In the last twenty years, the number of texts written on clinical pastoral supervision has accelerated. Thomas St. James O’Connor analyzes these texts, nearly 300 of them, in light of three fundamental questions about the praxis of clinical pastoral supervision: (1)what is distinctive about the praxis? (2)what is an appropriate theological method for the praxis? and, (3)what is an adequate praxis? In doing so, he formulates three approaches: the social science, the hermeneutic and the special interest. Looking at the theology of Charles Gerkin, a pastoral theologian and family therapist, O’Connor develops a conversation between Gerkin’s theology and the texts. The theological methods in the three approaches are critiqued and Gerkin’s praxis/theory/praxis method is endorsed. Case examples are used throughout to illustrate theory and issues discussed and to aid in the presentation of an adequate praxis. Clinical Pastoral Supervision and the Theology of Charles Gerkin provides a unique overview of the history and current state of clinical pastoral supervision and an understanding of its methodology and theological foundations. More than that, it builds on the practical theory of Charles Gerkin, expanding it for immediate use in the practice of ministry.

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.

This book articulates a perichoretic pastoral theology, offering a pastoral theological response to the question of how ministering persons practice ministry in communion with the triune God. Key elements from contemporary pastoral theology—theologies of human experience, concern for human suffering, and situational attentiveness—are drawn into conversation with the doctrine of perichoresis. Jim Horsthuis provides a vision for life and ministry in relational, participational and spiritual communion with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The chapters explore four spiritual movements that foster this vision: (1) the move from experience to relationship; (2) the move from concern to presence; (3) the move from competence to communion; and (4) the move from practice to prayer. The book represents a unique academic contribution to both pastoral theology and Trinitarian theology.

It is often said that bioethics emerged from theology in the 1960s, and that since then it has grown into a secular enterprise, yielding to other disciplines and professions such as philosophy and law. During the 1970s and 1980s, a kind of secularism in biomedicine and related areas was encouraged by the need for a neutral language that could provide common ground for guiding clinical practice and research protocols. Tom Beauchamp and James Childress, in their pivotal The Principles of Biomedical Ethics, achieved this neutrality through an approach that came to be known as "principlist bioethics." In Pastoral Aesthetics, Nathan Carlin critically engages Beauchamp and Childress by revisiting the role of religion in bioethics and argues that pastoral theologians can enrich moral imagination in bioethics by cultivating an aesthetic sensibility that is theologically-informed, psychologically-sophisticated, therapeutically-oriented, and experientially-grounded. To achieve these ends, Carlin employs Paul Tillich's method of correlation by positioning four principles of bioethics with four images of pastoral care, drawing on a range of sources, including painting, fiction, memoir, poetry, journalism, cultural studies, clinical journals, classic cases in bioethics, and original pastoral care conversations. What emerges is a form of interdisciplinary inquiry that will be of special interest to bioethicists, theologians, and chaplains.

This book on ministerial formation and supervision provides an accessible and thorough resource. It explores the nature of ministry and formation for 21st Century church and public life. It argues for the importance of supervision in the learning contexts of placement, parish and pastorate and presents an exciting model of supervision as reflective practice that draws on existing literature from different disciplines, including other helping professions, literature and practical theology and the methods and insights of Clinical Pastoral Education, interpreted within a British context. Chapters cover stimulating and useful areas for consideration by the theological educator and ministerial student, such as doing theological reflection in context; resistance to learning; coping with loss and failure; dynamics of power in ministry and issues of transculturalism in ministry and issues of gender and sexuality. It also offers ways in which the effectiveness of placement learning can be evaluated.

How do we care justly when the self suffers because of the identity that they inhabit? Pastoral theologian Katharine E. Lassiter approaches this interdisciplinary question from a feminist perspective in order to understand how suffering, subject formation, and social injustice are connected. Lassiter identifies the challenges of identity in developing a pastoral theological anthropology, reflecting on tensions in her own experiences of caring for selves. Drawing from theories of recognition, she argues that doing just care requires recognizing the need for recognition as well as acknowledging the impediments to receiving interpersonal, social, and theological recognition. Bringing together resources from pastoral theology and social theory, she develops a feminist pastoral theology and praxis of encounter in order to advance a care that does justice. Scholars, social justice practitioners, and pastoral caregivers will be able to use this resource to discover not only how and why recognition affects human development but also how we might implement a liberative theological praxis that is attentive to the role of recognition in subject formation.