Pastoral Relationship with People with Intellectual ... - Theses

131institutional settings such as prisons, hospitals and asylums. Nonetheless, it doespoint to the Church’s role in discerning socio-political movements. Furthermore,it does broadly note the development of pastoral understandings and practicesthat uniquely sought to respond to the socio-political circumstances of the time.At the same time, the mainstream Church’s general response to socio-politicalcircumstance was largely religious in nature, focusing on the care and bolsteringof the individual soul in response to the oft-regarded threat provided byprevailing social and political institutions and movements.The early years of the twentieth century continued to regard the conceptof pastoral care in terms of care for the individual soul, with such care beingunderstood in terms of personal salvation. In returning to how such care is seen toapply to people with intellectual disability, the early mission statement of MindaHome, first published in 1900, again proves instructive. It refers to the childrenunder its care as having a “closed-soul vision,” to which the evangelicallycharitable and pastoral response is found amidst the “... love that burns to serveher Lord.” 3624.1.2 Contemporary Understandings of Pastoral CareThe latter decades of the twentieth century, which equate to Clebsch andJaekle’s eighth and final epoch, are for the first time amongst all epochs markedby a lack of clarity concerning the dominant pastoral feature of the era. As theyindicate,New circumstances of the late eighteenth and early nineteenthcentury revolutions against the Christendom societies of earliertimes, and the concomitant voluntaryism and pluralism of modernChristianity, brought with them an array of pastoral work that hasbeen largely oriented around a type of guidance that educes valuesand norms from personal convictions and value systems. 363The development of systems of theological critique such as historicoliterarycriticism challenged prevailing dogma and traditional conceptualisationsof truth. In concert with this mode of critique, understandings of pastoral carealso developed that challenged traditional models of ministry regarding boththeory and practice.362 Minda, The Second Annual Report, 1.363 Clebsch and Jaekle, Pastoral Care in Historical Perspective, 14-15.