For me, engaging in an ethnographic study was a transformative experience, and one that set the stage for my work in developing a methodology for pastoral ethnography (Moschella, 2008b). I soon discovered that I was not alone in reaching toward this new approach and that I was participating in a growing trajectory of scholarship employing qualitative research as a means toward pastoral (or practical) theological ends. In this chapter, I will offer a brief history of this trajectory in the field of pastoral theology, with some attention to the wider discipline of practical theology as well. I will then describe a number of recent, exemplary studies within this trajectory, grouping them into three streams of work, and noting how the issues animating the broader field of qualitative research have echoes and analogues in pastoral research. The three streams include: ethnographic and qualitative research that illuminates and invigorates pastoral practices; the work of the Ecclesiology and Ethnography Network of scholars that focuses on the intersection between theology and ecclesial practices; and narrative qualitative studies. These three streams are not exhaustive; neither are they entirely discrete, as will become evident. Many of the exemplary studies I reference demonstrate the overlapping concerns, methods, and goals in each category. Nevertheless, this broad classification helps illumine the contours of pastoral scholarsā current questions, goals, and contributions. Following this exploration of the literature, I will make a case for the importance of qualitative research in pastoral theology and care, arguing that practice matters, and that exploring actual practice is in fact central to the fieldās stated identity of āconstructive theology growing out of the exercise of caring relationshipsā (Mission Statement, Journal of Pastoral Theology). In the last section, I will address future directions in this research trajectory, articulating my particular interest in the development of the third research stream, narrative qualitative research, and its burgeoning creative, therapeutic, and prophetic capacities.
Development of the Research Trajectory
The qualitative research trajectory in pastoral theology and care participates in a broader āturn to cultureā in theological and religious studies that can be seen in the work of historians, ethicists, systematic theologians, and biblical scholars.1 Timothy Snyder offers an apt description of this pronounced shift:
Don Browning helped set the stage for pastoral and practical theologians to participate in this turn to culture with his emphasis on social and cultural description (Browning, 1991). Robert Schreiterās work (1985) on local theologies embraces an interāconnected view of theology and culture. Elaine Graham (1996) illuminates the transformational and revelatory dimensions of practice, highlighting the ācreative tensionā of which Snyder speaks, and arguing for an interpretive rather than prescriptive role for pastoral and practical theologians.
John Pattonās description of the communal contextual paradigm of care, along with his image of the pastoral caregiver as a āminiāethnographerā (Patton, 2005, p. 43) encourages pastors and scholars alike to pay careful attention to the lives of persons and communities in order to be able to practice genuinely helpful pastoral care. At the same time, multiple contributions of scholars of color, feminists, womanists, and others from underārepresented or marginalized social groups have challenged the pastoral field to recognize the dominant cultural paradigms embedded in the literature that do not adequately represent their lived religious experiences. Their focus on the cultural contexts of care, now routine in introductory pastoral theology and care courses, spurred the need for new methodologies in pastoral research.
The field of congregational studies provided impetus and resources for the pastoral trajectory in qualitative research by emphasizing the study of congregations in their complex social and geographic ecologies (Ammerman et al., 1998; Eiesland, 2000). Participatory action research, with its emphasis on communityābased research for the purpose of social change, is a related approach that practical theologians have taken up with vigor (Cameron et al., 2010; CondeāFrazier, 2012). My work on ethnography as a pastoral practice brings ethnographic principles and methods to the practice of pastoral care (Moschella, 2008b). To date, numerous scholars from pastoral and practical theology as well as other theological fields have been engaging in qualitative research studies linked to theological reflection (Scharen and Vigen, 2011).
Similarly, the teaching of ethnography and qualitative research in theological schools has been expanding dramatically. Once the sole purview of sociology of religion, such courses are now taught by pastoral, practical, and systematic theologians, ethicists, field education supervisors, clinical pastoral educators, and others. Susan Willhauck (2016), in research funded by Wabash, found that qualitative research methods are being taught in more than 50 theological schools in the US and Canada alone.
I argue that the disciplined study of religious practices is one way of keeping pastoral scholars and practitioners accountable to the people in the ecclesial, social, and political worlds we address. In pastoral theology, in particular, we need to be informed about the particular practices and experiences of a wide array of culturally and religiously diverse persons, congregations, and communities. Rather than prescribing overly general theories of care, we need the wisdom that can only come from close exploration of lived theology and practice. The qualitative research trajectory helps us reclaim the central importance of listening, of attending to people in their socioācultural particularity, and allowing ourselves to learn from the people who share their stories with us.
The Field of Qualitative Research
This trajectory in pastoral theological research has required us to adapt the methodological resources of the broader field of qualitative research. In their Introduction to The Discipline and Practice of Qualitative Research, Norman Denzin and Yvonna Lincoln (2011) review the various research paradigms animating that field. Rehearsing the history of debates among proponents of quantitative, positivist, constructivist, and critical theory paradigms, the authors show how forms of resistance to qualitative research still loom over the field. While many quantitative researchers regard qualitative studies as āunreliable, impressionistic, and not objectiveā (Denzin and Lincoln, 2011, p. 9), qualitative researchers assert the value of studying āthe world of lived experience, for this is where individual belief and action intersect with cultureā (Denzin and Lincoln, 2011, p. 2). These tensions linger, contributing to a range of interpretive paradigms within qualitative research, ranging from positivist/postpositivist, constructivist, feminist, ethnic, Marxist, cultural studies, to queer theory (Denzin and Lincoln, 2011, p. 13). Each of these approaches has distinct criteria for evaluation, theories of analysis, and types of narration. Denzin and Lincoln stress that the politics of interpretation must always be kept in view. They write:
Denzin and Lincolnās postmodern perspective, though still contested, finds echoes in much of the current work in pastoral and practical theology.
Such multiple interpretive paradigms can be seen in the three streams of ethnography and qualitative research that I describe below. These streams include: research in pastoral ethnography and qualitative research designed to illuminate and invigorate pastoral practices; the work of the Ecclesiology and Ethnography Network, with its focus on theology; and qualitative studies that emphasize the development of alternative, justiceāoriented narratives. In each stream there are slightly different embedded values concerning not only the subject(s) of the research, but also the methods of evaluation, analysis, and narration. Norwegian practical theologian Tone Stangeland Kaufman, describing the āconundrumā of theologically motivated qualitative research, calls such embedded values, ātheoryāladen practices with inherent normative dimensionsā (2016, p. 146). It is also important for pastoral theologians to recognize the political dimensions of interpretation.
