipsed in contemporary academic scholarship that is inherently bent toward the realm of theory and ideas. This is unfortunate because it neglects bodies, physical or communal, as the repository and generator of culturally conditioned ideas and theory. It is ironic because all knowledge transmission minimally requires several senses including sight, touch, and hearing. Sensing Sacred is organized into two parts. The first section devotes a chapter to each human sense as an avenue of accessing religious experience; while the second section explores religious practices as they specifically focus on one or more senses. The overarching aim of the volume is to explicitly highlight each sense and utilize the theoretical lenses of practical theology to bring to vivid life the connections between essential sensation and religious thinking and practice.