Theology: Practical Theology: Multi-cultural Counselling

Counseling Across Cultures, Sixth Edition offers a comprehensive examination of the increasing priority of culture in the counselling process. The contributors examine the cultural context of accurate assessment and appropriate interventions in counselling, highlighting work with groups including African Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanics, American Indians, refugees, and international students.Chapters also consider culturally appropriate counselling methods as they relate to gender, aged populations, health psychology, and school settings.

The coming of Colonization and Christianity to Africa and other indigenous cross-cultural contexts was a mixed bag of pros and cons. The impact of the advent of the two has had a lasting effect being felt even today. It created issues of bi-culturalism and bi-religiousness in personal and religious identities that counselors and the church need to address when working with people from these contexts. There is the existence of deep cultural trauma (including psychological and spiritual scars) needing healing for those living in most of these post-colonial contexts. The Western counseling approaches and Christian rituals need contextualization. A counselor or pastoral caregiver with an integrative consciousness is required to address the psychological and religious identity conflicts existing in African and other indigenous cross-cultural contexts.

This is the first time an author has listened to pastors in Africa and compared her findings with pastoral counseling from a Western perspective. Pastoral Counseling in Africa and the West presents a practical record of pastoral counseling in Africa. It accounts for the wide difference between pastoral counseling in Africa and the West considering that pastoral counselors in Africa received Western theological training. It presents a theological perspective of the pastoral counseling ministry in Africa and the West. It also presents both perspectives as professional partners in conversation with each other. "Thank God for providing trained experts like Dr. Daramola to enlighten His people. I have every confidence this publication is only the first installment. More GRACE to her elbows!" Emmanuel Oladipo Former International Secretary Scripture Union