Injustice and the Care of Souls, Second Edition: Taking Oppression Seriously in Pastoral Care

By Sheryl A. Kujawa-Holbrook

The practice of pastoral care cannot escape the realities of injustices and oppression that often operate in the context where caregiving happens. In response, Sheryl A. Kujawa-Holbrook and Karen B. Montagno present a compilation of essays that reach beyond individualistic, white, Western, middle-class models of caregiving that can mimic systems of injustice. Instead, the resulting volume offers constructive approaches to caregiving that more effectively meet the needs of those who routinely experience marginalization and oppression.

Kujawa-Holbrook and Montagno argue that the fundamental work of religious traditions, including caregiving, is about human freedom and wholeness. As such, Injustice and the Care of Souls helps chaplains, pastoral counselors, social service workers, and other caregivers to better situate their work within the contexts of those seeking care. The book also helps caregivers to reflect on ways their social locations affect their work.

Since its first publication nearly fifteen years ago, this book uniquely offered content that situated contexts such as substructures in urban neighborhoods, religious liturgical practices, and the impact of public policies as the focus for examining critical dynamics surrounding those seeking care, the caregiver, and the hope for oppression-sensitive forms of pastoral care. This second edition revises and reorganizes previous essays while providing additional ones. New chapters include ones that highlight the dead time of prison life, the impact of moral decision-making on veterans, and the life-or-death challenges that immigrants and refugees often face.

Kujawa-Holbrook and Montagno divide this edition's twenty-seven essays into five parts, with the first part devoted to the pastoral caregiver's positionality. The remaining sections address pastoral caregiving as embodied practices, cultural fluency and intersectional awareness, pastoral practice across the life span, and pastoral practice and public witness. This volume's contributors offer spiritual caregivers a compilation of approaches to the care of souls that bring healing, voice, and wholeness to the marginalized and oppressed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Release date: Sep 12, 2023
• ISBN: 9781506482484

Book preview

Praise for Injustice and the Care of Souls, Second Edition

This editorial work challenges us to move beyond individualistic, white, Western, middle-class models of pastoral care. With different authors drawing from the unique contexts of their own experiences, this book offers an insightful paradigm of communal pastoral and spiritual care in various intersectional contexts such as gender, race, class, culture, religion, sexuality, and nationality. This is an invaluable resource for intercultural pastoral care for those who attend to the needs of people as they deal with systems of oppression, injustice, and traumatic stress every day.

—Rev. AHyun Lee, assistant professor of pastoral theology, care, and psychotherapy, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary

"In this second edition of Injustice and the Care of Souls: Taking Oppression Seriously in Pastoral Care, Sheryl A. Kujawa-Holbrook and Karen B. Montagno again make a significant contribution to pastoral care. Time has confirmed what the first publication argued—context and particularity matter. The model of pastoral care that reified the individual and gave scant attention to those relegated to the margins and subjected to the capricious effects of systemic injustice is fading, thanks to Kujawa-Holbrook and Montagno and their collaborators. The new chapters are timely and thought-provoking. The collection is deeply pastoral and, like the first edition, challenges the novice and most experienced to think theologically, pastorally, and systemically. A classic."

—Phillis Isabella Sheppard, E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter chair and Professor of Religion, Psychology, and Culture; interim associate dean for academic affairs; and director of the James Lawson Institute for the Research and Study of Nonviolent Movements, Vanderbilt University, and author of Tilling Sacred Grounds: Interiority, Black Women, and Religious Experience

Struggle, pain, hardship, and loss are inevitable facets of the human condition. Yet, the extent to which we suffer is not simply an individual matter. Systems of oppression, inequality, and marginalization add often unrecognized layers of trauma and grief. This rich anthology of essays from diverse cultural, philosophical, and religious perspectives guides the twenty-first-century chaplain from assumptions to awareness, from stereotypes to cultural competence, and toward the important work of caring for all people.

—Cantor Jonathan L. Friedmann, PhD, dean of the master of Jewish studies program, Academy for Jewish Religion California, and coeditor of Torah, Service, Deeds: Jewish Ethics in Transdenominational Perspectives

"Injustice and the Care of Souls exemplifies an embodied public theology in its oppression-sensitive and anti-racist approach to spiritual and pastoral care. Kujawa-Holbrook and Montagno midwife a text with an impressive community of voices that calls for an embodied practice that is accountable both to diverse traditions and to the emergent needs of marginalized communities. An invaluable conversation partner for all those engaged in ministries of care."

—Storm Swain, Frederick Houk Borsch Associate Professor of Anglican Studies, Pastoral Care, and Theology, United Lutheran Seminary, and author of Trauma and Transformation at Ground Zero: A Pastoral Theology

Pastoral care classic renewed. There is not pastoral care without the facing of injustices, truth-speaking, and reparation. Whether your care-full ministry is in the context of a congregation, chaplaincy, or broader community, this volume is an invitation and a nourishment for the faithful journey of providing effective and sustainable pastoral care.

—Rev. Dr. Zachary Moon, professor of theology and psychology, Chicago Theological Seminary

"An indispensable resource for pastoral care classes. Injustice and the Care of Souls expands our understanding of pastoral care to include how caring ministry may be carried out in the face of intersecting forms of social oppression."

—Kyungsig Samuel Lee, Edna and Lowell Craig Professor of Practical Theology, Spiritual Care, and Counseling, Claremont School of Theology, and coeditor of Justice Matters: Spiritual Care and Pastoral Theological Imaginations in Times of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Kujawa-Holbrook and Montagno are at it again, offering a revision I realize I have been waiting for. Faithful to their original motivating quest to resource ‘pastoral care as if oppression matters,’ this thoroughly revised and reorganized second edition expands the diversities of issues, identities, and intersections of pastoral care today. Activists, pastors, and professors need Kujawa-Holbrook and Montagno’s edited book to inform spiritual care practices in situations always affected by oppressive structures that continue to perpetuate harm from generation to generation. The authors make a compelling case for and show how to practice care that attends to liberation and transformation toward thriving together. This is pastoral care that is real about just how much oppression matters and is a book needed urgently in a grieving, aching world with layers of unhealed wounds while bursting in possibilities and practices of new life. I will be assigning this edition in my pastoral care classes.

—Mindy McGarrah Sharp, associate professor of practical theology and pastoral care, Columbia Theological Seminary, and author of Misunderstanding Stories and Creating Resistances

"This new edition of Injustice and the Care of Souls significantly updates and expands the first edition, offering a fuller conception of what it means to care in contexts of social injustice. Beginning with a strong account of the harm that white supremacy has wrought, the authors in this collection describe situations of people in diverse communities facing marginalization, discrimination, injustice, and/or violence. These essays offer sensitive insight and practical guidelines for caring responses across religious, racial, and cultural barriers. Fittingly, the final essays highlight the role of public witness and activism as vital elements of pastoral practice. This book is an indispensable resource for students of spiritual care, chaplains, religious leaders, and scholars."

—Mary Clark Moschella, Roger J. Squire Professor of Pastoral Care, Yale Divinity School

In a world where ministers confront myriad contexts of suffering, this book is an essential contribution to pastoral care. Students, pastoral ministers, and teachers will benefit from the depth and breadth of diverse experience and scholarship provided by the authors in this second edition.

—Ryan LaMothe, professor of pastoral care and counseling, Saint Meinrad Seminary and School of Theology, and author of A Radical Political Theology for the Anthropocene Era

"Injustice and the Care of Souls is a powerful and timely resource that meets a moment of reckoning within the field as national pastoral and spiritual care bodies strive to become anti-racist, anti-bias, and social justice organizations. This book, by a wide diversity of authors who write with self-reflective awareness of their intersectional social locations, beautifully envisions pastoral care as gardening. The pastoral gardener lovingly tends to the well-being of each individual plant. At the same time, they know that when the soil has become toxic due to oppressive systems, they need to work toward radically changing the environment, or the garden and each plant will continue to suffer. This book is pastoral and spiritual rather than merely psychological or sociological by also acknowledging that the blooming of each plant ultimately is brought about by a transcendent or spiritual reality larger than ourselves that the wisdom traditions know by many names or by the emptiness of no name at all."

—Rev. Jurgen Schwing, ACPE certified educator, core faculty, The Chaplaincy Institute: An Interfaith Seminary and Community

"I welcome this revised second edition of Sheryl A. Kujawa-Holbrook and Karen B. Montagno’s excellent anthology Injustice and the Care of Souls. Incorporating new essays and updating the first edition, this volume again brings voices of the marginalized into the spotlight for pastoral care and shines a light on ways in which traditional, white, Western modes of caregiving, however well-intentioned, can also reinforce and collude with oppressive systems. An important and potentially eye-opening read for religious leaders and all those who provide pastoral and spiritual care."

—Pamela Cooper-White, Christiane Brooks Johnson Professor of Psychology and Religion, Union Theological Seminary, New York, and author of Gender, Violence, and Justice

"The value and importance of this groundbreaking collection has only increased since its first edition. Stellar essays by inside experts cover an expanded number of contexts and provide concrete steps to advocate for those facing adversity amid ongoing inequity, intolerance, and harm. An absolutely essential guide for today’s caregiver and for all those who care."

—Bonnie Miller-McLemore, E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Chair and Professor of Religion, Psychology, and Culture, emerita, Vanderbilt University

Injustice and the Care of Souls

Injustice and the Care of Souls

Taking Oppression Seriously in Pastoral Care

Second Edition

Sheryl A. Kujawa-Holbrook and Karen B. Montagno

Editors

Fortress Press

Minneapolis

INJUSTICE AND THE CARE OF SOULS

Taking Oppression Seriously in Pastoral Care, Second Edition

Copyright © 2009, 2023 by Fortress Press, an imprint of 1517 Media. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Email [e-mail] or write to Permissions, Fortress Press, PO Box 1209, Minneapolis, MN 55440-1209.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023934096 (print)

Cover design: Laurie Ingram Art + Design.com

Print ISBN: 978-1-5064-8247-7

eBook ISBN: 978-1-5064-8248-4

Contents

Preface

Sheryl A. Kujawa-Holbrook and Karen B. Montagno

About the Authors

Part 1: The Pastoral Caregiver

1. Midwives and Holy Subversives: Resisting Oppression in Attending the Birth of Wholeness

Karen B. Montagno

2. Love and Power: Confronting White Supremacy in Pastoral Care

Sheryl A. Kujawa-Holbrook

3. The Womanist Chaplain: Spiritual Care for African American Women in Systemic Injustice

Jessica Chapman Lape

4. Can One Care for a Soul that Doesn’t Exist? And Other Koans from Buddhist Chaplains

Monica Sanford

Part 2: Caregiving as Embodied Practice

5. Community Organizing as Spiritual Care: A Model for Healing Racial Trauma

Nicholas A. Grier

6. The Care of Souls from the Underside of Hope: A Latinx Perspective

Miguel A. De La Torre

7. Deadtime and Redemption: Prison Chaplaincy, Meaning Making, Community, and Healing

Karuna Thompson

8. Making (Ritual) Sense of Our Own Lives

Elaine J. Ramshaw

9. From Cleaning and Mopping to Mutual Recognition: Radical Caregiving and the Call to Heal the World

Cheryl A. Giles and Juliana Cohen

10. Flowers and Songs: A Liturgical Community Approach to Pastoral Care

Eric H. F. Law

11. The Politics of Tears: Lamentation as Justice-Making

William Blaine-Wallace

Part 3: Cultural Fluency, Intersectional Awareness, and Pastoral Practice

12. Addiction, Power, and Powerlessness: Alternatives Toward Recovery

Joel Glenn Wixson

13. Caring for People of Asian Descent in an Age of Anti-Asian Hate and Violence

Greer Anne Wenh-In Ng

14. Wise of Heart: Twenty-First Century Spiritual Care for Jewish Communities and Beyond

Rochelle Robins

15. Light at the End of the Tunnel: Pastoral Care for Muslims

Ahmed Nezar M. Kobeisy

16. Injustice and the Care of Queer Souls

C. J. Fowler and Cody J. Sanders

17. Ableism: The Face of Oppression as Experienced by People with Disabilities

Carolyn R. Thompson

18. Pastoral Care with Transgender People

Sarah Gibb Millspaugh and Mr. Barb Greve

Part 4: Pastoral Practice Across the Life Span

19. Under Stress, Scared, and Lonely: Caring for Children and Youth

Sharon Ely Pearson

20. Just Aging: Practicing Pastoral Care with Older Adults

Jaeyeon Lucy Chung

21. Seeking Wholeness at the End of Life: Progressing from the Margins to the Center

Marcia Chanta Bhan

Part 5: Public Witness and Pastoral Practice

22. Relational Ministry: Ministry with People Who Are without Homes and People Who Are Food Insecure

Elizabeth Mae Magill

23. Pastoral Care in Contexts of Protracted Pandemic: The Ongoing Reality of HIV/AIDS

Altagracia Perez-Bullard

24. Military Moral Injury: Mapping Support for Veterans and Families

Joshua T. Morris

25. Gender-Based Violence: A Network of Harms

Marlene M. Ferreras

26. Walking in the Liminal Space with Migrants and Refugees

Natalie Teague, Pedro Ramos Goyocolea, and Bere Gil Soto

27. Ajo, limón y miel (Garlic, lime, and honey): Reflections from the Aztec Capital on Care in a Pandemic

Rubén Arjona

References

Preface

How does oppression manifest itself in the structures of society? What are the implications of structural oppression for pastoral care? It has been over fourteen years since we started our work on the first edition of Injustice and the Care of Souls. The book developed out of a course we designed and taught at the Episcopal Divinity School (EDS) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, called Pastoral Care as If Oppression Matters. Pastoral care had not been taught at EDS for several years previously. As we looked for books, we found helpful texts for beginners in pastoral counseling but also believed that we needed content with a larger scope beyond traditional pastoral counseling models. Most of our students were pursuing pastoral ministries in local communities where skills in counseling would be helpful but limited, given the scope of care needed by whole communities.

Each time we taught Pastoral Care as If Oppression Matters, we searched for resources (books and people) that spoke to the largest segment of our society: marginalized people. Although we found many excellent resources on general pastoral care, it was more challenging to find texts that addressed the diversity of concerns of marginalized persons. The desire to give a prophetic voice to pastoral care inspired the birth of this project. We were inspired then by the work of Valerie Batts, Donald M. Chinula, Carroll A. Watkins Ali, Emmanuel Y. Lartey, Edward P. Wimberley, Lee H. Butler Jr, and others.

Since 2008, the pastoral care field has grown and diversified exponentially. We appreciate the many colleagues who contributed to the first edition as well as those who used the book in their research and classrooms. Then, as now, this book seeks to broaden and inform the paradigm for pastoral care in a variety of intersectional contexts and communities, including those who are poor, those without homes and/or are experiencing food insecurity, those who are abused, and racial and ethnic communities, among others.

Almost two years ago, we decided that it was time to update and revise the book to make it even more valuable. Chapters have been added on populations such as veterans, prisoners, immigrants, young people, and others who were not included in the first edition. The religious diversity of the collection also has been updated. Some authors from the first edition elected to revise their chapters and new voices have been added. While it is impossible to include chapters on all marginalized groups, based on conversations with colleagues, authors, and those who used the book in the past we sought to address a wider scope of pastoral opportunities likely encountered by pastors and activists today.

An underlying assumption of this book is that pastoral care is inextricably linked with equity and justice. In the face of interlocking social oppressions, those engaged in prophetic ministries cannot approach pastoral care solely from the perspective of white, western, middle-class models that are disconnected from the realities of communities of color and other marginalized people. Overall, the purpose of this book remains constructive in its agenda. That is, the book aims to provide readers with an opportunity to inform and broaden their knowledge and skills in pastoral care, respond to the needs of oppressed persons more effectively, and reflect on ways that the social identities of pastors impact pastoral ministry. The focus is not on individual pastoral counseling per se, but on pastoral care within the context of marginalized communities. How are the realities of racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism, ageism, ableism, gender oppression, and other structural oppressions prevalent within our faith communities? Given such realities, how can we develop more oppression-sensitive forms of pastoral care?

Theologically, this book assumes that the bias of most religious and philosophical traditions is with the marginalized. The primary work of religious communities, then, is human freedom: to provide an opportunity for wholeness for all people. While it is true that all human beings struggle and experience pain, the systemic realities of oppression mean that within human structures some persons have more advantages than others. Skilled pastors can both recognize and analyze intersectionally the impact of oppression on individuals and communities and determine how to best utilize their prophetic role to bring greater healing, voice, and wholeness to those they serve.

As the pastoral care field has diversified, so has the use of terminology. In the first edition of Injustice and the Care of Souls, we used the term pastoral care to define the field. Now terminology such as spiritual care, practical theology, and combinations thereof are found. Similarly, there are evolving differences in nomenclature when referring to specific communities of color and other marginalized communities. The language we utilize is an important part of the voice of the authors. We have made every effort to retain the diverse voices of the authors. Hence, you will find some variation in terminology across articles, although the articles’ terminologies maintain internal consistencies.

This new edition of Injustice and the Care of Souls is structured somewhat differently than the first edition. Rather than grouping the chapters in two sections, we have divided the book into five parts. Obviously, the themes the authors present throughout the book are interdisciplinary and overlapping and do not fit neatly into separate categories. However, to facilitate the usage of this new edition, we divided the chapters into five parts. Part one is devoted to the positionality and social location of the pastoral caregiver. In part two, the themes of the chapters closely relate to different aspects of pastoral caregiving as embodied practice. The need for caregivers to ground pastoral practice in cultural fluency and intersectional awareness is interwoven throughout the chapters in part four. Lastly, in part five, the authors engage topics related to pastoral practice and public witness, exploring areas of concern that address the impact of public policy and marginalization throughout diverse segments of larger society.

We would like to thank all the authors of these chapters for their wisdom and enthusiasm. It is an honor to be entrusted with their work. We are grateful to Fortress Press for developing a second edition and for the skills and professionalism of our first editor, Beth Gaede—who helped birth the first edition and started us off with the second edition—and for our current editor, Yvonne D. Hawkins, who expertly supported the development and completion of this edition. Yvonne’s expertise in practical theology and enthusiasm for the project improved the manuscript in countless ways. Many thanks also to our families, friends, and communities across many years who provide the inspiration for this project.

Sheryl A. Kujawa-Holbrook and Karen B. Montagno

About the Authors

Rubén Arjona, PhD was born and raised in Mexico City. Before coming to the United States, he served as a pastor and taught in two seminaries in Mexico City. His research includes the pastoral care of men, the intersections of pastoral care and liberation theologies, the care of couples and families, and Erik H. Erikson’s psychosocial theory. Currently, Arjona serves as assistant professor of pastoral care at Union Presbyterian Seminary in Richmond, Virginia.

Marcia Chanta Bhan, MDiv is the associate for mission and outreach at Saint Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church in Dallas, Texas. Her previous posts include interfaith chaplain at Tufts Medical Center, associate university chaplain for Protestant ministry, and chair of the Cambridge (Massachusetts) Human Rights Commission.

William Blaine-Wallace, PhD is an Episcopal priest and pastoral counselor. The author of Water in the Wastelands: The Sacrament of Shared Suffering and When Tears Sing: The Art of Lament in Christian Community, Blaine-Wallace has ministered in parishes and hospices as well as mental health and educational settings. He lives on a farm in the foothills of Western Maine, where he and his spouse rescue donkeys.

Jaeyeon Lucy Chung, PhD, MLIS is associate professor of pastoral theology and care and the director of the Styberg Library at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois. A first-generation immigrant originally from South Korea and a United Methodist layperson, Chung sees herself in tri-vocational roles—teacher, pastoral theologian, and library leader. She is the author of Korean Women, Self-Esteem, and Practical Theology: Transformative Care as well as articles on intimate partner violence, undocumented migration, anti-Asian racism, and pastoral theology.

Juliana Cohen, MDiv has degrees in anthropology, liberal studies, and theology. She has worked as research associate for the Moses Mesoamerican Archive at Harvard University and has taught courses on spiritual care and counseling, human migration, ethnographic methods, and storytelling. Her current research is focused on the intersection between caregiving practices, spirituality, and social change. Juliana was born and raised in Colombia, and she is passionate about the plant world, the stars, and what they teach us.

Miguel A. De La Torre, PhD is an internationally recognized scholar and professor of social ethics and Latinx Studies at Iliff School of Theology in Denver. The 2020 winner of the American Academy of Religion Excellence in Teaching Award, he has published forty books, five of which received national awards. He wrote the screenplay for the documentary Trails of Hope and Terror, trailsofhopeandterrorthemovie.com.

Marlene M. Ferreras, PhD is assistant professor of practical theology at the HMS Richards Divinity School at La Sierra University in Riverside, California. Her research focuses on decolonial approaches in care and counseling with working-class Latinx women.

C.J. Fowler is a master of divinity candidate at Harvard Divinity School on the ordination track. He graduated with distinction from Yale University in 2021 with a bachelor of arts in religious studies. While there, he was awarded a Solomon Research Fellowship in LGBT Studies to pursue senior thesis research in late-twentieth century US lesbian and gay history. Originally from Little Rock, Arkansas, C.J. hopes to work nurturing queer and trans-affirming Christian communities in the Bible Belt.

Cheryl A. Giles, PsyD is the Francis Greenwood Peabody senior lecturer on pastoral care and counseling at Harvard Divinity School and a licensed clinical psychologist. She teaches courses on spiritual care, trauma, and contemplative care of the dying. Her research interests are trauma-informed care and the role of chaplaincy in improving health care disparities. Her most recent book is Black and Buddhist: What Buddhism Can Teach Us About Race, Resilience, Transformation, and Freedom, co-edited with Pamela Ayo Yetunde.

Joel Glenn Wixson, PsyD, CAS (he/his) is a white, straight, cis male, married, father, able, right-handed, teacher, musician, and doctor of psychology. He holds a mortgage and has employment, housing, access to food, and support. He is socially connected to a mostly white community where his positionality is tacitly accepted.

Pedro Ramos Goyocolea, MDiv is the pastor and organizer of Comunidad Limen Christian Church, a progressive Latinx community in Tucson, Arizona. He holds a master of divinity degree from Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California, and is an ordained minister with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).

Barb Greve, MDiv, MCRE is a Unitarian Universalist minister, hospice chaplain, and past co-moderator to the UUA. Genderqueer himself, Barb has spent over half his life educating religious and academic institutions about gender identities, sexual orientation, and oppression. Committed to bringing the beloved community closer to being, he uses righteous anger and holy love to inspire and invite change.

Nicholas A. Grier, PhD, LPC is associate professor of practical theology, spiritual care, and counseling at Claremont School of Theology, counselor at the Bishop Wellness Center at Willamette University, and founder of Coloring Mental Health Collective, a community-focused organization that advocates for the mental health of Black and brown people. He is the author of the book Care for the Mental & Spiritual Health of Black Men: Hope to Keep Going.

Ahmed Nezar M. Kobeisy, PhD is associate professor at King Abdulaziz University and former faculty member at Le Moyne College, Syracuse University, both SUNY Oswego and SUNY Albany, and Hartford Seminary.

Sheryl A. Kujawa-Holbrook, EdD, PhD (her/hers) is professor of practical theology and religious education at Claremont School of Theology and professor of Anglican Studies at Bloy House, the Episcopal Theological School at Los Angeles. She co-edited the first edition of Injustice and the Care of Souls. A certified Episcopal chaplain and priest, she taught pastoral care at Episcopal Divinity School and Bloy House. She has written widely on racism and white supremacy in pastoral care, formation, interreligious engagement, and congregational life.

Jessica Chapman Lape, PhD is the assistant professor and director of interreligious chaplaincy at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities. She is a womanist pastoral theologian, chaplain, and doula.

Eric H. F. Law, DD, an Episcopal priest, is the founder of the Kaleidoscope Institute, the mission of which is to create diverse and sustainable communities. For more than twenty years, he has provided transformative and comprehensive training and resources for churches and ministries in all the major church denominations in the United States and Canada. He writes a weekly blog called The Sustainist: Spirituality for Sustainable Communities in a Networked World.

Elizabeth Mae Magill, DMin is ordained by the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and an interim pastor of indoor churches for Southern New England Conference of the UCC. She is founding pastor of Worcester Fellowship, and Missioner to the affiliates of Ecclesia Ministries, a network of street churches reaching adults who are homeless or at risk. She is the author of Five Loaves, Two Fish, Twelve Volunteers: Growing Relational Food Ministries (Upper Room 2020), elizabethmaemagill.com.

Sarah Gibb Millspaugh, MDiv is a cisgender Unitarian Universalist minister who helped develop the groundbreaking UU and UCC sexuality education curriculum series, Our Whole Lives, and currently serves on the UU Association’s regional staff. Ordained in 2005, Sarah is called to enact the transformative power of religious community to foster justice, love, wholeness, and interconnection.

Karen B. Montagno, MDiv is an Episcopal priest, retreat leader, writer, and activist in the gun violence prevention movement. She was a seminary community life dean and theological educator. A member of Spiritual Directors of Color, she most recently served as a canon at the Cathedral in Cincinnati. Karen is a faith leader in Moms Demand Action and was co-editor of the first edition of Injustice and the Care of Souls.

Joshua T. Morris, PhD, BCC is a bivocational scholar-practitioner. He teaches introductory and advanced spiritual care courses in hybrid and on-campus platforms at seminaries across the United States. He also serves as assistant director for the Spiritual Services Department at Children’s Mercy Hospital and as a chaplain in the United States Army Reserve. He is the author of Moral Injury among Returning Veterans: From Thank You for Your Service to a Liberative Solidarity and numerous peer-reviewed articles.

Greer Anne Wenh-In Ng, PhD is associate professor emerita at Emmanuel College, Victoria University in the University of Toronto. She also taught at Trinity Theological College, Singapore, and Vancouver School of Theology. An ordained minister of the United Church of Canada, Wenh-In has served her denomination locally, regionally in Christian formation and development, social justice and ethnic ministries, and nationally as a curriculum writer and in racial justice.

Sharon Ely Pearson, MACE is an Episcopal layperson whose vocation has spanned over forty years as a Christian formation leader, author, and editor with experience working with children, youth, and adults on the congregational, diocesan, and church-wide level. A graduate of Virginia Theological Seminary, she is an Education for Ministry mentor, Godly Play teacher, Sacred Ground facilitator, and confirmation leader in Connecticut. She writes at www.rowsofsharon.com.

Altagracia Perez-Bullard, PhD is an Episcopal priest, director of contextual ministry, and assistant professor of practical theology at Virginia Theological Seminary. Her areas of expertise include practical theology, Latinx ministry, congregational development, education psychology, youth development, and community organizing.

Elaine J. Ramshaw, PhD, an ELCA laywoman, is a spiritual director and an online teacher of pastoral care for several seminaries scattered across the country. She taught pastoral care full-time for sixteen years at Methodist, Lutheran and Episcopal seminaries until the sugar maples called her home to New England in 2001. She is the author of Ritual and Pastoral Care and The Godparent Book, a how-to book that was issued in revised form in 2020.

Rochelle Robins, MAHL, BCC serves as vice president and dean of the chaplaincy school at the Academy for Jewish Religion, California. Rochelle is an ACPE certified educator and directs the academy’s Clinical Pastoral Education program.

Cody J. Sanders, PhD is pastor of Old Cambridge Baptist Church in Cambridge, MA, where he also serves in religious, spiritual, and ethical life at both Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is an affiliated assistant professor of pastoral theology and chaplaincy studies at Chicago Theological Seminary and the author of several books, including A Brief Guide to Ministry with LGBTQIA Youth and Christianity, LGBTQ Suicide, and the Souls of Queer Folk.

Monica Sanford, PhD is one of only two Buddhist chaplains to lead a religious life department at a college or university. Sanford is one of only a handful of Buddhist chaplains to receive a complete theological education with a PhD in practical theology from Claremont School of Theology. She published the first dedicated textbook for Buddhist chaplains, Kalyānamitra: A Model for Buddhist Spiritual Care, in 2021.

Bere Gil Soto, MA, MDIV serves as the pastor of Iglesia Hermandad Cristiana (Disciples of Christ), a vibrant and growing Latinx congregation on the west side of Indianapolis. She was born and raised in San Luis Potosí, Mexico, where she earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology. She also holds a master of arts in marriage and family therapy and a master of divinity, both from Christian Theological Seminary.

Natalie Teague, JD is immigration legal counsel to the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). As a former solo immigration attorney, domestic violence prosecutor, and federal public defender, Natalie’s career has revolved around advocating for immigrants, women, and children. She received the Leary Davis Service and Leadership in the Community Award for Elon Law Alumni, and the Latinx Alumni Award from the Carolina Latinx Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Bilingual in Spanish, Natalie is a North Carolina licensed attorney with practice limited to US immigration and nationality law.

Carolyn R. Thompson, MDiv served on the steering committee for the World Council of Churches Ecumenical Disability Advocates Network for fifteen years, and also on the Disability Ministries and Wider Church Ministries boards of the United Church of Christ. She is retired from the Commission for Persons with Disabilities in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is a graduate of the Episcopal Divinity School, and is a woman with a lifelong disability.

Karuna Thompson, PhD is a second-generation American Buddhist who is ordained as a minister in the Shambhala Buddhist tradition. Her ministry emphasizes restorative justice practices, peacemaking, and community enrichment and development. She has been a staff chaplain and a volunteer in the Oregon Department of Corrections since 2001. She is currently an adjunct faculty member at Claremont School of Theology and Western Oregon University, and sits on the advisory board for the Western Restorative Justice and Reentry Center at Western Oregon University.

Part 1

The Pastoral Caregiver

Chapter 1

Midwives and Holy Subversives

Resisting Oppression in Attending the Birth of Wholeness

Karen B. Montagno

But the midwives feared God; they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them.

—Exodus 1:17

Context and community have shaped my ministry and approach to pastoral care. In his foreword to Edward Wimberly’s Relational Refugees, Gilbert H. Caldwell writes about the innate nature of context. Whenever we put pen to paper or fingertips to keyboard, we do so in a particular historical and cultural context.¹ From the time I was a youth, the context that surrounds my cultural experiences and the values of my community have been influential forces.

Why you talk so proper? You need to get back to your roots, gal, and I ain’t meaning your hair! These are phrases I remember from childhood. They came from my southern cousins questioning my proper northern way of speaking. Their advice about getting back to the roots of where I came from (in my case, the South) was as important as taking proper care of new hair growth as a Black girl. Knowing your roots, your community of people, and where you came from was critical to being whole, knowing who you were and where you were going. This is the interconnectedness of context and community.

My story, however, is one of overlapping contexts. I am an African American woman, a descendent of African people enslaved in North Carolina. Now retired, I was an instructor and practitioner of pastoral care, an Episcopal priest in a local parish, a cathedral canon, a diocesan staff person, a seminary dean, and a parent. My communities are multiple, significant, and formative.

Although my current context is diverse, my African American heritage forms my worldview. My school days in the North were spent during the turbulent struggles for civil rights for African Americans and the Vietnam era of the 1960s and 1970s. My father, a research scientist, and my mother, a nurse, faced many of the barriers, frustrations, and humiliations of African American professionals who tried to move forward and contribute meaningfully to society during that time. Like many other African American professionals, they raised funds, marched, and were involved in organizing for the struggle for civil rights.

During that time, our neighborhood was in flux. It was a changing mix of African Americans, white Americans, and Italian and Puerto Rican Americans. It was a time of throwing off old racial norms and labels and claiming a self-defined identity. It was a time of struggle, reclamation, protest, and resistance. During the turmoil, our small neighborhood Episcopal church, which was an African American congregation, was a place of quiet beauty, nurture, and graciousness.

Equally formative were the seasons of my childhood spent in the rural, Baptist South. Those years reflect the ways that ethicist Peter J. Paris lifts up the practical wisdom of African American elders as an important source of training for African American children. Whenever their children were separated from their grandparents by geography (as when African Americans had emigrated to the cities), many generations of parents sent their children to live with their parents during school holidays . . . spending the summer in the care of one’s grandparents enabled the child to learn about their values and experience the practical import of these values.²

Those days in the South offered their own context. Worship services, prayer meetings, Bible studies, choir practices, and visiting family formed the fabric of my weeks. Neighbors spent time visiting from house to house and lent their collective expertise to any issues that emerged. The South’s blazing heat of sunny days would give way to the mysteries of the black, black night. Into the night, neighbors’ voices would echo, carrying stories about great-grandparents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Amid growing pains and adolescent angst, these stories of life, death, crisis, recovery, despair, and joy gave me a perspective and sense of wholeness that continues today.

These overlapping contexts help shape my approach to pastoral care. Context and the community of the caregiver, as well as those of the care-seeker, set the stage for the pastoral care encounter. For example, here are some of the concerns and contexts that I bring to the work of pastoral care:

The challenges and strengths borne in the historical and continuing oppression of African peoples, especially African American men and boys, and other oppressed communities in this country.

The baby boomer era as a matrix where the tension between conformity and human rights and political action took place.

Geographical diversity and dualities such as north/south, city/rural, cyclical poverty/upward mobility.

Concerns of African American women and families.

Ministry and seminary communities.

Not only do my context and community inform what I bring to pastoral care, they also give clues about the challenges—both personal triggers and insensitivies—I may face as a pastoral caregiver. Caregivers from oppressed populations often bring their own struggles with oppression to the pastoral care encounter. Because of this context, self-care and mindfulness about the impact of oppression are critical. While shared oppression can provide valuable insights and solidarity, it also presents challenges. Christian educator Verna Dozier speaks from her own experience: One of the great tragedies of being an oppressed people is that you take on, almost without intending to do it, the evaluation of the controlling community.³

Internalized Oppression

Diversity, equity, and inclusion trainers Valerie Batts and Suzanne Lipsky each write about internalized oppression. Lipsky tells us that internalized oppression and racism create harmful evaluations and patterned behaviors. Internalized oppression is this turning upon ourselves, upon our families, and upon our own people the distress patterns that result from the racism and oppression of the majority society.⁴ Taking on a negative evaluation of others shatters the self-esteem, authority, and confidence of the caregiver. Batts describes five expressions of internalized oppression:

System beating as attempting to get over or around oppressive social systems through manipulation.

Blaming the system as deflecting responsibility for one’s action or putting all the blame on another.

Anti-white avoidance of contact as avoiding contact with whites or distrusting all whites.

Denial of cultural heritage as distrusting one’s own group or accepting that one’s own group is inferior.

Minimization of the political significance of racial oppression as feeling powerless (such as learned helplessness) or misdirecting anger to persons with less power.⁵

Operating from internalized oppression can limit growth and new learning if used habitually or unconsciously. Ultimately, internalized oppression does not address the root causes of oppression itself. Batts relates internalized oppression to what she calls modern racism.⁶ Modern racism is old-fashioned racism expressed covertly at personal, interpersonal, institutional, and cultural levels. These two forms of racism play off and trigger each other. The task, then, is to become aware of dysfunctional old patterns of racism and internalized oppression and strategize new methods for interrupting these and all forms of oppression.

Considering the dynamics of internalized oppression, the overlapping and interrelated nature of my contexts and community further suggests that addressing oppression is essential for me as a caregiver. It requires adopting an approach that is holistic—addressing a care seeker’s (and my own) physical, spiritual, and psychological needs equally. By holistic, I mean equally caring for the person’s spirit, body, and mind because these, too, are interconnected. Furthermore, spirits, bodies, and minds cannot remain whole if they are not integrated into community. Pastoral theologian Emmanuel Lartey writes about holism, saying that it involves working with other caregivers for the total well-being of all persons.⁷ This totality includes social networks and the relevant psychosocial, theological, and ethical disciplines. As a Christian African American, this holism comes together, takes shape, and derives meaning through my faith life. Pastoral care is one way I live out my call to faith.

Resisting Oppression

In the context of my African American community, there is a sense of urgency, peril, and challenge. The liberative acts of African Americans struggling against oppression have been part of the unfolding story of this country. Questions about the impact on our future abound. Has the ongoing legacy of oppression and internalized oppression subverted our confidence and power to take risky and strategic steps toward wholeness? Have we turned against ourselves? Has oppression kept us from observing and witnessing to the promise we hold? Has the spell of mobility seduced us from the power of solidarity in community?

Despite many social gains, African Americans continue to stagger under the weight of systemic economic and social disparities. African American males, in particular, have become an endangered species disproportionately predisposed to poverty, prison, violence, and stress-related disease. Writer Salim Muwakkil describes the challenges that African American boys and men face as a social emergency.⁸

The theme of resistance against social oppression in general suggests a challenge for pastoral caregivers. Pastoral theologian Carroll A. Watkins Ali points to advocacy and agency in dismantling oppressive systems as overlooked roles for the field of pastoral care. Pointing toward the African American context, Watkins Ali says that:

The pastoral care of African Americans is not just a situation that African American pastoral theologians and pastoral caregivers need to address. The existential problems that confront African Americans today are as much an American problem as the institution of slavery was an American problem. Hence the crisis in Black America presents a ministry situation that the field of pastoral theology and care needs to come to terms with collectively.⁹

Pastoral caregivers must be agents of the scriptural vision spoken of in the book of Isaiah where lamb and lion exist in safety together. Another biblical image for the impact of pastoral care is a sumptuous banquet table with enough provision for all and to which all are invited. Together, such visions compel us to midwife the birth of a place for all humanity. This is the challenge for pastoral care. These visions suggest this promise is available if we integrate contexts and community with respect for difference and a sense of mutuality and responsibility for the well-being of others. Community and Scripture are reference points.

Models of Pastoral Care in Scripture: The Midwives in Egypt

In Scripture, there are many images that have been used as models for the work of pastoral care. For many Christians, Jesus is the model pastoral caregiver as a savior/liberator, teacher, healer, and prophet. Scripture also offers other images of a pastoral caregiver who facilitates divine transformation in the lives of people and communities. Creator, shepherd, gardener, potter, and wounded healer are common images of pastoral caregivers.

The model that speaks most clearly to me is that of the Hebrew midwives found in the story of the Exodus. This story is positioned at the beginning of the iconic story of God’s work of liberating the Israelites from oppression, forging community, and establishing an ongoing presence among the Hebrew people. The Exodus story has been formative and a source of strength for many African peoples in the diaspora as we continue the struggle to attain freedom in our own contexts. In the story, women working as a team are models of pastoral caregivers. The agency of women, teamwork, and collective resources are important themes. The women act against the powers of the world (the king) because of their fear (or taking seriously the call) of God. There are other themes as well, such as oppression, solidarity, resistance, transformation, liberation, and blessing. Together, the various themes create a context of urgency, peril, challenge, and promise. Consider the passage:

Therefore, they set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labor. . . . But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread, so that the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites. The Egyptians became ruthless in imposing tasks on the Israelites and made their lives bitter with hard service in mortar and brick and every kind of field labor. They were ruthless in all the tasks that they imposed on them.

The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, ‘When you act as midwives to the Hebrew women, and see them on the birthstool, if it is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, she shall live.’ But the midwives feared God; they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them. (Exod 1:11a, 12–17b)

The function of the midwife is seemingly simple and practical—to attend to birth. In reality, the midwife’s task is quite challenging and complex. Trained in practical knowledge, collective wisdom, and experience, the midwife is a mentor who offers strategy to empower and bring about birth. The midwife seeks to preserve health and ensure safety—attending, listening, and witnessing to the process and what is emerging. The midwife honors what is being birthed by encouraging and urging the one giving birth to use collective resources necessary for birth. There is attention to forces at work that are not seen. In many ways, the role of a midwife is similar to a pastoral caregiver’s.

Any birth is transformative, and the work of the pastoral caregiver is to attend that transformation. One aspect of the midwives’ story that makes it particularly relevant to my context and community is that the midwives took subversive, risky, and strategic steps to interrupt and dismantle oppression and to ensure the wholeness and future of their community by preserving the lives of the male children.

Learning from the Wisdom of Pastoral Caregivers of Color

As a pastoral caregiver, I have been surrounded by a community of pastoral care colleagues, including pastoral caregivers of color. Their collective voice has been urgent, formative, wise, and supportive. These colleagues help represent my context and community. They have been a source of authority and accountability as well as challenge. I asked several of these colleagues of color five questions about the work of pastoral care as seen through their context and community.¹⁰ Their answers reflect many of the issues raised in this essay. The major points of their collective wisdom are paraphrased below. The answers are not listed in order of priority.

What comes to mind when you hear the phrase pastoral care as if injustice or oppression really mattered?

An understanding of oppression, power, and privilege is key.

In an ideal world, pastoral care in the face of injustice might mean a redundancy of care. However, there is a profound and deep recognition that, sadly, many do not experience a redundancy of care.

Pastoral care is a sacred practice that considers how the Spirit is working on various levels: mind, spirit, body, and community. Pastoral care has the goal of transformation, salvation, liberation, redemption, healing, and restoration.

Care takes place within a particular social, cultural, historical context. It asks: What are the norms, strengths, or challenges of the situation, individual, or group? What does health look like in this context?

Being present and available to listen, comfort, mentor, encourage, witness, and advocate is important.

Being a practical resource and assessing concerns of safety, food, health, shelter, clothing, and livelihood are important.

Pastoral care at its best comes naturally from the community.

What skills have been important to you as a pastoral caregiver of color?

Recognizing that the person or group brings gifts and solutions to the situation as well as challenges;

Respect, mutuality, and compassion;

Presence, listening, and witnessing; Patience to let the story unfold in its own time;

Networking, resource development, and team and coalition building;

Credibility is important, which means knowing the person or community and being known;

Spiritual practice, prayer, faith, and reliance on God;

Counseling and other skills that can be transferred to a variety of contexts;

Knowledge or a willingness to explore other contexts, history, cultures, and norms, as well as a willingness to explore assumptions and learn, relearn, or unlearn