“‘PRACTICAL BEARINGS:’ A PASTORAL THEOLOGY OF RELIGIOUS COPING RESEARCH”

Abstract

Introduction In his history of pastoral care in North America, E. Brooks Holifield lamented that pastoral theologians in the late twentieth century seemed unable resist the temptation to allow psychological language overwhelm or define religious tradition. Since that lament, however, many pastoral theologians have successfully avoided significant traffic not only with psychology but also with the social sciences in general. They have done so for good cause. After all, pastoral theologians are primarily theologians, not pastoral social scientists, or even pastoral researchers of religion. As theologians, one of their tasks is set captives free from various forms of idolatrous bondage—including Max Weber's dreaded iron-cage of bureaucratic/managerial purposive rationality in which the social sciences are often trapped. Moreover, while psychology may have once been very dear the church and pastoral theologians, many pastoral theologians nowadays eschew its all too often individualistic theory and elitist practice.