Pastoral Bearings offers up ten studies that exemplify the usefulness of the lived religion paradigm to the field of pastoral theology. The volume presents detailed qualitative research focused on the everyday beliefs and practices of individuals and groups and explores the implications of lived religion for interdisciplinary conversation, intercultural and gender analysis, and congregational studies.

The study of lived religion is an enterprise which attempts to elucidate how 'ordinary' men and women in all times and places draw on religious behavior, media, and meanings to make sense of themselves and their world. Through the influence of liberation theology and postmodernism, pastoral theologians_like other scholars of religion_have begun more closely to examine the particularity of religious practice that is reflected through the rubric of lived religion. Pastoral Bearings offers up ten studies that exemplify the usefulness of the lived religion paradigm to the field of pastoral theology. The volume presents detailed qualitative research focused on the everyday beliefs and practices of individuals and groups and explores the implications of lived religion for interdisciplinary conversation, intercultural and gender analysis, and congregational studies. Reflecting upon the utility of this approach for pastoral theological research, education, and pastoral care, the studies collected in Pastoral Bearings demonstrate the importance of the study of lived religion.

1 Dedication
2 Table of Contents
3 Acknowledgments
Chapter 4 1. Pastoral Bearings: Lived Religion and Pastoral Theology
Part 5 I. Congregations, Bodies, and Theology
Chapter 6 2. Theological Reflection and Theories of Practice: Rethinking Normative Memory as if Bodies Matter
Chapter 7 3. Weaving a Communal Narrative: Agape United Methodist Church
Chapter 8 4. Culture Coded Care: Ecclesial Beliefs and Practices in Response to Illness
Chapter 9 5. Homeless in Seattle: A Lived Religion of Hospitality
Part 10 II. Gender Positive Care: Re-writing Dis/ability, Denominational History and Unchurched Religion
Chapter 11 6. Resisting Stares and Stereotypes—Affirming Life
Chapter 12 7. Baptist Clergywomen's Narratives: Reinterpreting the Southern Baptist Convention Schism
Chapter 13 8. "Spiritual But Not Religious"—How Small Groups in America Redefine Religion
Part 14 III. Intercultural Nuance
Chapter 15 9. Lively Choruses: Relational Dance with God
Chapter 16 10. Pastoral Care and Counseling in Independent Evangelical Charismatic Churches in Ghana: A Barthian Theological Perspective
Chapter 17 11. Religion in Thailand: Pastoral Theological Reflection from the Perspective of Thai Buddhist Monks
18 Select Bibliography
19 About the Authors
20 Index