Exploring the Emerging Conversation Between
Theology and Congregational
Studies
September 27-29, 2007
Recent work on the church has benefited from an effort to rethink the traditional divide between empirical and theological analyses. Within ecclesiology there has been a renewed interest in the social and cultural expression of the Church. Loosely this has been identified as “ethnography.” At the same time there has been a resurgence of interest in the empirical study of congregations and worship.
While it has been the case that these two areas of research have generally remained distinct and distinctive from each other this symposium aims to explore a conversation between the empirical study of congre-gations and ecclesiology. Based around two meetings at Yale and Oxford the symposium will be focused on a series of joint presentations that pair those working in empirically with theologians working in eccesiology. Those invited to present their work at the symposium (either at Yale or in Oxford) will be asked to work collaboratively with a scholar from outside their discipline.
This conference is invitation only; proceedings will lead both to published works and to further conferences open to both scholars and practitioners.