Chaplaincy And Spiritual Care In The Twenty First Century

Wendy Cadge and Shelly Rambo demonstrate the urgent need, highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic, to position the long history and practice of chaplaincy within the rapidly changing landscape of American religion and spirituality. This book provides a much-needed road map for training and renewing chaplains across a professional continuum that spans major sectors of American society, including hospitals, prisons, universities, the military, and nursing homes. Written by a team of multidisciplinary experts and drawing on ongoing research at the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab at Brandeis University, Chaplaincy and Spiritual Care in the Twenty-First Century identifies three central competencies—individual, organizational, and meaning-making—that all chaplains must have, and it provides the resources for building those skills. Featuring profiles of working chaplains, the book positions intersectional issues of religious diversity, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and other markers of identity as central to the future of chaplaincy as a profession.

The place of religion in public life continues to be a much-debated topic in Western nations. This book charts the changing role of hospital chaplains and examines through detailed case studies the realities of practice and the political debates which either threaten or sustain the service. This second edition includes a new introduction and updated material throughout to present fresh insights and research about chaplaincy, including in relation to New Atheism and the developing debate about secularism and religion in public life. Swift concludes that chaplains must do more to communicate the value of what they bring to the bedside.

Issues of faith and spirituality have been resurgent in the UK since the opening of the twenty-first century. This book charts the impact of shifting attitudes towards spirituality through the experiences of health care chaplains. Rooted in a new and challenging interpretation of the chaplain's work in the past, the book moves on to describe a current crisis in the nature of spiritual care. Using the tools of practical theology to analyze these experiences, fundamental problems are identified for chaplains as they work within the culture of 'evidence based practice'. As the National Health Service struggles to balance its books in the face of national economic uncertainty, chaplains will continue to come under increasing levels of scrutiny. Some chaplains have faced the prospect of redundancy or cuts to their budgets, while a growing number of NHS Trusts no longer offer chaplaincy to patients out of hours. In this context the nature of chaplaincy itself has come into question, and rival models of the profession have emerged. Is chaplaincy a new and distinct profession within health care, based on evidence and available to all? Or is it State-funded religious activity, theoretically open to all but in practice utilized chiefly by the faithful few? In responding to these questions the book concludes with a vision of how chaplaincy can both maintain its integrity - and be a valued part of twenty-first century health care.

This book examines the services that chaplains provide to dying patients and the unique relationship that palliative care staff construct with people at the end of life. It explores the nature of hope when faced with the inevitable and develops a theory of spiritual care rooted in relationship that has implications for all healthcare professionals.

This open access volume is the first academic book on the controversial issue of including spiritual care in integrated electronic medical records (EMR). Based on an international study group comprising researchers from Europe (The Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland), the United States, Canada, and Australia, this edited collection provides an overview of different charting practices and experiences in various countries and healthcare contexts. Encompassing case studies and analyses of theological, ethical, legal, healthcare policy, and practical issues, the volume is a groundbreaking reference for future discussion, research, and strategic planning for inter- or multi-faith healthcare chaplains and other spiritual care providers involved in the new field of documenting spiritual care in EMR. Topics explored among the chapters include: Spiritual Care Charting/Documenting/Recording/Assessment Charting Spiritual Care: Psychiatric and Psychotherapeutic Aspects Palliative Chaplain Spiritual Assessment Progress Notes Charting Spiritual Care: Ethical Perspectives Charting Spiritual Care in Digital Health: Analyses and Perspectives Charting Spiritual Care: The Emerging Role of Chaplaincy Records in Global Health Care is an essential resource for researchers in interprofessional spiritual care and healthcare chaplaincy, healthcare chaplains and other spiritual caregivers (nurses, physicians, psychologists, etc.), practical theologians and health ethicists, and church and denominational representatives.

Encouraging a broad, compassionate, humanistic approach to spirituality, this book shows how patients' spiritual needs can be communicated well within interdisciplinary teams, leading to better patient wellbeing. This book describes the art of charting patients' spiritual perspectives in an open way that will help physicians and nurses to better direct medical care. It includes practical information on how to distil spiritual needs into pragmatic language, helping to demystify spiritual experience. Drawing on his extensive practical experience, the author also suggests key points to emphasise that will enrich chart notes for medical records, including brief, relative narratives, trusting one's own impressions, reflecting holistically on the patient's life, patient attitudes towards treatment and recovery, and describing families' opinions on the health care situation of their loved one. The book shows healthcare professionals of all disciplines how to engage in a shared responsibility for the spiritual care of their patients.

This edited collection about good practice for mental health chaplains and other related professionals looks at how spirituality is viewed across mental health fields. It identifies what mental health chaplaincy is, how mental health chaplaincy interacts with other organisations like the NHS, and what good practice means with examples of positive and fulfilling experiences in mental health settings. The chapters consider some of the main issues of working with the mental health community, such as the place of volunteers, the recovery process, religious diversity and patient safety. They are followed by uplifting case studies, including service user perspectives, to provide a valuable overall insight into mental health chaplaincy and its context in wider mental health services.

Trends and skills for those who offer pastoral care Christian pastoral care has changed a great deal in the past few decades in response to many factors in our rapidly changing world. In part 1 of Nurturing Hope, Lynne Baab discusses seven trends in pastoral care--shifts in who delivers pastoral care, the attitudes and commitments that undergird pastoral care, and societal trends that are shaping pastoral care today. She illustrates them with stories from diverse congregations where Christian caregivers are meeting those challenges in creative and exciting ways. In the second half of the book, Baab presents four practical, doable, energizing skills needed by pastoral carers in our time. Focusing on skills that help carers nurture connections between everyday life and Christian faith, she explores the need for carers to understand common stressors, listen, pray with others, and nurture their personal resilience. Grounded in an understanding of God as the true caregiver and healer, the author offers tips for readers who are training other pastoral carers or developing their own understanding and skills. Each chapter ends with discussion and reflection questions, making the book helpful for groups. Lynne Baab brings readers hope for their caring role and for their own spiritual journey.

Is it appropriate, or even legal, for government to provide spiritual care for its citizens? Winnifred Fallers Sullivan shows that courts and administrative agencies have, for better or for worse, already decided this question. Religious freedom in American today means government affirmatively providing opportunities for Americans to encounter their religious selves and realize their religious commitments. How did this happen? The answer, Sullivan shows, is an emerging religious practice--the ministry offered by chaplains in secular settings, generally called a ministry of presence. In this eye-opening book, Sullivan details the legal recognition and regulation of the spiritual care delivered by governmental and quasi-governmental chaplaincies, as well as by chaplaincies within ostensibly private but regulated industries, such as hospitals and colleges. Across America today, there are chaplains in airports, fire departments, prisons, hospitals, the military, unions, and even businesses and workplaces. Chaplains operate at the intersection of the sacred and the secular, brokers responsible for ministering to the wandering souls of a globalized economy while sacralizing institutions we generally consider unmarked by any religious identity. A book with profound implications for how we understand the relationship between religion and law in contemporary America, "A Ministry of Presence" will interest readers in legal studies, religious studies, sociology, and public policy. "

The first comprehensive resource for chaplains and campus ministers of all faith traditions--a vital resource for ministry in multifaith and secular contexts. Caregiver, educator, trustee of institutional traditions, public religious voice and, occasionally, prophet: in an increasingly multifaith, multicultural, global world, the role of the college or university chaplain has changed. This book examines experiences and perspectives that arise at the intersection of religious practice, distinct campus culture, student counseling and the secular context of the modern academic institution. Contributors who are actively engaged in the work of college chaplaincy--from educational institutions as diverse as Stanford University, Williams College, Jesuit-affiliated Creighton University and Louisiana's historically black Dillard University, and from many faith traditions--explore the practice, theology and joys of campus ministry and the chaplain's calling to support, challenge, stir the imagination of and address this generation's urgent longing for connection and meaning. CONTRIBUTORS: Rabbi Rena S. Blumenthal, Vassar College * Rev. Gail E. Bowman, Dillard University * Rev. Janet M. Cooper Nelson, Brown University * Rev. Dr. Lucy A. Forster-Smith, Macalester College * Rev. Dr. Susan Henry-Crowe, Emory University * Rev. K. P. Hong, Macalester College * Rev. Dr. Charles Lattimore Howard, University of Pennsylvania * Rabbi Patricia Karlin-Neumann, Stanford University * Sharon M. K. Kugler, Yale University * Rev. Dr. Linda J. Morgan-Clement, The College of Wooster * Rev. Dr. J. Diane Mowrey, Queens University of Charlotte * Fr. Roc O'Connor, SJ, Creighton University * Rev. Ian B. Oliver,Yale University * Fr. Daniel Reim, SJ, University of Michigan--Ann Arbor * Rev. Dr. Paul H. W. Rohde, Augustana College * Rev. Deanna L. Shorb, Grinnell College * Rev. Dr. Richard E. Spalding, Williams College * Rev. Dr. Samuel H. Speers, Vassar College * Sohaib N. Sultan, Princeton University