East Central Community of Practice
2025 SPRING WEBINAR
8:00 AM - 12:00 PM ET
This program is open to all members of ACPE!
Frank Woggon will be presenting on his book, The Empathic God: A clinical Theology of At-onement. Here’s how he described his work:
Theological reflection has long been an important aspect of clinical education and has become more challenging in an increasingly diverse educational environment. This workshop introduces one attempt to utilize the clinical method in order to reinterpret the problematic Christian teaching about atonement for a praxis of spiritual care. The workshop is based on an academic textbook, The Empathic God: A Clinical Theology of At-onement (Fortress Press, May 2024), that constructs a theological theory for spiritual care, based in lived human experience, Christian theology, and interdisciplinary dialogue, and is applicable to diverse clinical contexts.
Clinical Pastoral Education aims to educate reflective practitioners, and the ability to reflect theologically needs to be part of the educational process and outcomes. Claiming their role as clinical theologians, reflective spiritual care practitioners are uniquely positioned to explore the human condition from a spiritual perspective and means of restoration and transformation. The workshop introduces a clinical theology as dialogical, contextual, experience-near, and purposeful, and suggests that spiritual care in clinical-theological perspective means to participate in God’s ongoing work of salvation and liberation, aiming to restore individuals and communities toward wholeness.