Emmanuel Y. Lartey – författare

Postcolonializing God examines how African Christianity especially as a practical spirituality can be truly a postcolonial reality. The book offers thoughts as to how African Christians and by that token others who were colonial subjects, may practice a spirituality that bears the hallmarks of their authentic cultural heritage, even if that makes them distinctly different from Christians from the colonizing nations. There are themes in both the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Scriptures in which God’s activities result in shattering hegemony, overthrowing the powerful, diversifying communities and affirming pluralism. These have by and large been ignored or downplayed in the formation of Christian communities by western and westernized Christians in Africa. The effect of this is that much of the practice of African Christians imitates that of a European Christianity of bygone times. Postcolonializing God charts a different course uplifting these ignored readings of scripture and identifying how they are expressed again by Africans who courageously seek through the practices of mysticism and African culture to portray a God whose actions liberate and diversify human experience.Postcolonializing God seeks to express the human diversity that seems to be the Creator’s ongoing desire for the world and thereby to continue to manifest the manifold and diverse nature and wisdom of God. It is only as humans refuse to be created in the image of any other human beings, that the richness and complexity of the divine image will be more closely viewed throughout the world.

Postcolonializing God examines how African Christianity can be truly a postcolonial reality and explores how people who were colonial subjects may practice a spirituality that bears the hallmarks of their authentic cultural heritage, even if that makes them distinctly different from Christians from the colonizing nations.

Pastoral theologians from Congo, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, and Zimbabwe address, in this book, the issues of leadership, Ubuntu (community), gender-based violence, political violence, healing, and deliverance faced by pastors and ministers in African contexts today. Drawing on biblical, theological, social scientific, and cultural contextual perspectives, these African Christians offer much needed insights to assist in the care and counseling of persons towards healing, health, and well-being.

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.

A comprehensive resource on the nature and value of African religious lifePortrayals of African spirituality have been tainted in the past by harmful stereotypes and negative judgments or have altogether ignored African religions. Very few scholarly works have encompassed the depth of how spiritual care is conceptualized and practiced in African and African diasporic communities.Spiritual Care in African Religious Cultures offers insights into the nature and value of African religious life while also giving persons of different religious persuasions information about African beliefs and practices. This book reveals how practitioners of African traditional religions and people who engage in African spirituality draw on their own spiritual traditions to help them live satisfying and productive lives. Lartey addresses key beliefs about the divine realm, ancestors, evil, health, death, and life, as well as practices such as ceremonies, manifestation of spirit, naming, and healing rites inherent in African and African Heritage religions, which are utilized in providing care for persons amid the challenges of living. He invites us to go beyond maligning and misrepresenting African religions and to enter into the therapeutic and life-giving realities of African life and thought.Spiritual Care in African Religious Cultures is a comprehensive resource on African understandings of spiritual care and has the potential to enhance communal relationships for multicultural communities.

A comprehensive resource on the nature and value of African religious lifePortrayals of African spirituality have been tainted in the past by harmful stereotypes and negative judgments or have altogether ignored African religions. Very few scholarly works have encompassed the depth of how spiritual care is conceptualized and practiced in African and African diasporic communities.Spiritual Care in African Religious Cultures offers insights into the nature and value of African religious life while also giving persons of different religious persuasions information about African beliefs and practices. This book reveals how practitioners of African traditional religions and people who engage in African spirituality draw on their own spiritual traditions to help them live satisfying and productive lives. Lartey addresses key beliefs about the divine realm, ancestors, evil, health, death, and life, as well as practices such as ceremonies, manifestation of spirit, naming, and healing rites inherent in African and African Heritage religions, which are utilized in providing care for persons amid the challenges of living. He invites us to go beyond maligning and misrepresenting African religions and to enter into the therapeutic and life-giving realities of African life and thought.Spiritual Care in African Religious Cultures is a comprehensive resource on African understandings of spiritual care and has the potential to enhance communal relationships for multicultural communities.

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.

What is spiritual care? Much has been assumed as an answer to this question within particular professional and religious silos. The contributors to this volume offer fresh answers from perspectives of different caregiving professions (medicine, nursing, public health, psychology, pastoral care, and pastoral theology), different religious traditions (Islam, Judaism, Christianity, and Buddhism), and different cultural contexts. Certain red threads become apparent: the importance of deep listening, openness to difference, willingness to recognize the importance of spiritual care as practiced in different professions and religions, respect for the inherent dignity of every person, and support for each individual''s unique spiritual journey. At the same time, the diversity of voices makes clear--both by juxtaposition and argumentation--that the hegemony of a mid-twentieth-century white American Protestant "tradition" of "pastoral care" is being reevaluated, contested, expanded, and even decolonized, as voices formerly from the margins are being brought to the center, and the spiritual needs of persons from many different traditions and locations are increasingly being met on their own terms. The cumulative impact of this work emphasizes that spiritual care is finally inseparable from larger efforts toward justice and peacemaking. This is an invaluable resource for healthcare providers, chaplains, and pastoral professionals.

In today's world the challenge of care is how to respond to people's emotional as well as their economic circumstances. How can we be respectful of the individual and the community in ways that affirm both? How are we to live respectfully with difference and ambiguity? Where shall we find our models of life and care from--the dominant Western or else some kind of global perspective that includes indigenous knowledge? In our theologies do we continue to privilege the study of abstract, conceptual theory or do we give place to pragmatic, aesthetic, and nonverbal forms? In the face of increasing extremism, terrorism, and violence, is it possible to make a sensible choice between radical relativism and absolute essentialism? Are we to be drawn towards the various expressions of religion or to the opportunities and ambiguities of spirituality as it is called upon in many societies today? With the scarce resources available or allocated to health care in many national budgets across the world, shall we give greater attention to the eradication of disease through increasingly advanced technologies and therapeutic strategies or to the promotion of health through primary health care and public health education? Pastoral Theology in an Intercultural World presents practical theological resources for the broad vision, deep passion, and thoughtful action needed for pastoral care in the twenty-first century.

The meaning of pastoral care in modern multicultural societies is challenged and re-examined 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.