Book Review
“Of making many books there is no end. . . “ Ecclesiastes 12:12 NRSV
Counseling Hispanics through loss, grief, and bereavement: A guide for mental health professionals
By Ligia M. Houben.
New York: Springer Publishing Company, 2012. Paper, 293 pp. ISBN: 978-0-8161-2556-9.
Reviewed by David F. D’Amico
The book is a welcome addition in the area of pastoral care, especially, since Hispanic American evangelicals tend to spiritualize death and dying.
As a pastor of a Hispanic-American church during the 1970s, I conducted funerals and weddings. In the process, I had to overcome customs, and traditions embedded in the culture. Once, I conducted a funeral in front of open casket of a Cambodian man full of vegetables and fruits, and I tried through an interpreter to provide comfort to the family.
Any book attempting to instruct Hispanic churches will be read with the subjective suspicion of nationalism, especially since each country of Latin America has unique views about death and dying. The influence of Roman Catholicism affects people’s views and death rituals.
The author of the book is from Venezuela. She provides a very helpful guide to ministers and laypersons that many times are at sea when trying to minister on death and dying amid superstition and cultural mores that may be more provincial than biblical.
The book contains four parts: Socio-cultural aspects of Hispanic culture; Loss and grief; Hispanic immigrants: are they all the same, and Conclusion. It is based on the author experience in teaching persons in Venezuela, her native country. Thus, the book is explicitly contextual.
One favorable feature the book is the inclusion of case studies of persons going through grief and bereavement.
As such it is a welcome source, a guide, that may be helpful for many pastors, who are bi-vocational and may not have had an opportunity for graduate theological education. Based on my personal experience, many Hispanic churches in the US emphasize evangelism more than pastoral care.
As a primer in Pastoral counseling, and dealing with death and dying, the book may be useful in the increasing Hispanic church development of bilingual churches in some areas of the United States.
David F. D’Amico is retired pastor, professor, missionary, and Cooperative Baptist Fellowship’s representative to the United Nations in New York City. He lives in Louisviille, KY.
