Theology Through Creative Practice

Engagements with the Work of Heather Walton

Pamela D. Couture, Fiona Darroch, Elaine Graham, Simon Hallonsten, Andrew W. Hass, Tone Stangeland Kaufman, Callid Keefe-Perry, Bonnie Miller-McLemore, Pádraig Ó Tuama, Wren Radford, Anthony Reddie, Nicola Slee, Frances Ward, Ariel Zinder, Doug Day, Alison Jasper, David Jasper, Doug Gay

• Publisher: Sacristy Press
• Year: 2025
• Print ISBN:
  9781789593983
• eBook ISBN:
  9781789594003
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Heather Walton's highly imaginative approach to theological thinking has led to significant developments in the field of autoethnography, creative writing within theology and theology through creative practice. Her theological work is rooted in deep engagement with lived experience. Over her thirty years in the University of Glasgow she has been a leading figure in the fields of literature, theology and the arts, practical theology, and most recently theology through creative practice. The chapters in this book reflect the remarkable range of her teaching and writing, her gift for new discoveries in religious reflection and her brave and deep humanity in the face of our present chaos in the world. Colleagues and former students celebrate and engage with her work through reflections, poetry, and chapters about practical theology, ecology, theopoetics, feminist theology and postcolonial literature.

Table of contents

• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Contributors
• Lingering at the crossroads: Practical theology between imagination and empiricism
• Hello darkness, my old friend: Generating theology from loss and waste
• A writing life: On leaving nothing out
• No answers—Four poems and a midrash
• Theology through creative listening
• Theology in the making: A glossary of theopoetic practices (for relating to oneself, others, materials, traditions and the Sacred)
• “Thank the Goddess there is a book”: Reading Alice Walker’s The Color Purple as a gift of return
• The making and unmaking of methodological habits
• Tiresias
• Creative Black theological writing: Explorations in being yourself
• Life in the liminal:The ecotonal theology of Heather Walton
• It’s another day to love you
• The great derangement in literature and practical theology:Following fiction into the other-than-human world
• Selected bibliography of Heather Walton’s published writings