Theo Pleizier

There is a growing public support for medical interventions at the End of Life (EoL), such as euthanasia and physician assisted suicide (EPAS) and palliative sedation (PS). This paper explores pastors’ views and their pastoral care on the place of EPAS and PS and uses a 2.556 pastors’ survey. W hereas only 38% were in favour of EPAS, more than 90% could justify PS. This paper analyses the differences in pastors’ attitudes regarding EPAS versus PS.

International Journal of Homiletics – Open access journal published by University of Groningen Press.

The field of homiletics has become a very complex field that studies the many aspects, dimensions, theologies and dynamics of preaching. This essay provides an approach to construct a map of the multi-faceted field of preaching by distinguishing between three levels, namely ‘homiletical reasoning’, ‘homiletical phenomena’, and ‘homiletical issues’. The concept of resonance is applied to understand the variety within and the relationships between the levels that make up the map of preaching. In the second part of the essay, the proposal for the map is tested against the future developments in the field of preaching as they emerge in the digital age. The essay concludes with a reassessment of the role of the preacher in the many practices of preaching.

This paper explores the intersection of theology, postcolonialism, and theory-building within empirical theology, highlighting the complex interplay between linguistic constructions and lived experiences of the divine. Drawing on postcolonial epistemology, the study advocates an inductive research strategy, particularly through the use of Grounded Theory methodology. It critically engages with ongoing debates within Grounded Theory, emphasizing the need for reflexivity in recognizing dominant discourses that may shape the researcher’s understanding of participants’ experiences. By examining specific case studies, the text illustrates how research participants’ attributions to God challenge conventional theological concepts, prompting a reconsideration of the nature of God-related language. Ultimately, this work calls for a nuanced understanding of empirical theology in which both “God” and lived religious experiences emerge as essential elements of theological discourse, urging scholars to remain attentive to the realities of participants’ lived faith.

What happened to the human soul in contemporary theories of preaching? The field of homiletics shows a wide variety of themes, approaches, perspectives, and theologies. Somewhere between the social critique, in postcolonial and post-human approaches, and sense-making, in cultural and experiential approaches, the issue of humanity re-emerges. This essay inquires whether and how it might be possible to re-envision preaching as a practice of care for the soul. The essay closes with a homiletical agenda in the form of three conditions for retrieving the soul in homiletics, a hermeneutical, a rhetorical, and a theological condition.

In spiritual care research, studies on military chaplaincy are underrepresented, and most available studies center on moral injury. This article contributes to the existing literature on spiritual care in the military by presenting a study of 13 case descriptions of spiritual care provision by military chaplains from the Netherlands. These were analyzed using the framework method, a qualitative method of systematically searching for patterns in data sets, in order to answer the question: How do military chaplains contribute to the moral resilience of soldiers and veterans experiencing moral stress? The analytical framework was constructed on the basis of Doehring’s (Pastoral Psychology, 64(5), 635–649, 2015) conceptual understanding of moral resilience as the outcome of processes of spiritual integration of moral stress in caregiving relationships. This study shows that soldiers experience moral stress when core values associated with ‘being a soldier’ conflict with expectations or actions of soldiers themselves or of others, with the way the military organization functions, or with the spiritual notion of ‘being a good, loving and loveworthy human being’. In their responses to moral stress, chaplains contribute to moral resilience by engaging in co-creating spiritual orienting frameworks which accommodate a sense of goodness of self and others and allow for nuanced, biographically rooted moral views. Soldiers experience conversations and brief encounters with chaplains as relational ‘moments of goodness’, which may also contribute to moral resilience.

In this article practical theologians from three Dutch Protestant institutions reflect on developments in the field. Their institutions started as ministry training centers and still have a strong focus on ecclesial practices. This focus has been reinforced by international trends in Practical Theology, mainly by a gradual shift towards an empirical way of working, with an emphasis on participative methods and ethnography. However, the field in the Netherlands continues to have a strong connection with church history and systematic theology. The authors discern three themes that characterize their institutes’ contribution to the international conversation on PT: the divine action within the practices, God’s promises in the context of his covenant, and a realistic view of brokenness, sin, and failure.