Religious Diversity And University Chaplaincy

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.

Based on extensive in-depth interviews with more than thirty active duty chaplains regarding their successes, failures and conflicts, the book is about the way military chaplains handle religious diversity among the enlisted they serve and within their own corps.

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

Based on extensive in-depth interviews with more than thirty active duty chaplains regarding their successes, failures and conflicts, the book is about the way military chaplains handle religious diversity among the enlisted they serve and within their own corps.

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.

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.

This title was first published in 2000. The place of religion in universities and institutes of higher education has become increasingly topical and contested in recent years, largely due to the growth of religious diversity on campus. Issues such as shared worship spaces, equal opportunities, and the management of inter-religious conflict, concern university administrators and students alike. Based on primary empirical research, this book indicates the need for clear guidelines on these issues and provides the data to inform policy-making. Offering the first study of the practical and sociological implications of the multi-faith campus, this book provides a context for examining some of the dynamics of religious diversity in Britain more generally as well as providing a useful analysis for the wider international context. Key themes covered include: religion in institutions; inter-faith relations; the changing roles of religious professionals; secularisation and resacralisation; and religion, youth and identity.

Stay up-to-date in health care ministry as cultural and spiritual heterogeneity increases! Ministry in the Spiritual and Cultural Diversity in Health Care: Increasing the Competency of Chaplains identifies concrete methods for improving the provision of pastoral care to culturally and religiously diverse patients and/or residents. Experts from both inside and outside the profession—with established records in cross-cultural work and experience with religious diversity—discuss in detail the multicultural revolution that has challenged the traditional health care delivery system. With this timely resource, you will be able to respond to the requests and desires of patients and their loved ones with compassion and consideration for their cultural and spiritual backgrounds. Ministry in the Spiritual and Cultural Diversity in Health Care explores the challenges for the spiritual care professional in health care to address the emotional, cultural, and spiritual needs of a patient without assumption, bias, or discomfort for either person. In addition to advice, recommendations, and real-world examples and case studies, this valuable resource provides a guide for chaplaincy supervisors to use when training chaplain students to impart such unprejudiced care. The book is devoted to establishing chaplains who are clinically trained and certified to contribute to the increasingly pluralistic and global health care context with assorted religious, spiritual, and cultural values, beliefs, and practices. Ministry in the Spiritual and Cultural Diversity in Health Care will keep you updated on: how a health care chaplain can overlook the differing worldview of a patient and his or her family how cultural diversity impacts the work of the health care chaplain specific strategies and tools that will assist chaplains in acquiring spiritual and cultural competency definitions, obstacles, and standards of care for fostering a genuine multicultural perspective among health care givers, particularly chaplains how professional health care chaplains take leadership in responding to cultural and spiritual diversity within health care environments