Womanist Pastoral Counseling

Womanist pastoral counseling (WPC) has emerged since the 1990s as a critical component of practical theology in both the church and the religious academy. As a pastoral theological discipline, WPC is an outgrowth of Black theology and Womanist theology, a goal of both of which is to liberate African Americans from the emotional, psychological, and physiological impact of pervasive societal oppression and discrimination. The formal organization of “Womanist pastoral counseling” occurred in 1991 (Boyd 1997) when a group of African American pastoral theologians and pastoral counselors compiled their scholarship into the text WomanistCare: Tending to the Souls of Women (Hollies 1992) to give voice to the narratives of Black women’s lived experiences of oppression in religion, culture, and society. This text followed the publication of Women in Travail and Transition: A New Pastoral Care (Glaz and Moessner 1991), which, despite its title, addressed only the “unvoiced thoughts” of white...