Abstract
Bernadette Flanagan and Sharon Thornton (eds), The Bloomsbury Guide to Pastoral Care, Bloomsbury Continuum: London and New York, 2014; 240 pp.: 9781441125170, £35.00/$45.95 (hbk)
This is a useful resource for undergraduate students of pastoral care, pastoral theology and practical theology, especially those seeking good overview summaries of shifts and trends from both European and North American perspectives. The two opening chapters of each section dealing with European trends and themes (Kevin Egan) and North American trends and themes (Bernadette Flanagan and Brita L. Gill-Austern) are the strongest, most coherent and therefore the most useful for students seeking to understand developments in the field of pastoral care and pastoral theology, particularly in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Their mode of presentation will allow a beginner to map clearly the distinctives of the two contexts and to illustrate clearly the important need for critical engagement with the different North American and European emphases in this field, most notably through the distinction between pastoral counselling and pastoral care and the need for clarity around psychotherapeutic influences, assumptions and values. Inadvertently, and not sufficiently intentionally, the chosen format draws attention to the Western focus of the Guide. It is remarkable that neither the North American nor the European contributors appear to refer to writers from African perspectives, Asian perspectives and South American perspectives, apart from one engagement with Emmanuel Lartey’s model of intercultural counselling which he developed while teaching in Birmingham, UK. There is attention paid to the powerful influence of the context in which pastoral care is offered and received and this is helpful. There is one essay from Andrew Sung Park on racial healing. There is, however, scant attention paid to issues of migration and mobility other than through the lens of asylum seeking. Benny McCabe’s essay in this area is powerful and persuasive but creates the possibility of an assumption that intercultural engagement will be individualistic rather than communitarian. The postcolonial theological endeavour in Europe and North America is not engaged with very effectively.
The essays that follow are illustrative of the distinctives and different foci in European and North American contexts. The contributors are, in the main, practitioner-scholars and this adds a contemporary relevance for students beginning studies in this field as to the range of social settings and contexts in which pastoral care is required. Flanagan and Thornton are keen to demonstrate the rapidly changing and range of challenging contexts in which pastoral practice can be exercised. This creates a degree of imbalance in the Guide when one essayist, Annemie Dillen in her essay on ‘Nurturing Families: Challenges for Family Ministry’ engages with a very traditional notion of family and family ministry which is not explored very critically. This essay also draws attention to a feature of the Guide which is not dealt with overtly. The contributors are mainly writing from a Roman Catholic perspective. This is helpful and to be welcomed but it would help the student to navigate through this Guide to be aware of the particularity of the perspective with which they engage.