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  • Devotion and the Struggle for Justice in the Farm Worker Movement:A Practical Theological Approach to Research and Teaching in Spirituality
  • Claire Wolfteich (bio)

They walked miles and miles from Delano to Sacramento that spring of 1966. What began as a small group in Delano swelled to thousands as farm workers and supporters joined the march. At the very front of the procession, a marcher held aloft a banner of Our Lady of Guadalupe with the letters NFWA (National Farm Workers Association) printed underneath her feet. Red union flags picturing the bold black farm worker eagle symbol waved in the wind alongside crosses and signs that read "Huelga!" ("Strike!"). Some strummed guitars and played drums as they walked. Cesar Chavez talked with workers along the way, at times leaning on a cane as he walked, at times rallying the group with a speech from the back of a truck. Each evening, the walkers rested and celebrated and prayed with people in towns along the way. It was a long march—over 300 miles. By Easter Sunday the ranks had swelled, one corporation had acquiesced to the workers' demands, and the march triumphantly arrived at the state capitol building. What was this event? A Lenten pilgrimage? A Resurrection moment? An ingenious public relations move?

To step into this story is to walk with the marchers for a few paces, to be open to the power of their witness, to see as they saw. To attend to this story from the distance of some years and with the tools of scholarship also means engaging in critical reflection about what was happening, asking what we can learn from them about prayer and social action, considering what questions we would bring to those marchers. What I propose in this essay is precisely such a multi-layered engagement with actual stories, or case studies, as a mode of practical theological study and teaching of spirituality. Specifically, this essay addresses the relationship between prayer and socio-political engagement as seen in a case study of devotional practices in the farm worker movement led by Cesar Chavez, and therein proposes a practical theological approach to research and teaching of spirituality. [End Page 158]

Practical Theology and Spirituality

Practical theology and spirituality are two emerging academic disciplines that share in common several key features: an interdisciplinary methodology that pushes conversations among classical disciplines such as history and systematic theology while also drawing strongly upon the human sciences; a focus on practices and an insistence on the interrelated character of theory and practice; a concern with the self-implicating nature of theological study and teaching; and a transformative aim. Because there is so much natural resonance between these disciplines, I would encourage them to be closer dialogue partners. Practical theology needs more attention to spirituality even as it breaks out of the so-called "clerical paradigm" to attend to social, ethical, and political questions. And, spirituality studies will benefit from a practical theological approach that stands to integrate some of the dominant modes (e.g., historical, theological, and anthropological) of studying spirituality.1

To be clear, not all practical theologians are spirituality scholars, nor are all spirituality scholars practical theologians. A practical theologian may focus on one among several fields of study: liturgics, spirituality, preaching, ethics, mission, or pastoral care, for example. Spirituality scholars may work primarily as historians or systematic theologians. Such work makes an indispensable contribution to the field. Yet, at its heart, I believe, spirituality studies call for a practical theological approach. What I will suggest in this essay are some contours of what it means to study and teach spirituality as a practical theologian.

The case study approach is but one possible way to study and teach spirituality as a practical theologian. My hope is that we will generate further conversation about other ways to bring these fields of study together. Working with case studies entails a practical theological approach to the study and teaching of spirituality insofar as we:

  • • richly describe particular practices of prayer and social engagement, drawing upon all relevant disciplines (e.g., history, sociology, political science, culture studies, economics) to set these practices in context and bring them to life;

  • • cast...

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