*2.3. Methodology*

This article's use of the term "pastoral care" starts from a broad meaning of the concept, as it addresses diversity in gender, age, race, sexuality, social class, and religious and nonreligious/secular convictions and values in order to include everyone who seeks pastoral care. Thus, the concept of pastoral care operates in line with Rodney J. Hunter's broad intercultural definition, here cited in a slightly moderated version:

"Pastoral care is considered to be any form of personal ministry to individuals and to family and community relations by representative religious persons (ordained or lay) and by their community of faith, who understand and guide their caring

#### efforts out of a theological perspective rooted in the tradition of faith." (Hunter and Ramsay 2005, p. x)

In order to form a useful clinical resource for the pastoral care of that particular emotional dilemma that our ecological crisis creates, I draw on three grounds of theories— from anthropology, theology, and psychology—that inform the practices of pastoral care, as each of them in different ways corresponds through different kinds of perspectives that operate and relate—with their similarities and differences—in constructive ways.

The eco-anthropological theory presented draws on the constructivist Bruno Latour's (1993, 2017) "empirical philosophy". It holds critiques against a modern worldview and argues that humans and nature—instead of separating them from one another—become more and more interconnected as entangled hybrids. As a co-architect of *Actor Network Theory*, Latour is preoccupied with tracing "the enactment of materially and discursively heterogeneous relations that produce and reshuffle all kinds of actors including objects, subjects, human beings, machines, animals, 'nature', ideas, organizations, inequalities, scale and sizes, and geographical arrangements" (Law 2009, p. 141). Thus, Latour claims that religion holds the language and passion for the force of the world in which everything is entangled. In this sense, this amodern approach to science and religion can lead us through our crisis in order to care for the Earth.

In the context of pastoral care practice, a theological "translation" of Latour's anthropological view is necessary in order to address and interpret beliefs, faith, and trust with further regard to the cultural (and confessional) context in Danish society. Turning to theological theory, I present a protestant, constructive, and postmodern perspective by the eco-feminist theologian Sallie McFague (1987, 2008). McFague argues that God is not a distant supernatural force but incarnated in the world as "the body of God"—a God who will hold us "close through our greatest fears" (McFague 2008, p. 172). By use of McFague's theology correlated to anthropology, Latour, in turn, presents a theo-anthropological ground, which unfolds the relation of nature-culture, that shows complementary to McFague's framework. However, McFague's systematic theology and Latour's empirical philosophy raise the question of how theology and anthropology are clinically applicable in pastoral care in order to work as a stress releasing mental health practice related to the individual— as it is simultaneously not only related to self and others but directly connected with communality, the collective, society, and world.

In addressing this clinical need in pastoral care, I turn to psychological theory. The concept "mentalization", developed by Fonagy and colleagues, has strong roots in psychoanalysis. I sugges<sup>t</sup> this therapeutic framework for mental health as a stress releasing and "Earth healing" practice in pastoral care, as mentalizing builds up ("epistemic") trust in care practice through its work with relating self to others and the world. Mentalizing is related to everyday concepts, such as thoughtfulness, empathy, and self-knowledge, and integrates elements from, e.g., psychoanalytical theory, evolution theory, developmental psychology, affect theory, neurobiology, theory of mind, social cognition, meta-cognition, and attachment theory. Mentalization-based therapy (MBT) has proven to be useful in the treatment of mental disorders and has further expanded the knowledge on mentalization in relation to mental health in general.

Emphasizing in this context that pastoral care practice is not MBT in its classical clinical form and that pastoral care does not indicate psychological treatment as such, I sugges<sup>t</sup> that pastoral care may be inspired by the ways that mentalizing, among others, highlights the role of imagination in the intersubjectivity between self, others, and the world. I sugges<sup>t</sup> that this imaging may come near to both Latour's anthropological understanding and McFague's theological interpretation of our connectedness to Earth, indicating a kind of openness towards the spiritual—an openness which is further supported by scholars in mentalization, who point to the fact that clients, in general, are more inclined to talk about religious and spiritual matters than psychotherapists (Allen 2013).

Altogether, I relate these three theories to the empirical material from the University chaplains—as they unfold and crisscross through similarities and differences—and sugges<sup>t</sup>

that they create a room of conversation in pastoral care practice, which has the opportunity to use theological and pastoral knowledge and religious beliefs to solve environmental issues. Hence, as I draw on implicit ideas of pastoral care imagined as a "web" (Miller-McLemore 1996) or "network" (Johannessen-Henry 2012, 2013, 2017), I leave the suggested model open as actualizations of unprejudiced, anti-hierarchical, and devotional spaces.

#### **3. "Down to Earth": A Point of Departure for an Ethnographical-Theologically-Driven Pastoral Care Model**

"The condition of living with climate change lies as foil on everything in the conversations. They [the students] ge<sup>t</sup> in contact with basic anxiety, the anxiety of vanishing. The situation of climate changes appears in one way or the other— intensified by the fact that we seemingly are much, much closer to disaster than we have earlier believed. This triggers conflicts between the generations; it is my boomer-generation who prompted the climate changes and placed the whole responsibility on the youth. So, when we present explanations of meaning (of life), they do not listen at all, saying: 'You have really no idea what you have done. You have created a situation that leads to the Twilight of the Gods'. I feel it through their anxiety: 'What is the meaning of life, if we are not here anymore in a few generations?'. The students raise climate issues directly by saying: 'Well, then there is all that with the climate ... '. It is like blind spots appearing in the conversations that you cannot deal with rationally. It's about gaining more knowledge about it, more, more, more, how to prevent it and what we can do, where is the worst happening, and what is the best to do. It runs constantly on other levels during the pastoral care conversations."
