Ann Loades as practical theologian and Christian educator

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article attempts to frame the theology and teaching of Ann Loades within the categories of practical theology and Christian education. After outlining the author’s academic relationship with Loades, the author analyses the meaning of the phrase ‘practical theology’ and some aspects of the debate surrounding the term. He contends that Loades’s wide-ranging reflections on the practices of Christian prayer and spirituality, worship and liturgy, and ethics and belonging may be regarded as examples of such a practical theology. The author’s concept of ‘ordinary theology’ is then employed as a bridge into an exploration of Christian learning and teaching, which draws parallels between both Loades’s interpretation of a ‘learning Christ’ and her perspectival account of spiritual vision, and the views of other Christian educationalists and theologians. Although Ann Loades did not inhabit the rather specialised worlds of practical theologians or Christian educationalists, her work has much to contribute to both.