Putting Heart and Soul into Research: An Inquiry into Becoming a Scholar-Practitioner-Saint

Putting Heart and Soul into Research: An Inquiry into Becoming a Scholar-Practitioner-Saint
by David Adams for TRANSFORMATION (April/July 2008)

 
Abstract
In this paper the author explores the relationship between his research and his personal development. The author is part of a community of scholars at the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies that is passionate about translating faith and knowledge into practical action in culture and society. His work therefore has broader relevance. The paper highlights the need for recognising multiple identities and 慽nter-disciplines?involved in research which can then lead to the development of the community as whole. The main question it seeks to intentionally address is: What kind of person-in-community am I becoming through research?
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Introduction
In this paper I want to explore a personal question that may find an echo for others梩he relationship between my research and my own personal development. Like many involved in doctoral research I have used the metaphor of a journey to describe the experience. Four years ago, when my PhD studies began, I saw the task in practical terms. I had been involved in developing an MA in Communication Practice with the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies (OCMS) and wanted to explore ways of improving the programme. I turned to Action Research as a way of addressing the challenge. I expected to discover some new educational tricks that would enhance the quality of my teaching and programme management. Today I have come to recognise and appreciate the intellectual and spiritual, as well as the practical, demands of research and the way in which it can become a life changing experience.
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Let me share a story with you. A short time ago I was in Cyprus, working on a consultancy contract with the executive staff of an international media organisation. I had been locked up in the beachside hotel for several days and it was late afternoon when I finally ventured out of the hotel to walk along the beach. After walking for perhaps 15 or 20 minutes I quite suddenly noticed that the sand beneath my feet had given way to pebbles and as I looked down I found myself surrounded by small white stones. I reached down and picked one up, fingering it in the palm of my hand. I was immediately reminded of Charles Handy抯 idea, taken from the book of Revelation, about the white stone (Handy 1997). 慣o the one who prevails, the Spirit says, I will give a white stone卭n which is written a name, which shall be known only to the one who receives it.?(Rev. 2:17)
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I saw several things in this idea. The 憂ame?to be revealed suggests the unveiling of my identity. When the Spirit gives me my stone I will then know who I am. This suggests that my life is a search for my true identity. Who I am is who I am becoming. This is, of course, a different idea to James Hillman抯 notion of the acorn in each of us that contains the seeds of our destiny, the Greek daemon, or the Roman genius. Our identity is not foreordained; otherwise we could receive the stone at the beginning of our life. It suggests a deeply relational notion of identity shaped by our interactions with others, like the stones knocking against each other in the waves. I will only receive the stone after struggle, 憈o the one who prevails厭 This gives tremendous value and importance to life, and is an enormous incentive to 憀iving life as inquiry?(Marshall 2001).
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As I stood and gave attention to the stone I began to realise that the name on the white stone, given by the Spirit, will not be engraved on it. Perhaps, like Michelangelo with his statues, it will emerge from deep inside, its truth revealed by the battering of life. I am on a journey towards wholeness where identity and daily living meet. Martin Buber reminds us of the words of Rabbi Zusya, a short while before his death: 慖n the world to come I shall not be asked, 揥hy were you not Moses??I shall be asked, 揥hy were you not Zusya?敀 (Buber 1985).
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So I have a sense of something drawing me forward, inviting me into the future. Life is a vocation. My earlier Christian upbringing put a lot of emphasis on this, stressing the importance of discerning my life calling. Looking back I realise that it lacked this teleological dimension ?the notion that God was calling me to become all that I could be. Over time it is too easy to be influenced by a culture that sees no purpose to life beyond satisfying one抯 personal needs. Kathleen Norris suggests that this might explain our mania for credentials as a way of distinguishing ourselves from others. 慉 call, on the other hand, is pure process; it cannot be measured, quantified, or controlled by institutions.?(1987, 41). This sense of purpose, of calling, has been renewed through my research journey and I want to explore some of its dimensions in this paper and draw out its possible implications.
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Background
The Oxford Centre for Mission Studies (OCMS) was born out of the missiological commitments of the emerging leadership of the two-thirds world church in the last quarter of the twentieth century. This generation created a global platform for what emerged as an amazingly coherent and comprehensive call for rigorous and fresh engagement with the Bible and culture and a commitment to holistic mission practice. Living, in most cases, as members of minority religious communities and amongst the world抯 poor, they articulated a strong conviction in the power of the gospel to transform human life, culture and society, often expressed in terms of the kingdom of God and in programmes of social transformation. This was the womb in which OCMS was conceived and it clearly defines its mandate.
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We are a centre for 憁ission studies? For me the term 憁ission?can be misunderstood and creates problems in professional contexts and hostile environments (why should an employer hire a journalist if he studied his practice in a centre for mission studies, for example?). We mean by the term critical, creative and compassionate action in society and culture. In reality we are a centre for the study of Christian action. In a thoughtful article on 慍hristian Scholarship in Africa in the Twenty-First Century?Andrew Walls (2001) points out that 慍hristian scholarship follows Christian mission and derives from Christian mission.?(2001, 44) This is perhaps the most significant insight we can offer the academy (and the world of professional practice) ?scholarship as the fruit of Christian action. Whenever the Church has rolled up its sleeves and committed itself to compassionate and creative involvement with its surroundings it has yielded fresh insight into reality.
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Early missionary work in Africa or Asia began with the assumption that the challenge was mainly one of language, and many missionaries did exemplary work in providing spoken languages with a written script and then an indigenous literature. But 慽t was not long before it became plain that language is only the outer skin of the consciousness we now call culture?(2001, 45). 慣he missionary movement, out of its essential concern to communicate the gospel, was forced into innovative scholarship? New disciplines or fields of study were invented or made possible: in the languages and literatures of the world beyond Europe, in comparative linguistics, in anthropology, comparative religion and tropical medicine. The western academy in its present secular phase has forgotten where these things came from. They arose, or were made possible, by the desire that Christ should be known in other cultures.?(2001, 46)
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Although there was substantial success, the challenges of achieving 慸eep translation, the appropriation of the Christian gospel in terms of that culture, down to the very roots of identity?exposed the gaps and inadequacies of Western scholarship. 慏eep translation is necessary to deep mission. So periods of active mission need to be periods of active scholarship. The converse is also true; when the sense of mission is dulled or diverted, the death knell sounds for Christian scholarship.?Scholarship has developed on the cutting edges of Christian action.
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At the beginning of the twentieth century eighty percent of Christians lived in Europe and North America. Today well over half the world抯 Christians live in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Pacific. These facts are well known to us. But although demographically the composition of the church has shifted southwards, its thought processes and cultural understanding remains western. Western theological dominance has become an incongruity. The future of global Christianity lies in the hands of scholars from the non-western world and the quality of their work will be shaped on the anvil of mission practice. Theology (Christian scholarship) 慽s about making Christian decisions in critical situations, and it is in the southern continents that those decisions will be most pressing, and the key theological developments are accordingly to be looked for.?(2001, 47)
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Walls goes on to describe the process by which western Christianity has been deeply shaped by the Enlightenment, a process that made it quite unsuited to its encounter with non-Christian cultures. The Enlightenment view established a clear demarcation between the empirical world (that we could see and touch) and the world of the spirit. While the Christian worldview shaped by the Enlightenment recognises the existence of crossing places (revelation, the incarnation, resurrection, prayer, etc) these are limited when contrasted with the African experience where the frontier between the empirical and spiritual is crossed 慹very day in both directions?
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If Africa, Asia and Latin America have become 憈he leading theatres of mission?in the 21st century then they must also become centres of scholarship and learning. As a community of people from these very different contexts, the OCMS community has chosen to work in a Western academic environment. This suggests the need for epistemological vigilance as context, culture and faith give shape to our research. To put the question in the more personal terms I began with; in what ways are the epistemological assumptions of the academy influencing what am I becoming through my inquiry? Some will find the 憈aken-for-granted?worldview intimidating and easily succumb to what Donald Schon calls its 憈echnical rationality? None of us are immune to its subtle inoculation into its particular ways of framing reality.
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I would like to suggest a way of exploring these questions through a simple threefold typology of what we aspire to become. I am proposing that we see our personal development in three dimensions, intellectual, practical and spiritual. I am personalising them by speaking of 憇cholar, practitioner and saint? Inevitably ideal types (Weber, 1978) are more abstract than the reality they suggest but they can serve as heuristic devices to facilitate discussion. I am not attempting to define reality and the types are not mutually exclusive. Perhaps the best known use of this approach in a field familiar to the OCMS community is the work by Reinhold Neibuhr on the relationship between Christianity and culture. He proposed a fivefold typology to describe the different ways in which the relationship has been understood and practiced (opposition, agreement, synthesis, duality and transformation). He was not suggesting them as distinct categories but as a helpful way of distinguishing different approaches to the relationship. In the same way, I offer the following threefold typology.
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The Model
As presented the model suggests an ecology of human being, a balance of personal development involving intellect, practice and spirit or mental, physical and spiritual health; as one of our partners calls it 慼ead, hand and heart?
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Exaggerated growth in one dimension without the others has consequences. Traditionally these spheres of human life have been separated. The academy did not see its responsibility extending to the spiritual or practical, for example. Yet such separation is not necessary. Not only do we, as a community, come from holistic cultures of the non-western world; there is growing acceptance of reflective practice (a holistic skill) in professional development in many fields and of action research (a holistic research paradigm) in the academy.
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But the hegemony of the enlightenment remains. It is easy to postpone attention to experience by honouring theory over practice. 慣he epistemology of the empirical tradition is that theory determines practice?(McNiff 2002). It is equally possible to perpetuate the western habit of relegating spiritual growth to the personal and private realm. One can imagine the model in which the three spheres separate in various ways. Practitioner-scholar without saint, or scholar-saint without attention to practice. In the worst case all three could separate. Clearly the more convergent these three domains are, the stronger, more integrated, the individual. This requires constant vigilance, even pro-active design, in our educational policies and teaching practice if our aim is to see greater convergence, coherence and integrity. This will call for intentional, deliberate planning and reflexive attention to what happens in practice.
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At the same time each pair can be analysed individually with the intention of creating stronger and deeper relationships. So, for example, the scholar-practitioner could be strengthened if our research is conducted with regular, intentional attempts to address the 憇o what??question, reflecting on the application of knowledge in process, not just at the end of the research. This fits the ethos of OCMS, committed to holistic transformational mission in which research interventions are intended to improve the situation and make a difference. 慣he unique and uncertain situation comes to be understood through the attempt to change it, and changed through the attempt to understand it.?(Schon 1983, 132)
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In a similar way the scholar-saint could be strengthened by more rigorous attention to theological reflection whatever the field of research, and the practitioner-saint developed by attention to the spiritual disciplines essential to vital Christian leadership. The challenge is to hold these dimensions together, to manage the tension they inevitably bring to our research and teaching. It would be worthwhile for us to define the qualities of a graduate in the light of these commitments and to explore the epistemological implications of these dimensions to leadership development, an epistemology that is theologically grounded, practice focused and spiritually oriented.
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Scholar
Let me briefly consider each type separately. Bentz and Shapiro (1998) observe that 慳s our society has moved increasingly toward being a knowledge-based society, structured inquiry of a scholarly kind has come to shape knowledge in every field.?What distinguishes such activity 慺rom more informal, everyday, intuitive inquiry is primarily the existence of rationally grounded procedures of creating knowledge that is accepted as reliable and valid within scholarly discourse.?(Bentz & Shapiro 1998) The highest form of scholarship is what Boyer calls the 憇cholarship of discovery? making a contribution to human knowledge. (Schon 1995) Although I do not intend to confuse scholarship with obtaining a PhD it is possible to see scholarship in similar terms to the expected standard of doctoral work which the UK Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education describes in these terms:
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Doctorates are awarded for the creation and interpretation of knowledge, which extends the forefront of a discipline, usually through original research. Holders of doctorates will be able to conceptualise, design and implement projects for the generation of significant new knowledge and/or understanding. (Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, 2001)
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So the notion of scholarship is not just about knowing the subject matter of a discipline, but equally about competence in the specific methods of scholarly inquiry in the field. Although there are disagreements about what constitutes reliable knowledge, there are appropriate procedures for generating such knowledge and it is therefore possible to identify the broad traditions and intellectual foundations that define what knowledge in a discipline looks like and how it is created.
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If I reflect on my own development as a scholar I am aware of being involved in a process in which I am constructing a map of the intellectual traditions in which I work ?the major thinkers, key theories, landmark findings and appropriate methods of research in the field (and gaining experience in this way of exploring reality). In the process I am experiencing a gradual shift in the way I read and think. In the past I read in order to find answers, to access knowledge created by others.
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At the beginning of my research my supervisor pointed out how my use of copious quotations sometimes smothered my own voice. I let others do the talking. Slowly I gained confidence to think critically about what I read and more competent at translating their ideas into my own language. From time to time I would make a claim about something that I did not read in a book. I felt invigorated and alive as if, in a small way, I was contributing to the pool of human knowledge. Occasionally amongst the great intellects of my field I sometimes feel like a peer and not just a student. Although I may never know as much as they know, I know some of what they know, and I know some things they do not know.
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My interaction with the community of scholars in my field is a process of socialisation, an induction into ways of thinking and talking about ideas, an entry into a discourse and a particular canon of methods, evidence and argument suited to the field that gives me a sense that I belong. Bentz & Shapiro have summarised the conditions which apply to membership in a particular academic community as; 慣he first characteristic of the academic context which an outsider will notice is its specialized language. A second is the high value placed on theories rooted in traditional disciplines or established fields of academic study. A third is the obligation to place one抯 ideas in close relationship to those of other writers by profuse citation. A fourth is the authority structure whereby the epistemological authority upheld by institutional norms and practices is reinforced by the positional authority of assessment. These characteristics limit the ways in which knowledge can be used in academic contexts with important consequences for knowledge acquisition.?(Bentz & Shapiro 1998)
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This already hints at the limits of scholarship. There are others. While not all scholars are positivists, the so called 憇cientific method?of observation, hypothesis and verification remains the dominant paradigm of the western academy. Empirical, atomised data (observable and discrete) forms the basis of knowledge and human reason, the means by which its factual character can be discovered. Such knowledge does not require philosophical justification and lies beyond ethical control. Its influence has extended far beyond the scientific community to impose its 憈echnical rationality?(Schon 1983), what Jacques Ellul (1964) calls 憀a technique? on the social, bureaucratic and cultural world.
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It抯 most pernicious characteristic, and of particular relevance to my purpose, is its self-justification. It assumes that there is a basis for knowledge (in observable phenomena and human reason) that does not need to be questioned. But this refusal to reflect on the philosophical and social conditioning of knowledge limits its scope and value (Habermas 1972). Outside its empirical framework the researcher is forced to become his own philosopher. 慣o be an inquirer in the human and social sciences, you now have to become something of an epistemologist, a theorist of knowledge.?(Bentz & Shapiro 1998, 31). This is a highly significant issue for us, as individual researchers and as a research community, and I will return to this later.
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The criteria for membership in a community of scholars, essential to the recognition of my work, can have a negative effect upon the other communities in which I live. As my vocabulary changes I begin to sound strange to my former colleagues and friends. As I deepen my understanding of my specialist knowledge I loose touch with other realities and begin to sound theoretical or abstract to those who are outside the community of scholars I have joined. In a March 2003 lecture at OCMS Vinay Samuel, said; 慞eople who have been doing research here have never been able to communicate adequately their research to the local churches. OCMS should be in the business of 搕he best of scholarship at the service of mission? We have been given the responsibility as scholars to make our research 揷hurch friendly? The challenge from our research should be to the discipleship of those churches. The issue is the question of obedience. So we must be stewards of knowledge not mere researchers.?/span>
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An academic institution, like OCMS, is rightly concerned with the creation of knowledge. But this cannot be separated from the one who creates this knowledge or the nature of the knowledge created. And this brings us back to the roots of the vision, in an emerging and flourishing church in the non-western world, rich in the experience of mission and energised by the Spirit. The students who enrol in the programmes of OCMS come from these critical edges of mission practice. Their churches expect them to return to their context with greater knowledge, of course, but also with renewed energy and passion for mission.
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But in the hegemonic atmosphere of the western academy there is a danger of emphasising the intellectual development of our students at the expense of other aspects. It is easy to succumb to the traditional understanding of education as the transmission of knowledge and of research as the creation of knowledge without seeing this as a fundamental compromise of the OCMS distinctive. If the expectation of the output of OCMS is transformed leaders able to transform, it raises two obvious questions ?what do we mean by 憀eaders?and what is involved in 憈ransforming? Rarely do we explore the dimensions of this goal, or the curriculum and pedagogy required to achieve it.
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Practitioner
I am more comfortable describing myself as a practitioner rather than a scholar. I have spent most of my life in the media, reporting, producing and managing the production, broadcasting or publishing process. I understand the stress of daily experience, meeting the conflicting demands of quality and punctuality, success and failure.
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Most research students join our community as activists條eaders of their Christian community, development workers, pastors, journalists or educators. They arrive with practical concerns and a desire to address these concerns through research.
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It is legitimate to ask of the scholar ?so what? I am reminded of the story of the sultan who asked his vizier to find someone who could do what nobody else could do. After a long search the vizier brought him a man who could throw a thread through the eye of a needle at a distance. He accomplished this marvellous feat several times, at greater and greater distances. The admiring sultan then said to his vizier: 慓ive the man 100 gold pieces and 100 lashes with a stick? The performer was delighted with the gold but astonished by the beating. The sultan then said to him: 憈he 100 gold pieces are for accomplishing this extraordinary feat, and the 100 lashes are to punish you for wasting your time on something so futile.?(Erguner 2005)
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Under the heading 憆igor or relevance?Donald Schon (1995) offers the image of high ground overlooking a swamp. 慜n the high ground, manageable problems lend themselves to solution through the use of research-based theory and technique.
In the swampy lowlands, problems are messy and confusing and incapable of technical solution. The irony of this situation is that the problems of the high ground tend to be relatively unimportant to individuals or to society at large, however great their technical interest may be, while in the swamp lie the problems of greatest human concern.?/span>
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I find myself in the middle of this uneasy relationship between the academy and professional practice. Whether I admit it or not I have spent many years in awe of the special expertise emanating from the research community and a ready recipient of what Schon describes as 憈he Veblenian bargain?(Schon 1983, 1995). Just look at my bookshelves, bulging with big ideas. Thorsten Veblen objected to the decision by the board of trustees of the University of Chicago to establish a business school in the early years of the 20th century. As a compromise it was agreed that a gulf would divide the 憇chools of higher learning?whose proper business is the kind of scholarship based on science and the 憀ower schools?whose business was to prepare individuals for professional practice. 慒rom the practitioners, their problems; from the researchers, the expert knowledge whose application to those problems enables practitioners to solve them in a distinctively professional way.?(Argyris & Schon 1996)
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But the bargain has not worked well for either side. 慦hen researchers see themselves mainly as sources of research-based knowledge, the consequence of their interactions with practitioners is likely to be rejection or dependency. Dependency is the likely outcome if practitioners pick up the experts?esoteric knowledge and become little scientists ?most often, 搇ittle social scientists??who use fragments of theories as ritual clich閟, floating, without palpable connection to the ways in which work is actually done? Rejection is the likely outcome if practitioners question how well researchers?theories fit the practice situation厭 (Argyris & Schon 1996)
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Seeing as an observer is not the same as seeing as a participant. A practitioner sees from within the action not from outside it. 慦e should think about practice as a setting not only for the application of knowledge but for its generation. We should ask not only how practitioners can better apply the results of academic research, but what kinds of knowing are already embedded in competent practice.?(Schon 1995, 29). Practitioners are, of necessity actors, agents of change in their environment. They live and work in the situations they try to understand and their continuous interaction with their environment helps them come to see and act in new ways. The epistemological challenge facing the practitioner-researcher is that much of this knowledge cannot be represented in propositional form. Polanyi (1974) used the term 憈acit knowledge?to describe that which we know but cannot tell.
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But there is common ground. Researchers and practitioners seek to explain phenomena in the real world. Both seek to give an account for the data they consider relevant. But because practitioners live in a doing not just a knowing environment the knowledge they seek will be judged by how well it works, in the sense of enabling them to do something they want to do. And this suggests important distinctions between the scientist and the practitioner. 慣he normal social-science model of causal inference aims at generalizability: it employs general cause and effect variables and calls for observation of multiple instances in which those variables take on different values. The practitioner抯 model of causality is situation specific.?(Agyris & Schon 1996)
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While both seek causal relationships in the data, the practitioner has a particular focus on what might influence his or her intentions. And this suggests a further difference ?慖n at least one view of science (Popper 1959), the scientific cycle of hypothesis forming and testing should continue for as long as members of the community of inquiry bring forward plausible competing hypotheses. For practitioners, on the other hand, that cycle comes appropriately to a close when their inquiry enables them to achieve their intended results and when they like, or can live with, the unintended side effects inherent in their designing.?(Agyris & Schon 1996)
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I am not suggesting that the sphere of professional practice is a closed system, impervious to scholarship. What is involved however is something similar to the processes when seed is sown in the ground. 慛ew concepts and ideas brought into these contexts have to be transformed in order to become usable in contextually appropriate ways? Therefore it is inappropriate to think of knowledge as first being learned then later being used. Learning takes place during use, and the transformation of knowledge into a situationally appropriate form means that it is no longer the same knowledge as it was prior to it first being used? (Eraut 1994, 20)
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Similarly the insights gained in practice are unlikely to be captured in propositional form. 慣heir situation-specific inferences of design, efficient, or pattern causality can be generalized only by a process we call 搑eflective transfer??搕ransfer,?because the model is carried over from one organizational situation to another through a kind of seeing-as; 搑eflective? because the inquirer should attend critically to analogies and dis-analogies between the familiar situation and the new one?The utility of the prototype lies in its ability to generate explanation and experimentation in a new situation. When it is carried over to a new situation, its validity must be established there by a new round of inquiry through which it is very likely to be modified.?(Argyris &Schon 1996) In simple terms practical knowing is most frequently disseminated through the stories we tell that ignite experimentation in new contexts, often resulting in new knowledge.
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Because professional competence cannot always be explained in propositional terms we often resort to a different language to describe its behaviour. We talk of 憈acit?and 慽ntuitive?knowledge. We recognise professional 慾udgment?and practical 憌isdom? This is slippery language for the scientist yet it captures a sense of mature experience which is recognised in good practice. 慣his image of wise judgment under conditions of considerable uncertainty stands in marked contrast to the preferred public image of a reliable, quasi-scientific knowledge base.?(Eraut 1994)
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This has important implications. 慠ather than a producer of knowledge for its own sake or for external consumers?it is worth considering how well the institution performs in light of what Lester calls, 慳 catalyst and animateur in the development of knowledgeable practice.?(Lester 2004)
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Scholar/Practitioner
The Melbourne Institute of Technology has coined a new phrase to describe the graduates of their DBA programme as 慹xecutive scholars? While we may regret the further encroachment of management-speak into the academy we should not, in my opinion, miss the intended meaning of this phrase. It suggests a combination of academic rigor and professional excellence ?an aspiration of significance to our development.
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It certainly hints at the potential value of bringing together the contribution of the scholar and practitioner, promising significant gains in our knowledge of the world and improvements to our interventions in it. Each role has its contribution and limitation. The scholar brings the theoretical tools for analysis and critical reflection. The practitioner brings their experience and access to multiple layers of practical knowledge inaccessible to the outsider. 慉s a member of both cultures the practitioner-scholar is able to translate and create meaning between the two cultures. The scholar-practitioner has an appreciation of the norms, appropriate behaviour and values embodied in both.?(Sorensen 2004, 160)
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Once we begin to acknowledge, in fact embrace and privilege experience and context, we move into a new set of epistemological questions. Several authors have called for 慳 new scholarship?(Boyer 1990, Schon 1995, Whitehead 2006). While confirming the continued importance of what he calls 憈he scholarship of discovery?Boyer suggests three new forms of scholarship.
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The scholarship of integration makes connections between the disciplines, and places isolated facts in their wider context; the scholarship of application explores the wider relevance and usefulness of knowledge; and the scholarship of teaching (or we might call it a scholarship of practice) gives attention to the transformation of knowledge that occurs when the practitioner experiences the 慴acktalk?of the specific situation. (Schon 1983)
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This is a reminder of Habermas抯 caution (1972) that once we move beyond the limits of the empirical world we must give attention to our epistemological foundations. In each of these forms of scholarship, what counts as knowledge and how is it validated? What are the appropriate methods required to capture data that might be considered as evidence?
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Saint
I am more than just head and hand. My pursuit of knowledge is also shaped by and influences my development as a spiritual being. I am uneasy with the label 憇aint?but have failed to find a better term. I am only willing to use it in the sense of what I might be 慴ecoming? Scholar and practitioner point towards what I think and what I do. Saint points towards the one who thinks and acts. I am not a human doing but a human being (Lichtmann 2005, 32).
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This dimension of inquiry has caught me by surprise. When I started my research I knew I would face intellectual challenges and was committed to a form of inquiry that would produce change in the way I (and possibly we) do things. What I had not expected was the effect this would have on me and, even more, bring me to realise the significant contribution my own spiritual experience has had and by extension, will have, on my knowing and doing.
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Kwame Bediako, a founder-member of the OCMS community, echoes Andrew Wall抯 recognition of the dynamic relationship between Christian action and scholarship and adds a further perspective. In discussing the curriculum needed to support what he calls 慣he African Renaissance?he observes the danger that scholarship can remain external and that training may not 慹quip us for meeting our own needs and problems, for dealing with the monster of sin and evil within us who are being trained. In other words, we are not asking the question whether the theological training we receive makes us holy people.?(Bediako 2001) Recalling the focus of the early Church (which Kwame points out had African roots) 憃ne embarked on theological training not to receive information to pass on, not to acquire status through diplomas and degrees, not even to acquire skills for ministry, but to be changed inwardly.?(Bediako 2001)
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And again, the influence of the Enlightenment is noted, 慣he real harm that the Enlightenment has done, has been to separate knowledge from character, intellectual development from spiritual growth, and, therefore, to produce scholars and intellectuals, theologically trained people, who are left morally weak because they have not been taken through the disciplines of being changed. The theory of knowledge on which they have been brought up is not holistic and so does not produce integral development.?(Bediako 2001) Bediako suggests that the purpose of our inquiry (formation) is 憈o provide exposure to fields of knowledge that assist self-understanding and liberate the mind, and generate larger and deeper human sympathies on the basis that Christ is the key to all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Col. 2:3).?(Bediako 2001)
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This has an echo in the 12th century writings of Bernard of Clairvaux: 慒or there are some who desire to know only for the sake of knowing; and this is disgraceful curiosity. And there are some who desire to know, that they may become known themselves; and this is disgraceful vanity?And there are also some who desire to know in order to sell their knowledge, as for money, or for degrees; and this is disgraceful commercialism. But there are also some who desire to know in order to edify; and this is love.?(Clairvaux in Lichtmann 2005, 10)
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This more holistic scholarship encourages me to live out who I am becoming, to pursue knowledge in action that gives direction to my values. So the inquiring life becomes a way of living 憈hat helps you live in a way you feel is good. Helps you live out the things you believe in and give good reasons for every step of the way.?(McNiff 2002) As Jay Wood expresses it;
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So the focus of our thinking about epistemological excellence, I argue, should be the unfolding careers of knowers and the care they display in orienting themselves toward ends they deem valuable. Viewing epistemological questions in career terms, as the concerns of a lifetime, requires that we attend to the processes of belief formation, maintenance and revision, not just the specific outputs of these processes?Epistemology, then, is not (or ought not be) concerned merely with the piecemeal appraisal of individual beliefs but with what kinds of persons we are and are becoming. (Wood 1998)
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The exploration of the inner world brings great promise. Peter Senge (the author of the influential book on the Learning Organisation, 慣he Fifth Discipline? quotes the economist Brian Arthur, 慐very profound innovation is based on an inwardbound journey, on going to a deeper place where knowing comes to the surface.?(Senge 2004, 7) Senge goes on, 慣his 搃nward-bound journey?lies at the heart of all creativity, whether in the arts, in business, or in science. Many scientists and inventors, like artists and entrepreneurs, live in a paradoxical state of great confidence and profound humility knowing that their choices and actions really matter and feeling guided by forces beyond their making. Their work is to 搑elease the hand from the marble that holds it prisoner,?as Michelangelo put it. While they know that their actions are vital to this accomplishment, they also know that the hand 搘ants to be released??(Senge 2004)
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The core capacity for such intervention, according to Senge and his colleagues, is presence. Not just a state of being fully conscious and aware but a 慸eep listening, of being open beyond one抯 preconceptions and historical ways of making sense.?Senge observes similarities between this kind of shift in awareness and what has been recognised in spiritual traditions for thousands of years. 慐ach tradition describes this shift a little differently, but all recognize it as being central to personal cultivation or maturation.?(Senge 2004)
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Each of us probably has a story of how this inner knowing influenced our action in some way. Angela Brew (1993) makes the distinction between knowledge that resides in the head (ideas, imaginings, explanations, etc) and knowing that is located somewhere in the centre of my being. This is not the same as 憈acit?knowledge (Polanyi 1958) it is 慳 set of commonsense non-articulated understandings through which we make sense of our world. The concept of inner knowing is a strange one within the context of western scientific knowledge. Yet I have found that when I have talked to people about their inner knowings, the concept has not been alien. In mystical traditions, it is commonplace. It is given expression in the practice of meditation and asceticism. It is akin to the knowing of the Hebrew prophets. They had knowledge of the social and political conditions of their day which came not from an analysis of the situation but from an inner spiritual source.?(Brew 1993)
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So the question is, how can we put our heart and soul into our research? As Maria Lichtmann puts it, 慠eason has served us so well as a laser tool in overcoming prejudice, ignorance, and error, that we would be foolish to abandon it. Yet, a 憇hrunken rationality? to use philosopher Elizabeth Minnich抯 phrase, a rationality lacking emotion, embodiment, spirit, and intuition, deadens our spirits.?(Lichtmann 2005)
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Bernard of Clairvaux provides a clue. 慙ove is the fountain of life, and the soul which does not drink from it cannot be called alive.?James Houston expands on this in his introduction to Clairvaux抯 writings. 慦e shall then begin to find that love and reason give us bifocal vision on life; we are given depth to reality that is beyond mere intellectualism as love enlightens reason and reason instructs love. Without love, reason leads only to pride, while love without reason is passion. This bifocal view, then, provides wisdom. Indeed it is the love of God within us that is true wisdom, for wisdom is only another name for the enjoyment of God.?(Houston 1983)
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Blaise Pascal was a respected mathematician and physicist but he is probably best known for his 慳pology?for the Christian faith that was published as a random collection of thoughts under the French title 慞ensees? Like the writer of Ecclesiastes he concluded that human knowledge is vain because we pursue it only for our own pride, not to help or educate others, but only to show off in front of them. 慍uriosity is only vanity. Usually one only wants to know something in order to talk about it.?(Pascal in Poffenroth 2004) 慘nowledge has two extremes which meet. The first is the pure, natural ignorance in which all people are born. The other extreme is reached by great souls who, having run through everything that humans can know, find that they know nothing, and they return to that same ignorance from which they departed; but it is a wise ignorance which knows itself.?(Poffenroth 2004)
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Wise ignorance is a humbled and self-reflective knowledge. And here is Pascal抯 real contribution to our understanding, human reason can know and diagnose its own limitations. 慣he final step of reason is to recognize that there are (sic) an infinity of things that go beyond it; it is just deficient if it can抰 even go as far as knowing that.?Reason knows when to step aside, 憈he way the sense of smell is uninvolved when reading a book? Like a telescope that cannot take us to the stars but that lets us know the stars are there and fans the flames of our desire to get there, reason points us to what lies beyond itself.?(Poffenroth 2004)
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Pascal talks about this human faculty in terms of the heart that 慺eels?things, but it is more than this, it also 慿nows?and 憉nderstands? Pascal says that people who understand through the heart are 憌ise?and see 憌ith the eyes of the heart? 慘nowledge presupposes love. One will know the truth ?really know it, in the most profound sense, with the passion of appropriation ?to the extent that one is loving.?And in knowing and loving, the heart also gives itself to what is known: 慠eally to know something is to give oneself to it, follow its lead, let it shape and guide one抯 thought?The heart?discerns and it loves, and in it knowledge and feeling?are mutually helpful.?(Poffenroth 2004)
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This helps me on my journey. My research has been pushing me towards the questions of the relationship between myself and my work. But this more personal, inner, journey is not easy. Brew talks about the way we deny who we are and so fail to access what we know. This is compounded by our education, the clutter and congestion that surrounds us and the jumble of conflicting desires that we find inside. I am aware of my obsession with knowledge, the idea that I will find the key to everything in the next book I read, although the hunger is never satisfied. I am indicted by the 12th century Carthusian monk, Guigo, who asks, 慒or what is the use of spending one抯 time in continuous reading [of books]卽nless we can extract nourishment from them by chewing and digesting this food so that its strength can pass into our inmost 揾eart?拻?(Guigo in Lichtmann 2005) 慦e gulp down ideas without reflection just as we gulp down fast food.?(Lichtmann 2005)
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I am also aware of the 慹xcess?of spiritual resources and personal practices that can help me open the inner world. I am encouraged in this process by the recent acknowledgement, in some parts of the academic community, of the spiritual dimension (Freshwater1998, Wright1998), and in particular the tentative exploration of spiritual practices in research, for example in the contribution Coghlan sees of the Ignatian exercises, 慽nquiring into action (practice) through the eyes of faith? (Coghlan 2005)
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And so I can agree with Elena Pinto, another contributor to Senge抯 work on presence. 慖 have learned that when I have to make a decision or want to know what to do in the future, I need to listen to myself. If I listen with my heart and my body, not just my mind ?if I am fully present and not distracted from what my senses and intuitions tell me ?I gain deeper understanding and arrive at better, more viable decisions.?(Senge 2004, 14)
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Scholar/Practitioner/Saint
And so I return to my opening question and the full model with which I began. What kind of person am I becoming through research? What kind of graduate are we producing? Is the answer to these questions coincidental or intentional?
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Each of us is involved in a continuous negotiation for our place in the field, surrounded by different disciplines, philosophical orientations, theories, methods and research traditions. There is a danger of us fragmenting into multiple identities. Much of our work is 憁ulti-disciplinary?or 慽nter-disciplinary?so we are familiar with the need to work with a synthesis of intellectual traditions. Together we form a unique community of inquirers ?seeking holistic development in ourselves and our context through our research and action. It is my proposal that we recognise this unique vocation and actively encourage and hold one another accountable on this journey.
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We form a research community that is passionate about translating faith and knowledge into practical action in culture and society. While there will be differences in subject and discipline between us we share a common view on the purpose of research and therefore have the possibility of developing a culture of inquiry that can support us all. 慉 culture of inquiry is a chosen modality of working in the field ?an applied epistemology or working model of knowledge used in explaining or understanding reality.?(Bentz & Shapiro 1998) I am not suggesting a unified scientific method but an attempt to help one another validate different approaches to the creation of knowledge that will enrich and empower the church in mission. The exploration of this working epistemology could (and I suggest should) be a common task. In this way our participation in this community of scholars can become a collaborative journey rather than the lonely path experienced by most researchers.
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(This article originally appeared in Transformation Vol. 25, Nos. 2-3. Reprinted here by permission. Click here for more information about Transformation and the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies.)

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