century to limit its concern to experiences like bereavement, difficulties in relationships, crisis intervention, and addictions; to understandings and concerns of identity development, personality, and personhood; and to clinical conditions like depression and anxiety. Hence, pastoral theology’s primary focus became the individual person, those in closest relationship to the individual, and eventually to the various systems, environments, or contexts in which the individual lived and related. Particularly influential figures in the second half of the twentieth century in North America, who are representative of diverse understandings of, approaches to, and foci within pastoral theology, include Don S. Browning, Donald Capps, Howard Clinebell, James E. Dittes, Andrew D. Lester, Nancy J. Ramsay, Carroll Saussy, Charles W. Taylor, and Edward P. Wimberly; and outside North America, Paul Ballard, Alastair Campbell, and Eduard Thurneysen.
Various movements and disciplines closely related to, and often in conversation with, pastoral theology were either born or became more organized during this same period. Each tended, in various ways, to utilize theological and human scientific perspectives or conceptual frameworks for the concerns and tasks of pastoral care and counseling. Four are particularly noteworthy. The first was “personalist” care and counseling, which grew out of philosophical personalism as embraced especially by professors and students at Boston University, and was represented by Paul E. Johnson and Carroll Wise. It held that the individual person is the primary ontological category and unit of care, which includes the various components and constituents of personality as well as the person’s experiences, struggles, and needs. Wise in particular argued for human experience being the locus of theological experience, meaning theological reflection necessarily has to arise out of life as it is lived. The second was “clinical theology,” a predominantly British phenomenon represented by Robert Lambourne and Frank Lake. The latter’s belief was that care and counseling are necessarily “christocentric,” meaning the adult Jesus is the paradigm both of authentic personhood and ideal pastoral care. As the pastoral caregiver or counselor engages in the process of correlating various understandings offered by faith on the one hand and psychology and psychiatry on the other, faith and its precepts remain foundational and thus are the ultimate guide to, and shaper of, care and counseling. The third was “the psychology of religion,” which remains a vital discipline even though it is often disregarded by theological and religious studies as well as the majority of psychology faculties due to its interdisciplinary methods and its largely critical stance toward both religion and psychology. That is, in applying the theories and methods of psychology, which tend to devalue the role of religion in human experience, precisely to the study of religion and theological beliefs, the psychology of religion simultaneously belongs to and exists apart from the established fields of religion, theology, and psychology. Influential representatives include Capps, Dittes, Paul Pruyser, Diane Jonte-Pace, Ann Belford Ulanov, and the Jesuit W. W. Meissner. The fourth, which also remains a vital movement, is “clinical pastoral education” (CPE). This began with Boisen’s vision in 1925 and continues to focus on training pastoral caregivers by means of placing them in actual ministry situations in hospitals, prisons, and mental health clinics and having them reflect with peers and supervisors on the experiences. This experience is particularly important is developing critical self-awareness along with a deepening understanding of the caring process itself. The CPE movement has been represented by Richard C. Cabot (also a pioneer in medical social work), Russell Dicks, and, more recently, by Charles E. Hall Jr. and Charles V. Gerkin.
This narrowing of pastoral theology’s focus to pastoral care and counseling, including its related movements and disciplines, paralleled the pattern of increased specialization among theological disciplines that began in the nineteenth century, though the end result was quite different.
Contemporary Developments and Debates
Contemporary pastoral theology continues to be viewed primarily as the theology and practice of pastoral care and counseling, is still informed largely by Protestant liberalism, and is still centered chiefly on both “person-in-environment” transactions and a concern for concrete and contextual experience. Particularly influential figures, also diverse in their understandings of, approaches to, and foci within pastoral theology, include some mentioned previously as well as David W. Augsburger, Carrie Doehring, Robert C. Dykstra, Nancy J. Gorsuch, and Howard Stone; and outside North America, Philip Culbertson, Valerie M. DeMarinis, Elaine Graham, Stephen Pattison, and Riet Bons-Storm.
However, contemporary pastoral theology has broadened in at least two additional ways. First, due to the influences of Marxist, feminist, and liberationist thought as well as critical social theories, some now conceive of pastoral theology as necessarily attending to more “public” concerns. Those include the effects that various forms of abuse, oppression, and injustice have on both individual and corporate well-being. Continuing to bring the perspectives of theology and the human sciences into critical relationship through various methods of correlation and hermeneutics, pastoral theology thus envisioned draws heavily on the concept of praxis to underscore the view that once the insights of theory and practice in critical relationship are discovered, one must intentionally take action to enhance the public good in light of those insights. Pastoral theologians Pamela D. Couture, James Newton Poling, Christie Cozad Neuger, Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore, and Larry Kent Graham are representative of those increasingly interested in how pastoral theological reflection more broadly conceived, pastoral ministry, constructive theology, and particularly pastoral care and counseling are both influenced by and, in turn, may influence not only the private or individual realms of daily life but also the ecclesial and political sectors in ways consistent with Christian precepts.
A second broadening, which is actually a move to reclaim the classical grounding of pastoral theology in theological principles and reflection, is also taking place. Central to this effort is the goal of reducing the predominant role the human sciences and cognate disciplines have had in shaping both the theories and methods of pastoral theology, so that pastoral theology is guided principally by theological precepts and perspectives that shape pastoral reflection and practice with respect to pastoral care and counseling and beyond. This current focus within pastoral theology is represented by yet another diverse group, including Deborah van Deusen Hunsinger and Daniel S. Schipani, who are influenced chiefly by neoorthodox and postliberal theologies, and especially by Karl Barth; Andrew Purves, who is guided by patristic emphases as well as by Reformed orthodoxy; Michael Jinkins, who also works from Barthian and classical Reformed perspectives, and whose approach focuses largely on pastoral leadership and ecclesiology, thus demonstrating kinship with British understandings of pastoral theology; and Leonard M. Hummel, whose work is grounded in particularly Lutheran thought. Still a comparatively small movement, it has a growing set of voices whose final impact on pastoral theology by seeking to re-envision it in more explicitly theological ways remains to be seen.
Roman Catholic
Term
Since Vatican II, the terms pastoral theology and practical theology have been used almost interchangeably among Roman Catholics. Strictly speaking, pastoral theology is an area or focus within the academic discipline of practical theology and attends to what is classically called poimenics or pastoral care. However, pastoral theology is more commonly conceived in broader terms, denoting what poimenics, along with catechetics, religious education, moral theology, and social ethics, liturgics, missiology, and canon law together—that is, practical theology—seeks to provide. According to Karl Rahner, the objective is engaging in theological reflection in order to discern how, in light of both the nature of the church and concrete contextual circumstances, the church (clergy and laypersons) should engage in ministry in both intra- and extraecclesial contexts (Rahner, 1968).
Modern Period to Vatican II
From the late eighteenth century until the completion of Vatican II reforms in 1965, Catholic views of pastoral theology largely paralleled what has been described as occurring in Protestantism during the same era. That is, pastoral theology was concerned with the formal training and practices of clergy and drew heavily on the guidance of pastoralia as well as the collective wisdom and experiences of seasoned
