Sensing Sacred

Exploring the Human Senses in Practical Theology and Pastoral Care

Edited by Jennifer Baldwin - Contributions by Stephanie Arel; Jennifer Baldwin; John Carr; Christina Davis; Shirley Guider; Jason Hays; Martha Jacobi; Emmanuel Y. Lartey; Bonnie Miller-McLemore; Kenya Tuttle and Sonia Waters

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.

Lexington Books

Pages: 206 • Trim: 6 x 9

978-1-4985-3123-8 • Hardback • August 2016 • $105.00 • (£81.00)

978-1-4985-3125-2 • Paperback • March 2018 • $47.99 • (£37.00)

978-1-4985-3124-5 • eBook • August 2016 • $45.50 • (£35.00)

Series: Studies in Body and Religion

Subjects: Religion / Theology, Philosophy / Mind & Body, Religion / General, Religion / Christian Ministry / Pastoral Resources, Social Science / Material Culture

Sensing Sacred

Exploring the Human Senses in Practical Theology and Pastoral Care

Hardback

Paperback

eBook

Summary

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.

Details

Lexington Books

Pages: 206 • Trim: 6 x 9

978-1-4985-3123-8 • Hardback • August 2016 • $105.00 • (£81.00)

978-1-4985-3125-2 • Paperback • March 2018 • $47.99 • (£37.00)

978-1-4985-3124-5 • eBook • August 2016 • $45.50 • (£35.00)

Series: Studies in Body and Religion

Subjects: Religion / Theology, Philosophy / Mind & Body, Religion / General, Religion / Christian Ministry / Pastoral Resources, Social Science / Material Culture

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 Tuttle
11. Holy Transitional and Transcendent Smells: Aromatherapy as an Adjunctive support in Pastoral Care and Counseling, Jennifer Baldwin

Reviews

Without neglecting bodily ethics and the right use of power relations, the authors in this volume offer a way to revalue the whole body in pastoral theology, utilizing both western and non-western traditions as foundations for reclaiming the five senses in pastoral practice—a balancing act well accomplished.
— Pamela Cooper-White, Christiane Brooks Johnson Professor of Psychology and Religion, Union Theological Seminary in New York

In a field that often makes the mistake of dealing in polarities (e.g. individual v. society, subject v. object, psyche v. body), this volume unites them, arguing that the body mediates personal, cultural, social, and religious experiences, and thus must be taken seriously as a site of knowing and healing. If practical theologians are to understand human being more fully, we must contend with physicality. This collection of essays invites readers into this complex work of taking embodied selves seriously, and encourages us to value them as loci of wisdom and theological insight.
— Barbara McClure, Brite Divinity School