‘Out of the Whirlwind’: Clinical Pastoral Education and Climate Change

Abstract

This article traces the development of an innovative program of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE), conducted in 2013 in Victoria, Australia. Interns were placed in environmental contexts; the program’s aim was to enhance the eco-ministry identity of interns as they attended to the anxieties and concerns of people affected by ecological change, as well as listening to the cries and groans of Earth. In this sense, pastoral care acknowledges the environment and our human presence within it as of religious and spiritual concern. The theological and supervisory rationales of the program are outlined and include a careful alignment of parallel competencies with the existing objectives and standards required for accreditation. Guidelines for sacred practice in nature, place/case study and the more-than-human verbatims are described, and an illustrative example of such a verbatim is also included.