‘Judicious narratives’, or ethnography as ecclesiology

Abstract

Ethnography ought to be a means of doing theology. Following debates over John Milbank's influential work Theology and Social Theory, the paper responds to criticism that Milbank's church is too idealised, a critique that Milbank accepts, saying that his work requires ‘supplementation by judicious narratives’. The thesis of the paper proposes that ethnography provides the most robust corrective to the problem of too formal an ecclesiology, thus offering just the sort of ‘judicious narratives’ that can make such ecclesiology more recognisably real. Drawing on the author's research, such an approach is modelled by suggesting that a sense of ‘communal identity’ stands as a complex and crucial element in practical ecclesiology.The last chapter of Theology and Social Theory requires (infinite) supplementation by judicious narratives of ecclesial happenings which would alone indicate the shape of the Church we desire.