CHAPTER 2: A PRACTICAL THEOLOGICAL METHODOLOGY 79 at least potentially, a deeper understanding of the transcendent. As such, biographic narratives offer interesting and viable entry-points for exploring practice as locus theologicus. That is why this study takes biographic narratives as its point of departure. Inherent to this type of research is that narratives are told in a particular moment in time and so are the meanings constructed within them. As such, narrative research is not timeless but rather particularly contextual. In the case of this study, that is exactly the point: to articulate the way inwhich respondents today make sense of their experiences of years of engaging in Eucharistic hospitality. Narrative research, then, helps not only to map current convictions and insights but also enables tracking the impulses for them: the experiences out of which they were born. Analysis: Grounded theology Epistemologically, qualitative research in practical theology closely relates to grounded theory in the humanities. Helen Cameron and her co-authors assert that this is justified when they discuss the normativity of Theological Action Research. Even though my study is not TAR in all aspects, the argument applies to this study as well. They write: The authority such empirically grounded insights can claim is closely related to the nature of Christian truth. This is much more than a quality of conceptual knowledge. Ultimately, theological truth-claims rest on Christ’s claim ‘I am the Way, the Truth and the Life’ – truth embodied in a Person. This is truth to be grasped through the practice of the Christian life.213 The notion of “empirically grounded insights” - or “found theologies”214 – is at the core of the analytical method of this study. It can also be termed “grounded theology,” as suggested by Australian practical theologian Bruce A. Stevens: Qualitative research can do more than provide a ‘thick description’. However, most applications of qualitative research to theological research have been exploratory and the results descriptive. But the challenge is to go beyond being descriptive to being generative. This more ambitious approach is what grounded theology tries to achieve. 213 Cameron et al., Talking about God in Practice, 17. 214 Gerardo Marti, “Found Theologies versus Imposed Theologies: Remarks on Theology and Ethnography from a Sociological Perspective,” Ecclesial Practices 3, no. 2 (2016): 157–72, https://doi.org/10.1163/22144471-00302002.
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