Book Description

Care, Healing, and Human Well-Being within Interreligious Discourses is an edited, peer reviewed volume of global perspectives on interreligious approaches to healing and well-being by 23 academics and practitioners from five different faith practices and 13 different cultures. With chapters by counsellors, chaplains, religious thinkers and linguists, the multifaceted nature of the volume provides an expansive approach to spiritual care and counselling. In order to understand the ways in which interreligious encounters can have an enriching effect on our humanity, the volume is divided into four sections that address: methodological questions surrounding spiritual caregiving, perspectives of different faith traditions on care and healing, the challenges to the praxis of care in diverse cultural and political settings and, finally, how spiritual care and healing can be carried out in public places such as the police, the military, and hospitals. The book is an outgrowth of 25 years of experience within the Society for Interreligious Care and Counselling (SIPCC) to promote better understanding and practices of intercultural and interreligious spiritual caregiving. Care, Healing, and Human Well-Being within Interreligious Discourses is an extraordinary assemblage of writings from diverse cultural, religious, and geopolitical contexts. By addressing methodological questions, challenges faced in the care of individuals, and care in public settings from Islamic, Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, and Hindu perspectives, this anthology moves the discourse on care and healing into a more adequate theological anthropology than has often undergirded pastoral care and counselling in most Western texts. This much-needed work will doubtless be crucial for chaplains and other spiritual care-providers seeking to offer genuinely interreligious and intercultural care in today’s globalized world. Emmanuel Y. Lartey, PhD, Charles Howard Candler Professor of Pastoral Theology & Spiritual Care Candler School of Theology, Emory University, GA, USA Given the variety of religious expressions in the contemporary world, providing interreligious care is a great challenge for caregivers. This book contributes to reflection on care and healing from an interreligious perspective by helping us to think about the theme not only from a theoretical approach, but also from methodological, practical, and culturally contextualized points of view that overflow with compassion. It is not to be simply read but studied and used as a bedside book by those engaged in the practice of human care. Dr. Mary Rute Gomes Esperandio, Professor and researcher on Spirituality & Health in the Post Graduate Program in Bioethics and Post Graduate Program in Theology at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Paraná, Brazil