Towards Effective Pastoral Caregiving within Contemporary Post-Colonial Praxis in Africa: A Discernment of Care Needs for ‘Now’ and ‘Intervention’ Propositions
Abstract
:1. Context and Background
[a]s Afrikaners assert their exclusive group interests, the black majority (most of whom have yet to see many of the fruits promised in 1994) also agitate for their interests, irrespective of how the rest of their compatriots are affected
(a) How do we understand this concrete situation in which we must act? (b) What should our praxis be in this concrete situation? (c) How do we critically defend the norms of our praxis in this concrete situation? (d) What means, strategies, and rhetoric should we use in this concrete situation?
(a) What is going on? (b) Why is this going on? (c) What ought to be going on? (d) What are the strategic steps that should be taken to respond to the situation?
three principal ways are identified that affirm the possibility of the publicisation of theology: addressing different audiences, such as the academy and the church (model of the audience); articulating itself through a style and an accessible form of argument (apologetic model); and addressing contextual challenges (contextual model)
How do practical theology, public theology and pastoral care converge? Pastoral care is a subdiscipline of practical theology. In view of public theology and its parameters, when pastoral care takes an explicit public dimension, it becomes public pastoral care.
This ‘reflexive turn’ in practical theology mirrors similar trends across the humanities and social sciences. Insights from the sociology of knowledge, including postmodern and feminist perspectives, have cast doubt on epistemologies that lay claim to neutrality and objectivity, insisting on critical attention to the material and ideological circumstances within which claims to truth are constructed. Such an approach repudiates the belief that research can be conducted through a long lens, as it were, in such a way that the researcher themselves is unaffected by the process. Certainly, within the social sciences, such strict objectivity is untenable; anyone dealing with the realms of human value, meaning, and understanding recognises that levels of interpretation are unavoidable; research methodologies take account of the ‘storied’ and hermeneutical nature of human culture. This is not only an individual process of formation but also one that is shared within particular communities of practice.
is not about reducing practical theology to autobiography but seeing how our own standpoints and concerns have informed our intellectual and academic interests, and vice versa. In the interests of integrity and transparency, the self as researcher, as one who brings particular presuppositions, questions and interests, must be prepared to ‘write themselves in’ to the text of their research. This practice of locating and declaring ourselves is not simply a question of stating who we are as a set of statistical or physical facts, or of inflicting our personal life histories on a captive audience. It involves being aware of one’s own pre-commitments, and how the practices of research may in themselves be challenging or reshaping one’s own relationships to the field. It entails more than simply ‘reflecting’ in the sense of thinking deeply about something, but of identifying how we are simultaneously both the subjects and objects of our own experience.
2. Presuppositions Informing Public Pastoral Care within Contemporary Post-Colonial Africa
- (a)
- First, the meaning and practice of pastoral care should be expanded. Pastoral care (cura animarum—cure of souls) refers to a “ministry that is directed not merely to a human being’s inner life, but also to the spiritual care of the total person in all the psycho-physical and psycho-social dimensions (spiritual wholeness)” (Louw 2014, p. 60). However, pastoral care has been limited to an individualism-operative ideology, which aligns with the white middle class (McClure 2011, p. 4). The focus has been on an individual person and psychic aspects within the religious realm. Therefore, McClure (2011, p. 5) observed that at the diagnostic and interventional levels, “our overly narrow conceptions of self-hood and suffering obscure real sources of distress and make it difficult to effectively care for all those who seek our support” (McClure 2011, p. 5). Hence, the goal and purpose of pastoral care is much broader than a narrow individual intrapsychic perspective. An intrapsychic perspective refers to an understanding that “conflicts, or other psychological phenomena arise or occur within the psyche or mind” while downplaying social factors (American Psychological Association (APA) 2018, n.p). If the primary objective of pastoral care and counselling is to help create the conditions for human flourishing, then “its captivity to an individualist cultural construal may not help it achieve this goal” (McClure 2011, p. 3). Pastoral care, among other considerations, should include “social and institutional realities that shape our experiences and ourselves” (McClure 2011, pp. 3–4). These experiences can be pleasant or unpleasant, but they have to be understood and engaged with.
- (b)
- Second, pastoral care in Africa has tended to focus on black people as if white people are unaffected by problems affecting black people, especially public problems such as service delivery, as indicated by Siluma (2024a) above. This situation has tended to leave a vacuum in terms of inclusive pastoral care reflection, where the focus in on problems affecting both black and white people. Thus, this gap should be attended to.
- (c)
- Third, theology and pastoral care in Africa have tended to focus on the Africa of the past. Magezi (2018) and Bowers (2009) observed that very few African scholars have adopted a progressive stance by focusing on present-day Africa, and they tend to focus on the Africa of the past. Similarly, Mucherera and Lartey (2017) emphasise that African Christian thinking focuses on the Africa of the past, while the current challenges are not being attended to, resulting in a gap in the contemporary situation, which should be addressed.
- (d)
- Fourth, as pastoral care shifts to focus on public problems, it becomes fuzzy and unclear, especially when evaluated through the lens of the predominant individualistic intrapsychic models. When pastoral care takes on a public dimension, it tends to appear like broader practical theology and, at times, sounds like public theology (Leslie 2008, pp. 96–97). This fuzziness is typical of public theology, which lacks a clear and distinct methodological orientation (Kim 2017, pp. 60–62). Hence, this might be evident in intervention design. Furthermore, this fuzziness sometimes makes public pastoral care enmeshed with and indistinguishable from other related practical theology disciplines, like diaconal care and Christian development or transformation.
- (e)
- Fifth, term publics in public theology refers to spaces where people “cohere in the midst of, and because of, the difference and even conflict they accommodate. It is indeed a forum or agora, a space, which allows and indeed encourages encounter with that which is different” (Day and Kim 2017, p. 12). The publics are characterised by “questioning, doubting and challenging, as well as asserting, confirming and agreeing” (Day and Kim 2017, p. 12). Thus, different from communities where people focus on commonalities, publics are spaces of dialogue to influence one another (Morton 2004, pp. 25–36). The publics were identified by Tracy (1981, p. 5) as the academy, wider society, and the church. Our area of pastoral praxis is wider society. This conception of our pastoral praxis is critical as both black and white people seek to coexist with one another in society.
3. Two Pastoral Praxis Situations in Post-Colonial Africa in Juxtaposition
3.1. Praxis One: White People’s Situation in Post-Colonial Contexts
3.2. Praxis 2: Black People in Post-Colonial African Contexts
The term typically refers to financial contributions that black professionals are expected to make to less fortunate family members. While young white South Africans might enter the labour market with generational wealth and additional support from their parents, young black South Africans face an additional ‘tax’ on their income in the form of support [having to be] offered to their families. The term, however, is contentious. A recently published book of essays on the topic, which delves into the lived experiences of the book’s contributors and their kin, queries whether black tax is a ‘burden or Ubuntu’. The contributors’ stories are testament to the prevalence of private networks of support, although opinions vary about whether black tax is a burden or Ubuntu
Although black graduates constitute a much smaller share of the population—just 12 percent of black adults (15+) report a post-secondary qualification—a greater share of graduates remit (30 percent) compared to other individuals (13 percent). Of those who do remit, graduates comprise just over one quarter of these individuals—roughly double the share of graduates in the population.
4. From Understanding Post-Colonial Africa Praxis to Pastoral Care
- Home-away-from-home pastoral theory: Public pastoral care in Africa is deeply Christian and theological (Magezi 2020a). Thus, there has to be an explicit theological theory to guide caring practice. A theological conception of the home and citizen is suggested to guide the public. The country, a geographical place in time, is a temporary home for all people, but it is a home and a passage at the same time. Viewing the geographical location in this light presents a perspective of geographical place as a ‘passage’ and a ‘transitional space’, while one waits for a final and permanent home. Therefore, life is a time and space of waiting, while purposefully contributing to goodness of life, contributing to meaning and purpose. Magezi (2017, p. 227) calls this “home away from home”. This understanding contributes to the re-imagination of our places as a temporary shelter. It communicates theologically and practically the limitation imposed on an individual to fight for such a place. One should hold to it loosely and share it while awaiting something more permanent. In a shelter, we all participate in life, share, coexist, and eagerly wait to move on.
- Empowerment for public functioning and well-being: Waiting in a shelter to move on is a theological statement (2 Corinthians 5:1). Such a theological language has little meaning in the public space. Therefore, there is a need to translate the theological understanding of the meaning of temporary shelter or the concept of a home away from home to the public for it to have meaning. Public theologians believe that translating theological language to be understood at the public square is one of the greatest challenges of public theology (De Villiers 2011; Dreyer 2011). For this reason, churches and religious spaces should be places of empowerment for public functioning. Such empowerment should prepare individuals to adapt, confront, struggle and cope, negotiate, challenge, embrace, and reject. People should be able to encounter the other person from a different context, and the converse should also be true. Theology should be intensified as a public apparatus. Public theology is about dialoguing to influence one another (Morton 2004); it is about “questioning, doubting and challenging, as well as asserting, confirming and agreeing” (Day and Kim 2017, p. 12). The conversations and debates occur—but they do so within families and communities. Therefore, church leaders should equip people to function and meaningfully engage with this. Empowered individuals should be equipped to ‘zig-zagly’ manoeuvre and assume a relevant role in their situation as the situation demands, for example, being a prophet, pastor, priest, or participant. This will position individuals to be agile and imaginative.
- Preventive pastoral care as equipping people for public care: The designation of pastoral care, cura animarum (cure of souls), where ‘soul’ refers to individuals and their intrapsychic relations, has sustained the individualistic emphasis of pastoral care, which draws from the Western operative context (McClure 2011). Louw (2005), in “Mechanics of the Human soul”, located soulfulness as thriving within the context of relationships and human beings’ networking. The notion of the ‘cure of souls’ has tended to remove pastoral care as a human relational art influenced by the new ontic being in Christ. This has resulted in an over-emphasis on psychology and a medical model. Within a medical model, prevention focuses on “interventions aimed at reducing risks or threats to health” (Institute for Work & Health 2024, p. 1). Prevention falls into primary, secondary and tertiary categories.
Primary prevention aims to prevent disease or injury before it ever occurs. Secondary prevention aims to reduce the impact of a disease or injury that has already occurred. Tertiary prevention aims to soften the impact of an ongoing illness or injury that has lasting effects
- Public conversations as conversational pastoral care: A common feature in South Africa is public tension characterised by the unwillingness or limited ability to listen to one another. This is evident in supposedly small incidents that are blown beyond proportion. There seems to be an incapacity to listen to one another. Listening to one another communicates respect and positive regard for the other person. Therefore, it is important to create a space for conversations and listening to each other. By therapeutic conversations, we are not necessarily referring to “discussion with an individual that will directly activate a healing effect on the physical and emotional well-being of that individual” (Sharma and Gupta 2023, p. 1). It refers to creating a conversational care space. It means creating a safe space for conversations, and for venting and lamenting with one another. Conversational pastoral space is different from the notion of publics, which is characterised by dialoguing, debating, “questioning, doubting and challenging, as well as asserting, confirming and agreeing” (Day and Kim 2017, p. 12). Conversational pastoral space is modelled on a conversation café, which is a space where “people have calm and profound conversations in which there is less debating and arguing, and more listening” (Liberating Structures 2024, p. 1)5. In a conversational space, people openly express their views without fear of being judged or misunderstood. Individuals from different racial groups can journey, discuss, explore, and listen. Conversational care is both a process and an end. As a process, it equips people to be emphathetic, unconditionally listen to the other, learn to understand, and respect the other person. As an end, it creates a healing space. In situations where people do not feel listened to and feel fearful or numb to express their feelings and concerns, conversational spaces provide a healing oasis or a fresh breath of social air.
- Being with the other in shared spaces as coexistence negotiation: The empowerment to function in public assumes going to the spaces where people are. One of the current shifts in pastoral care is its shift in emphasis from a counselling room to caregiving, which implies a movement to where people are (Magezi 2020b). Louw (2022) advises that pastoral care should assume a “pavement caregiving and streetwise compassion”, which entails “befriending neighbouring, based on the notion of compassionate being-with”, which “contributes to informal forms of friendship, the cornerstone for establishing social coherence” (Louw 2022, p. 1). However, as people engage in cross-cultural contexts, such as the ones in South Africa, there are important principles to consider. Magezi (2020b, pp. 7–8) posits that, as pastoral care is practised across contexts, this entails “being with the other” people. To do so, the following useful and relevant principles should guide the caregiving process: “interparthy, vulnerability, respect, positive regard of other human beings, humaneness, connecting, genuineness, creativity”.6 Mistakes will be made when one crosses racial boundaries, but the sense of humanity and sincere desire to be with the other overrides any cynicism. Our common humanity encourages us to accept, embrace, and pursue being with the other. Thus, the art of shifting from one’s place ‘to be with the other’ in their ‘street and pavement’, both physically (geography shared spaces) and through a cognitive effort to understand the other in order to co-exist ‘interparthy’ (Augsburger 1986, pp. 29–30) stand out as critical approaches to encourage care.
5. Conclusions
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Conflicts of Interest
1 | For a discussion of apartheid see A History of Apartheid in South Africa. South African History Online (https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa), accessed: 30 April 20924, South Africa: Twenty-Five Years Since Apartheid, and many other sources. |
2 | The meaning of public pastoral care is somewhat confusing as observed by Leslie (2008, pp. 96–97) who admitted that, at one level, public pastoral care appears to be practical theology and, at times, sounds like public theology. For a detailed discussion and articulated definition of public pastoral care, see V. Magezi (2020a). |
3 | A Model-C school is “a state school in South Africa that used to be for white children only and is now mixed. Model-C schools are generally considered better than township schools” (Macmillandictionary.com n.d.). |
4 | I use the terms Christian theology or Christianity in this article to refer to all Christians whose identity is defined by being followers of Jesus Christ as taught by Christian faith despite variations among Christian churches such as the Roman Catholic, Protestant and more recent Pentecostal church traditions. |
5 | A detailed discussion on Liberating Structures and Conversation Café are described in Lipmanowicz and McCandless (2014). |
6 | “(1) Interparthy, which entails “a process of ‘feeling with’ and ‘thinking with’ other people from different contexts” (Augsburger 1986, pp. 29–30); (2) Vulnerability entails exposing oneself to being stupid and failing, and yet in that process, the lessons you learn are priceless. In vulnerability one is being real about limitations of knowing the other; (3) Respect entails approaching other people with a positive regard, including accepting them unconditionally and acknowledging God’s image in them, which results in positive human interactions; (4) Positive regard of other human beings entails being conscious that differences and diversity make us fully human; (5) Humaneness is a quality that makes us human. It is about solidarity and communion as human beings. To be truly human is to be intricately connected to other human beings. Humaneness is a drive to reach other human beings; (6) Connecting refers to developing skills and mastery in relating to people who are different from us. Connecting with people who are different from us does not occur naturally. The art of connecting is about making an effort to learn and understand other people who are different from us; (7) Genuineness entails genuine concern for the other, which translates to warmth and unconditional embracing of the other person; (8) Creativity entails imagining ways of relating to others in a sensitive way. It means having an awareness that each individual is unique and has unique expectations and needs” (Magezi 2020b, pp. 7–8). |
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Magezi, V. Towards Effective Pastoral Caregiving within Contemporary Post-Colonial Praxis in Africa: A Discernment of Care Needs for ‘Now’ and ‘Intervention’ Propositions. Religions 2024, 15, 789. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15070789
Magezi V. Towards Effective Pastoral Caregiving within Contemporary Post-Colonial Praxis in Africa: A Discernment of Care Needs for ‘Now’ and ‘Intervention’ Propositions. Religions. 2024; 15(7):789. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15070789
Chicago/Turabian StyleMagezi, Vhumani. 2024. "Towards Effective Pastoral Caregiving within Contemporary Post-Colonial Praxis in Africa: A Discernment of Care Needs for ‘Now’ and ‘Intervention’ Propositions" Religions 15, no. 7: 789. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15070789