URL: http://www.practicaltheology.org/home/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=50&fu...

Summary:
Association of Practical Theology, American Academy of Religion Session
Saturday, November 19, 2005 • Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Panel: Michael Brown, Candler School of Theology; James Hudnut-Beumler, Vanderbilt University Divinity School; and Mary McClintock Fulkerson, Duke Divinity School; Respondent: Bryan Stone, Boston University School of Theology.

How I, a Historian, Got Interested in Practice and Context
James Hudnut-Beumler
Vanderbilt University

I began graduate school in an era when students and scholars in American religious history still mostly tackled great men with great ideas. Think Jonathan Edwards. In fact, students who really wanted to do something daring might venture to redeem a lesser light–think Nathaniel Taylor or Timothy Dwight–or a great woman like Amy Semple McPherson. Because these figures’ positions in history had already been established, it went without saying that their thought “counted,” and was influential amongst their hearers, and was consequently worth study..

Category: Practical Theology

Tags: practical theology, Interest, practice, context, historian