sustain:if:able kiwi

Making and Christian witness in Australia today: journal article acceptance

Thrilled. Delighted. Stoked.

I’ve just had news of journal article acceptance by Colloquium, an international peer-reviewed journal, for an article titled: “Making and Christian witness in Australia today.”

I’m thrilled with the blind peer reviewer comments, which were just so positive.

• Reviewer 1 – “Excellent article. Well focused and innovative theme, clear methodology and aims, sound research design, and thoughtful practical theology and mission implications – all well written”
• Reviewer 2 – “This is a creative and interesting article about Christian witness as ‘making’.”

I’m delighted to have a piece of qualitative research on the topic of knitting accepted in a scholarly academic journal.

I’m stoked because it’s the first concrete sign of academic writing progress on the Ordinary knitters research project. I’ve been quietly working away on the research for over 3 years. I have over 45,000 words written on a book. But a book takes so long to write and I wanted some way of testing the waters regarding academic suitability. So I peeled off a slab of the data, 14 of the more than 50 interviews. I then applied a different analytical lens, using the marks of mission to analyse the data rather than reflexive thematic analysis.

Thrilled. Delighted. Stoked. Here’s the abstract, keywords and acknowledgement.

Abstract: Christian witness is generally framed as occurring through words and deeds. This paper explores making as another approach to Christian mission. Christian theology understands God as Maker. Yet, making as a domain of Christian practice rarely features in theological accounts and mission thinking. Craft in general and knitting in particular is popular in contemporary society, yet there is little research into Christians who make in mission. Hence this paper conducted qualitative research, including “scavenge” ethnography and interviews with knitters, to investigate contemporary acts of making by Christians in Australia. Some makers knitted angels to yarn bomb at Christmas, while others knitted scarves in climate activism. The Marks of Mission were deployed as a holistic frame, with all five Marks evident in the knitting of angels and scarves. The interviews unravelled understandings of making as a joyful experience of active praying that provided distinct ways of relating. Making allows ordinary people, particularly women, to participate in mission as telling, teaching, tending, transforming and treasuring. In a contemporary culture saturated with words and cynical of deeds, the research has significance for how mission and theology are conceived in contemporary Australia and practised in local church contexts.

Keywords: activism – knitting – making – qualitative research – mission – witness

Acknowledgements: My thanks to the knitters willing to show and tell, to peer reviewers for their attention to the craft of writing and to AngelWings Ltd for the allocation of pro-bono time to undertake this research project.

social impact of religious practices: pilots and letter boxes

I’m researching the social impact of selected religious practices. The 12 month research project is funded by John Templeton, located in the University of Birmingham and administered through the University of Otago, where I am a Research Affiliate with the Centre for Theology and Public Issues.

I am using an action research approach, in which I invite people to share a selected religious practice for a period of time. I conduct a survey at the start and end, using several established psychological scales, to explore if participants experience any changes in aspects of social connection and human flourishing. I ask participants to keep a journal, writing weekly about their experience of the practice. I also host a focus group in which participants reflect together on their experience of the religious practice. These three modes of gathering information uncover how religious practices are experienced in relation to social aspects.

In November, I gained ethics approval.

In December, I began a pilot. Undertaking a pilot allows me to get things up and running. It also gives me feedback on different parts of the research, testing the questions I am asking and understanding how much time is involved.

This pilot involves working with a local congregation who have an established religious practice. During Advent, the congregation are invited into four weeks of slowing and silence in daily life. This is facilitated by lighting a candle for a defined period of time. The practice occurs during the worship service. People are also invited to take and light a candle daily in their homes, as a way of continuing the practice in daily life. During Advent, the length of silence slowly increases (in this case, one minute in week one, two minutes in week two, and so on). Could this practice, of slowing and being silent, impact social connection and human flourishing?

In this pilot, I am testing two of my three modes of data gathering. Participants interested in being part of the research have given their ethical consent. They have each been sent a survey. They have also been given a journal, in which they are invited to respond each week to four questions about their experience.

Which meant that this week my time as a researcher included dropping journals in letter boxes and wondering what people will write, as they reflect on their experience of this particular religious practice. Such is the joy of undertaking empirical research into the real life experiences of religious practices in daily life.

The social impact of selected religious practices research project is one of seven different research projects I am currently involved in. For example, I’m also involved in researching digital activism, experiences of reading out loud, knitting as craftivism and race, justice and mission in the history of Oceania. Plus I’m undertaking longitudinal evaluations of different interventions in two church organisations and have just wrapped up a project writing resources to encourage ecological readings of Advent and Christmas Bible readings.

Knitting as public theological witness: spoken presentation feedback

For the last three years, I have been interviewing people who knit for Christian projects in public spaces. To date I’ve conducted 50 interviews with knitters, coded all the transcripts and done reflexive thematic analysis of two (of the four ) knitting projects. This has resulted in around 45,000 words toward a possible book on craftivism as public Christian witness. (To keep up with the project, click follow on the Ordinary Knitters Facebook page I have set up.)

A few months ago, I proposed a paper for the Systematic Theology Association of Aotearoa New Zealand (STAANZ). I thought it would be very helpful for my research to try to summarise 45,000 words into a 2,300 word paper as a way of clarifying key ideas.

I delivered the paper today. I began with several stories of knitting to introduce how knitting connects and making empowers. I defined public theology using Elaine Graham and ambient witness using Matthew Engelke. I offered an overview of theologies of making in Christian history. I then explored one of the four knitting projects I have researched and described how the knitting of strawberries to express solidarity with victims and survivors of church abuse could be seen as an expression of public ambient theological witness. I brought the interviews into conversation with Sara Ahmed, and outlined how her work around citational practices helped me realise the importance of informal and side-by-side formation in knitting.

Participants asked a range of excellent questions. I try to take handwritten notes of the questions I get asked after a presentation. Taking notes gives me time to think about how to respond. It also means I can sit more thoroughly and more thoughtfully with the questions at later date.

Here is my recollection of the 5 questions I was asked, along with a summary of my brief responses.

1. Did the knitters you interviewed knit alone or together? Both. I interviewed people who knitted in groups and people who knitted alone. In both categories there were descriptions of a rich set of relationships, including informal, through which connections between people were being made.

2. How was Mary be utilised as a theological resource? One of my interview participants described connecting Mary with the strawberry plant, as a representation of the simultaneous generativity of runners and flowers and a symbol of “exuberant defiance.” The connections between the reproductivity of strawberries and Mary as bearer of God’s reproductive action in the world offers some fascinating way to think theologically about creation and redemption.

3. Do younger people knit? Are expressions of craft taking shape differently in different generations? There is research that indicates that younger people are still enjoying discovering knitting. Examples include Tom Daley, the British Olympic diver and Ella Emhoff hosts a knitting club. Equally, there are ways of making, for example digital activism, that are more widely present among younger generations.

4. Was there evidence in your interviews of knitting as a spiritual practice? Yes. I felt I had two groups of participants. One group tended to knit with the television on and were knitting with their attention focused elsewhere. A second group knitted and reflected during the interview that they were intentionally thinking about the person they were knitting for. The interview process helped them realise how this was a material form of prayer for others.

5. (Later in the day.) You talked about the importance in the interviews of grandmothers and mothers. Have you read Kat Armas’s Abuella Faith regarding the role of grandmothers in faith? No, but that is a very helpful suggestion.

My thanks to STAANZ for accepting my paper and for the thoughtful engagement by participants. Now back to writing.