Sensing Sacred: Exploring the Human Senses in Practical Theology and Pastoral Care
Sensing Sacred is an edited volume that explores the critical intersection of “religion” and “body” through the religious lens of practical theology, with an emphasis on sensation as the embodied means in which human beings know themselves, others, and the divine in the world. The manuscript argues that all human interaction and practice, including religious praxis, engages “body” through at least one of the human senses (touch, smell, hearing, taste, sight, kinestics/proprioception). Unfortunately, body—and, more specifically and ironically, sensation—is eclipsed in contemporary academic scholarship that is inherently bent toward the realm of theory and ideas. This is unfortunate because it neglects bodies, physical or communal, as the repository and generator of culturally conditioned ideas and theory. It is ironic because all knowledge transmission minimally requires several senses including sight, touch, and hearing. Sensing Sacred is organized into two parts. The first section devotes a chapter to each human sense as an avenue of accessing religious experience; while the second section explores religious practices as they specifically focus on one or more senses. The overarching aim of the volume is to explicitly highlight each sense and utilize the theoretical lenses of practical theology to bring to vivid life the connections between essential sensation and religious thinking and practice.
1124508242
Sensing Sacred: Exploring the Human Senses in Practical Theology and Pastoral Care
Sensing Sacred is an edited volume that explores the critical intersection of “religion” and “body” through the religious lens of practical theology, with an emphasis on sensation as the embodied means in which human beings know themselves, others, and the divine in the world. The manuscript argues that all human interaction and practice, including religious praxis, engages “body” through at least one of the human senses (touch, smell, hearing, taste, sight, kinestics/proprioception). Unfortunately, body—and, more specifically and ironically, sensation—is eclipsed in contemporary academic scholarship that is inherently bent toward the realm of theory and ideas. This is unfortunate because it neglects bodies, physical or communal, as the repository and generator of culturally conditioned ideas and theory. It is ironic because all knowledge transmission minimally requires several senses including sight, touch, and hearing. Sensing Sacred is organized into two parts. The first section devotes a chapter to each human sense as an avenue of accessing religious experience; while the second section explores religious practices as they specifically focus on one or more senses. The overarching aim of the volume is to explicitly highlight each sense and utilize the theoretical lenses of practical theology to bring to vivid life the connections between essential sensation and religious thinking and practice.
48.59 In Stock

eBook

$48.59 

Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
WANT A NOOK?  Explore Now

Related collections and offers

LEND ME® See Details

Overview

Sensing Sacred is an edited volume that explores the critical intersection of “religion” and “body” through the religious lens of practical theology, with an emphasis on sensation as the embodied means in which human beings know themselves, others, and the divine in the world. The manuscript argues that all human interaction and practice, including religious praxis, engages “body” through at least one of the human senses (touch, smell, hearing, taste, sight, kinestics/proprioception). Unfortunately, body—and, more specifically and ironically, sensation—is eclipsed in contemporary academic scholarship that is inherently bent toward the realm of theory and ideas. This is unfortunate because it neglects bodies, physical or communal, as the repository and generator of culturally conditioned ideas and theory. It is ironic because all knowledge transmission minimally requires several senses including sight, touch, and hearing. Sensing Sacred is organized into two parts. The first section devotes a chapter to each human sense as an avenue of accessing religious experience; while the second section explores religious practices as they specifically focus on one or more senses. The overarching aim of the volume is to explicitly highlight each sense and utilize the theoretical lenses of practical theology to bring to vivid life the connections between essential sensation and religious thinking and practice.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781498531245
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date: 08/30/2016
Series: Studies in Body and Religion
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 206
File size: 2 MB

About the Author

Jennifer Baldwin is adjunct professor at Elmhurst College, executive director and clinician at Grounding Flight Wellness Center, founder and executive director of Vertical Exploration Foundation, and senior editor of Vertical Exploration Journal.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Embodied Knowing, Embodied Theology: What Happened to the Body? Bonnie Miller-McLemore

I. Exploring the Senses
1. Smelling Remembrance, Martha Jacobi
2. Embodying Christ, Touching Others, Shirley Guider
3. Savoring Taste as Religious Praxis: Where Individual and Social Intimacy Converge, Stephanie Arel
4. Embodied, Akroatic Hearing and Presence as Spiritual Practice, Jennifer Baldwin
5. Devotional Looking and the Possibilities of Free Associative Sight, Sonia Waters
6. Knowing Through Moving: African Embodied Epistemologies, Emmanuel Y. Lartey

II. Sensing Religious Practices
7. Use of a Hot Tub as Spiritual Practice: Three Decades of Daily Baptism by Immersion, John Carr
8. Word Made Flesh: Using Visual Textuality of Sign Languages to Construct Religious Meaning and Identity, Jason Hays
9. A Laying on of Hands: Black Feminist Intimations of the Divine and Healing Touch in Religious Practice, Christina Davis
10. Have We Lost Our Taste? Caring for Black Bodies Through Food, Kenya T
From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews