Pastoral Reflections on Global Citizenship: Framing the Political in Terms of Care, Faith, and Community

(Hardback)

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This book explores the growing awareness, brought on by the recent explosion of communication technology, that all human beings are citizens of the world. Ryan LaMothe argues that this awareness comes with an urgent need to address political issues, systems, and structures at local, state, and international levels that harm human beings and our one habitat. Through the lens of pastoral theology, LaMothe analyzes the concepts of care, faith, power, and community as they are related to addressing local and global problems linked to neoliberal capitalism, racism and classism.

Reviews

In the current climate of destructive nationalism, ecological degradation, and deeply entrenched neo-liberalism in which there is little regard for the other as a full human being, LaMothe has provided a vital resource for anyone interested in the relationships between local and global politics and their implications for human (and other creatures) well-being. Pastoral Reflection on Global Citizenship examines ways nation-states, communities, and the humanly-constructed institutions that comprise and support them, function. Drawing from multiple disciplines and the critical lenses of faith (whether explicitly religious or not), care, and justice, LaMothe explicates what is often outside our awareness. Thoroughly researched, carefully nuanced, and finally persuasive, LaMothes book helps readers understand the interlocking structures, attitudes, and practices that create suffering and endanger our planetindeed our very livesand proposes alternatives. Hopeful without being nave, this is the right book in a crucial time. -- Barbara J. McClure, Brite Divinity School at Texas Christian University
Ryan LaMothe continues to expand our vision for the complexity and importance of care in public life. Just as care requires justice, here he demonstrates that for a world in which each persons humanity and belonging are honored, justice requires strategic and reparative practices of care. He constructs the winsome theological vision of a planet in which all people and creatures are at home. He then offers abundant resources for a politically strategic practice of care as a global necessity. -- Nancy J. Ramsay, Brite Divinity School
In Pastoral Reflections on Global Citizenship, Ryan LaMothe, as much here prosecuting attorney as pastoral theologian, builds a devastating case for how climate change, militarism, and unfettered capitalism take devastating toll, however stealthily, on persons and communities large and small. Given perils international in scope, the care of souls today calls for conscientious activism and collective pursuit of institutional accountability on a grand scale. Unrelenting but brilliant, sobering but full of hope for realistic change, this book flings wide the portals to offer expansive views of what caring for the least of these involves in faith communities and beyond. -- Robert C. Dykstra, Princeton Theological Seminary
This prophetic book urges us to care for the world as our collective home, and all humanity as brothers and sisters who deserve to survive and, indeed, flourish. LaMothe constructs a compelling political pastoral theology that frames political powers and systems through interdisciplinary concepts of care, faith, and community. LaMothes Pastoral Reflections on Global Citizen is a sustained lament against the magnitude of sufferinghuman and ecologicalwrought by the scourge of global neoliberal capitalism. His lament offers hope for human and ecological flourishing when care and faith become the foundations of a polis. Pastoral Reflections on Global Citizen needs to be read by faculty and students in theological and religious studies, by religious leaders and communities of faith, and by global leaders and global citizens who care about the future of humanity and this fragile earth. -- Carrie Doehring, Iliff School of Theology

Author Bio

Ryan LaMothe is professor of pastoral care and counseling at Saint Meinrad Seminary and School of Theology.