Pastoral Care from a Third World Perspective

The advent and approach of colonization and Christianity condemned the African traditional religion and culture as paganistic and backward. This created issues of bi-culturalism and bi-religiousness in personal and religious identity that the church needs to address. For those living in most post-colonial countries, there is the existence of deep psychological and spiritual scars that need healing. The Western Christian rituals in use in most African mainline churches exclude any traditional religious rituals. A new pastoral theology of care and psychodynamic understanding of integrative consciousness is needed in these contexts. A pastoral care-giver with integrative consciousness (possessing an awareness of both the traditional and Western worldview and/or integration thereof) is required to address the psychological and religious identity conflict existing in post-colonial contexts such as Zimbabwe.