Oliver Barclay has always been a wise and insightful contributor to important issues in evangelical thinking and so I read with interest his article ‘Where is Academic Theology heading?’ (EN, December 2006).
He queries how helpful academic theology is for preparing men and women for any kind of ministry, even if it does provide the churches with excellent resources. However, the academic theology he talks about in his article is not the only type of theology studied in Bible colleges and universities. Increasingly, in recent years, there has been a growing interest in the discipline of Applied Theology. Dr. Barclay ends his article with a question: ‘What sort of theological study is most useful to the ordinary student, who has no aspirations to become an academic or to do serious research, but wants useful knowledge and skills?’ To me, the answer is Applied Theology. This article attempts to set out the case for it.
What is Applied Theology?
Applied Theology is theology that concerns itself with what the church does as it interacts with society around it. In a recent book, Practical Theology and Qualitative Research (SCM Press, 2006), John Swinton and Harriet Mowat define the purpose of the related discipline of Practical Theology as ‘ensuring and enabling faithful participation in God’s redemptive practices in, to and for the world’. That provides a useful starting point for four ideas that are fundamental for Applied Theology.
