Rev. Christinah Kwaramba, D.Min. is ordained with the United Methodist Church (UMC), certified as an educator through Association of Clinical Pastoral Education (ACPE). Dr. Kwaramba works as a chaplain with Vitas Health in Texas, Fort Worth and has worked as an ACPE educator in major hospitals in the DFW area. She has been a clinical pastoral educator (online program) 2022-2025 with the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry Center for Integrative Pastoral Care (CIPP) of the UMC.
Dr. Kwaramba, a native of Zimbabwe in Southern Africa, was a schoolteacher for 20+ years with formal education from the University of Zimbabwe, Seke Teacher’s College, Harare, (Bachelor of Education); Africa University—Faculty of Theology, (Master’s in Divinity)-Zimbabwe; Southern Methodist University Perkins School of Theology (Master of Theological Studies-Dallas, TX, USA; Texas Christian University Brite Divinity School (Doctor of Ministry: Pastoral Theology and Pastoral Care) Fort Worth, TX, USA, ACPE Certified Educator, USA. Dr. Kwaramba’s project, "Gender Conflicts and the Church: Pastoral Care with Immigrant African Zimbabwean Women;" Dr. Kwaramba calls this constituency, the “Zimbabwean Diaspora.” What does it mean to be an effective pastor or chaplain and offer pastoral care to women who migrated to the USA and/western countries? Dr. Kwaramba’s focus is on how issues of gender roles and the conflicts that arise therein might be addressed through offering a “needs-based ministry” to this constituency of immigrant women. This gender role conflict impact, that Dr. Kwaramba is raising in her project is a pastoral theology and care issue where pastoral theology is to be understood as faith and practice in a world community.
Dr. Kwaramba, as a post-colonial theologian, born and raised in a colonial Rhodesia, finds her pride in her two children who are both doctors in the USA, whom she raised as a widow, alone, after her husband died of cancer when their children were 12 and 8 years old. Their daughter who was 8 years old recently is a recent graduate of Yale University and is now a practicing oncologist and their then, 12-year-old son earned a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering, and is working in the cannabis industries.
“I am because we are…… since we are, therefore, I am.” by John Mbiti, grounds Dr. Kwaramba who thrives in community. Dr. Kwaramba also proposes a potential pastoral care solution to the problem, especially to the inherited theology that is part of the larger context. Is the church bringing life amidst the challenges inherited by this woman from her culture, religions, and dislocation? Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) with its Action-Reflection-New Action model helps with wrestling with life realities through sharing our own stories in a more reflective and transformative way in diverse groups--(religion, denomination, culture, race, sexual orientation, place of origin, gender, education, class, married, single, etc.). Dr. Kwaramba CPE passion comes from her story and has grounded Dr. Kwaramba to her true authentic self as an African Zimbabwean woman, post-colonial theologian who resides in the in between spaces, by meeting people where they are. My passion is to empower minorities around the globe through the CPE process, to access their power and identity from within.