About this Book

"Pastoral Bearings is a richly textured mosaic of lived religion as practiced in local communities, denominations, and individual lives. The pictures are painful, inspiring, and joyful, providing an earthy view of religious life in diverse communities facing diverse challenges. The concern for pastoral bearings-the pastoral effects of religious beliefs and practices is addressed in the ethnographic and interview narratives themselves, and also in the probing interpretations that evoke complex pictures of bodies, race, gender, poverty and social class, material culture, illness, dis/ability, and suffering in the religious landscape. Pastoral caregivers and practical theologians will be challenged and informed by this book." The study of lived religion is an enterprise that attempts to elucidate how "ordinary" men and women in all times and places draw on religious behavior, media, and meanings to make sense of themselves and their world. Through the influence of liberation theology and postmodernism, pastoral theologians-like other scholars of religion-have begun to examine more closely the particularity of religious practice reflected through the rubric of lived religion. pastoral Bearings offers up ten studies that exemplify the usefulness of the lived religion paradigm to the field of pastoral theology. The volume presents detailed qualitative research focused on the everyday beliefs and practices of individuals and groups, and explores the implications of lived religion for interdisciplinary conversation, intercultural and gender analysis, and congregational studies. Reflecting upon the utility of this approach for pastoral theological research, education, and pastoral care, the studies collected in Pastoral Bearings demonstrate the importance of the study of lived religion. Book jacket. Leonard Hummel is associate professor of pastoral theology and pastoral care at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg. Mary Clark Moschella is professor of pastoral care and counseling at Yale Divinity School. Book jacket.