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In the fields of pastoral care and pastoral theology, there are times when a book signals a paradigm shift. This is one such book. LaMothe develops a political pastoral theology that is used to examine critically political, economic, and societal structures and practices. In the first part of the book, LaMothe argues that care and pastoral care are political concepts, which, along with the notion of justice, can be used as a hermeneutical framework to assess macropolitical and macroeconomic realities. Included in this section is the notion of civil and redemptive discourse, necessary for the survival and flourishing of persons and polis. The last section of the book examines U.S. Empire, capitalism, class, classism, and other pressing political issues using the hermeneutical lens of care.
This book explores the growing awareness, brought on by the recent explosion of communication technology, that all human beings are citizens of the world. Ryan LaMothe argues that this awareness comes with an urgent need to address political issues, systems, and structures at local, state, and international levels that harm human beings and our one habitat. Through the lens of pastoral theology, LaMothe analyzes the concepts of care, faith, power, and community as they are related to addressing local and global problems linked to neoliberal capitalism, racism and classism.
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.
As awareness of the widespread presence of trauma grows, popular culture can name everything stressful "traumatic." Yet, diagnostic definitions of trauma overlook cultural understandings that refine our conceptualization of trauma. M. Jan Holton and Jill L. Snodgrass argue for a theory and theology of trauma to navigate such complexities. In Reframing Trauma, Holton and Snodgrass compile essays that expand our understanding of trauma as a stress-trauma continuum. The volume engages the challenges of racism, eco-violence, and myriad sociopolitical and interpersonal injustices that injure individuals, communities, and the globe. Each essay is grounded in a strength-based approach to trauma and...
Ryan LaMothe believes that pastoral counseling involves the practice and process of offering and creating a relationship and communal space where persons can revitalize their faith. He provides a faith-psychological model for understanding the practice of pastoral counseling as one of revitalizing faith. LaMothe explores how the experience of faith emerges in human development and how the organizations of these experiences are present in the counseling relationship. LaMothe sets the stage by describing faith as vital concern and studying the dynamics of faith in human interactions. He argues that it is not so much efficacy, meaning, purpose, or pleasure that motivate people, but rather the d...
Given the fierce urgency of now, this important book confronts and addresses key problems and questions of political theology with the aim of proposing a radical political theology for the Anthropocene Age. LaMothe invites readers to think and be otherwise in living lives in common with all other human beings and other-than-human beings that dwell on this one earth.
A foundational premise in this book is that the question and struggle of the 21st century for people in Western societies is one of community. To be relevant and helpful, psychological and, in particular, psychoanalytic theories must consider this question and struggle. This unique and valuable book seeks to reframe psychoanalytic theory and practice in terms of community and experiences of communion.
In Prisms of Faith, a diverse and distinguished group of scholars approach the theme of religious education and Catholic identity from their respective disciplinary perspectives, offering compelling insights of interest to scholars, catechists, and the general reader alike. The first three chapters are more historical in nature, offering targeted studies that focus on the Apostolic Fathers as a resource in the formation of faithful Catholics, the preaching of St. Augustine, and religious education in modern Poland. The last four chapters have a more contemporary focus, approaching current initiatives and challenges in the formation of faithful Catholics. Issues under consideration include th...
This book explores the varied ways men respond to the precarities of life. Using novels and autobiographies, LaMothe surveys depictions of masculinities gone awry as well as portrayals of courageous, resilient men who find ways to adopt more life-enriching forms of relating to other men, women, and more-than-human species.
A Political Psychoanalysis for the Anthropocene Age presents an evaluation of the politics of climate change and considers how psychoanalysis can contribute to this discourse. Presented in two parts, the book first uses a psychoanalytic approach to interrogate political-economic realities and their impact on shaping Western political selves in the Anthropocene age. Ryan LaMothe identifies core illusions of the Western psyche and how they shape behavior and relations, as well as how they are implicated in various emotional responses to climate change like eco-mourning and eco-denial. Topics such as political dwelling, sovereignty, political violence and change, climate obstacles such as capit...