A Response of the Pastoral Care and Ministry to Vulnerable People in the Neoliberal World - From the Perspective of Psychosystemic Theory

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to help persons who are economically exploited and who are oppressed by the malignant social system such as sexism, classism, materialism in pastoral care and church ministry. With the question how pastoral caregivers go beyond the limited scope of counseling to the roles of liberating those who are slaves of pathological society and economic system, I have an insight from Graham’s psychosystemic theory. In order to approach both to the people and the world of suffering, I emphasize transforming power which comes from reciprocal interplay between the psyche of individuals and their socioeconomic context. Exploring the political, social, and cultural backgrounds of suffering individuals can never be separated from the process of understanding the inner world. Rather, the more we explore the background of the individuals, the more a new world of possibilities for change and resistance against evil system and ideology that is oppressed in our inner world opens up. This study reveals that churches should become the place of compassionate resistance against evil systme and influence in this corrupted world. Congregations also need to have sympathy and solidarity with the vulnerable people. Within the topic of neoliberalism and its impacts on human life, I examine several subjects: economically vulnerabily, neoliberalism, psychosystemic theory and implications in the pastoral care and church ministry. I develop my arguments, first, with the concept of psychosystemic theory in pastoral care and counseling which helps ministers and pastoral caregivers not to ignore social and political problems. Second, I develop a socioeconomic understanding of the human life in the context of neoliberal world. Then, in the third part of the research, I search a theological interpretation of the meaning of care in the context of the society of overheated competition and fatigue. Lastly, I suggests several implications for the pastoral care and the church ministry.