Midwifing--A Womanist Approach to Pastoral Counseling: Investigating the Fractured Self, Slavery, Violence, and the Black Woman, is an investigation of intergenerational trauma. Exploring the impact of slavery, violence, racism, sexism, classism, and other isms on the self of the Black woman. This examination of the complexity of pain speaks to the multidimensional reality of some Black women and the necessity for a therapeutic technique that invites the fullness of the Black woman's historical narrative. Dr. Thurmond-Malone's work exposes hidden pain in a safe and sacred space that speaks to the deep-rooted anguish experienced through generations of Black women and invites her readers to understand the necessity for a rebirthing to occur. This work also empowers women of African descent to become unarmored through the naming, claiming, and reauthoring of their story, and empowers therapists to become midwives adept at empathizing with the intense pain carried by some Black women. Lastly, the book provides clinicians with insight into how to become midwives capable of holding the accounts of Black women while illustrating the author's approach as a method of interdependence, communal, and cultural competency. Taking an analytical look at the counselee's past then births hope for their future as a whole and transformative self.

Pastoral care and its theology get a gentle boost from some of the best in the business of caring for the soul. When a person hurts, they often look to God. Several pathfinders give new light from their specialties, each one speaking powerfully, uniquely, and artfully from decades of experience. Dr. Amos Yong’s article on disability forwards the amazingly helpful term, “temporarily able-bodied.” Greek Orthodox Dr. Vasileios Thermos and Roman Catholic Dr. Robert Fastiggi enlighten next to the powerful testaments of Professor Godfrey Harold on South Africa and Dr. Samuel Yonas Deressa on Ethiopia. Each weathered author contributes universal insights into the grace of our great God and challenges pastors throughout the Christian world to kindly consider the heart of the afflicted. These finely hewn stones can be used by anyone in the ministry to sharpen their serve. Mattis and Maness offer this third collection from Testamentum Imperium with a prayer that these will open new avenues of sensitivity to the hearts and souls of those in travail and aid those who are called by God to serve those in pain.

For twenty years, clinical pastoral educators, congregational caregivers, chaplains, pastoral psychotherapists, and pastoral theologians have turned to Pamela Cooper-White's Shared Wisdom to ground their teaching, training, and understandings of countertransference and how the use of the caregiver's self, in turn, impacts the relational dynamic between caregivers and care seekers. Now, Cooper-White updates her groundbreaking book to present new insights on how understanding one's own emotional reactions remains a core competency for ministry. With precision and depth, Cooper-White continues to innovate the theory and practice of spiritual care, counseling, and spiritual psychotherapy. This revised and expanded 20th anniversary edition explores current research on countertransference and intersubjectivity; mutual influence and unconscious relationships; and intercultural and interreligious dynamics in caring relationships. Cooper-White examines how the relational paradigm for pastoral assessment and theological reflection that she pioneered now has important implications for evolving types of care relationships. As she does so, she addresses emerging topics such as postcolonial theory, spiritual and religious fluidity, and gender diversity. CPE supervisors, pastoral care and counseling educators and practitioners, pastoral theology scholars, and psychotherapists looking for an in-depth understanding of relationality and intersubjectivity will find the 20th anniversary edition of Shared Wisdoma must-have resource to build and expand upon a core competency.

""Modern theology needs the rediscovery of the category of consolation. This book is rich of consolations because it takes the cry of lament seriously."" --Jurgen Moltmann ""A timely, accessible, and valuable book. The recovery of the biblical traditions of loss and hurt is intrinsically worth doing, more worth doing in an increasingly disestablished society."" --Walter Brueggemann, Columbia Theological Seminary, Emeritus ""This cross-disciplinary collaboration is . . . poignant and compelling testimony to the personal and communal power of lament and its importance to the practice of ministry. This book is the one that I have been waiting for."" --Christie Cozad Neuger, Brite Divinity School ""Few books in the literature of lament have drawn together so much material from the biblical, theological, and pastoral spheres as Rachel's Cry."" --Patrick D. Miller, Princeton Theological Seminary ""Honesty with God is the doorway to authentic hope and faith. . . . This is one of the most liberating books I have read in a long time."" --James Newton Poling, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary ""This is the first book to bring scattered discussions together into one coherent whole . . . with deep Christian insight and conviction, with vivid examples, and with learning which is as gracefully communicated as it is broad and deep in its substance. I will be keeping it near at hand, so as to return to it often."" --Nicholas Wolterstorff, Yale University ""Rachel's Cry is not only a timely book, it is an urgently needed resource for people who long for a way to live with irrational suffering. Unless we recover the prayer of lament, we are in danger of being trapped in powerlessness, cynicism, and despair."" --Herbert Anderson, Catholic Theological Union, Emeritus ""I found it difficult to put this book down. Rachel's Cry convincingly argues that an authentic and empowering spirituality requires the language of lament and protest alongside praise and thanksgiving."" --Nancy J. Ramsay, Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary Kathleen M. Billman is dean of academic affairs and professor of pastoral theology and counseling at Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago. Daniel L. Migliore is Charles Hodge Professor of Systematic Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary.

This book is an edited volume of works that have predominated over the past several decades in contemporary pastoral theology. Through the writings of nineteen leading voices in the history of pastoral care, Dykstra shows how each contributor developed a metaphor for understanding pastoral care. Such metaphors include the solicitous shepherd, the wounded healer, the intimate stranger, the midwife, and other tangible images. Through these works, the reader gains a sense of the varied identities of pastoral care professionals, their struggles for recognition in this often controversial field, and insight into the history of the disciple. Includes readings by: Anton T. Boisen, Alastair V. Campbell, Donald Capps, James E. Dittes, Robert C. Dykstra, Heije Faber, Charles V. Gerkin, Brita L. Gill-Austern, Karen R. Hanson, Seward Hiltner, Margaret Zipse Kornfeld, Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore, Jeanne Stevenson Moessner, Henri J. M. Nouwen, Gaylord Noyce, Paul W. Pruyser, Edward P. Wimberly.

Ritual can resonate to human need, and to this end there is much the ritualist can learn from the psychological insights into human development and personality familiar to those in the field of pastoral care.

Inspired by Jim Corbett’s free-range pastoralism of ‘goatwalking,’ this work gleans a pastoral theology from the wealth of practical wisdom within the Quaker tradition, giving particular attention to Corbett’s foci of alertness, adaptability, symbiotic relationships, and co-creativity.