Are there vestiges or elements of African traditional cultural beliefs and practices that affect the psychological and spiritual well-being of African Christian students in Tangaza University College (TUC)? If there are, how best can pastoral carers work with the affected students to help them deal with the issues and regain congruence? These questions, arising out of our practice in the Student Life Ministry in TUC, are the puzzles I set out this study to try to resolve. Our experience was that some of the students were presenting issues in counselling and spiritual direction emanating from unresolved conflict between their African backgrounds and the Christian faith. Observation was that the issues did not surface easily and when they did the carers were not sure how best to help the clients. I thus felt a need to find out what cultural issues affect the students, how the issues manifest in their lives and how best the pastoral care team could work with those affected to help the issues surface and be resolved. This is an original research designed as an inductive case study and to collect data, a multi-dimensional approach including focus discussion groups with students and members of the SLM, depth interviews with SLM members, selection of some vignettes of counselling and spiritual direction and practitioner observation - were used. The main finding is that there indeed are elements of African beliefs and practices that impinge on the psychological and spiritual wellbeing of some of the African Christian students in TUC. However, not all the students experience such dissonance as some have developed a synthesis between their two world views. Those who have not are embarrassed about and reticent in disclosing the issues thus the need for the pastoral carers to help them to integrate their traditional culture with their Christian faith. Clinical experience has shown that by combining two counselling models – the Rogerian Person-centred and Albert Ellis’s Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy, underpinned in a dialogical, theological paradigm, counsellors and spiritual guides can help the affected students not only to talk about the issues but also to work through them to re-gain equilibrium and enjoy greater fullness of life.

Submitted by Maykon Nascimento (maykon.albani@hotmail.com) on 2016-05-31T18:11:13Z No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 23148 bytes, checksum: 9da0b6dfac957114c6a7714714b86306 (MD5) Dissertacao Raphael Fae.pdf: 1458087 bytes, checksum: 9bb5536b81d595e791fccfd83888e8e9 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Patricia Barros (patricia.barros@ufes.br) on 2016-06-30T13:18:11Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 23148 bytes, checksum: 9da0b6dfac957114c6a7714714b86306 (MD5) Dissertacao Raphael Fae.pdf: 1458087 bytes, checksum: 9bb5536b81d595e791fccfd83888e8e9 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-30T13:18:11Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 23148 bytes, checksum: 9da0b6dfac957114c6a7714714b86306 (MD5) Dissertacao Raphael Fae.pdf: 1458087 bytes, checksum: 9bb5536b81d595e791fccfd83888e8e9 (MD5) / O sentido ordinário dado à secularização no ocidente aponta para o expurgo do religioso das esferas públicas e da sociedade, em cujos debates evidenciam-se um embate polarizado entre discursos religiosos e científicos, com vantagem para estes. Charles Taylor pretende demonstrar o quão tímida e enviesada é essa perspectiva. No bojo da resposta à questão “o que mudou, entre crença e descrença, em 500 anos de civilização ocidental, de 1500 a 2000?”, ele considera um conjunto de reelaborações e ressignificações nos antigos e novos modos de pensar, agir e se envolver no tocante à espiritualidade e seus modos de imbricação social. O propósito, aqui, é analisar a chave de leitura tayloriana sobre a secularização, o quadro no qual se desenvolverão as condições da crença e da descrença atuais, com amplas repercussões políticas, sociais, éticas, antropológicas, etc., em indivíduos e em sociedades. / The ordinary meaning given to the secularization in the West, points to the purge of the religious view in public places and society, in which debates evidentiate themselves in a polarized clash between religious and scientific discourse, with the advantage of these last. Charles Taylor intends to demonstrate how timid and biased is this perspective. In the midst of the answer to the question “what has changed between belief and unbelief, in 500 years of Western civilization, from 1500 to 2000?”, he considers a set of redrafts and new meanings in old and new ways of thinking, acting and engage regarding to spirituality and its modes of social embeddedness. The aim here is to analyze the Taylorian reading key about secularization, the framework within which are going to be developed the current conditions of the belief and unbelief, with wide political, social, ethical, anthropological, and so forth, repercussions, on individuals and societies.