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April 30, 2001
Postmodernism – What Does It Mean, and What Are Its Implications for the Future of the Clinical Pastoral Movement?
by Rodney Hunter
Rodney Hunter, Candler School of Theology, Emory University
Address to the 2000 CPSP Plenary
Dr Rodney J. Hunter is professor of Pastoral Theology at Candler School of Theology, Emory University, in Atlanta. He is one of the founders and leading spirits, as well as Corresponding Secretary, of the recently organized Society for Pastoral Theology. Dr Hunter's most monumental achievement thus far is to have been the General Editor of the Dictionary of Pastoral Care and Counseling, published in 1990 by Abingdon Press. This dictionary has been and will remain a major resource for professionals in our field. The work has established Dr. Hunter's professional reputation.
Dr. Hunter addressed the 2000 CPSP Plenary held in Virginia Beach, VA last spring. He has very generously given the CPSP Pastoral Report permission to publish his address. The PR is very appreciative of his generosity and we hope that by publishing this important work on the web that it will be available to a much larger community. Please pass the word on to your colleagues, trainees and students about Dr. Hunter's work that effectively addresses the issue of postmodernism and its impact on the clinical pastoral movement.
Postmodernism What Does It Mean, and What Are Its Implications for the Future of the Clinical Pastoral Movement? by Rodney Hunter, Candler School of Theology, Emory University: "... now that I know something about who you are and have read through your superb covenant statement...This makes me feel that we have much in common. I do think that we pastoral professionals need to find new ways of being in community with one another--ways that maintain the informality, vitality and spontaneity of personal relationships in the midst of professional and public, institutional responsibilities. This is more easily said as an ideal than achieved as a regular practice. But it can be done..."
Raymond Lawrence Responds to Rodney Hunter's Address: This address by Dr. Hunter to the Tenth Plenary Meeting of CPSP in 2000 is a powerful statement deliniating what he sees as the critical problems confronting the pastoral care and counseling tradition at the present time. He sees the collapse of Enlightenment values and their foundation in human reason as the matrix in which we must now struggle to find our way. In this bracing analysis Dr. Hunter emphasizes the necessity of drawing more deeply on our religious tradition in order to complement some of the deficits in the tradition of psychology from which the clinical pastoral movement has received much wisdom. Dr. Hunter is a strong advocate of more serious personal commitment to values, values that have to some extent been neglected by our efforts to be pluralistic and multicultural. In this call to a new commitment to values Dr. Hunter is calling for a corrective to the neglect both in the traditions of religion and psychology, and advocates a uniting of the best of both traditions.
Posted by Perry Miller, Editor at April 30, 2001 2:47 PM