In Living Color

An Intercultural Approach to Pastoral Care and Counseling Second Edition

Emmanuel Y Lartey

• Editorial: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
• Año: 2003
• ISBN:
  9781846423987
• Edición: 2
• Categoría: Social Sciences
• Categoría: Social Work

The meaning of pastoral care in modern multicultural societies is challenged and reexamined from a pluralistic, global perspective in this book. Emmanuel Lartey stresses the importance of recognizing different cultural influences on individuals in order to effectively counsel, guide and empower them. He provides a clear and concise history of pastoral care and considers its relationship to different models of counseling and spirituality.

This new edition has been updated to reflect postmodern and postcolonial studies and provides illustrations of how an intercultural approach can work in practice. Theological teachers and students will welcome its return as an indispensable introduction to the field of pastoral care. In Living Color is an essential source of inspiration to leaders from any religious stream who wish to provide pastoral care in a way that reflects their community's cultural diversity. This book is also a useful resource for practitioners in a wider range of caring contexts who work in multicultural environments.

PART I

History, Theory and Practice

CHAPTER 1

Introduction to Pastoral Care

In 1964, Clebsch and Jaekle offered what proved to be a groundbreaking definition of pastoral care. This was so largely because no other work of then recent currency had examined the theory and practice of pastoral care historically. It is true to say that at that time pastoral care was still very much the ‘Cinderella’ of the theological course curriculum. Moreover, at that time, hardly any secular usage of the term is discernible. John McNeill (1977) explored the term cura animarum (cure of souls) from the earliest times BCE. Clebsch and Jaekle, restricting themselves to the Christian era, identified four principal functions, which they saw as characterizing pastoral care throughout Christian history. They went on to claim that one particular function dominated particular periods of history, although recognizing that all functions were present in all ages. In spite of this historiographically somewhat naive claim, Clebsch and Jaekle’s definition of pastoral care was to set the tone of the discussion for the years to come. It is true to say that the definition they offered and indeed the publication of their book, Pastoral Care in Historical Perspective, marked the beginning of what may be described as the recent history of pastoral care.

Pastoral Care consists of helping acts done by representative Christian persons, directed toward the healing, sustaining, guiding and reconciling of troubled persons, whose troubles arise in the context of ultimate meanings and concerns. (Clebsch and Jaekle 1967, p.4)

This has become more or less a standard definition of pastoral care.

In spite of its generic tone, however, the definition demonstrates the important influence of social and historical location. Apart from the specified functions of pastoral care, which we examine in Chapter 4, there are four aspects of the definition that raise significant questions. First, pastoral care is identified with helping acts. It therefore has a pragmatic focus and a somewhat messianic tone, demonstrating the pragmatism and optimism of the 1960s, especially in the US. Second, pastoral care is the preserve of ‘representative Christian persons.’ These are not, the authors argue, to be identified with ordained clergypersons. Rather these are persons who represent Christian faith in that they bring to bear upon problems, the insights and thinking of the Christian tradition. The discussion shows little recognition of the influence of other religious traditions, notably Judaism, on pastoral care. Indeed it suggests that ‘pastoral care’ is ipso facto a Christian term, failing to recognize that the imagery of the shepherd, most beloved of Christian pastoral carers, comes itself originally from the Jewish scriptures. While it is no doubt true that the term has been developed and most significantly used in Christian discourse, it must be borne in mind that what it signifies has been characterized and practiced to a greater or lesser degree in all religious traditions and cultures. Third, pastoral care has to do with ‘troubled persons.’ This problem-centered focus, with the implied problem-solving approach, has affinities with the types of therapies, educational philosophies and management techniques that seem to have appeared in the US in the 1960s. Finally, the context of the troubles focused on in pastoral care is ‘ultimate meanings and concerns.’ This is particularly distinctive existential theological language reminiscent of the theologian Paul Tillich, whose most influential works were written in the US in the 1950s.

American pastoral care practitioner Howard Clinebell could be regarded as a guru of Western pastoral care and counseling. His publications have circled the globe and can be found on library shelves from Fiji to Finland. His first major work was entitled Basic Types of Pastoral Counseling: New Resources for the Troubled (1966). This was later revised and expanded in line with growth both in his perspectives and also in the discipline. This is how he describes the enterprise in the later work:

Pastoral Care and Counseling involve the utilization by persons in ministry of one-to-one or small group relationships to enable healing empowerment and growth to take place within individuals and their relationships… Pastoral Care is the broad, inclusive ministry of mutual healing and growth within a congregation and its community, through the life cycle. (Clinebell 1984, pp.25–26)

Among the issues that are clearly central to Clinebell are the ecclesial (i.e. Christian church) context, the importance of one-to-one or else ‘small’ group relationships and the focus on individuals and their relationships. What was new at the time of publication was the emphasis on growth and empowerment as well as the mutuality of pastoral care ‘within a congregation and its community.’ This concern is now central to all considerations of the subject. Pastoral care is now clearly seen as a communal, congregational matter. Gone from Clinebell’s rendition, is the ‘problem-centred’ focus evident in the subtitle of the first edition, which Mills is unable to escape even in 1990 when he writes: ‘Pastoral care derives from the biblical image of shepherd and refers to the solicitous concern expressed within the religious community for persons in trouble or distress’ (in Hunter 1990, p.836). It is still largely the case that pastoral care is seen as an ‘ambulance service.’

From the British scene Alastair Campbell (1987) offered a terse but comprehensive statement of pastoral care as ‘that aspect of the ministry of the Church which is concerned with the well-being of individuals and of communities’ (p.188). Campbell shares the deep concern of other British writers notably Lambourne, Wilson, Forrester, Selby and more recently Pattison that socio-economic and political forces that cause distress need to be addressed in pastoral care. In overtly theological language and within the framework offered by Clebsch and Jaekle, Pattison (1993) offers the following definition:

Pastoral care is that activity, undertaken especially by representative Christian persons, directed towards the elimination and relief of sin and sorrow and the presentation of all people perfect in Christ to God. (p.13)

The attempt to reclaim the language of Christian theology in pastoral care is observable here. This is very much in line with the desire to reclaim the Christian heritage of pastoral care and to rescue the discourse from its psychological captivity. Important as this is, it raises as many questions as it attempts to answer. Is ‘the elimination of sin’ a real possibility or is this the other worldly idealism of which Christianity has been so vociferously accused? What about sorrow? Is it realistic to hold out the hope that sorrow will be eliminated from people’s lives? What is actually entailed in the presentation of people ‘perfect’ in Christ? These exciting themes are yet to be explored in Pattison’s works.

African American pastoral theologian Ed Wimberly explores Pastoral Care in the Black Church (1979). In this book he defines pastoral care as ‘the bringing to bear upon persons and families in crisis the total caring resources of the church’ (p.18). Wimberly provides a model of and for pastoral care within the Black church that emerges from traditional Black pastoral care while borrowing ideas from systems and crisis theories. In his model, the four functions of pastoral care for liberation are worship, care, nurture and witness. In spite of a focus on crisis, which seems to be the bane of pastoral care worldwide, the categories and practice of pastoral care in the Black church tradition emerge as overwhelmingly about preparing, strengthening and attempting ‘to change those conditions which prevent persons from choosing healthy crisis-coping patterns’ (p.79), within a framework which is communal and supportive. The communal framework is crucial. Pastoral care, especially in the Black church tradition has to do with mobilizing the resources of the total community in caring for the needs of individuals and groups. Wimberly’s later books, notably Liberation and Human Wholeness (1986), demonstrate further the importance of social context, culture, the Black symbolic universe and biblical and African eschatology in pastoral care, especially in the African American situation.

African pastoral practitioners have sought to relate their activities and their reflections to the contextual realities they are faced with. In the wake of the colonial and early missionary experience, which was largely one in which much of African life, culture and thought was denigrated, recent movements have been attempts to rediscover and revalue traditional beliefs and practices and integrate these with the theories and practices received from the West. Postcolonial writers and workers have emphasized the imaginativeness that was present within the colonized community even during Empire days. This now blossoms into the creativity with which postcolonial pastoral caregivers engage their clients. Two authors whose works reflect this shift are Masamba ma Mpolo of Zaire and Abraham Berinyuu of Ghana.

Masamba ma Mpolo has consistently shown an interest in a core belief and experience in Africa, namely that of witchcraft and bewitchment. His models of pastoral care have therefore been ones in which there is a radical search for a ‘liberating spirituality’ (Masamba ma Mpolo 1994). Such spirituality takes seriously African traditional cosmologies, which in fact persist and are clearly manifest in contemporary life and thought. It also seeks culturally relevant interpretations of experienced phenomena. In addition to these, African pastoral caregivers, Masamba would argue, should recognize that forms of what Western practitioners describe as psychotherapy have existed in Africa for centuries. As such, an integration should be sought with Western concepts, some of which might prove helpful in the task of liberation. Consequently, Masamba (1991) advocates ‘insight-oriented therapy’ while also arguing that

disease in Africa is thought of as also having spiritual and relational causes. It may be ascribed either to bewitchment, to the anger of mistreated and offended spirits, to possession by an alien spirit, or to broken human relations. Pastoral Counselling should therefore also use spiritual means of letting people deal with their emotional needs, even through ecstasy, rituals and symbolic representations. (p.28)

Berinyuu shares similar concerns. He attempts to be deeply rooted in the therapeutic practices and interpretations of the peoples of Africa, while dialoguing critically with and attempting to integrate Western forms of healing. For him, ‘a pastoral counselor in Africa, could be defined as [a] shepherding diviner who carefully guides a sheep through a soft muddy spot’ (Berinyuu 1989, p.12). Berinyuu examines processes and practices of divination in Africa and proposes that divination, in both its ‘inspired’ and ‘deductive’ forms, could be considered as an African form of therapy. He chooses Freudian psychoanalysis and Jerome D. Frank’s ‘persuasion healing’ approach as dialogue partners in his integrationist scheme.

Berinyuu proceeds by exploring the implications of storytelling, myths and proverbs, dance and drama, and finally music, for pastoral counseling. Thus he attempts a model of pastoral counseling, and as such also pastoral care, which he calls ‘psychopneumatist,’ drawing on an African ‘spirit-filled’ universe as well as culturally recognizable symbolic forms of interaction such as proverbs and dance, in the quest for appropriate responses to the experiences of life in Africa.

Essential elements of pastoral care

It appears to me that there are five essential elements that any comprehensive definition of pastoral care needs to encompass. These would be: first, a declaration of the nature of activity it is; second, a discussion of agency that explores who are involved or engaged in it; third, an indication of how it is done which includes pointing to resources and their employment in achieving the fourth element of the definition, namely the goals aimed at; last, but by no means least, is a setting forth of motive – why people do it.

In responding to these I will now set out the essential features of a definition of pastoral care that attempts to be intercultural in its nature and scope.

1. Pastoral care is an expression of human concern through activities

In pastoral care, it seems to me, deep concern about what it is to be human is expressed. Pastoral caregivers have a concern for what meets the eye about human persons as well as what may lie deeply buried within them. This implies that there is an aspect of pastoral care that may be hidden. The ‘hiddenness’ lies in the heartfelt desire for humanity to be truly and fully human. It is an all-encompassing passion that all people might live to the fullest of their potential. In the Christian scriptures this is expressed in the saying of Jesus recorded in John 10:10, ‘I have come that they may have life, and may have it in all its fullness.’ Pastoral care has to do with the total well-being of the whole person.

This concern is expressed in activity. Various helping activities such as counseling may offer such an expression but so are celebrating, commemorating, rejoicing and reflecting, as well as mourning or being present with people at different times of life.

2. Pastoral carers recognize transcendence

People who participate in pastoral care recognize a transcendent dimension to life. They realize that there is more to life than often meets the eye. They have an awareness that power, grace and goodness are often not found in the obvious places. They recognize that there is a mysteriousness about life, which is not reducible to sociological, psychological or physiological analyses and explanations, important though these be.

This transcendence is real, although we have no objective and external means of gaining access to it and of verifying whether we are right or not. Different religious traditions have developed ways of speaking about it and have elaborated rites and rituals for signifying and participating in the recognized realities. The languages and rituals of spirituality, whether religious or non-religious, are attempts at coming to terms with it. The content of transcendence for many people is shaped by the formulations of the particular religious traditions in which they have been socialized. It is possible in terms of a given tradition to ascertain the degree of fit of any particular expressed viewpoint, and as far then as that tradition is concerned there is truth and falsehood. Different religious traditions value different understandings of ‘revelation’ and hold their sacred scriptures to have been given by the Deity in specific ways. Each tradition is important and has valuable insights to offer. However, we have no direct access to an objective, external standard by which all viewpoints on transcendence may be judged as ultimately true or false.

In the pastoral care spoken of in this book, religious functionaries are significant participants, although they are by no means the sole or even most important participants. There is a mutuality of participation in pastoral care. Leaders there may be, and their activity certainly merits careful study. However, being an official religious representative does not automatically confer pastoral ability. As a matter of fact, there are many who testify that those who have been of greatest pastoral relevance for them have not been the most obvious or recognized. It is crucial that we study the pastoring function and not simply the official pastoring functionaries. Pastoral care may be mediated through the least recognized source. Unless this reality is recognized and incorporated into the study of it, much that is of the essence of pastoral care will be lost.

There is a sense in which this recognition of a transcendent dimension to life characterizes and distinguishes the pastoral caregiver from other carers. Th...

Índice

• Cover
• Of Related Interest
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Acknowledgments (Second edition)
• Foreword
• Preface
• Part I: History, Theory and Practice
• Part II: Private Care and Public Struggle
• References