Pillars of Salt: Pastoral Care with Adolescents with a Migration Experience

Amy Casteel

doi:10.3390/rel13020184

Abstract

“Lot’s wife looked back”. This detail in the migration journey of Lot and his family illustrates being caught in between needing to move forward but wanting to look back. Many adolescents who have migrated to Europe experience in-betweenness. This article begins from their reported practices of lived religion. This interpretive phenomenological analysis study brings together the domains of lived religion, migration theology, and adolescent development to better understand how pastoral care may address this liminal state. Looking at their descriptions of the presence and absence of important relationships, religious practices, and the experience of the divine shows the importance of these three areas working together. In the absence of strong proximal social relationships, many adolescents with a religious identity who have migrated to Europe turn their attention to the divine Godself. Releasing someone caught in between two places may require an awareness of the concepts of grief and loss, post-trauma theology, and skills in orienting and making social connections. One goal of pastoral care for adolescents who have experienced migration can be to provide a path out of the liminal in-between space to a place where there is room to flourish.

Highlights

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations
Since this study focused on the lived religion of adolescents with a migration experience, the design of the project needed to be accessible for people from a variety of religious, cultural, and educational backgrounds
Pastoral care for those with an experience of migration should start from the presence and absence of social relationships

Summary

Introduction

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. One part of this describes Lot, the nephew of Abraham, who was, together with his wife and two daughters, directed to quickly leave the city where they had settled. She turned from an unknown future to look back at a place that held both memories and expectations This half sentence “Lot’s wife looked back” is pulled out of a very dramatic story, capturing a moment familiar to many people who have migrated. It is a moment of movement in two different directions. Where religion was considered in most of these studies, it was often as a “barrier to integration

Methods

Discussion

Conclusion