The Beauty of Simplicity--or Not?

Dear Colleagues and Friends,

In a postmodern and pluralistic world, are religious educators—and practical theologians—working toward greater simplicity or complexity in our students’ thinking? I’ve been wondering about this since reading John Swinton and Harriet Mowat’s Practical Theology and Qualitative Research (SCM Press, 2006). In it they state that doing practical theology requires “complexifying” life situations so as to illuminate them more deeply (13-16)—raising critical and interpretive questions that open up new avenues of faith, thought and action.. They go even further and cite Poling and Mudge to the effect that such reflection is “unnatural” (from Formation and Reflection: The Promise of Practical Theology [Fortress, 1987], no page given). It tends to occur at times of crisis, or when some intentional process—perhaps an educational process?—is initiated.

What do you think?
· Is this “practice” of complexification in practical theology also characteristic of religious education? Is it appropriate for our goals? Aren’t we instead supposed to be fostering some level of clarity through education, rather than potentially rendering it more confusing?
· Is such complexification “unnatural”? If so, is it desirable?
· What theological assumptions underlie such attempts at complexification, especially assumptions about God, God’s activity in the world, and our response to such activity?