A PASTORAL THEOLOGICAL RESPONSE TO SOME RECENT BOOKS ON THE FAMILY

Abstract

Concern for the family is not new, but lately there has been a lot more of it than usual. This article reviews some of the books that have recently appeared in pastoral theology and closely related fields and engages in dialogue with some of them. My response to the books is not particularly well balanced. In reviewing a number of books one gets "hooked" by some more than others. If I am unfair to some of the authors by lack of a lengthy response, I apologize and hope to be in further dialogue with them at some other time. The practical reason for agreeing to write this article was that I had already read about half of the books on the list as a part of putting together a course entitled "The Family in Context." The practical purpose for the course was to help students meet requirements for taking the marriage and family therapist licensing exam, but we were also concerned to examine contextual issues related to the family from a Christian theological and ethical point of view. My primaiy perspective in reviewing this literature is that of a pastoral counselor and supervisor of pastoral counseling and marital and family therapy. Although I have taught courses on the pastoral care of marriage and family and co-authored a book on that topic, I have spent much more of my time in working therapeutically with couples and families. Moreover, my wife and I have spent four or five years as patients in couples therapy. Thus, as both a consumer and a provider, I have been immersed in the practice of family therapy. Although in recent years I have been attempting to "widen my horizons" and to "care for worlds" as well as persons, I must acknowledge that my vision may not be wide enough to understand and interpret some of the challenges that affect the family today and which are addressed in the books I discuss in this review. Examining work on the family in a pastoral theological journal it seems important to say what I understand pastoral theology to be. It is a type of practical theology that attempts to reflect theologically upon particular experiences in which the care of the religious community is being expressed through its ministers. Pastoral theology is theology that emerges from the crucible of pastoral responsibility. Moreover, it is a type of theology that asserts the importance of those experiences and claims practical theological meaning for the idiosyncratic and the particular in human life. It is not all that theology is nor is it identical with the larger category of practical theology, but it does