Injustice and the Care of Souls, Second Edition - 2nd Edition by Sheryl a Kujawa-Holbrook & Karen B Montagno (Paperback)

About the Book

Injustice and the Care of Souls, Second Edition, explores injustices in church and society and their impact on pastoral caregiving. The book offers pastoral and spiritual caregivers broader contexts, knowledge, and skills to respond effectively to marginalized people and to reflect on how their own social locations affect their work.

Book Synopsis

The practice of pastoral care cannot escape the realities of injustices and oppression that often operate in the context where caregiving happens. In response, Sheryl A. Kujawa-Holbrook and Karen B. Montagno present a compilation of essays that reach beyond individualistic, white, Western, middle-class models of caregiving that can mimic systems of injustice. Instead, the resulting volume offers constructive approaches to caregiving that more effectively meet the needs of those who routinely experience marginalization and oppression.

Kujawa-Holbrook and Montagno argue that the fundamental work of religious traditions, including caregiving, is about human freedom and wholeness. As such, Injustice and the Care of Souls helps chaplains, pastoral counselors, social service workers, and other caregivers to better situate their work within the contexts of those seeking care. The book also helps caregivers to reflect on ways their social locations affect their work.

Since its first publication nearly fifteen years ago, this book uniquely offered content that situated contexts such as substructures in urban neighborhoods, religious liturgical practices, and the impact of public policies as the focus for examining critical dynamics surrounding those seeking care, the caregiver, and the hope for oppression-sensitive forms of pastoral care. This second edition revises and reorganizes previous essays while providing additional ones. New chapters include ones that highlight the dead time of prison life, the impact of moral decision-making on veterans, and the life-or-death challenges that immigrants and refugees often face.

Kujawa-Holbrook and Montagno divide this edition's twenty-seven essays into five parts, with the first part devoted to the pastoral caregiver's positionality. The remaining sections address pastoral caregiving as embodied practices, cultural fluency and intersectional awareness, pastoral practice across the life span, and pastoral practice and public witness. This volume's contributors offer spiritual caregivers a compilation of approaches to the care of souls that bring healing, voice, and wholeness to the marginalized and oppressed.

Review Quotes

"This editorial work challenges us to move beyond individualistic, white, Western, middle-class models of pastoral care. With different authors drawing from the unique contexts of their own experiences, this book offers an insightful paradigm of communal pastoral and spiritual care in various intersectional contexts such as gender, race, class, culture, religion, sexuality, and nationality. This is an invaluable resource for intercultural pastoral care for those who attend to the needs of people as they deal with systems of oppression, injustice, and traumatic stress every day." --Rev. AHyun Lee, assistant professor of pastoral theology, care, and psychotherapy, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary

"In this second edition of Injustice and the Care of Souls: Taking Oppression Seriously in Pastoral Care, Sheryl A. Kujawa-Holbrook and Karen B. Montagno again make a significant contribution to pastoral care. Time has confirmed what the first publication argued--context and particularity matter. The model of pastoral care that reified the individual and gave scant attention to those relegated to the margins and subjected to the capricious effects of systemic injustice is fading, thanks to Kujawa-Holbrook and Montagno and their collaborators. The new chapters are timely and thought-provoking. The collection is deeply pastoral and, like the first edition, challenges the novice and most experienced to think theologically, pastorally, and systemically. A classic." --Phillis Isabella Sheppard, E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter chair and Professor of Religion, Psychology, and Culture; interim associate dean for academic affairs; and director of the James Lawson Institute for the Research and Study of Nonviolent Movements, Vanderbilt University, and author of Tilling Sacred Grounds: Interiority, Black Women, and Religious Experience

"Struggle, pain, hardship, and loss are inevitable facets of the human condition. Yet, the extent to which we suffer is not simply an individual matter. Systems of oppression, inequality, and marginalization add often unrecognized layers of trauma and grief. This rich anthology of essays from diverse cultural, philosophical, and religious perspectives guides the twenty-first-century chaplain from assumptions to awareness, from stereotypes to cultural competence, and toward the important work of caring for all people." --Cantor Jonathan L. Friedmann, PhD, dean of the master of Jewish studies program, Academy for Jewish Religion California, and coeditor of Torah, Service, Deeds: Jewish Ethics in Transdenominational Perspectives

"Injustice and the Care of Souls exemplifies an embodied public theology in its oppression-sensitive and anti-racist approach to spiritual and pastoral care. Kujawa-Holbrook and Montagno midwife a text with an impressive community of voices that calls for an embodied practice that is accountable both to diverse traditions and to the emergent needs of marginalized communities. An invaluable conversation partner for all those engaged in ministries of care." --Storm Swain, Frederick Houk Borsch Associate Professor of Anglican Studies, Pastoral Care, and Theology, United Lutheran Seminary, and author of Trauma and Transformation at Ground Zero: A Pastoral Theology

"Pastoral care classic renewed. There is not pastoral care without the facing of injustices, truth-speaking, and reparation. Whether your care-full ministry is in the context of a congregation, chaplaincy, or broader community, this volume is an invitation and a nourishment for the faithful journey of providing effective and sustainable pastoral care." --Rev. Dr. Zachary Moon, professor of theology and psychology, Chicago Theological Seminary