ABSTRACT
The question of ‘tradition’ is central to undertaking advanced research in practical theology. Even researchers who espouse a primarily practice-based, experientialist, and practice-oriented form of practical theology must take account of their own inhabited worlds of belief and practice, whether overtly religious or not. This chapter considers how practical theological research might acknowledge fully and seriously its own traditions, values and sacred texts and work with them – and within them – both critically and constructively. These normative worlds of prior beliefs and commitments, formed by theological traditions, provide a critical lens through which to understand experience and practice; likewise the interrogation of experience and practice provides a critical perspective on the ‘taken-for-granted’ of established theological frameworks of belief and commitment.
