The Shabbat practices of American pulpit rabbis in practical theological perspective

One result of rethinking Christianity's relationship to Judaism in the aftermath of the Shoah has been a renaissance among Roman Catholics and Protestants who see Judaism as a rich resource for Christian practice, including the Sabbath. This swelling interest in the Sabbath and its Jewish roots among Christians is laudable insofar as it does not result in the replacement theology of days gone by. One way to avoid such supercessionism is to recognize the Sabbath as an embodied practice, experientially known, and not a detached object devoid of a context. What is needed is the incorporation of empirical research into our theological reflection. Failure to ground any Christian application of Shabbat practices in the reality of contemporary lived Judaism can result not only in anecdotalism, but also potentially the gross caricaturization of Jews that Christianity is desperately trying to overcome.;To address this lacuna, this dissertation draws upon practical theological methods to explore the problem and central question: How do American pulpit rabbis practice Shabbat? Using Richard Osmer's consensus equilibrium approach to practical theology as a way to frame the study, this dissertation draws on phenomenological research methodology to gain a thick description of Shabbat practice. The researcher thus conducted six in-depth, semi-structured interviews with rabbis across the spectrum of Judaism. In an attempt to mine the depths of the rabbis' Shabbat experience, the interview data were analyzed following Max Van Manen's Phenomenology of Practice and Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis. In light of such thick description, further theological reflection included dialogue with a social scientific understanding of practice, Jewish and Christian sabbatarian theologies of the Sabbath, and post-Shoah theology as an interpretive lens. In this way, theoretical texts, nonnative texts, as well as "living texts," are brought into a mutually constructive critical exchange.;As a practical theological study, the goal of this dissertation is to erect action-guiding theories of Christian praxis in particular social contexts; it is not intended to be generalized to Jewish rabbis. By applying post-Shoah theological principles to the Seventh-day Adventist practice of the Sabbath, and comparing such practice with the participants in this study, it is clear that Adventism has not escaped traces of the classical Christian "teaching of contempt," but also that it shares an unprecedented number of similarities with the rabbis' Shabbat practices. If it is recognized that Adventism harbors Jewish elements in its belief and practice of the Sabbath, and if post-Shoah theology demands that Christianity critically reexamine itself in light of Judaism, then one major implication for this study is that the Adventist practice of the Sabbath has something essential to offer the Christian story of the Sabbath. The researcher's commitment, through reflective Sabbath praxis, is to learn how better to serve as an agent of reconciliation in the Jewish-Christian relationship.