Abstract
The community of clergy and religious orders totals more than 350,000 people in the USA alone (Wells, Probst, McKeown, Mitchem, & Whiejong, 2012), comprising a diverse range of individuals with widely varying professional responsibilities and roles. Churches and religious organizations have varied expectations and requirements for members of the clergy (e.g., celibacy) which can present challenges for the development and maintenance of social support networks. Mindfulness-based programs can provide strategies that assist clergy and members of religious orders in maintaining appropriate forms of self-care and facilitating effective engagement in valued life activities even when intensive time demands and complex roles and responsibilities threaten to reduce opportunities for reflection and contemplation.
Keywords
- Mindfulness
- Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR)
- Mindfulness-based interventions (MBI)
- Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT)
- Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT)
- Teacher
- Pedagogy
- Clergy
- Religious orders
- Stress
- Burnout
- Compassion fatigue
- Anxiety
- Depression
- Spiritual practice
- Prayer
- Self-care
- Nonhierarchical
- Values
- Celibacy
- Contemplation
- Devotion
- Centering prayer
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Marks, D.R., Moriconi, C.D. (2016). Teaching Clergy and Religious. In: McCown, D., Reibel, D., Micozzi, M. (eds) Resources for Teaching Mindfulness. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-30100-6_22
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