Multiple forms of oppression, injustice, and violence today have roots in histories of colonialism. This connection to the past feels familiar for some and less relevant for others. Understanding and responding to these connections is more crucial than ever, yet some resist rather than face this task directly. Others resist oppressive postcolonial conditions. Using intercultural stories and pastoral care scholarship, this book charts pathways through five resistances (not me, not here, not now, not relevant, not possible) to awaken creative pastoral care in a postcolonial world. McGarrah Sharp recommends practices that everyone can do: believing in each other, revisiting how histories are taught, imagining more passable futures, heeding prophetic poets, and crossing borders with healthy boundaries.

This anthology is about caring for all persons as a part of the revolutionary struggle against colonialism in its many forms. In recognition of the varied ways in which different forms of oppression, injustice, and violence in the world today are traceable to the legacy and continuing effects of colonialism, various authors have contributed to the volume from diverse backgrounds including differing ethnic identities, religious and cultural traditions, gender and sexual orientations, as well as communal and personal realities. As a postcolonial critique of spiritual care, it highlights the plurality of voices and concerns that have been overlooked or obscured because of the politics of race, religion, sexuality, nationalism, and other structures of power that have shaped what discursive spiritual care entails today. Postcolonial Images of Spiritual Care presents voices of practical and pastoral theologians, academics, spiritual care providers, religious leaders, students, and activists working to provide greater intercultural spiritual care and awareness in the areas of healthcare, community work, and education. The volume, as such, expands the discourse of spiritual care and participates in the ongoing paradigm shifts in the field of pastoral and practical theology.

This anthology seeks to theorize a method of a radical, decolonial spiritual-care paradigm that can chart a new course in defining--or reframing--what is "spiritual," what is theological, and what is "care." Postcolonial Practices of Care presents voices of educators, chaplains, students, human-rights and disability activists, and other professionals to highlight the problems of disciplinary divides and binaries--such as pastoral/spiritual or ordinary/sacred. In focusing on the practices of care during the pandemic, the editors see their book as contributing to ongoing paradigm shifts and the importance of decoloniality as a method in the field of pastoral care. The praxis of spiritual care addresses--and interrogates--the history of spiritual violence and its imbrication with modernity/coloniality, colonialism, racial capitalism, neoliberalism, and (conscious and unconscious) white Christian supremacy that constructed not only the pastoral and the spiritual but also its divide: the pastoral/spiritual. Such a framework focuses on "religious" difference without probing or critiquing how those differences have reified hierarchies of superiority or sustained ideologies of Euro-centric monocultural ethnocentrism. We want to emphasize the shared practices that bring us together as human beings on Earth rather than to prove we are better, or more unique, than one another.

Care companions in congregations support others at multiple levels. They walk with people during challenging life situations, including death and grief; become prayer partners in moments of need; and are present in everyday moments of life. Sometimes care relationships arise through informal networks such as Sunday school classes or fellowship groups. Other times people are recruited and trained to become part of the caring ministry of a church. Lay Pastoral Care: A Narrative Approach offers guidance for people across a spectrum of care. Using a model grounded in narrative and collaborative theories, Joretta L. Marshall and Christie Cozad Neuger describe key ideas and practices that inform lay care companioning. They also provide comprehensive curricular suggestions for training lay companions. Marshall and Neuger build on a commitment to mutual learning, deepening spiritual growth, and collaborative support for people who wish to become care companions. Congregational leaders and members alike will discover that the recommended practices enhance the relational and spiritual lives of participating individuals and the congregation as a whole.

This book offers a cross-cultural and inter-religious understanding of the ways social transformation in Asia is related to Asian spiritualities. Bringing together scholars and practitioners from different cultures and fields of study, it collates cutting-edge research and applies it to the role of Asian spiritualities in social transformation. Spirituality has garnered increasing attention in recent years across diverse fields of research and practice, from psychology and healthcare, to anthropology, education, sociology, political sciences, social work, feminist studies, cultural studies, religious studies, theology, philosophy, and so on. However, the term means different things within these different disciplines. Spirituality can be understood to be private and personal, but also public and societal, not only as a force that brings about change but also one that helps maintain the status quo – not only as a core element in religion but also as something disconnected from it. This book poses that to gain a firm grasp of spirituality, one needs to traverse these different terrains. Disbarring the orientalist understanding of spirituality that is often found embedded in stereotypes of the East as mystical, esoteric, and spiritual, in contrast to the West as scientific and rational, this book deconstructs this binarism to enable a sophisticated understanding of the diversity within Eastern and Western spiritualities. It presents “Asian spirituality” as a misnomer, focusing on the plurality of spiritualties and the region’s multifaceted religiosity, and it also excavates interfaith terrains. It is of interest to social scientists, theologians and religious scholars, and students and researchers interested in Asian spiritualties and social movements

The author argues that identity politics eliminates Ethiopians' in-between spaces and identities and defines in-between spaces as political, social, religious, and geographical spaces that enable Ethiopians to co-exist with equity, solidarity, and justice. The elimination of in-between spaces and in-between identities creates either-or class, religious, ethnic, and gender categories. Therefore, the author proposes an in-between theology that invites Ethiopians to a new hybrid way of being to resist fragmented and hegemonic identities. The author claims that postcolonial discourse and praxis of in-between pastoral care disrupts and interrogates hegemonic definitions of culture, home, subjectivity, and identity. On the other hand, in-between pastoral care uses embodiment, belonging, subjectivity, and hybridity as features of care and praxis to create intercultural and intersubjective identities that can co-construct and co-create in-between spaces. In the in-between spaces, Ethiopians can relate with the Other with intercultural competencies to live their difference, similarity, hybridity, and complexity.

Unraveling Religious Leadership considers various attributes related to the form and function of leadership within religious institutions in conversation with decolonial ideas and practices. Decoloniality, in negation of the ongoing legacies of colonialism, seeks ways of being and doing beyond white, eurowestern, modern ideals of who a leader is and what a leader does, especially in the context of Christianity and its entanglements with empire. In this book, Lizardy-Hajbi draws upon decolonial ideas, worldviews, and practices to question the current assumed understandings of religious leadership as individual, singular in role and structure, centralizing in power, possessing of expertise and select qualifications, production-oriented, and primarily change-inducing. Pulling on each of these threads invites a reconsideration of the epistemologies (knowledges) and ontologies (notions of being) that give shape to religious leadership in North American Christianity today. Lizardy-Hajbi's innovative approach directly challenges popular leadership styles in wide use among leaders today, placing these styles in conversation with decolonial scholarship, diverse realities and worldviews, and practices that disrupt idealized norms. Popular styles such as authentic, charismatic, servant, executive, and transformational leadership are found wanting in terms of their substance and utility for meaningful leadership within religious institutions. Ultimately, Lizardy-Hajbi engages readers by presenting alternative constructions that consider the myriad complexities within both the role and function of leadership, offering new ways to frame the leadership identities the church needs for today's world.

In an increasingly broken world filled with hate and violence, God’s plan from the beginning was to save and restore the world to the glory for which he had created it. This simple plan has not changed with the evolution of sin, time, or man’s rejection of his creator. Rather, God’s simple twofold plan of redemption included both a commandment to love the creator with all one’s heart, mind, soul, and strength, and a commandment to love one’s neighbor as one’s self. Neither commandment stands in isolation, for one cannot fully love others without a consuming love for God, and neither can one completely love God without a love for the neighbor created by God. The answer to hate is love; the answer to war is love; the answer to violence is love; and the answer to all of societal disfunction is love. The answer is not a commandment to like God and others, because one only likes others because of likeness. Rather, love is a choice. A choice to love what you don’t like. A choice to love what you don’t understand. A choice to love until the God you love sets everything right in eternity.

How do international encounters in Nicaragua connect spiritual formation and liberation theology to transform communities? Seekers of justice from around the world found inspiration in the Nicaraguan revolution and struggle for freedom. After recognizing the patronizing, neocolonial structure of missionary models of aid, pastor Leslie Penrose founded a nonprofit organization, JustHope, with core values of solidarity, mutuality, collaboration, and sustainability in partnership. Hundreds of participants have joined this quest to enact the compassionate and just ethics of the Hebrew prophets and the liberating power of Jesus. Inspiring stories of Nicaraguan-led creativity exploring a new future with volunteers from the U.S. are told by pastoral theologian and ethicist Kathleen McCallie. Framed as an interdisciplinary case study of seminary students traveling for solidarity to explore social justice with JustHope, the book offers glimpses of one group’s journey. Readers explore possibilities for an international partnership between U.S. volunteers and Nicaraguan community organizers. The Nicaraguan base-community model offers critiques of and alternatives to the church in the U.S. and neoliberal development. McCallie contributes to academic and activist discourses about dismantling abusive theology, racism, sexism, and U.S. hegemony.

In this bold and provocative invitation, Martyn Percy imagines what the post-pandemic Church might look like and sets out what it needs to learn. It argues that the Church needs to stop obsessing about itself – its size, its strategies to shore up decline, its waning public influence – and rediscover how to live as the body of Christ. In other words, what does it need to do in order to become more like Christ? As Christ poured out his life for the sake of others, he considers ways in which the Church might imitate Christ in practice today. Whenever Jesus visited anywhere beyond the confines of the Jewish community he immediately became socially useful, and so this extols such virtues as humble service in the community, not because it is an effective way to grow the Church, but because it is faithful to Christ’s own example. Avoiding responses such as exasperation, righteous anger at shortcomings or wishful thinking about returning to the past, he sets out a vision for the Church's future that is both biblical and christological. Incisive, imaginative and engagingly written, this will resonate deeply with many lay and ordained members of the Church.