Brite Divinity School

Spirituality, including its expression in religious identity, has been increasingly recognized as a vital source of strength in coping that can be integrated in the counseling process to affect positive outcomes. However, lesbian, gay, and bisexual clients frequently experience conflicts between their religious and sexual orientation identities that complicate or prevent their access to religion as a source of support. Complicating matters, counselors may feel ill equipped to address religious concerns in counseling settings that are not faith based. The Goals, Renewal, Action, Connection, and Empowerment (GRACE) model is offered as a means to assess and integrate religious identity with lesbian, gay, and bisexual clients in the counseling process. A composite hypothetical case illustrates the application of the model with a client.

In “Characteristics of Negro Expression” folklorist Zora Neale Hurston posits “the second most notable characteristic” of Black expression is the will to adorn. Historical accounts of the Great Migration in the United States reveal Black communities sought to navigate the problem of visibility through respectability politics that appealed to the moral agency and goodness of Black people through self-censure and dress. By critically engaging French philosopher Michel Foucault’s theory of panopticism, this article argues today’s visible Black Church perpetuates not a free will to adorn as a result of moral agency but rather a self-surveilling culture that polices the Black female body through the establishment and enforcement of rigid codes of holy dress, as evidenced in Juanita Bynum’s “No More Sheets II.” Au contraire, contemporary Black churchwomen indulging stylistic pleasures of the self through adornment, reclaim not only will but somebodiness, thus realizing a womanist ethic of redemptive self-love.

Foundational texts in pastoral care are difficult to write, primarily because there are so many conversation partners to take into consideration. Yet, in just 200 pages, Karen Scheib has managed to...

"Pillars of Cloud and Fire: The Politics of Exodus in African American Biblical Interpretation." Black Theology, 14(3), p. 279

Anti-Asian xenophobia and discriminatory acts against Asian Americans have increased significantly as the COVID-19 pandemic has rapidly spread across the US. But connections between diseases, racism, and xenophobia are not new in the history of Asian America. While from the 1890s to the 1950s, Asian Americans were primarily stigmatized with the label ‘Yellow Peril,’ from the 1960s to the present, they have been simplistically cast as the ‘model minority.’ However, with the outbreak of COVID-19, misinformation about the virus also spread, and the public perception of Asian Americans has shifted once again from their being the ‘model minority’ to being the ‘Yellow Peril.’ By looking at intellectual and cultural history, I argue that ‘Yellow Peril’ and ‘model minority’ are Orientalist representations of Asian Americans that have been used as hegemonic devices. Orientalism as a relationship of unequal power has structured the obstacles that Asian Americans have struggled against as they try to find a sense of belonging in the US.

Revelation addresses a struggle over how followers of Jesus might negotiate the complex imperial realities of Roman rule. The call for societal distance and disengagement resists and seeks to conceal other voices that urge greater levels of societal interaction. Revelation also raises the urgent issue of how contemporary followers of Jesus might negotiate the world's most powerful empire—the one we in the United States inhabit.

It is possible to construct both ‘ontological’ and ‘chronological’ scales on which Mark's Christology is then plotted. In neither case, however, does the method correspond to Mark's own christological method, which uses narrative to juxtapose pictures of Jesus as both ‘truly human’ and ‘truly divine’. This essay explicates the ‘truly divine’ side of Mark's presentation, arguing that a number of Markan texts express a ‘high’ Christology without compromising either Jesus’ humanity or a truly monotheistic doctrine of God.

Intersectionality is a metatheory that is singularly focused on naming and resisting the exercise of hegemonic power. This article demonstrates the timely value of intersectionality for advancing public trajectories in pastoral and practical theology nationally and internationally. It also articulates the genealogy and core principles of intersectionality. It notes the relevance of such origins and core themes for practices of ministry. It illustrates ways pastoral and practical theologians working in areas of practices of care can draw on this theory effectively to confront asymmetries of power that distort lives and relationships at micro, meso, and macro levels. Finally, it also proposes ways through which pastoral and practical theologians have much to contribute to the ongoing construction of this metatheory.

Abstract Practical Theology (PT) in the US emerged in the latter half of the 20th century shaped by the epistemological turn toward a critical postmodernity and liberation theologies. This article traces the emergence of PT in the 20th and first two decades of the 21st century including attention to the emergence of several constitutive fields and the Association of Practical Theology. I will attend to several trajectories: epistemological and related liberative political influences, effects of privilege and marginalization for the integrity of the discipline and the knowledge it constructs, methodological innovations, and strategies for research. The article describes emerging trajectories.

The Soul of Discernment: A Spiritual Practice for Communities and Institutions is a sequel to Elizabeth Liebert's earlier book, The Way of Discernment: Spiritual Practices for Decision Making. In t...

1. The Thomistic Internet? 2. Authority 3. Beauty, Truth, and the Good 4. Theological Anthropology 5. Virtuous Living 6. Church 7. Conclusions.

This chapter contains sections titled: The Early Years (1970–?1985): The Personal Becomes Political and Relational The Middle Years (1985–1995): Revising Telos, Scope, and Methods Recent Developments (1995–2010): From Power and Identity to Cultural Criticism and Epistemology Methodological and Thematic Contributions References

Within the context of collectivist cultures, moving from one group to another, or changing identities, is an arduous and sometimes violent task. Saul's move from zealous Judean to follower of Jesus is depicted as a violent time of separation and aggregation. In this study, I use the anthropology of Ritual and Social Identity to construct a model of Social Identity and Boundary Breaking Ritual so that modern interpreters can better understand what is happening to Saul on the road to Damascus. Furthermore, utilizing terminology from the study of New Religious Movements, I argue that “recruitment” be used as a more accurate term than “conversion” in this context. I also compare the passage to other similar passages found in the literature of the Greco-Roman world. The models and comparisons provide a methodological framework to help modern interpreters better avoid anachronistic readings of Acts 9:1-19a.

Last summer, at the end of a week-long, intensive course on pastoral care with lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered people, a comment by one of the participants caught my attention. As the evaluation was concluding, Jamie said, Thank you. This is the first time I have had an instructor who reflects my own identity. I found myself thinking: 'Wow, this is what it feels like to sit in a classroom and learn from a professor who looks something like me'... My experience here (at this school) would have been so different if you were still here.. ,

“War changes lives forever.” So begins this edited volume on spiritual care for those suffering military moral injury. In this important, timely, and eminently practical book, the authors give guid...

Patricia Beattie Jung has long been a leader in theological ethics, exploring the intersections of feminism, sexuality, and gender. As a Roman Catholic, she has taught on the faculty of several ins...

1It does not take long to recognize multiple reasons for despair and Hopelessness in our world. In the months leading up to the meeting of the Society for Pastoral Theology in June 2016, our attent...

The fascinating, but complex field of intercultural communication and pastoral care is the focus of research in this article. The authors describe the two approaches of pastoral therapy and show how it can be implemented in an intercultural setting. Although there are major differences between the narrative and brief counseUng approaches, there are also striking similarities. In both cases the pastor tries to work from a nonexpert position and is non-prescriptive in the approach. The authors are convinced that this basic approach of respectfulness makes both models usefull for intercultural work.

After describing key interpretive categories of sanctioned and structural violence, the article identifies some forms of sanctioned structural violence evident in Matthew’s Gospel. It concludes with a brief consideration of contemporary strategies for identifying and resisting scriptural inscribing and sanctioning of violence.

This article reads Acts 27–28.10 as an ‘aquatic display’ that offers Christ-believers a spectacle of navigating the stormy imperial world. It argues that Pliny'sPanegyricussimilarly employs aquatic displays to instruct in negotiating the emperor Trajan's power. It identifies four means in Acts 27 that assert Rome's power – judicial, military, economic, and the sea as a contested site where the sovereignties of God and Rome compete and cooperate – and which Christ-believers must negotiate by various means including submission, awareness of danger, courage, social interaction, agency, contribution to well-being, and discernment of and contestive allegiance to God's greater sovereignty.