Practical Theology in an Interpretive Community
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University of South Florida Scholar Commons Graduate Theses and Dissertations Graduate School 4-6-2017 Practical Theology in an Interpretive Community: An Ethnography of Talk, Texts and Video in a Mediated Women's Bible Study Nancie Hudson University of South Florida, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd Part of the Communication Commons, Religion Commons, and the Women's Studies Commons Scholar Commons Citation Hudson, Nancie, "Practical Theology in an Interpretive Community: An Ethnography of Talk, Texts and Video in a Mediated Women's Bible Study" (2017). Graduate Theses and Dissertations. http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/6713 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Practical Theology in an Interpretive Community: An Ethnography of Talk, Texts and Video in a Mediated Women’s Bible Study by Nancie Jeanne Hudson A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Communication College of Arts and Sciences University of South Florida Co-Major Professor: Navita Cummings James, Ph.D. Co-Major Professor: Jane Jorgenson, Ph.D. Chaim Noy, Ph.D. Camilla Vasquez, Ph.D. Date of Approval: March 29, 2017 Keywords: Group Interaction, Religion, Multimodality, Theology, Ethnography, Communication Copyright © 2017, Nancie Jeanne Hudson DEDICATION I dedicate this work to the women in the Bible study group. This research would not have been possible without you. Although I cannot thank you individually by name because I changed your names to protect your personal identities, I can express my sincere appreciation. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for making me feel so welcome every Thursday morning for a year and a half. Thank you for your trust, for telling your personal stories and speaking freely even though I was recording your conversation. Thank you for your fellowship, your wisdom, and your advice. Thank you for your prayers and emotional support while I was going through an extremely challenging Ph.D. program far from my home and family. Thank you for the jokes and the laughter that made my research feel more like fun than work. I will never forget you, and I feel very blessed to have been a member of your wonderful group. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my professors, academic colleagues, friends, and family for their support during this monumental project. To my Co-Major Professor Navita Cummings James, whose knowledge of and insight into Christianity never ceases to amaze me, thank you for your expertise and enthusiasm. You were the creative director who pointed me in exciting new directions and inspired my vision of what this project held the potential to become. To my Co-Major Professor Jane Jorgenson, who guided our analytical process by helping us decide which data to focus on in this project and what could be moved to “the parking lot” for a future project, thank you for your guidance, patience, and wisdom regarding the dissertation process. You were the executive producer who kept me on track to not only finish this project but also carefully craft results that would have the “Wow” factor. To Professor Chaim Noy, who taught me ethnography of communication as research method and supervised my pilot study of this small group, and Professor Camilla Vasquez, who made linguistics seem enjoyable and opened my eyes to virtual ethnography, thank you for your confidence in me as a scholar. I also must thank my fellow graduate students in the Department of Communication at the University of South Florida for their emotional support and scholarly advice, particularly my Ph.D. co-hort: Lindy Davidson, Jen Whalen, Krystal Bresnahan, and Nathan Hodges. To my colleagues and friends in social media and in the real world, thank you for joyfully celebrating each step of this academic journey. To my family, thank you for your faith, encouragement, and love. TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... iv Chapter One: Introduction ............................................................................................................. 1 Religious Bible Study and the Small Group Movement .................................................... 2 The Emergence of Electronically Mediated Bible Studies for Women ............................. 5 Interpretive Authority in Christian Communities ............................................................ 10 Interpretive Communities in Academic and Popular Literature ...................................... 13 Storytelling in Interpretive Communities ........................................................................ 16 Media Consumers as Interpretive Communities .............................................................. 17 Interpretive Conflict in Religious Communities .............................................................. 19 Communication Practices in Small Religious Groups ..................................................... 21 The Co-construction of Practical Theologies in Small Religious Groups ....................... 23 Rationale and Research Questions ................................................................................... 30 Preview of Chapters ......................................................................................................... 31 Chapter Two: Data and Method ................................................................................................... 32 Ethnography of Communication: An Overview .............................................................. 32 Obtaining Institutional Review Board Approval ............................................................. 36 Data Collection ................................................................................................................ 36 Data Analysis ................................................................................................................... 38 Chapter Three: Participant-Observation and Communicative Practices in a WBS ..................... 40 My Personal Story: Entering, Observing and Becoming Part of a WBS Group ............. 40 The awkward intrusion ........................................................................................ 42 Breaking the ice with the group .......................................................................... 45 Obtaining informed consent forms ...................................................................... 48 What is Going on Here? The S-P-E-A-K-I-N-G Model of Analysis ............................... 49 Setting and scene: Physical environment and cultural occasion .......................... 50 Participants: Characteristics and roles ................................................................. 52 Act sequence: Structure of the meetings .............................................................. 55 Norms: Implicit social rules for talk .................................................................... 58 Storytelling as a Social Norm .......................................................................................... 61 Part I: Spontaneous conversational narratives ..................................................... 62 Part II: The story chain ........................................................................................ 81 Patterned ways of speaking in the group ............................................................. 85 Tensions and practical theology Part I: Science and religion .............................. 88 Tensions Part II: Social expectations for parenting ............................................. 90 Tensions Part III: Motherhood identity as a competition .................................... 92 i Chapter Four: Contemporary Multimodal Women’s Bible Study: Transformations of the Word, Interpretive Authority and Practical Theology ................................................. 94 The Word and Multimodality in Contemporary WBS .................................................... 94 Sound, Sight and Thought: The Word as Power and Performative Event ....................... 96 Transformations of the Word in the Electronic Age ........................................................ 96 The Word and Gender, Technology and Authority ......................................................... 99 First Global WBS Blog .................................................................................................. 105 The Isolated Thinker: Individual Learning in the Workbook .........................................107 Co-constructed Practical Theology: Group Discussion and Application of Workbook ............................................................................................................ 110 Interpretive conflict and reframing of wifely submission .................................. 111 Electronically-Mediated Emotional Intimacy: Group Learning in Video ..................... 115 Beth Moore: The charismatic girlfriend ............................................................ 118 Priscilla Shirer: The tech-savvy theologian ........................................................119 Kay Arthur: The wise grandmother ....................................................................121