A Handbook of Chaplaincy Studies

Understanding Spiritual Care in Public Places

Christopher Swift, Mark Cobb, Andrew Todd, Christopher Swift, Mark Cobb, Andrew Todd

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317187981
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Theology

A Handbook of Chaplaincy Studies explores fundamental issues and critical questions in chaplaincy, spanning key areas of health care, the prison service, education and military chaplaincy. Leading authors and practitioners in the field present critical insight into the challenges and opportunities facing those providing professional spiritual care. From young men and women in the military and in custody, to the bedside of those experiencing life's greatest traumas, this critical examination of the role played by the chaplain offers a fresh and informed understanding about faith and diversity in an increasingly secular society. An invaluable compendium of case-studies, academic reflection and critical enquiry, this handbook offers a fresh understanding of traditional, contemporary and innovative forms of spiritual practice as they are witnessed in the public sphere. Providing a wide-ranging appraisal of chaplaincy in an era of religious complexity and emergent spiritualities, this pioneering book is a major contribution to a relatively underdeveloped field and sets out how the phenomenon of chaplaincy can be better understood and its practice more robust and informed.

Chapter 1
Introduction to Chaplaincy Studies

Mark Cobb, Chris Swift and Andrew Todd

The presence and place of chaplains in contemporary society is a phenomenon that persists without much systematic inquiry, explanation or understanding. Those who practise chaplaincy are rightly concerned with fulfilling their responsibilities and accomplishing their tasks, consequently praxis in the demanding contexts of chaplaincy can easily outweigh any scholarly activity. This unquestioned pull towards practice and the requirements of the profession means that the scholarship within chaplaincy is often in the form of applied studies from other disciplines, for example moral philosophy and its application to ethical dilemmas. Whilst this appropriated knowledge and understanding is valid and relevant it cannot be the totality unless chaplaincy is content with becoming the sum of a set of derived insights and skills. This is not to imply that chaplains themselves are uninterested in their own practice and learning; but this can often go no further than a narrative of experience. Describing and discerning a situation is a vital first step that can lead on to critical interpretation, but this needs to be brought into reflective deliberation with theory if a general knowledge of chaplaincy is to exist and develop. What this points to is the need for a disciplined endeavour of chaplaincy studies that this book attempts to illustrate in its various modes.

It is our contention that rigorous inquiry and the creative work of scholarship can contribute to the self-understanding of the profession and its ways of interpreting the needs and contexts of those it seeks to serve, the development and refinement of good practice, and the derivation of sound guiding principles, core knowledge and critical theory. Chaplains do this in part through their commitment to reflexive practice as they seek to reason what it is best to do and how to respond to the unique circumstances of certain individuals in particular places and specific situations. Chaplaincy studies builds on this phronesis (Walton 2014) and tacit knowledge by identifying or generating sources of knowledge that can be scrutinised and brought into critical dialogue in ways that enable knowledge to be shared, fresh insights gained and new explanations, concepts and theories proposed. It is this habitual curiosity that is the characteristic of chaplaincy studies, evident in the chapters contained in this book, which has the potential to sustain and enrich not only the community of praxis, but also our knowledge of human flourishing.

What is the Object of Study?

The core of this book consists of the critical reflections of a set of people who are designated as chaplains and who practise chaplaincy. This is the ontological and evidential basis for the study of chaplaincy: the people who think and act in ways associated with being a chaplain. It is the presence and practice of designated chaplains in communities and institutions that constitute a social reality which can be the subject of observation, inquiry and analysis. It will be clear from many of the chapters in this book that what constitutes the kin of chaplaincy is a diverse family, located across a range of contexts and institutions, occupying different structural positions and inhabiting various roles. This complexity represents the first challenge in the study of chaplaincy in terms of where to draw the boundaries of the field. It is evident that mapping the location of chaplains across the social terrain can provide an outline derived from the function of chaplains and the contexts in which they work. However, one of the distinctive characteristics of chaplains is that they also represent and manifest claims about the nature of reality that inform the way they interpret and respond to human experience, such as prayer and meditation. These are typically the beliefs and practices of religious communities where chaplains have developed their spiritual disciplines and pastoral practices. This represents the second challenge for the study of chaplaincy in that a purely functional approach is insufficient and needs pairing with a substantive approach that refers to the kind of metaphysical commitments or superempirical realities found in religions (Schilbrack 2014). By implication, some forms of inquiry will require a methodological strategy capable of dealing with objects and properties that are not directly observable but which may be inferred from experiences, beliefs and practices.

It will be evident that some studies of chaplaincy concentrate more on the functional than the substantive aspects of chaplaincy, but supporting a coherent field of study we propose a definition that incorporates both elements. A definition is a useful but provisional statement that explains a phenomenon to support a common understanding. In terms of the aims of this book a definition of chaplaincy is useful to distinguish the object of chaplaincy studies from objects that might be regarded as similar, such as religious studies; it is provisional in that a definition is always open to being replaced by alternatives that perform the same function better. Here then is our definition of chaplaincy that is intended to apply across all sectors:

Chaplaincy is a practice of care involving the intentional recognition and articulation of the sacred by nominated individuals authorised for this task in secular situations.

Chaplaincy is a practical discipline in the same way that psychiatry or the practice of the law is a practical discipline based upon a body of knowledge and involving skilled actions, reasoning and judgements about a set of particular circumstances with a degree of uncertainty. In the case of chaplaincy the practice is intended to be conscientiously caring and supportive of the particular interests of those cared for. The practice of care is relational and depends upon the capacity to understand the needs of those being cared for and accepting a responsibility for meeting some or all of those needs. Care-giving and caring relationships therefore involve personal and social ethics that are necessary for people and societies to flourish (Held 2006). The following is an example from the National Association of Chaplains to the Police that illustrates the context-specific practice of care that is offered:

Working in today’s police service is increasingly challenging. More than ever, members of the police service need to be able to keep things in perspective. Police chaplains recognise that much of police work, by its very nature, is stressful and dehumanising. We understand that everybody is a complete person – body mind & spirit – and care for them in this holistic way. We also care for the organisation, acting as critical friends within the decision making processes. (NACP 2014)

Care to individuals and organisations is provided by many different professional groups trained in distinctive paradigms and practices of care. We argue that the distinctiveness of chaplaincy is found in its attentiveness to the sacred, a term that itself could easily be the subject of a whole book. The adoption of the term sacred is a carefully chosen signifier of those fundamental qualities of life that go beyond the material and mundane by which people orientate and make sense of their lives. The sacred can be expressed in all aspects of human thought and behaviour including beliefs, values and practices, and in artefacts, symbols, places and environments. Critically in relation to our definition, it is an object that, as Lynch argues, ‘ … is regarded as a grounding or ultimate source of power, identity, meaning and truth’ (Lynch 2007: 138). In other words, and to follow Lynch further, the sacred is ‘ … what people take to be absolute, normative realities that exert claims on the conduct of social life’(Lynch 2012: 5). An example of the sacred is life itself which has normative significance for most people in terms of absolute meaning and value. This finds its expression in the principle of the sanctity of life and the moral inhibitions this raises about intentional killing that may have a religious and non-religious basis. This term therefore admits a wide range of forms including but not limited to those mediated through religious traditions and practices. Consequently the term sanctity has a strong utility for the practice of chaplains because of the gamut of religions they are associated with and the diversity of people that they serve, including those with non-theistic, humanistic and atheistic beliefs and practices.

Chaplains have a unique licence within an organisation or institution to deal with the sacred, to handle sacred symbols and narratives, celebrate and express its manifestations, operate within sacred spaces, and deal with the consequences of disruptions to and violations against what is held to be sacred. This places chaplains in situations at the intersections of worldly and transcendent realities that they must negotiate with extreme care and absolute trust. As with any distinctive role, and in particular ones that deal with powerful values and meanings, chaplains are clearly designated and authorised for this task so that they cannot be confused with those who share a similar interest in promoting human welfare and flourishing. This raises interesting questions for chaplaincy studies about how chaplains are identified and authorised in distinction to, say, counsellors or visiting ministers of religion.

This leads us to the final distinguishing term of our definition that locates chaplains in secular situations. This is most evident from the binomial nomenclature of chaplaincy, for example airport chaplaincy and street chaplains, and is indicative of a practice that operates at the intersection of the sacred and the profane. Chaplaincy is largely at the service of institutions and organisations that are secular and pursue aims that are not contingent upon exclusively religious or non-religious worldviews, such as justice or health. Secularity here goes beyond simple neutrality and implies both a freedom of conscience to hold different beliefs and a mutual respect and equality between people regardless of their sacred orientations. It is this socio-political context that is a feature of most public domains and institutions in which chaplaincy operates, where it has been argued that:

Secularity promises an arena which is neutral, and at any rate plural and inclusive of all members of the political community: those who believe, those who do not, those who have not made up their minds, and those who are not interested in the discussion. (Jiménez Lobeira 2014: 397–8)

Why Study Chaplaincy?

Whatever the self-interests and curiosity of chaplains in reflecting on their roles and developing their knowledge and understanding, chaplaincy also reflects something about the way society and particular organisations deal with sacred meanings, identities and truths. In simple terms there is an internal motivation to understand the profession and practice of chaplains and an external motivation about the ways in which society and the state authorise and respond to the sacred through chaplaincy. There is an interest therefore both in the ‘black box’ of chaplaincy and in the relation of chaplains to the wider community and society. However, before such aspirations can be realised we have to acknowledge that chaplaincy studies is a relatively undeveloped field of enquiry. This is evident when we question the reliability and accuracy of the empirical maps of the chaplaincy landscape and realise that there remain many gaps and incomplete features. For example, there are no comprehensive national inventories of chaplaincies, the concrete and symbolic forms they take, how they represent themselves and are identified, what their organising principles and structures consist of, and how they behave and practise. A recent research report, commissioned by the Church of England, for instance, included an objective to map its current involvement in chaplaincy through the analysis of extant data. The researchers reported that:

It is a significant challenge for researchers to find accurate, reliable quantitative data about the number and type of chaplaincy roles that exist, the number of people in chaplaincy ministry, the amount of time spent in chaplaincy ministry and how that ministry is resourced. There are two main reasons for this. The first reason is that there is no conceptual clarity about what constitutes chaplaincy. For example, people may use the term ‘chaplaincy’ as a familiar term of convenience for any ministerial role that takes place in a non-church context without there being a clear understanding of what makes the role a chaplaincy. The second reason is that no accurate diocesan or central Church of England statistics are kept for chaplaincy. This fact says something in itself. (Todd et al. 2014: 14)

A report by the think tank Theos in partnership with the Cardiff Centre for Chaplaincy Studies attempts to overcome some of these limitations by mapping the range of chaplaincy provision in one UK geographical location where it finds 169 chaplains serving in the town of Luton (Ryan 2015). However, it is safe to say that the basic empirical map of chaplaincy remains largely incomplete, and in some areas either speculative or not charted at all. This may be a particular challenge for chaplaincies without any associational representation or in settings where they remain largely out of site for either strategic or numerical reasons. Mapping the territory theoretically appears to be in no better state and there is a similar lack of definition in terms of explanatory and conceptual features and landmarks. Sociological and cultural approaches to chaplaincy studies probably lead the way in this venture, exemplified by two recent publication from the United States: Wendy Cadge’s study of hospital chaplains, Paging God: Religion in the Halls of Medicine (Cadge 2012), and Winnifred Fallers Sullivan’s examination of chaplaincy as a product of religion and the law in A Ministry of Presence: Chaplaincy, Spiritual Care, and the Law (Sullivan 2014). Both offer critical and extensive engagements with chaplaincy from a particular disciplinary perspective and are rare but welcome examples of the limited scholarly activity in this field. In the UK there are two notable publications that have attempted to expound on the practice and nature of chaplaincy across different sectors (Legood 1999, Threlfall-Holmes and Newitt 2011), and in addition there have been studies about particular sectors, such as hospital chaplaincy (Orchard 2000, Swift 2014), or particular faiths (Gilliat-Ray et al 2013).

We are not aware of any professional or scholarly attempt to develop a comprehensive agenda for chaplaincy studies including what key questions it should seek to address and by what means, and what scope of enquiry it should encompass. The authors represented in this book provide some of the pieces of this mosaic but clearly there remains much foundational work to be completed before any systematic attempt at assembling the whole can be considered. We suggest, therefore, that the state of chaplaincy studies is an early developmental state and requires greater focus and better linkages if it is to achieve greater traction in the professional and scholarly communities. The goal of chaplaincy studies is perhaps clearer: the creation of new knowledge and the generation of new theories and understandings about chaplaincy phenomena with the intention of making a distinct and valuable contribution to the practice of chaplaincy, the academy and society. To achieve this aim chaplaincy studies will need to draw upon a range of established disciplinary knowledge, methods and expertise such as theology, sociology, psychology and philosophy. This will result in both unidisciplinary studies (an example of which would be the history of theatre chaplains) and multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary studies that address complex topics (an example of which would be understanding the impact of chaplaincy in care homes). This is why we use the plural form of ‘studies’ to indicate the breadth of scholarship and disciplinary approaches that can be applied to chaplaincy inquiries.

The Layout of the Book

The first section of the book explores the wider social, political and academic contexts within which the study of chaplaincy is necessarily situated. Stephen Pattison opens this section with a perceptive and informed discussion about what he sees as the rise of chaplaincy as religion has faded, and he reflects on why this might be so. Pattison draws upon the work of Lynch, as we have done, to explain how chaplaincy has embraced contemporary social sacralities as religion seems to have abandoned them. However, he ends with a warning that can be seen as something of a challenge to the goal of chaplaincy studies as we understand it, that the more we understand and explain chaplaincy the less plausible and vital it might become. Alan Billings takes a look at chaplaincy in relation to public life in Chapter 3. He begins by considering some of the changes to the place of religion in society and the public sector over time that have presented challenges to chaplaincy in the recent past and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future. Billings then develops a case for chaplaincy in terms of the value that it adds, which he argues is derived from its distinctive understanding of the complex needs of people, its availability to all, and its context-specific contribution to each sector that it operates within. However, he also recognises the ongoing challenge to chaplains of maintaining their integrity, pastoral focus and prophetic voice when operating at the interface of the state, faith communities and the individual needs of those they serve.

How to study chaplaincy is the subject of Chapter 4. Wilf McSherry and Peter Kevern scrutinise chaplaincy from four perspectives: as representative of a religious tradition; as serving institutional values and ends; as therapy for the individual client; and as a reflective and reflexive activity. This helps them to identify some of the significant gaps in the materials and methods of chaplaincy studies and the under-representation in the research of both the voice of those that chaplains care for and the voice of chaplains themselves as researchers. In Chapter 5 Victoria Slater considers the dissonance between the dominant positivist scientific approach of evidence-based practice manifest in many secular institutions and what she describes as the interpretive relational approach characteristic of chaplaincy. She aims to resolve this tension through developing an approach to practice-based evidence in chaplaincy which is a form of qualitative inquiry that she considers can be integral to practice, particularly in the form of case studies.

The second section of the book turns its attention to some of the prominent themes and topics in chaplaincy studies that practitioners and scholars of chaplaincy have to navigate and understand. In Chapter 6 Frank Cranmer sets out the legal basis for the main sectors of chaplaincy considered in this book. He then proceeds to consider questions of a more general nature including whether chaplains are employees or office holders, the extent to which a confidential conversation with a chaplain may be regarded as privileged by the law and the application of Article 9 (Freedom of thought, conscience and religion) in the European Convention on Human Rights to chaplaincy. Peter Sedgwick, in Chapter 7, describes what he considers to be the distinctive ethical demands made of chaplains and why these arise as a result of the religious communities that chaplains belong to and the secular institutions in w...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Contributors
• Foreword by Linda Woodhead
• 1 Introduction to Chaplaincy Studies
• Part I: Chaplaincy in Context
• Part II: Key Themes in Chaplaincy Studies
• Part III: Health Care Chaplaincy
• Part IV: Military Chaplaincy
• Part V: Prison Chaplaincy
• Part VI: Education Chaplaincy
• Conclusion
• Index