Christopher C. H. Cook – författare

'Remarkably beautiful and pastoral' JUSTIN WELBY, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY'Brimming with wisdom and humanity' DAME SARAH MULLALLY, DBE, BISHOP OF LONDONStruggling with God gets right to the heart of a great predicament for many Christians. When it feels as if our struggles are overwhelming - and our capacity for faith and hope and love is diminished - how is it possible to maintain, never mind nourish, our relationship with God?The truth, as this deeply compassionate volume reminds us, is that Jesus came alongside people wrestling with mental health problems. Many familiar conditions, such as anxiety and depression, and more severe ones, including bipolar affective disorder and schizophrenia, are addressed by the authors here. Dispelling common myths and misconceptions, they explore the impact such mental health disorders can have on individual Christians, Church and society..Each chapter includes biblical reflections relevant to its theme, prayers, questions to facilitate individual/group study, and pointers to further reading. In short, the book presents a Christian vision of spiritual and mental wellbeing through prayerful struggling with God.

Deliverance Ministry provides a theologically critical (but balanced), spiritual and practical approach to deliverance ministry in the Church today, taking into account cultural, historical, psychological and medical perspectives. Based upon the work of the authors in providing national and diocesan training on deliverance ministry in the Church of England, it covers a wide range of phenomena, including hauntings, poltergeists, place memories, spirit attachment, occult involvement and possession states. The book emphasizes the need for collaboration with mental health professionals, as well as spirituality, team working, safeguarding, liturgy and pastoral care. It is informed by the guidelines on deliverance ministry approved by the House of Bishops of the Church of England in 2022.

In recent years, resilience has become a near ubiquitous cultural phenomenon whose influence extends into many fields of academic enquiry. Though research suggests that religion and spirituality are significant factors in engendering resilient adaptation, comparatively little biblical and theological reflection has gone into understanding this construct. This book seeks to remedy this deficiency through a breadth of reflection upon human resilience from canonical biblical and Christian theological sources.Divided into three parts, biblical scholars and theologians provide critical accounts of these perspectives, integrating biblical and theological insight with current social scientific understandings of resilience. Part 1 presents a range of biblical visions of resilience. Part 2 considers a variety of theological perspectives on resilience, drawing from figures including Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Part 3 explores the clinical and pastoral applications of such expressions of resilience. This diverse yet cohesive book sets out a new and challenging perspective of how human resilience might be re-envisioned from a Christian perspective. As a result, it will be of interest to scholars of practical and pastoral theology, biblical studies, and religion, spirituality and health. It will also be a valuable resource for chaplains, pastors, and clinicians with an interest in religion and spirituality.

The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781472453983, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivative 4.0 license.Experiences of hearing the voice of God (or angels, demons, or other spiritual beings) have generally been understood either as religious experiences or else as a feature of mental illness. Some critics of traditional religious faith have dismissed the visions and voices attributed to biblical characters and saints as evidence of mental disorder. However, it is now known that many ordinary people, with no other evidence of mental disorder, also hear voices and that these voices not infrequently include spiritual or religious content. Psychological and interdisciplinary research has shed a revealing light on these experiences in recent years, so that we now know much more about the phenomenon of "hearing voices" than ever before. The present work considers biblical, historical, and scientific accounts of spiritual and mystical experiences of voice hearing in the Christian tradition in order to explore how some voices may be understood theologically as revelatory. It is proposed that in the incarnation, Christian faith finds both an understanding of what it is to be fully human (a theological anthropology), and God’s perfect self-disclosure (revelation). Within such an understanding, revelatory voices represent a key point of interpersonal encounter between human beings and God.

In Mystical Theology and Contemporary Spiritual Practice several leading scholars explore key themes within the Christian mystical tradition, contemporary and historical. The overall aim of the book is to demonstrate the relevance of mystical theology to contemporary spiritual practice. Attention is given to the works of Baron von Hugel, Vladimir Lossky, Margery Kempe, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Thomas Merton, and Francisco de Osuna, as well as to a wide range of spiritual practices, including pilgrimage, spiritual direction, contemplative prayer and the quotidian spirituality of the New Monasticism. Christian mystical theology is shown to be a living tradition, which has vibrant and creative new expressions in contemporary spiritual practice. It is argued that mystical theology affirms something both ordinary and extraordinary which is fundamental to the Christian experience of prayer.

Addictive disorders are characterised by a division of the will, in which the addict is attracted both by a desire to continue the addictive behaviour and also by a desire to stop it. Academic perspectives on this predicament usually come from clinical and scientific standpoints, with the 'moral model' rejected as outmoded. But Christian theology has a long history of thinking and writing on such problems and offers insights which are helpful to scientific and ethical reflection upon the nature of addiction. Chris Cook reviews Christian theological and ethical reflection upon the problems of alcohol use and misuse, from biblical times until the present day. Drawing particularly upon the writings of St Paul the Apostle and Augustine of Hippo, a critical theological model of addiction is developed. Alcohol dependence is also viewed in the broader ethical perspective of the use and misuse of alcohol within communities.

Addictive disorders are characterised by a division of the will, in which the addict is attracted both by a desire to continue the addictive behaviour and also by a desire to stop it. Academic perspectives on this predicament usually come from clinical and scientific standpoints, with the 'moral model' rejected as outmoded. But Christian theology has a long history of thinking and writing on such problems and offers insights which are helpful to scientific and ethical reflection upon the nature of addiction. Chris Cook reviews Christian theological and ethical reflection upon the problems of alcohol use and misuse, from biblical times until the present day. Drawing particularly upon the writings of St Paul the Apostle and Augustine of Hippo, a critical theological model of addiction is developed. Alcohol dependence is also viewed in the broader ethical perspective of the use and misuse of alcohol within communities.

Spirituality in Mind offers a unique, personal, and critical perspective on the complex entanglements between psychiatry, spirituality, religion, and theology. Drawing on over four decades of experience, the author explores how spirituality, despite often being overlooked or undervalued, is central to holistic, patient-centred psychiatric care. Through compelling case studies and interdisciplinary insights, the book challenges conventional symptom-focused models and advocates for a shift toward meaningful recovery. It engages with the concept of "clinical theology," highlighting the ordinary theological concerns of patients and the need for psychiatry to be more spiritually attentive. By integrating perspectives from the critical medical humanities, this book demonstrates that spirituality is not an optional extra but a core concern of psychiatry, psychiatrists, and patients alike. Spirituality in Mind raises vital questions about the nature and purpose of psychiatric practice, offering a new vision for mental health care.

In recent years, resilience has become a near ubiquitous cultural phenomenon whose influence extends into many fields of academic enquiry. Though research suggests that religion and spirituality are significant factors in engendering resilient adaptation, comparatively little biblical and theological reflection has gone into understanding this construct. This book seeks to remedy this deficiency through a breadth of reflection upon human resilience from canonical biblical and Christian theological sources.Divided into three parts, biblical scholars and theologians provide critical accounts of these perspectives, integrating biblical and theological insight with current social scientific understandings of resilience. Part 1 presents a range of biblical visions of resilience. Part 2 considers a variety of theological perspectives on resilience, drawing from figures including Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Part 3 explores the clinical and pastoral applications of such expressions of resilience. This diverse yet cohesive book sets out a new and challenging perspective of how human resilience might be re-envisioned from a Christian perspective. As a result, it will be of interest to scholars of practical and pastoral theology, biblical studies, and religion, spirituality and health. It will also be a valuable resource for chaplains, pastors, and clinicians with an interest in religion and spirituality.

Currently, religion is absent or severely underemphasized within the medical humanities, and The Routledge Handbook of Spirituality, Religion, and the Medical Humanities forges direct engagements between the fields of medical and health humanities, on the one hand, and religious studies and theological studies on the other. This volume consists of 35 chapters from an international and interdisciplinary range of contributors, organized into 6 parts:Religious Studies and Theology in the Medical Humanities: Tensions and TransformationsThe Socio-Spiritual SelfCulture and the Culturally MediatedSpace, Place, and BodiesBeliefs, Brains, and BehavioursSpirituality and Religion in Healthcare: Application and ImpactBy directly connecting major questions and themes from each of these domains, this volume firmly establishes a needed bridge and valuable resource for stakeholders with an interest in how mental and physical health relates to the human drive for meaning.

The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781472453983, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivative 4.0 license.Experiences of hearing the voice of God (or angels, demons, or other spiritual beings) have generally been understood either as religious experiences or else as a feature of mental illness. Some critics of traditional religious faith have dismissed the visions and voices attributed to biblical characters and saints as evidence of mental disorder. However, it is now known that many ordinary people, with no other evidence of mental disorder, also hear voices and that these voices not infrequently include spiritual or religious content. Psychological and interdisciplinary research has shed a revealing light on these experiences in recent years, so that we now know much more about the phenomenon of "hearing voices" than ever before. The present work considers biblical, historical, and scientific accounts of spiritual and mystical experiences of voice hearing in the Christian tradition in order to explore how some voices may be understood theologically as revelatory. It is proposed that in the incarnation, Christian faith finds both an understanding of what it is to be fully human (a theological anthropology), and God’s perfect self-disclosure (revelation). Within such an understanding, revelatory voices represent a key point of interpersonal encounter between human beings and God.

In Mystical Theology and Contemporary Spiritual Practice several leading scholars explore key themes within the Christian mystical tradition, contemporary and historical. The overall aim of the book is to demonstrate the relevance of mystical theology to contemporary spiritual practice. Attention is given to the works of Baron von Hugel, Vladimir Lossky, Margery Kempe, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Thomas Merton, and Francisco de Osuna, as well as to a wide range of spiritual practices, including pilgrimage, spiritual direction, contemplative prayer and the quotidian spirituality of the New Monasticism. Christian mystical theology is shown to be a living tradition, which has vibrant and creative new expressions in contemporary spiritual practice. It is argued that mystical theology affirms something both ordinary and extraordinary which is fundamental to the Christian experience of prayer.

In this insightful book, accounts of voice hearers are presented, evaluated and interpreted by a Christian theologian and psychiatrist. By listening to the first-hand experiences of voice hearers and evaluating them in the light of Christian theology, the book enables the reader to understand the experiences of voice hearers as a part of Christian experience and to engage with the theological issues raised by them, including the nature of revelation. This engaging and thought-provoking collection looks at a range of stories - ranging from comforting to complex to simply conversational - to encourage debate and search for meaning and also show how the reader can adapt clinical and pastoral practice to better aid people in this situation.

Spiritual issues still raise ethical and professional dilemmas in mental healthcare. This text use narrative excerpts and case illustrations to explore the importance and challenge of spirituality in clinical psychiatric practice and show how spiritual concerns can be included in a range of psychiatric treatment options.