Relationships between people are frequently compromised as a result of religious viewpoints, but appropriate spiritual care requires bridges to understanding that will allow for trust and justice to become visible. The pattern for this book is shaped on the recognition that, while religious expressions differ markedly in their presentation, we can discern at the core of all religious expressions a supposition of sacred presence. It is therefore helpful for us all, in the daily events of our lives, that we approach people of other faiths with a degree of humility, recognizing that neither we, nor they, have a final answer to the question of faith. The book is divided into four parts, each part containing some chapters, in which elements of interfaith care are considered. Part one explores the complexities of interfaith engagement. Part two discusses ways for caring for each other in the search for meaning. Part three claims that spirituality is most difficult, if not impossible to define, but can be visible in a variety of experiences. The fourth part explores ways in which all that has gone before may be put into practice as spiritual care.

Across the helping professions, and as a compassionate response to human suffering, spiritual care is a special process of companioning. Furthermore, all forms of spiritual care always consist in connecting diverse wisdom traditions with care receivers' spiritual resources, longings, and struggles in socio-cultural and contextually pertinent ways. This book thoroughly explicates such understanding with interdisciplinary lenses. Its main purpose is to offer a comprehensive response to the new challenges and opportunities for excellent care presented by increasing cultural and religious-spiritual pluralization. Practical guidelines and case studies are connected with models of spirituality, spiritual toxicity and injury, communication strategies for engaging difference, patterns of caregiving work, and profiles of professional competence. In addition to offering an overarching orientation to the field, the contents of this book invite further reflection, dialogue, and collaboration among clinical pastoral education and psychospiritual therapy students and supervisors; chaplains, pastors and other religious caregivers; counselors; psychotherapists; and others interested in spiritual care in our multifaith world. It thus reflects the shared hope and, indeed, the expectation that spiritual care theory and practice across traditions and disciplines will continue to be enhanced in the days ahead.

The United States is witnessing a rise in the religiously unaffiliated. Participation in traditional religious settings is in decline. But everyone inhabits a location relative to religion, whether or not they practice or identify with a religious tradition. People engage in religious encounters and relationships in myriad ways, and their religious location is one part of their intersecting identities. This shifting religious landscape challenges spiritual caregivers to provide competent care and counsel that honors how persons' religious locations intersect. Jill Snodgrass argues that without a theoretical understanding of religious location, chaplains, counselors, and other spiritual caregivers are left without sufficient tools to navigate this relational terrain. In The Art of Spiritual Care across Religious Difference, she gathers practices and insights from experienced spiritual caregivers and scholars to explore the concept of religious location--a term initially coined by pastoral theologian Kathleen Greider--as an aspect of an individual's intersecting identity. Snodgrass presents a compilation of essays that help spiritual caregivers think reflexively about their own religious locations and how these locations influence relational dynamics with care seekers within a diversity of cultural contexts. This vigorous compilation advances the fields of pastoral and practical theology as well as spiritual care and counseling by developing a robust, interreligious theory of religious difference grounded in insights from Christianity, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Islam. As such, The Art of Spiritual Care across Religious Difference presents a well-timed resource for the training of religiously competent caregivers to serve in hospitals, prisons, places of worship, community mental health centers, offices of campus ministry, and more. Scholars and practitioners will quickly discover that this book will serve as an enduring resource to meet the training needs for spiritual caregivers in ways that will help them to build enduring competencies.

Relationships between people are frequently compromised as a result of religious viewpoints, but appropriate spiritual care requires bridges to understanding that will allow for trust and justice to become visible. The pattern for this book is shaped on the recognition that, while religious expressions differ markedly in their presentation, we can discern at the core of all religious expressions a supposition of sacred presence. It is therefore helpful for us all, in the daily events of our lives, that we approach people of other faiths with a degree of humility, recognizing that neither we, nor they, have a final answer to the question of faith. The book is divided into four parts, each part containing some chapters, in which elements of interfaith care are considered. Part one explores the complexities of interfaith engagement. Part two discusses ways for caring for each other in the search for meaning. Part three claims that spirituality is most difficult, if not impossible to define, but can be visible in a variety of experiences. The fourth part explores ways in which all that has gone before may be put into practice as spiritual care.

This book offers insights into the thinking of majority world practical theologians and introduces the reader to faith realities previously unknown in a quest to create a more inclusive and welcoming practical theological network. Practical theologians are situated in all corners of the globe attempting to make sense of their lived experiences and of those around them from a faith perspective. Historically, practical theology tended to be constructed from academics situated in the West and indirectly marginalized those in and from the majority world. Against this backdrop, this book is a deliberate attempt to empower practical theological voices from the further corners of the global village, based upon the conviction that sharing epistemologies creates an opportunity not only to learn about others and the contexts in which they live, but from them, enhancing the meaning making of practical theology in the present. Cognisant that epistemology as a formal discipline does not always centre lived experience, practical theology has historically prioritised the importance of wisdom, worldview, and a way of life for individual and collective knowing. The diverse issues addressed in this work offers insights into the thinking of mainly Asian and African practical theologians and introduces readers to the faith realities previously unknown to create a more inclusive and welcoming practical theological network. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal Practical Theology.

Practical theology has outgrown its traditional pastoral paradigm. The articles in this handbook recognize that religion, spirituality, lived religion on this side and beyond institutional communities refer to realms of cultures, ritual practices, and symbolic orders whose boundaries are not clearly defined and whose contents are shifting. The Handbook of Practical Theology offers insightful transcultural conceptions of religion and religious affairs collected from various cultures and religions. The first section presents ‘concepts of religion’. Chapters include considerations of the conceptualizing of religion in the fields of 'anthropology', 'community', 'family', 'institution', 'law', 'media', and 'politics' among others. The second section is dedicated to case studies of ‘religious practices’ from the perspective of their actors. The third section presents the main theoretical discourses that map the globally significant diversity and multiplicity of religion. Altogether, fifty-eight authors from different parts of the world encourage a rethinking of religious practice in an expanded, transcultural, globalized, and postcolonial world.

The six volumes of Peterson's Annual Guides to Graduate Study, the only annually updated reference work of its kind, provide wide-ranging information on the graduate and professional programs offered by accredited colleges and universities in the United States and U.S. territories and those in Canada, Mexico, Europe, and Africa that are accredited by U.S. accrediting bodies. Books 2 through 6 are divided into sections that contain one or more directories devoted to individual programs in a particular field. Book 2 contains more than 12,500 programs of study in 152 disciplines of the humanities, arts, and social sciences.