College University Chaplaincy In The 21st Century

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

Contributors who are actively engaged in the work of college chaplaincy explore the many aspects of campus ministry: navigating the secular academy as religious professionals, supporting students' increasingly hyphenated religious identities, and more.

With candor, passion, and deep love for her work, Lucy Forster-Smith takes us across the threshold as a chaplain on a college campus. This vocational narrative braids the story of her faith journey that began on a porch when she was a four-year-old, was shaken by a sexual assault as a seminarian, and through healing and grace brought her to claim a call to ministry with students. With delightful humor and an infectious love for her work, Forster-Smith invites the reader into her world. Crossing Thresholds is a theological narrative, weaving together the story of faith in the context of the professional life of a college chaplain. Lighting on the power of spiritual awakening at a college, once named as the number one institution of higher education that "ignored God on a regular basis," Forster-Smith jars loose the assumptions about the avowedly secular campus. Her journey of healing and grace illuminates and guides to cross the threshold of the campus's soul.

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. The book, which features profiles of working chaplains, 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.

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.

Examines the contemporary social and pastoral context of Catholic colleges and universities in the United States, from the perspective of the campus minister of the twenty-first century

Since the 1990s, the religious diversity of United States universities has increased, with growing numbers of students, faculty, and staff who are Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, and Humanist. To support these demographics, university chaplaincies and spiritual life programs have been expanding beyond their Christian and Jewish compositions to include chaplains and programs for these traditions. Through interviews with these new chaplains, this book examines how these chaplaincies developed, the preparation the chaplains needed, their responsibilities, and the current challenges and the future prospects of these programs. It provides valuable advice for university leaders about how and why to develop spiritual life programs to support today’s religious diversity.

Showing how spiritual care is practiced in a variety of different contexts such as healthcare, detention and higher education, as well as settings that may not have formal chaplaincy arrangements, this book offers an original and unique resource for Hindu chaplains to understand and practice spiritual care in a way that is authentic to their own tradition and that meets the needs of Hindus. It offers a Hindu perspective for all chaplains to inform their caregiving to Hindus. The book explores the theological and metaphysical roots of Hindu chaplaincy and puts forward the case for Hindu chaplaincy as a valuable spiritual practice. It covers the issues that arise in specific locations, such as college, healthcare, prison, military and the corporate sector. Chapters also examine Hindu pastoral care offered in other, 'non-chaplaincy' settings, such as LGBT centres, social justice work and environmental activism. Made up of some 30 essays by chaplains, scholars and other important voices in the field, Hindu Approaches to Spiritual Care provides spiritual caregivers with a comprehensive theoretical and practical approach to the relationship of Hinduism and chaplaincy.