Healing Clergy Burnout Through Theology and Practice Print

Politics, Religion & Ideology, 2025

2022

Journal of Prevention & Intervention in the Community, 2019

Cl ergy provide significant support to their congregants, sometimes at a cost to their mental health. Identifying the factors that enable clergy to flourish in the face of such occupational stressors can inform prevention and intervention efforts to support their well-being. In particular, more research is needed on positive mental health and not only mental health problems. We conducted interviews with 52 clergy to understand the behaviors and attitudes associated with positive mental health in this population. Our consensual grounded theory analytic approach yielded five factors that appear to distinguish clergy with better versus worse mental health. They were: (1) being intentional about health; (2) a "participating in God's work" orientation to ministry; (3) boundary-setting; (4) lack of boundaries; and (5) ongoing stressors. These findings point to concrete steps that can be taken by clergy and those who care about them to promote their well-being.

Journal of Dermatological Treatment, 1994

2016

Antistasis, 2012

When toward the end of his long life, John Kenneth Galbraith was asked what social change he had found most remarkable, he responded that it was the "decline of the Catholic Church as a critical institution in American life." 1 Whatever our views of organized religion, Galbraith's larger point is difficult to deny. We are living at a time when the spiritual truths and ancient verities upon which our civilization have been built have crumbled away before the tribunal of reason and science. So even as our civilization progresses in many ways, there is a very real enervation of the spirit, as individuals struggle for meaning in a cold and impersonal universe. What is to be done?

English Studies, 2017

This essay, a contribution to the study of secularisation, explores conditions under which a new genre, the lay sermon, emerged early in the nineteenth century. It does so through a reading of the texts that inaugurate the genre, Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Lay Sermons (1817). In particular, the essay examines Coleridge's Lay Sermons' historical context, that is, to the beginnings of liberal politics. And it also pays attention to Coleridge's relation to the heritage of religious sermons, especially seventeenth-century sermons. It argues that the lay sermon, unlike the religious sermon, tends to be directed to particular social groups or formations rather than, more broadly, to Christians of a particular denomination. In this essay we offer an historical analysis of the "lay sermon" as a genre which found a niche in British intellectual and cultural history for over a century after about 1820. Thus, for example, the working-class Scottish deist, James Hogg, published a series of lay sermons on manners in the mid 1830s. Thirty years later, the British idealists, Edward Caird, W. R. Sorley and T. H. Green chose the genre when they wished to address a public as practising Christians rather than as academic philosophers. (In Caird's and Green's cases as Anglicans; in Sorley's case as a member of the Free Church of Scotland.) It also became a genre in which members of the bourgeoisie could address and advise the working classes on secular matters as for instance in John Brown's Health: Five Lay Sermons to Working People (1862). The lay sermon could also be used to publish less prescriptive pieces, as by the socialite and one time prime minister's wife, Margot Asquith, who published a volume baldly entitled Lay Sermons in 1927. Later examples exist, like E. P. Thompson's 1969 defence of the young Wordsworth's and Coleridge's politics, provocatively named "Disenchantment or Default: A Lay Sermon". Perhaps the genre's most successful example, however, was Thomas Henry Huxley's Lay Sermons (1870) which consisted mainly of lectures delivered in the mid-1860s. These included the famous "The Physical Basis of Life", a widely read essay that made the radically secular case that protoplasm constitutes the material substratum for vitality. It was a contribution to popular science, but also a sermon because, enounced from a position of some authority, it envisaged and recommended a profound shift in the understanding of consciousness. However, the genre was first established by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in his two Lay Sermons, the first published in 1816, the second in 1817. We concentrate on Coleridge's

Recherches en psychanalyse, 2017

Frontiers in Communication, 2024

Empirical evidence from compassion literature reports the inherent di culty in teaching compassion-related qualities and indicates the recent shift towards promoting interventions focusing on enhancing communication skills associated with compassionate care. Given the absence of a strong empirical and theoretical understanding of compassionate communication, the present scoping review identifies and integrates the definitions and theoretical approaches to compassionate communication based on the existing literature. A total of , records identified through an initial search in four databases (Scopus, Web of Science, PubMed and APA PsycNet) combined with the obtained through manual search, underwent screening based on PRISMA-ScR guidelines. A total of articles that met the eligibility criteria were finalised for narrative synthesis (which included a thematic and content analysis). The review serves as a constructive critique of the contradictions and issues with empirical evidence on verbal and non-verbal compassion and portrays the concept to exist beyond its impact on the alleviation of su ering by describing compassionate communication in light of ( ) cognitive aspects, ( ) a ective aspects, ( ) behavioural/state aspects ( ) relational aspects, ( ) self-compassion, ( ) mutuality, ( ) individual-specific virtuous traits or values. The necessity for an integrative definition of compassionate communication and a theoretical framework that links the components of compassionate communication with its antecedents and outcomes is highlighted. The review is a valid and reliable source of guidance for future research on theory, education, and interventions on compassionate communication. The findings of the review can be interpreted in light of both contemporary and traditional communication theory, having practical implications for di erent domains of society (i.e., family, workplace relationships, business, and healthcare).

AmeriQuests, 2021

The "merchandise city" of Barcelona (Espinosa Zepeda, 2017) is a theatre of deep contrasts and inequalities. Tourists visit the famous city en masse using low-cost travel companies, many of them transiting Europe freely or with eligible visas. A "migrant precariat" on the other hand, arrives by irregular means, selling goods and souvenirs to the tourists through unequal power relationships. Every summer in Barcelona and along the Spanish coasts, hundreds of street vendors, mainly of Senegalese origin, become hyper visible in public spaces, but not without tension from local police forces. Due to the multifaceted "illegalisms" they are targeted, Senegalese migrant street vendors (in Spanish, manteros) face daily persecution. Added to racism, they are indeed criminalised due to their irregular migration status and their activity of street vending (selling irregular goods in unauthorised public spaces). Practicing the 'survival activity' of street vending implies the risk of fines, being beaten, arrested, deported, and even the risk of death. Despite the formation of a new municipal government that mobilised left-wingoriented discourses, 2015 was still characterised by increased criminalisation and persecution towards street vending. According to research participants, summer 2015 marked a "boom" in manteros' "community time" (Le Goff, 1991) when a street vendor died following a police intrusion in his apartment located in the touristic Catalan city of Salou. "Cycles of Contention" (Tarrow, 1998) were underway: the first local organisation in defence of street vending emerged ("Behind the Blanket") and a few months after, the creation of the "Street Vendors Popular Syndicate of Barcelona" (hereafter sindicato) was publicly announced. As a matter of fact, both the death of the street vendor and the creation of the sindicato provoked "booms" for street vendors' empowerment. The unconventional form of organisation that is adopted in the sindicato is indeed surprising and very successful in enlarging its struggles beyond the national-based identification. First, the sindicato members are organised in base of their working activity, including some street vendors of other origins. Second, they are not recognised as a formal syndicate; it is a "popular" syndicate. Their main aims are to regularise their migration status and to access legal work opportunities to stop street vending. To do so, the sindicato is deploying multifaceted repertoires of actions that enable the organisation to receive increased visibility, support, and legitimation. Today, the sindicato has had so much impact that it has become a model for the creation of other sindicatos in Spanish cities such as Madrid, Zaragoza and Palma. Going even further, the sindicato's success is making an impact not only throughout Europe but also on the other side of the Atlantic. I will argue in this paper that through the redefinition and enlargement of the sindicato's aims, artistic narratives, such as rap music and especially clothing design, have a strong potential for success in migrants' activism. This paper will be divided into different sections: first I will articulate contributions developed from literature on migrants' political participation and the framework of arts, ethnicity and migration. Second, I will justify my case study selection and the techniques of data collection. Third, I will show through the analysis of the song "This is the Syndicate" how rap music has become a key narrative for the organisation's identity and legitimation. Fourth, I will focus on clothing design, highlighting how the creation of the brand "Top-Manta" marked a turning point in the collective's organisation. Finally, I will summarise and bring into discussion the findings of this paper. Félicien de Heusch, "Empowerment through the Arts" AmeriQuests 16. 1 (2021)