Mad Practical Theology

This book introduces a new subfield of practical theology: Mad Practical Theology. This emerges from the intersection of Practical Theology and the emerging field of Mad Studies, filling a critical gap in practical theology's engagement with marginalized voices. While the field has learned to centre queer, disabled, black, and womanist spiritual experiences and liberation perspectives, psychiatric survivors remain absent from theological conversation, their voices mediated through medical rather than theological frameworks. This new subfield addresses that absence by challenging this exclusion through methodological commitments that reposition psychiatric survivors from spiritual care concerns to primary theological sources. The book demonstrates this new subfield through "Palimpsestic Theology," a methodology for engaging psychiatric archives that honours both institutional violence and persistent sacred meaning. Working across three archive types—patient writings from an asylum magazine, belongings from asylum patient suitcases, and cemetery records—this approach generates theological reflection and spiritual practices rather than remaining only theoretical. The results include liturgical resources emerging from asylum fragments, sacred conversations across time, and memorial practices demanding justice rather than comfortable remembrance. Where other approaches study marginalized voices, Mad Practical Theology learns from them as primary teachers whose institutional experiences generate distinctive wisdom about divine presence under institutional constraint. This work provides both theoretical framework and practical resources for communities seeking authentic engagement with psychiatric survivor wisdom. The three Creative Companions provide liturgical resources, contemplative practices, and memorial accountability frameworks that serve both academic and ecclesial communities. This integration addresses practical theology's commitment to praxis by showing how historical archive work generates useable devotional content, pedagogical resources for theological education, and alternative approaches to mental health ministry that centre survivor wisdom rather than medical authority—proving that ethical engagement with marginalized voices produces practical results.