Pastoral Bearings

Leonard Hummel is associate professor of Pastoral Theology and Pastoral Care at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg.Jane F. Maynard is currently serving as Priest in Charge at St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Medina, WA.Mary Clark Moschella is professor of Pastoral Care and Counseling at Yale Divinity School.

• 1 Dedication2 Table of Contents3 AcknowledgmentsChapter 4 1. Pastoral Bearings: Lived Religion and Pastoral TheologyPart 5 I. Congregations, Bodies, and TheologyChapter 6 2. Theological Reflection and Theories of Practice: Rethinking Normative Memory as if Bodies MatterChapter 7 3. Weaving a Communal Narrative: Agape United Methodist ChurchChapter 8 4. Culture Coded Care: Ecclesial Beliefs and Practices in Response to IllnessChapter 9 5. Homeless in Seattle: A Lived Religion of HospitalityPart 10 II. Gender Positive Care: Re-writing Dis/ability, Denominational History and Unchurched ReligionChapter 11 6. Resisting Stares and Stereotypes—Affirming LifeChapter 12 7. Baptist Clergywomen's Narratives: Reinterpreting the Southern Baptist Convention SchismChapter 13 8. "Spiritual But Not Religious"—How Small Groups in America Redefine ReligionPart 14 III. Intercultural NuanceChapter 15 9. Lively Choruses: Relational Dance with GodChapter 16 10. Pastoral Care and Counseling in Independent Evangelical Charismatic Churches in Ghana: A Barthian Theological PerspectiveChapter 17 11. Religion in Thailand: Pastoral Theological Reflection from the Perspective of Thai Buddhist Monks18 Select Bibliography19 About the Authors20 Index

Pastoral Bearings is a richly textured mosaic of lived religion, as practiced in local communities, denominations, and individual lives. The pictures are painful, inspiring, and joyful, providing an earthly view of religious life in diverse communities facing diverse challenges. The concern for pastoral bearings— the pastoral effects of religious beliefs and practices— is addressed in the ethnographic and interview narratives themselves, and also in the probing interpretations that evoke complex pictures of bodies, race, gender, poverty and social class, material culture, illness, dis/ability, and suffering in the religious landscape. Pastoral care-givers and practical theologians will be challenged and informed by this book.