Mary Clark Moschella

Professor Moschella joined the faculty at Yale in 2010. Her research focuses on three main areas: ethnographic research methods in practical theology; joy in the ministry and in life; and narrative approaches to spiritual care.  She has recently published the updated and expanded second edition of Ethnography as a Pastoral Practice: An Introduction (2023), with presses in the US and the UK. She co-edited a related publication, Qualitative Research in Theological Education, with Susan Willhauck in 2018. Her earlier books in this area include: Living Devotions: Reflections on Immigration, Identity, and Religious Imagination, and a collection of essays, edited with Jane Maynard and Leonard Hummel, Pastoral Bearings: Lived Religion and Pastoral Theology. She teaches a research methods course to equip students with the skills needed to observe, engage, and understand faith communities and collectives. She co-leads the study group for Religious Practices and Pastoral Research in the Society for Pastoral Theology.

With the support of the Henry Luce III Fellowship in Theology, Professor Moschella published Caring for Joy: Narrative, Theology, and Practice in 2016. She continues to lecture, research, and teach on this topic, with a particular focus on the link between justice and deep spiritual joy. Professor Moschella also co-edited with Lee Butler, The Edward Wimberly Reader: A Black Pastoral Theology (Baylor, 2020).

Professor Moschella’s current book project is tentatively titled Narrative Spiritual Care: Theory and Practice. Narrative spiritual care focusses on developing people’s identity through collaborative inquiry and re-authoring practices that deconstruct hegemonic cultural narratives. Professor Moschella trains extensively in this modality and teaches courses in it as well. 

Prior to coming to Yale, Professor Moschella taught Pastoral Theology and Congregational Care at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C. Before that, she was a chaplain and then a pastor in United Church of Christ congregations in Massachusetts. Additional teaching interests include psychopathology and pastoral care, pastoral perspectives on death and dying, and pastoral wisdom in fiction, memoir, and poetry. She has recently chaired the YDS Task Force on Prison Justice Ministries and enjoys teaching Inside/Out courses that bring YDS students into prisons to learn together with incarcerated classmates. She also co-edits the Journal of Pastoral Theology. She is a fellow of Yale’s Grace Hopper College.

Read more

• Mary Clark Moschella: Surprised by Joy
• Pastoral wisdom, in prison

Books