Thanks Mark and Dave.  Dave, I love your foray into 'piratical' theology!  You make a good point in showing the wide remit of today's practical theology and I agree with your implication that it embraces too diverse a curriculum.  The 'piracy' of practical theology can be seen in the way it grabs at all and sundry.  As you hint, I personally feel more at home in the realm of pastoral theology, pastoral care and counselling.

In 2008, when the journal Contact was re-launched as Practical Theology, Elaine Graham wrote an article which argued that practical theology needed to 'go public'.  She commented on the way this discipline, in the UK, spans 'a variety of institutional contexts', is 'practised by a wide range of people (lay and ordained)' and addresses 'questions of social as well as ecclesiastical concern'.  In contrast, in the United States, she said there is a greater subdivision into sub-disciplines, 'where there are separate networks and professional associations for healthcare chaplains, Christian educators, teachers of pastoral care or liturgy, for example.'

I agree that Gordon picks up on a number of these entities but omits the core subject of pastoral theology with its companions, pastoral care and pastoral counselling.  This is not so much Gordon's fault as an indicator of the neglect by many evangelical scholars of pastoral theology as an academic discipline.  Again, I hope I am proved wrong and, as Mark points out, maybe this is a richer seam explored by Christians outside the Church of England.

What is piratical theology. According to Wikipedia :

Practical theology consists of several related sub-fields: applied theology (such as missions, evangelism, pastoral psychology or the psychology of religion), church growth, administration, homiletics, spiritual formation, pastoral theology, spiritual direction, spiritual theology, political theology, theology of justice and peace and similar areas.^[2] It also includes advocacy theology, such as the various theologies of liberation (of the oppressed in general, of the disenfranchised, of women, of immigrants, of children, and black theology). Practical theology may also include branches such as the theology of relational care, which describes Christians caring for others as Christ cared for the poor.

Many of the subjects there are included in Gordon Kuhrt's article such as mission, spirituality, liturgy and ethics. Practical theology is a good name for a department but I dread to think what sort of Cook's tour a course on "Introduction to Practical Theology" would be. 

Now if we are talking about pastoral theology and counseling, I have found books by Derek Tidball and Roger Hurding helpful from British authors.

Dave 

Thanks Roger - I thought the same about practical/pastoral theology. Maybe it gets downplayed, but beyond the bounds of the Church of England I've met some first rate people in this field from places like Spurgeons College, Moorlands College, London School of Theology.

I wonder whether there is a tendency to think programme (eg Willow Creek) rather than personal in some strands of evangelical thought (and whether programme churches may be an implicit paradigm of evangelical success)??

Thank you, Gordon. I wonder whether the reason that there are fewer evangelical theologians and biblical scholars coming through in the UK is not just 'anti-intellectualism', but an increasing loss of biblical literacy. I had a conversation a couple of days ago with an evangelical church leader who happened to mention that they were unfamiliar with the stories of the Old Testament. I am sure others will have similar examples. Without a love of our scriptures being taught and caught in our local churches, the number of biblical theologians will diminish. I am sure fulcrum will want to play its part in addressing this challenge.

I'm intrigued that there is no section in Gordon Kurht's article for pastoral theology, or to use the presently preferred term, practical theology.  I have long argued that this is the 'cinderella' subject at theological colleges, not least in those of an evangelical persuasion.

Why is this?  Practical theology, in recent decades, has had a great deal of input from the human sciences, especially psychology and sociology, as well as from liberation, feminist and black theologies, and it is prehaps these bedfellows that make evangelicals nervous.  Maybe, too, the anti-intellectualism that, sadly, Solent still sees at Wycliffe Hall, contributes to this suspicion of the polyglot nature of practical theology.  A third possibility is that practical theology, including pastoral care and counselling, is less sharply divisive in its theology in that the untidy face of human need is reluctant to be straightjacketed into neat theological definitions.  Many practical theologians cross the boundaries between conservatism and liberalism.

Leading names in this area include Paul Ballard, Stephen Pattison, Elaine Graham, David Lyall, James Woodward, John Hull, Gordon Lynch, Zoe Bennett, John Swinton and Heather Walton in the UK and James Lapsley, Thomas Oden, Don Browning, Edward Farley, Donald Capps and David Tracy in the United States.  Ruard Ganzevoort in Holland is another important voice.  At the more evangelical end of the spectrum in the UK, David Atkinson, Alistair Ross, David Runcorn and Paul Goodliff are noteworthy contributors to practical theology and its ramifications.

I am sure I have missed out a number of strategic names both sides of the Atlantic.

Current major players in UK must include Francis Watson, Markus Bockmuehl. US major players ought to include RB Hays, sundry scholars called Craig, Douglas Campbell (although he is a Kiwi) long before we get down to Piper and Ferguson.

Thank you, Gordon, for this interesting article. It is undoubtedly true that serious and valuable evangelical scholarship is on the rise.

Unfortunately, in my recent experience as a graduate from Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, the problems identified in the second paragraph ("battling with a significant anti-intellectual spirit"; "the fear... that we were "soft" on the urgency of evangelism") are alive and well - and it was coming not only from fellow students but from many (not all) of the staff too. How sad to see that many of the leading scholars Gordon identifies were closely linked to Wycliffe Hall in the past, and how none is anymore - how the place has changed!

I hope it is not the same in other training colleges, or the past will return to haunt us. 

Thank you Gordon for your article on the rise of evangelical scholarship over recent decades.  Broadly, I agree with your list of particularly significant authors but would like to add the name of Colin Gunton as a salient contributor to systematic theology, especially with regard to Creation and the Trinity.  Along with Lesslie Newbigin I'm not sure Gunton would have considered himself an evangelical, yet both scholars have been and are widely read by evangelicals along with a broader range of Christian readership.

Gordon Khurt presents us with an impressive list but this list represents the past more than the present. It gives due credit to theologians of many strands of evangelicalism and includes some who are not always identified as evangelical. this impressive history of British Evangelicalism is not a fair basis from which to assess the current state of English Anglicanism. Gordon describes these people as scholar-writers but their reputation is wider as conference speakers, academic authors, popular authors, church leaders, academic teachers and administrators. We are living in an age of increased specialization which makes the move from the academy to the church less common. The influence of Oxford and Cambridge, Durham and St Andrews as post graduate centers of excellence in theology is great but I think their alumni are more likely to be found in an America than British pulpits. The center of gravity of anglophone theology has moved to America and the strength of its theology is seen in such leaders as J I Packer, Sinclair Ferguson, D A Carson, John Piper and Bruce Ware. The Church of england is in danger of becoming an old wineskin, unfit for the gospel.

Dave

Gordon helpfully gives us the longer picture here. Can I add another dimension?

1. He mentions SPCK in the list of publishers. Today evangelicals are published not just by evangelicdal publishing houses but by many others - SPCK is a notable one.
2. Evangelical scholars are found in good numbers in university departments and on the staff of 'mixed' courses - like my own. In addition, both Mirfield and Cuddesdon colleges have or had evangelicals on the staff.
3. Evangelicals might be expected to work in Bible or mission but we have also made considerable contributions to areas which were not our strengtyhs - like liturgy and ecclesiology. We have not just contributed to 'practical' liturgy as in the Grove worship series but also made significant contributions to 'heavyweight' liturgical scholarship at international level.

Dear Friends

we have just published Gordon Kuhrt's positive outlook on the situation of Evangelical thinking: 'The Results of Praying for Evangelical Scholarship'.

please use this thread for discussion.

blessings, Jody