Ecclesiology and Ethnography: an Unresolved Relationship

ecclesiology 14 (2018) 322-337 ECCLESIOLOGY

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Ecclesiology and Ethnography: An Unresolved Relationship

Paul Avis Durham and Exeter Universities, uk [email protected]

Abstract

This article undertakes a critical exploration of the current relationship between ecclesiology and ‘ecclesial ethnography’. It begins by proposing that ecclesiology should be a realistic, critical and practical discipline and that in these respects it can learn from ethnographical principles. It goes on to raise some questions about how the relationship between ecclesial ethnography and ecclesiology is presented in some recent literature, pointing out instances of over-drawn distinctions, exaggerated claims and methodological naivety. It concludes by affirming the vital role of ethnographical study to the overall theological investigation of the church and suggests that this would be strengthened if the weaknesses mentioned above were addressed.

Keywords

Ecclesiology – empirical theology – ethnography – induction-deduction – practical theology – theology and science – theory and practice

The interface between ecclesiology and ethnography is currently generating interest in the academy and giving rise to significant published discussion. But it seems to me that there are some aspects of the relationship that are prob- lematical Ideally the two disciplines should work in partnership, but, as it is construed in recent literature, their interaction involves certain tensions. This article is a contribution towards easing those tensions and clarifying the relationship between ecclesiology and ethnography in a constructive manner.1 To

1 I am most grateful to Professor Paul Fiddes for commenting on an earlier draft of this article. A condensed version was read at the meeting of the Society for the Study of Theology at the

Ecclesiology and Ethnography 323 justify this approach, I need to begin with a couple of definitions. Put very con- cisely, I understand ecclesiology to be the theological discipline that engages in comparative, critical and constructive reflection on the dominant paradigms of the identity of the Christian church.2 I understand ethnography, on the other hand, to be the empirical-conceptual study of the life of societies or communities as that life is lived and experienced in social practice; and ecclesial ethnography, therefore, to be the application of that distinctive approach to the Christian church and its constituent communities. I will now expand on these two concise definitions by way of preparing the ground for an examina- tion of the relationship between ecclesiology and ethnography. Ecclesiology normally starts from the faith of the Christian church concern- ing itself, as that faith has been received within a certain tradition. However, the identity of the Christian church refers not only to how it sees itself (its self- understanding) on the basis of Scripture and theological traditions, but also to how the church is perceived by those who look at it from the ‘outside’. So the church’s identity is derived, not only from how it understands itself, but also from its locus in culture and society, the prevailing image of the church in its environment. Hans Küng defines ecclesiology as ‘the theological expression of the church’s image’.3 Situating the church ‘in the eye of the beholder’ by speaking of its ‘image’ gives ecclesiology an open and public aspect. I suspect that many people have a general, ‘global’ image of the church which transcends their experience of particular ‘local’ churches, even though it is partly shaped by that experience. The public dimension of ecclesiology helps the church to be self-critical, which is the prerequisite of any steps towards reform of what needs mending. ‘Public theology’ requires ‘public ecclesiology’. This is my first sense of ‘ecclesiology’, referring to the universal church. In a derivative sense, ecclesiology includes the comparative, critical and constructive study of particular churches, often called ‘denominations’, though I would not myself normally use that term, preferring to speak of Christian traditions or communities.4 The identities of the many particular churches concern how they see themselves in relation to the world and to other churches. But it also includes the ways that other churches and the surrounding societies

University of Nottingham, uk, in April 2018, and once again I am grateful for the comments received then. 2 Further on the nature, scope and methods of ecclesiology, see my Introduction (Chapter 1) to Paul Avis (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Ecclesiology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). 3 Hans Küng, The Church (London: Search Press, 1971), p. 6. 4 See Paul Avis, 'Denomination: An Anglican Appraisal', in P. M. Collins and B. Ensign-George (eds), Denomination: Assessing an Ecclesiological Category (London and New York: T&T Clark, 2011), Chapter 2.

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324 Avis see these churches. Again, the reflexive aspect of the church’s identity gives ecclesiology a reforming edge, because those looking at the church from ‘the outside’, whether from a Christian or a non-Christian (I am avoiding saying ‘secular’) point of view, seem to be the ones who are most acutely aware of the church's shortcomings and where it needs to change, whereas those who have been entrusted with large responsibilities within the institution sometimes seem short-sighted and complacent, if not worse, about what abuses and deficiencies need to be tackled. In this second sense ‘ecclesiology’ refers to the identity of individual churches. But there is also a third sense of ecclesiology: ecumenical ecclesiology. Ecumenical ecclesiology is the theology of the nature and mission of the church that resources ecumenical dialogue between separated churches and, at the same time, is generated by that dialogue. Just such an ecclesiology is the theological milieu of ecumenism. Ecumenical ecclesiology brings together our first and second senses of ecclesiology. When two Christian world com- munions – for example, the Anglican Communion and the Roman Catholic Church, through the work of the Anglican – Roman Catholic International Commission (arcic) – engage in theological dialogue with the assigned goal of restoring full visible communion between them, they are bound to examine the common ground and the real differences between their traditions (thus looking at the ecclesiology of particular traditions – sense two). But they do this in the light of what they believe about the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church that the two traditions each affirm in the creed (sense one). What they respectively believe about the church catholic will include significant common ground (if it did not, they could not do business together), but it may also include some important differences. So ecumenical ecclesiology is similarly concerned with ecclesial identity and is similarly comparative, critical and constructive in its method.5 Ecclesiology is multifaceted in other ways too: it investigates the church’s manifold identity in relation to a wide range of research areas: its theological rationale; historical origins; mission and ministry; authority and governance; worship and liturgy; initiation and sacraments; unity and diversity; not forget- ting its relation to the state, civil society and the cultural environment. The scope of ecclesiology certainly includes what the church is understood to be in the purposes of God the Holy Trinity and the work that the church is given to do in relation to its social, cultural and political environment (its mission). Ecclesiology also studies the church as an institution, an enduring, structured

5 Paul Avis, Reshaping Ecumenical Theology (London and New York: T&T Clark, 2010).

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Ecclesiology and Ethnography 325 socio-political phenomenon, and when it does so it draws on collateral academic approaches, including cultural studies, the sociology of religion, sta- tistics and political philosophy. Thus ecclesiastical polity is also an aspect of ecclesiology.6 Ethnography, on the other hand, is understood here in a broad sense as the scientific study – by both empirical and conceptual methods (or, as I would prefer to say, empirical-conceptual methods) – of the life of societies or communities as that life is lived and experienced in social practice and ceremonial or ritual performance. Ethnography uses mainly qualitative empirical methods to understand the life of social groups and what it means to their members to belong to those groups and how they relate to and interact with each other. Qualitative empirical methods are in-depth, exploratory and hermeneutical in their approach.7 Ethnography frequently takes the form of congregational studies, aiming for a ‘thick description’ of the life and practice of a congregation or parish by means of participative observation.8 Since ethnography is a well-established ‘secular’ academic discipline in its own right, with various applications, I will use the term ‘ecclesial ethnography’ for the study of the Christian church and its constitutive communities by means of ethnographical methods and skills.

Ecclesiological Realism

The ecclesiology of the recent past could hardly help reflecting and endorsing the culture of modernity with its norms of activism, expansion, material and moral progress and institutional consolidation and complexification. While it would be completely unfair to accuse the ecumenical movement of the past century of being merely interested in institutional unity, fixated on commit- tees, structural mergers and so on, it did tend to assume that structural, institutional mergers were the goal of ecumenism. In the 1950s and 1960s ecumenism

6 Paul Avis, ‘Polity and Polemics: The Function of Ecclesiastical Polity in Theology and Prac- tice’, Ecclesiastical Law Journal 18 (2016.1), pp. 2–13. 7 John Swinton and Harriet Mowat, Practical Theology and Qualitative Research (London: scm Press, 2006), esp. pp. 29–30. 8 Relevant classic examples include: James F. Hopewell, Congregation: Stories and Structures (Minneapolis, mn: Fortress Press; London: scm Press, 1987); Timothy Jenkins, Religion in English Everyday Life: An Ethnographic Approach (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1999); Jenkins’ book contains extensive and acute methodological reflections. A related benchmark work is Kathryn Tanner, Theories of Culture: A New Agenda for Theology (Minneapolis, mn: Fortress Press, 1997).

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326 Avis tended to be programmatic, optimistic, expansive, even grandiose, sometimes speaking with alarming intellectual slackness and moral hubris of ‘the coming Great Church’. Self-criticism and theological humility were not the most obvi- ous characteristics of 1960’s ecumenism. It thrilled to heady visions of unity. Ecumenical ecclesiology has sometimes been constructed in the theological stratosphere, dreaming of ideal models of the church, especially of a future united church, without being sufficiently aware of the ambiguities in the con- cept of ‘unity’ or facing up to the problems – not only theological, but also legal, financial and political – of realising in practice a strongly organisational vision of unity. Modern ecclesiology was not adequately grounded in empirical reality. It did not take sufficiently seriously the hard-won convictions and well-winnowed communal practices that make up the self-understanding of the historic churches. The fact that they are historically and socially extended moral communities must determine how we study them. After high modernity, from roughly the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries, and into the current melting pot of post- or late-modernity, a more realistic, modest, chastened and self-critical ecclesiology emerged. It is an ecclesiology that is undertaken in a more tentative, exploratory, realistic and reflexive way. It does not disdain empirical studies of the church. It looks for a voice that is persuasive, yet practical; visionary, yet not utopian. It proves its worth when it points to incremental steps forward to unity in mission, pursuing the method that has already been found serviceable in ecumenical dialogue, that of 'unity by stages' towards an agreed goal of full, visible communion. Theological integrity demands that we do our ecclesiology in the real world, not in some ivory tower. Being intentionally realistic in our ecclesiology (including our ecumenical theology) means taking the concrete forms of the church and the actual expressions of church life into account and adapting our method accordingly. It means renouncing ‘blueprint’ ecclesiologies that fix their gaze on the ideal church – the church (we suppose) as it exists in the mind of God.9 Ecclesiological realism means shunning ‘Rolls-Royce’ concep- tions of the church – ecclesiologies that, cosseted by the luxury of dreams and fantasies about the church, glide smoothly on, oblivious to the faults and failings that compromise its witness, and to the sins and crimes that are being committed in its name. To avoid these pitfalls, our ecclesiology must be critical, pastoral and practical, as well as constructive.

9 Nicholas M. Healy, Church, World and the Christian Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). On Healy see Sjoerd Mulder, ‘Practical Theology for a Pilgrim Church: The Theo- logical Motives behind Healy’s Ethnographic Turn’, Ecclesiology 14 (2018), pp. 164–84.

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The Critical Moment

Ecclesiology cannot remain at a merely descriptive or phenomenological level – even less should it adopt a celebratory mode. Description easily passes into complacency and celebration tends to verge on triumphalism. Ecclesiol- ogy must retain an ethical cutting edge. ‘The time has come for judgement to begin with the household of God’ (1 Peter 4.17). So ecclesiology should be pursued within an eschatological framework, mindful of the judgement that is now at hand and seeking to anticipate it as best it can, unworthily indeed in its poor human way. Just as the eighth-century prophets of the Hebrew Bible brought an ethical searchlight to bear on the waywardness and idolatry of Is- rael, so ecclesiology should be pursued in the spirit of the prophets, exposing the moral failings of the institution, not least the abuse of power and the ex- ploitation of the vulnerable by those who have some degree of authority and are shielded by the structures. At the same time, as aspiring ecclesiologists we should not imagine for a moment that we are above criticism, judging but not being judged. Ecclesiology itself, as a theological practice, cannot escape ethical criticism; it must turn its critique back on itself, reflexively. In this respect ecclesiology stands in need of the insights of the Critical Theory developed by the Frankfurt School of Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno and others and by the Sociology of Knowledge and other forms of ideological critique, pioneered by Karl Mannheim.10 In every case, a ‘hermeneutic of suspicion’ needs to be deployed, though it cannot be allowed to have the last word. When suspicion, critique and deconstruction have done their necessary work, the hermeneutic of restoration, a fiduciary act, can come into play.11 Ecclesiology should have a prophetic dimension; ethical and ideological critique belong to its vocation, but are not the whole of it.12

10 Indicative texts include: Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhardt (eds), The Essential Frankfurt School Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 1978); Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia: An Intro- duction to the Sociology of Knowledge; Preface by Louis Wirth (London : Routledge & Ke- gan Paul, 1960 [1936]); Terry Eagleton, Ideology: An Introduction (London and New York: Verso, 1991); Robin Gill, Theology Shaped by Society: Sociological Theology, Volume 2 (Farn- ham, Surrey and Burlington, vt: Ashgate, 2012). 11 Paul Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation; trans. Denis Savage (New Haven, ct: Yale University Press, 1970 [1965]). Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: To- wards a Post-Critical Philosophy (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958). 12 See also Bradford E. Hinze, Prophetic Obedience: Ecclesiology for a Dialogical Church (Maryknoll, ny: Orbis, 2016).

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Ecclesiology as Practical Theology

Practical Theology has also become a distinct discipline in recent years and is closely related to Pastoral Theology – indeed in some cases it is an alternative name for it.13 Another approach to Practical Theology is via Applied Theology, which takes theological resources into the workaday world of eth- ics, politics and socio-economic issues (Robin Gill being a noted exponent of this approach). Ecclesiology must listen to exponents of Practical or Applied Theology and learn from their work. Ecclesiology would fail in its task if it tried to be a purely theoretical discipline, abstracted from the practice of the Chris- tian life both in the community of the church and in the ‘secular’ world. Nicho- las M. Healy insists that ‘theological reflection upon the church is in fact from the very outset a matter of practical rather than theoretical reasoning.’14 And I agree with Stanley Hauerwas that ‘Practices make the church the embodiment of Christ for the world.’15 Theoretical and practical modes of reasoning are both needed; they con- verge in praxis, that is to say, practice that is informed, shaped and enlightened by theology (theoria) – or to look at it another way, a lived or performed theology.16 Ecclesiology understood as praxis will not only be orientated to working for social and political justice and the freedom and flourishing of all people, in the way that Liberation Theology pioneered, but will also address issues in particular areas of church life and practice, such as pastoral ministry, worship and liturgy, authority and power, gender and sexuality – all of which cry out for this kind of critique. So ecclesiology will evolve into a critical, pastoral, practical, applied theology with an intentionality towards the freedom and flourishing of individuals in the the church and the wider society.17 But we must never allow ourselves to forget that ecclesiology is about the church only because it is ultimately about God – the character of God, the grace of God, the purposes of God and the work of God, as reflected in the church (or not).18

13 Elaine E. Graham, Transforming Practice: Pastoral Theology in an Age of Uncertainty (Lon- don: Mowbray, 1996). 14 Healy, Church, World and the Christian Life, p. 46. 15 Stanley Hauerwas, In Good Company: The Church as Polis (Notre Dame, in: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), pp. 67–68. 16 Clodovis Boff, Theology and Praxis: Epistemological Foundations, trans. Robert R. Barr (Maryknoll, ny: Orbis, 1987). 17 See Stephen Pattison, Pastoral Care and Liberation Theology (London: spck, 1997). 18 John Webster, ‘“In the Society of God”: Some Principles of Ecclesiology’, in Pete Ward (ed.), Perspectives on Ecclesiology and Ethnography (Grand Rapids, mi: Eerdmans, 2012), Chap- ter 11. For a balanced critique of Webster’s overall argument in this essay, see Christopher

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A mandate and an agenda for practical ecclesiology has been robustly set out by Clare Watkins in conversation with others.19 I fully agree with her that ecclesiology will be ‘authentic’ only when it is able to ‘speak truthfully about concrete realities’ and that ‘actual practices’ need to be given their rightful place in theological talk about the church. Practices are indeed ‘bearers of theology’ and potentially ‘a theological voice … spoken from the heart of the church’ which has ‘authority’. To attend to them is ‘to listen to works of theology’. Theory and practice, theology and life, belong together and need each other; an enlightened ecclesiology will be geared to promote their interaction at all times.

Ecclesial Ethnography

The key premise of ecclesial ethnography (that is, ethnographical methods applied to the concrete life of the church) is that the church is an historical- social-cultural reality, as well as a theological reality. (I note in passing that the church is also unquestionably an economic and political reality – hence the need for ecclesiology to be informed by ideological analysis and critique – but the economic and political aspects of the church seem not to be of particular concern to some forms of ecclesial ethnography; they are not particularly interested in ideological critique.) Now if ecclesiology is to take the historical, social and cultural dimensions of the church seriously – if it is to be ‘grounded’ in the actual life of Christian communities at various levels and to be relevant to them – it will need to keep in close touch with ‘the living church’ and to do this it will need to be informed by empirical or ‘field’ work, alongside the study of its standard sources (primarily Scripture, historical and systematic theology, philosophy and the human and social sciences). Such an earthing of ecclesiology can be secured by incorporating ethnographic approaches and procedures into its method, so bringing ethnographical researches to bear on ecclesiological reflection. Recent accounts clearly affirm the indispensable role of theological reflection in connection with ethnography.20 However, I have a few

Craig Brittain, ‘Why Ecclesiology Cannot Live By Doctrine Alone’, Ecclesial Practices 1.1 (2014), pp. 5–30. On the ordering of ecclesiology to the question of God see my Editorial, ‘Ecclesiology – An Impossible Possibility’, Ecclesiology 14 (2018), pp. 3–10. 19 Clare Watkins, et al., ‘Practical Ecclesiology: What Counts as Theology in Studying the Church?’, in Ward (ed.), Perspectives, Chapter 9. 20 Healy, Church, World and the Christian Life; Ward (ed.), Perspectives; Christian B. Scharen (ed.), Explorations in Ecclesiology and Ethnography (Grand Rapids, mi: Eerdmans, 2012); Pete Ward, Liquid Ecclesiology (Leiden: Brill, 2017).

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reservations and concerns about some of the claims currently being made for the relationship between ethnography and ecclesiology.

Some Questions

1. First, the question of ‘normativity’. I am not convinced by the opposition that is sometimes set up between ethnography, understood as descriptive empirical research, and ecclesiology understood as ‘normative’ theological exposition.21 It is perfectly true that ecclesiology, as I have outlined its scope and methods above, seeks to arrive at theological judgements. In many cases, ethical judgements or ‘value judgements’ are also involved. But the same is true of ethnography. It is undertaken by a ‘positioned subject’, carrying lots of emotional, ethical, intellectual and cultural baggage and operating from a singular standpoint and viewpoint. As Nicholas N. Healy notes, ‘theologians who watch the church have to make decisions as to what to watch and how to watch it, decisions that are contestable in various ways and for various reasons.’22 The point is reinforced by recent revisionist work in academic ethnography. In his 1993 Introduction to his 1989 work Culture and Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis, Renato Rosaldo states: ‘The emergent research program for ethnography has placed increased emphasis on history and politics in contexts of inequality and oppression based on such factors as Westernization, media imperialism, invasions of commodity culture, and differences of class, gender, race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation.’23 The object of ethnographical investigation is a maelstrom of contestation: ethical, religious, political, cultural, economic, sexual, and so on. So my questions to ethnographers would be: What is the role of theological and ethical judgements in your working methods and in the analysis of your findings? Are all social forms equally worthy of study, equal in theological value, or are some to be preferred above others? For example, do you aim to be completely neutral when you look at abusive fundamen- talist groups or at cults that effectively brainwash the minds of their members? Are you merely curious when your work reveals safeguarding issues or other forms of sexual or gender violence in a given community? Is it rewarding when

21 Scharen in Scharen (ed.), Explorations, pp. 3–4. 22 Healy, ‘Ecclesiology, Ethnography, and God: An Interplay of Reality Descriptions’, in Ward (ed.), Perspectives, p. 182. 23 Renato Rosaldo, Culture and Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis (Boston, ma: Beacon Press; London: Routledge, 1993 [1989]), ‘Introduction to the 1993 Edition’.

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Ecclesiology and Ethnography 331 you discover salutary forms of community, exemplars of mutual flourishing, among Christians, or are you unmoved? Is any of this gratifying, or alternative- ly offensive, to your sense of virtue and of justice? If so, where is pure description now? Let us not pretend to a spurious neutrality and objectivity. The place of ‘normativity’ in ecclesiology is not in dispute, but where is ‘normativity’ in ecclesial ethnography?24 An example of where the putative contrast between ethnography and ecclesiology over the question of ‘normativity’ breaks down is the assertion by some ethnographers that ‘the basic unit of the church is the congregation’, from which they derive the further claim that ‘congregational studies determine the object of ecclesiology’.25 This is a robustly ‘normative’ assertion by ecclesial ethnography and, moreover, one that boldly purports to determine a key aspect of ecclesiological method. I am not going to rise to the bait of the highly debatable claim that the basic unit of the church is the local congregation – the authors acknowledge that, for some strands of ecclesiology (actually epis- copalian ones) the basic unit of the church is the diocese, the sphere of the bishop’s ministry and oversight. That is another discussion and much depends on whether the terms ‘basic unit’ and ‘local church’ are being used colloquially or theologically. My point is simply that here ecclesial ethnography is making a normative statement with important methodological consequences, not only for ethnography itself, but for ecclesiology (which ecclesial ethnographers seem to accept is another discipline and, strictly speaking, not their business when they are doing ethnography). 2. I find it difficult to understand why ecclesiology is described as an ‘academic’ discipline in contrast to ethnography with the implication that the latter is a non-academic pursuit.26 There are university centres and cours es, conferences, monograph series and scholarly journals devoted to ecclesial ethnography, particularly in the form of congregational studies, just as there are university centres and courses, conferences, monograph studies and

24 The value-laden nature of ethnographic method is also acknowledged in John Swinton, ‘“Where is Your Church?” Moving Toward a Hospitable and Sanctified Ethnography’, and in Luke Bretherton, ‘Generating Christian Political Theory and the Uses of Ethnography’, both in Ward (ed.), Perspectives. Compare also the work of Martyn Percy which, while replete with value judgements, does not pretend – unlike some other ethnographical work – to exclude ‘normative’ criteria; e.g. Power and the Church: Ecclesiology in an Age of Transition (London and Washington: Cassell, 1998); The Ecclesial Canopy (Farnham, Sur- rey and Burlington, vt: Ashgate, 2012). 25 Nieman & Haight in Scharen (ed.), Explorations, p. 13. 26 Nieman & Haight in Scharen (ed.), Explorations, p. 10; cf. Scharen in Scharen (ed.), Explo- rations, p. 4.

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scholarly journals devoted to ‘ecclesiology’. Is ‘academic’ a weasel word here, as a term of disparagement, roughly equivalent to ‘theoretical’, ‘dry’, ‘irrelevant’? I imagine that ecclesial ethnographers would wish to claim the same standards of scholarly rigour and integrity as ecclesiologists would. So why describe the one as ‘academic’ and the other not? The academic/non-academic opposition seems to be seriously misleading in this case. Let ecclesial ethnography claim the academic high ground and order its work accordingly. 3. Another way of trying to distinguish between ecclesiology and ethnography that appears, both explicitly and implicitly, in the key literature on ecclesial ethnography is to posit that while in ethnography the ‘inductive’ method is dominant, in ecclesiology the ‘deductive’ method tends to predominate. Other ways of stating the difference are to say that ethnography is rooted in observation, but ecclesiology works largely by inference, or that the one is mainly empirical, while the other is more theoretical.27 This assumption is pervasive in the literature that I am citing here, but I believe that it rests on a crude antithesis. It is undeniable that much theology works partly by deduction or inference, but it is a mistake to imagine that ethnography does not employ substantial deductive and inferential methods too. It seems to me that the contrast between the two approaches is vastly overdrawn. Like ‘analysis’ and ‘synthesis’, ‘induction’ and ‘deduction’ are conceptual constructs whose contrast or opposition breaks down when we get down to work. The terms 'inductive' and 'deductive' refer to methodological models that prove unstable, unreliable and misleading. I think that they are best avoided. I now briefly elaborate this basic point in three ways. (a) It is true that much theology contains major deductive elements. Thomas Aquinas can argue to a theological conclusion by means of a long chain of deductions from philosophical and theological premises, including ones drawn from Scripture. But his work is certainly not theoretical or abstract. Aquinas’ theological exposition is a ladder of inferences showing the ascent of the soul to God. John Calvin also reasons by remorseless logic of a deductive kind (it sometimes gets him into deep water, as in his doctrine of double predestina- tion). But Calvin constantly refers to Scripture and his over-riding intention is the salvation and the pastoral well-being of Christians and the practical holiness of the church. Karl Barth spins endless spools of theological exposition from each of his key affirmations in the sphere of dogmatics, but no-one could claim that Barth was detached from the struggles of the church in the twentieth century. Karl Rahner is a prime example of a deductive theologian:

27 Paul Fiddes in Ward (ed.), Perspectives, pp. 13, 35, explores these distinctions in an heuristic way, arguing in conclusion for a kind of complementarity or integration of methods.

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Ecclesiology and Ethnography 333 we marvel to see what ecclesiological superstructure he can build on his basic axioms that the church is a social and historical entity. But Rahner’s aim is the spiritual renewal and institutional reform of the (Roman Catholic) Church. So each of these giants of the Christian tradition tends to the deductive in his theological method. But, at the same time, each ticks the boxes of ‘real’, ‘practical’ and ‘critical’ theology and each takes the real, existing church seriously. What drives their theology is a spiritual, pastoral and ecclesial vision and goal. The deductive component always serves those practical ends. (b) It has been unassailably established in the philosophy of science that all induction in scientific method is initiated, directed and controlled by theory, by hypotheses, by cognitive construction.28 Theory always includes – but is not reducible to – deductions from conceptual premises and inferences from

28 Selective key texts on the role of theory, hypothesis and deduction in physical science include: Pierre Duhem, To Save the Phenomena: An Essay on the Idea of Physical Theory from Plato to Galileo, trans. Edmund Doland and Chaninah Maschler, intro. Stanley L. Jaki (Chicago, il: University of Chicago Press, 1969 [1908]); id., The Aim and Structure of Physi- cal Theory, trans. Philip P. Wiener (Princeton, nj: Princeton University Press, 1954 [1914]); Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1938); Michael Polanyi, Science, Faith and Society (London: Oxford University Press, 1946); id., Personal Knowledge (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958); Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (London: Hutchinson, 1954, 1959); id., Realism and the Aim of Sci- ence (London: Hutchinson, 1983); N. R. Hanson, Patterns of Discovery: An Inquiry into the Conceptual Foundations of Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958); Ernest Nagel, The Structure of Science (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961); Mary Hesse, Models and Analogies in Science (Notre Dame, in: Notre Dame University Press, 1966); id., The Structure of Scientific Inference (London: Macmillan, 1974); id., Revolutions and Recon- structions in the Philosophy of Science (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1980); Peter Medawar, The Art of the Soluble (London: Methuen, 1969); Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave (eds), Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970); W. H. Leatherdale, The Role of Analogy, Model and Metaphor in Science (Amsterdam and Oxford: North Holland Publishing Company; New York: American Elsevier Publishing Company Inc., 1974); Frederick Suppe, The Structure of Scientific Theories (Urbana and London: University of Illinois Press, 1974); Paul K. Feyerabend, Against Method (London: nlb, 1975); Larry Laudan, Progress and its Problems (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977); Imre Lakatos, The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes: Philosophical Papers I, ed. John Worrall and Gregory Currie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978); Wolfhart Pannenberg, Theology and the Philosophy of Science, trans. Francis Mc- Donagh (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1976); W. H. Newton-Smith, The Rationality of Science (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981); Nancey Murphy, Theology in an Age of Scientific Reasoning (Ithaca, ny: Cornell University Press, 1990); Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 4th edition, intro. Ian Hacking (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2012 [1962]).

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334 Avis ideas. In the case of ecclesial ethnography and congregational studies, the theoretical element is informed by theology because the field of study – generally the congregation – is theologically, as well as sociologically, defined. So ethnographic method cannot function without a deductive component. Like every science, however empirical its centre of gravity may be, ethnography has theoretical, heuristic, hermeneutical and explanatory aspects. Like any other empirical discipline, ethnography is necessarily selective in the choice of data to be studied, interpretative in its method and limited in its application to wider questions. Ecclesial ethnographers ought to recognise that there is probably just as much theoretical construction – including deduction – in ethnography as there is in any other area of theology; only the subject matter is different. Commenting on Clifford Geertz’s term ‘thick description’, Lindbeck points out that, in ‘thick description’ it is ‘the full range of the interpretative medium which needs to be exhibited, and because this range in the case of religion is potentially all-encompassing, description has a creative aspect.’ Lind- beck adds, ‘There is, indeed, no more demanding exercise of the inventive and imaginative powers than to explore how a language, culture, or religion may be employed to give meaning to new domains of thought, reality and action. Theological description can be a highly constructive enterprise.’29 (c) On the other hand, there would seem to be a significant inductive element in ecclesiology as a branch of theology. Allowing, purely for the sake of argument, that the main sources of ecclesiological reflection are the Scriptures, the Christian tradition, philosophical concepts, and ideas from other relevant disciplines (topical examples of the latter are gender studies and the scientific study of sexuality), these sources clearly exist in textual form; they are documents (in ‘hard’ or ‘soft’ copy). Documents are human artefacts and have a material existence. They are a kind of empirical evidence. Ecclesiology, like other branches of theology, gathers, categorises, reads, interprets, compares and evaluates these texts as artefacts from the realm of human communica- tion and draws conclusions from them which are then, if not before, thrown into the cauldron of inter-scholarly debate. Is not this an inductive, even empirical, process too? 4. An uncritical assumption pervades certain accounts of ecclesial ethnography, namely that ethnography and ecclesiology are to be distinguished methodologically on the basis that the former observes life and practice – what is going on in the church – while the latter deals in abstract ideas, spiritual ideals and theological principles, which are all more or less detached from

29 George A. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (London: spck, 1984), p. 115.

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Ecclesiology and Ethnography 335 lived social experience. Pete Ward claims that theologians engage in ‘theoretical ecclesiology’; they are said to work ‘from texts’, while ethnography works from life. Theology as ‘construction’ is contrasted by Ward with ethnography as closer to the reality of church life.30 I think this contrast is mistaken. The reason why theology/ecclesiology sets to work in the first place is almost always because of some pressing challenge or urgent issue, even crisis, in the life of the church. Whether we think of Ire- naeus, Athanasius, Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Hooker, Schleiermach- er, Gore, Temple, Barth, de Lubac, Congar or Rahner, they were all responding to challenges in the intellectual, cultural and political milieu of the church. There are normally existential reasons for addressing theological questions. Theology is not usually speculative; it is frankly reactive. Theology wrestles with questions that come at it from outside the realm of theory, in fact from ‘real life’. The polarisation of life/practice and thought/theory in theological method is a false antithesis and is damaging to our understanding of both ethnography and ecclesiology. 5. The forms of ecclesial ethnography that I have under review here seem to assume that ecclesiology typically begins ‘from above’, with metanarratives, conceptual generalisations and methodological principles, while ethnography (it is claimed) starts ‘from below’. However, that is not invariably the case and is itself a generalisation with regard to the character and method of the two disciplines. I would like to mention just two strong examples of ecclesiology ‘from below’, one (F. D. E. Schleiermacher) classically modern, the other (Roger Haight, S.J.) contemporary. (a) Friedrich Schleiermacher pioneered an ecclesiology from below when he structured his dogmatics, The Christian Faith, around the corporate Chris- tian self-consciousness. This self-consciousness Schleiermacher understood as a mode of ‘feeling’, rather than of ‘knowing’ or ‘doing’. In particular, he charac- terised it as an immediate sense of absolute dependence on God, informed by reception of the saving work of Jesus Christ into the consciousness. Schleierm- acher’s theological method in his dogmatics was empirical in a sense; it aimed to be faithful to the collective religious experience of Christians in the community (Gemeinschaft) of the church. But for Schleiermacher, empiricism could take one only so far. ‘The peculiarity of the Christian Church can neither be comprehended and deduced by purely scientific methods, nor be grasped by

30 Ward, Liquid Ecclesiology, pp. 25, 18. I don’t discuss this book further in this article because the bulk of it consists, not in ethnographical work, but in ecclesiological reflection, taking the connection between gospel and church as its guiding thread. But I have reviewed it in this issue of Ecclesiology, pp. 372–4.

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336 Avis mere empirical methods.’31 There was also a theological task of interpretation and construction, but every conclusion had to be brought to the touchstone of felt ecclesial experience. (b) Roger Haight, S.J. is an outstanding contemporary practitioner of the discipline of ecclesiology from below. Haight has both expounded his method in theoretical terms and demonstrated it at work and at length. He takes as his data ‘the empirical history of the genesis and development of the church and also the development of the beliefs of the community about its nature and purpose [i.e. its ecclesiology]’.32 This approach, according to Haight, is truly ecclesiological – that is to say, it is a genuine theological discipline – rather than an expression of sociological reductionism, because ‘the historical data include the confessional witness to a transcendent dimension of the church’ and this is part of the field of study.33 Haight’s magnum opus is a paradigm of ‘ecclesiology from below’, though it is not ecclesial ethnography. I agree with him that ecclesiology should be earthed in what we know of ecclesial experience through the ages and ecclesial experience today. Then it is always, pre- cisely as ecclesiology, ‘ecclesiology from below’, from its living source in the faith-filled life of the church. These two examples show, I think, that the seductive contrast between ecclesiology ‘from above’ and ethnography ‘from below’ simply cannot be criti- cally sustained in the overall scholarly study of the church, except perhaps as an occasional heuristic tool. Uncontroversially, the object of study in ethnography is social practice. Ecclesial ethnography studies social practice in the congregation or other forms of Christian community and to do that it employs the tools of qualitative research. But ecclesiology (or any form of theology or of collaborative intellectual enterprise, for that matter) is also and equally a social practice in its own right. What form of collective human endeavour is not? Ecclesiology itself is a social practice with material, ritual, hierarchical, gendered, procedural,

31 F. D. E. Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, ed. H. R. Mackintosh and J. S. Stewart (Edin- burgh: T. and T. Clark, 1928), p. 3. 32 Nieman and Haight in Scharen (ed.), Explorations, pp. 12–13. Haight’s magnum opus takes the concrete church seriously, but it is not ecclesial ethnography: Christian Community in History, 3 volumes (New York and London: Continuum, 2004, 2005, 2008). See further Gerard Mannion (ed.), Comparative Ecclesiology: Critical Investigations (London and New York: T&T Clark, 2008); Gerard Mannion, ‘Constructive Comparative Ecclesiology: The Pioneering Work of Roger Haight’, Ecclesiology 5 (2009), pp. 161–191; but see also the per- ceptive review by Benjamin M. Guyer, Theology 119.1 (2016), pp. 44–47. 33 Nieman and Haight in Scharen (ed.), Explorations, pp. 12–13.

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Ecclesiology and Ethnography 337 economic and political dimensions.34 If the social practice of ecclesiology is, in principle, a proper subject for ethnographical study, the superstructure of contrasts between ethnography and ecclesiology, posited by some, looks even more ramshackle.

Conclusion

Academic ethnography is a solidly-established, multi-faceted ‘secular’ discipline. It has had nearly two centuries to refine its methods. Ecclesial ethnography, on the other hand, is in its infancy; it is still in pioneering mode. Some of the claims that it makes for itself, as it breaks fresh ground in the study of the Christian church and its constituent congregations, are overblown and rely on crude antitheses. Ecclesial ethnography is in the process of defining its identity in relation to ecclesiology. But ecclesial ethnographers are already making a significant contribution to our understanding of the church. The intentionality behind this approach is sound and salutary. To have a realist, practical and critical ecclesiology we need to know what makes churches tick. Ecclesiology needs to be earthed in practice. We need to understand the dynamics of Chris- tian community. But some aspects of the methodological claims of ecclesial ethnography are naive or crude. Greater clarity and sophistication in its methodological reflection, avoiding caricature, inflated claims and false antitheses, will qualify ecclesial ethnography to enrich and perhaps chasten the overall theological study of the church in coming days.

34 So Tanner, Theories of Culture, p. 80.

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