Volume 25, Issue 1

The spiritual care of dying children and their families requires both sensitivity and competence. Parents – and adults, in general – not only recognize an intrinsic value in children, but also see them as important symbols of hope and as promise for the future. Hence, hope may be challenged when a child is facing death. From the field of spiritual and practical theology, this research attempts to correlate the experience of children and families, and Christian sources on hope. Particular attention is given to the importance of bodies and space, desires and fears, as well as to the role of narratives in order to deepen the meaning of hope in situations that seem bereft of it.

Data from a recent survey on pastoral care consultations (PCC) in Norway (N=408) is presented, showing that PCC is a service priests and deacons provide for people in the municipality, independent of faith affiliation. The most common PCC themes regarded mental and social distress, such as grief, conflicts, and loneliness. Furthermore, illness-related themes were prominent, and a specter of religious and moral issues. We discuss the results in the context of ongoing changes and reforms in both church and health care, and point at possible health promoting dimensions of PCC as existential assistance in the space between personal network support and public health care.

With the changes in the world we live in, the conditions for learning change. Children and adolescents have access to orientation opportunities in the media, which they can approach independently. Digital environments call for a rethinking of educational theory and teaching practice in terms of content and didactics. In the contexts of YouTube and Instagram, Influencing has developed as a new factor in market, opinion and personality formation. In order to understand peer learning on social media, two classical learning theories can be applied. In the context of communication science and media pedagogy, influencing is based on an update of the conception of parasocial relationship. Technological aspects have to be taken into account. The article concludes with a media pedagogical assessment and religious pedagogical perspectives for educational practice and research.

This article seeks to construct a model for holistic Christian teaching grounded in the trinitarian kenotic praxis of love from the practical theological perspective. As a praxis of mutual caring, Christian teaching is considered as participating in and modelling the trinitarian kenotic praxis of love to help learners live the eschatological reign of God in the world. Christian teaching is a hermeneutic process and an interdisciplinary and missional enterprise that emphasizes conversation and solidarity with the world.

Western ways of thinking about our ecological context have too often failed to nurture meaningful relationship with it. This failure is rooted in our assumptions about what it means to know. Approaches to environmental education (including environmental education in religious communities and beyond) that rely on rationalist and objectivist epistemologies fail to adequately address the emotional and relational aspects of forming ecological character and identity. Ecological encounter, as spiritual and pedagogical practice, grounds an integrated and comprehensive way of knowing, loving, and caring for a dynamic and mysterious world, and the place of human life within it.

Over the past few decades, practical theologians in Korea have devised a framework to address important issues, correlating theory and practice and bridging the divide between pastors and lay people to facilitate open communication. However, the clerical paradigm has deep roots in Korean culture and ideology, which, combined with the Confucian patriarchal system, poses a challenge to Korean practical theology. These factors cause practical theology to reflect on its limitations and to move toward a hermeneutical- praxis paradigm by dealing with Christian praxis , connecting church with society for public responsibility, and providing an egalitarian leadership between pastors and lay people.

This article honours the rich contexts from which liberation theologies and decolonial insights emerge. It includes an invitation to practical theologians to be mindful of the long-standing intellectual traditions behind these strands. The authors summarize and distinguish the crucial insights and points of differences as they argue for rigorous practical theological methods. They draw from their concrete experiences in the Americas to show the intricate possibilities of using liberation and decolonial thinking in practical theology.

This review article focusses on three new texts in Pastoral theology, each of which, offers an important and interesting turn in the discipline. The three texts – Caring For Souls in a Neo-Liberal Age , by Bruce Rogers-Vaughn 1 , Race, Religion, and Resilience in the Neo-Liberal Age , by Cedric C. Johnson 2 and Care of Souls, Care of Polis by Ryan Lamothe 1 – will be reviewed in light of the prevailing themes they share. In what ways are these three authors foregrounding important new dimensions in the study of Pastoral theology and Pastoral care?