For religious communities to have integrity and credibility they must flourish as places of love and respect. Every aspect of church life is defined and protected by essential boundaries: boundaries around space, time, thought, speech, will, emotion, and behavior–both for clergy and church members. Lack of awareness and attention to boundary keeping diminishes the integrity of the church and harms its mission, whereas insight and vigilance about best practices lend freedom and energy to the calling of the church to care for others and to reach out to the world. In a flourishing Christian community, a wide array of boundaries must be recognized, celebrated, and navigated–from the boundaries that define and protect us as individual persons to role boundaries and the boundaries that define essential communal functions, such as worship.
This book is no conventional account of boundaries. It takes a comprehensive approach to the challenge of understanding and creating healthy boundaries. It applies the lessons from the emerging field of behavioral ethics to the rich and rewarding complexity of boundaries in church life, helping us to be more loving and responsible in how we think, speak, and act, so that the church can be true to its identity and mission.
About the author
Pamela Cooper-White is a scholar, teacher, and Episcopal priest whose work integrates pastoral theology with relational psychoanalysis. She teaches as the Ben G. and Nancye Clapp Gautier Professor of Pastoral Theology, Care and Counseling at Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, GA, and is also Co-Director of the Atlanta Theological Association’s Th D program in Pastoral Counseling. She was awarded a Fulbright fellowship as the 2013-14 Fulbright-Freud Visiting Scholar of Psychoanalysis in Vienna, Austria, where she conducted research on early psychoanalysis and religion at the Sigmund Freud Museum, and taught a seminar on Freud, Psychoanalysis and Religion at the University of Vienna. She holds two Ph Ds: from Harvard University (in historical musicology), and from the Institute for Clinical Social Work, Chicago (a psychoanalytic clinical and research degree). Cooper-White is the author of Braided Selves: Collected Essays on Multiplicity, God, and Persons (Cascade Books, 2011), Many Voices: Pastoral Psychotherapy and Theology in Relational Perspective (2007), Shared Wisdom: Use of the Self in Pastoral Care and Counseling (2004), The Cry of Tamar: Violence Against Women and the Church’s Response (1995; 2nd revised edition 2012), and Schoenberg and the God Idea: The Opera ‘Moses und Aron’ (1985). She has published numerous articles and anthology chapters, and has lectured frequently across the U.S., as well as in Vienna, Budapest, Bern, and Prague. Cooper-White is a clinical Fellow in the American Association of Pastoral Counselors, a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor in Illinois, and a Board Certified Counselor, National Board for Certified Counselors. She serves on the Steering Committee of the Psychology, Culture, and Religion Group of the American Academy of Religion, and the Editorial Board of the Journal of Pastoral Theology.
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