The Higher Education Chaplain within a Post-Secular Context: A Case Study of
Providing a Religious and Spiritual Reality on a 21st Century Campus
A dissertation presented to
the faculty of
The Patton College of Education of Ohio University
In partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree
Doctor of Philosophy
William E. Mullins
August 2017
© 2017 William E. Mullins. All Rights Reserved. 2 This dissertation titled
The Higher Education Chaplain within a Post-Secular Context: A Case Study of
Providing a Religious and Spiritual Reality on a 21st Century Campus
by
WILLIAM E. MULLINS
has been approved for
the Department of Counseling and Higher Education
and The Patton College of Education by
Peter Mather
Professor of Counseling and Higher Education
Renée A. Middleton
Dean, The Patton College of Education 3 Abstract
MULLINS, WILLIAM E., Ph.D. August 2017, Higher Education,
The Higher Education Chaplain within a Post-Secular Context: A Case Study of
Providing a Religious and Spiritual Reality on a 21st Century Campus
Director of Dissertation: Peter Mather
The purpose of this study is to examine the lived experience of the higher education chaplain. The reason for this study is that many students attribute importance to religious and/or spiritual quests. The study is a qualitative reflexive case study of three institutions that employ higher education chaplains. The goal of the study is to better understand the role the chaplain plays in a student’s undergraduate experience. The lived experience of the chaplain is examined through a phenomenological lens of care within the current postsecular moment. The higher education chaplain offers a transformative praxis of care for students, faculty, and staff on the 21st century postsecular campus. The term postsecular describes a renewed collaboration between the secular and spiritual worldviews within the larger culture and higher education. 4 Dedication
To my beloved partner, friend, and spouse Sommer L. Fisher-Mullins, thank you for the
often austere and lonely offices of love while I wrote this dissertation. In the words of
Bob Dylan, “I'm closin' the book on the pages and the text. And I don't really care what
happens next.”
5 Acknowledgments
I would like to acknowledge the many wonderful human beings who have helped me on my educational journey. I would like to thank the members of my committee.
First, to the chair of my dissertation committee, Dr. Pete Mather, you helped me in countless ways. You encouraged me to explore my passion for chaplaincy through the larger lens of higher education research—thank you. Next, to Dr. Laura Harrison, a gifted educator and a tireless advocate for clear academic writing. I deeply appreciated the messages you sent me during this process and the many articles you sent my way.
Also to Dr. Lynn Harter, thank you for gifting me with a reflexive research methodology—it is thrilling to have such an intimate research tool at my disposal.
Lastly, to Dr. Rick Nutt, I have learned a great deal from you. The lessons you have provided me with have shaped me in profound ways. What a wonderful mentor and friend you have been to me.
To the chaplains in this study, you gave of your time, you shared your wisdom, in other words, you did what you do best — shared with others so they can grow. This project would not have been possible without you, thanks. To my students, you are reason I show up, the reason I keep doing this kind of work and I am thrilled to continue this journey with you. To Prof. Paul Cockeram, if I were half the writer/academic you are I would have finished this project years ago with no rewrites. I can’t wait to raise a glass of Oban 18 with you. I also want to thank Rev. Landon Whitsitt—you believed in me from the first moment I met you—thanks. Now to my beloved spouse Sommer and my powerful and intelligent daughters, Eleanor, Harriet, and Miriam, let’s go for a long walk around the reservoir—maybe we can get ice-cream afterwards. 6 Table of Contents
Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………3
Dedication…………………………………………………………………………………4
Acknowledgments…………………………………………………………………………5
Chapter 1: Higher Education Chaplaincy…………………….…………………………..11
Purpose, Goal, and Problem Statement……………….…………………………..11
Research Questions………………………………………………………………15
Postsecularism……………………………………………………………………16
Definition of Terms……………………………………………………………....20
Limitations……………………………………………………………………….23
Methodological Introduction…………………………………….……………….25
Significance of the Study……….………………….……………………………..27
Chapter 2: Review of the Literature……………………….……………………………...28
Introduction………………………………………………………………………28
Spirituality in Higher Education…………………………………………………29
The Rise of Spirituality…………………………………………………………..31
The Decline of Religion………………………………………………………….33
Postsecular Theory……………………………………………………………….36
The Higher Education Chaplain Today……………………………………….…42
Vocation……………………………………………………….…………………45
Transformative Education………………………………………………………..49
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………….52
Chapter 3: Research Methodology……………………………………………………….54 7 Rational for a Qualitative Approach……………………………………………..54
Phenomenological Method………………………………………………………59
Research Tools…………………………………………………………………...63
Hermeneutic Approach…………………………………………………………..64
Reflexive Model………………………………………………………………….66
Pilot Testing……………………………………………………………………...72
Data Collection…………………………………………………………………..72
Organization, Analysis and Synthesis of Data…………………………………...76
Chapter 4: Analysis of Data……………………………………………………………...79
Care as the Overall Theme……………………………………………………….79
Introduction to the Data………………………………………………………….80
Case Study #1 Muskingum……………………………………………………....82
Care and navigating the unknown………………………………………..82
Care and the unpredictable……………………………………………….83
Care during trouble………………………………………………………84
Care for student’s God talk……………………………………………....85
Care as encounter………………………………………………………...86
Care as motivation………………………………………….…………….87
Care and grief…………………………………………………………….90
Care as love………………………………………………………………91
Care and role……………………………………………………………..92
Care and tension…..……………………………………………………...93
Caring with others………………..……………………………………....95 8 Care as experience………………………………………………………..96
Care and stories………………………………………………………..…97
Care and students……………………………………………………...….98
Care and vulnerability…………………………………………………..100
Care and faith…………………………………………………………...101
Care as collaboration……………………………………………………104
Care as communal……………………………………………………....110
Care and teaching……………………………………………………….117
Retired (Chaplain) College Minister Interview………………………………...124
The right mentor………………………………………………………..125
Care and conversation…………………………………………………..126
Care as prayer…………………………………………………………..127
Collaborative care……………………………………………………....129
Confidential care………………………………………………………..132
Care and conflict………………………………………………………..134
Chaplain Intern Case-Study…………………………………………………….136
Care as relationships…………………………………………………....137
Incognito care…………………………………………………………...138
Summary of Findings Case Study #1…………………………………………..140
Case Study #2 The College of Wooster………………………………………...144
Care within an interfaith context………………………………………..144
Introduction……………………………………………………….…….146
Reading the culture……………………………………………………..146 9 Caring center holds……………………………………………………..148
Caring for deep questions………………………………………………149
Role of honor…………………………………………………………...151
Gender, paradox and tension……………………………………………153
Honor and tension………………………………………………………157
Caring for the university’s soul…………………………………………159
Care and competition…………………………………………………...162
Summary of Findings for Case Study #2……………………………………….165
Case Study #3 Harvard University……………………………………………..170
Care and chaplaincy…………………………………………………….170
Introduction……………………………………………………………..172
Leadership as care……………………………………………………....173
Constant shifting of capacity…………………………………………...176
Care, space, and grace…………………………………………….…….179
The neutral zone of caring……………………………………………...184
Care and conflict………………………………………………………..188
Summary of Findings for Case Study #3……………………………………….191
Cross-Case Comparison of Care………………………………………………..193
Chapter 5: Interpreting the Chaplain……………………..……………………………..199
Introduction……………………………………………………………………..199
Postsecular Hospitality………………………………………………………….202
Hospitable discourse…………………………………………………....203
Academic hospitality…………………………………………………...204 10 Hospitality and mutuality……………………………………………….206
Hospitality and fearless communication………………………………..209
Hospitality and connection……………………………………………..211
Hospitality and compassion…………………………………………….211
Chaplaincy and Transformation………………………………………………...212
Transformative education……………………………………………....215
Social justice…………………………………………………………....216
Social justice, hospitality and transformation…………………………..224
Transformative theology………………………………………………..227
Chaplaincy and Leadership……………………………………………………..233
Embracing the secular…………………………………………………..236
Science………………………………………………………………….238
Transformative leadership……………………………………………...239
Chaplaincy and Wisdom………………………………………………………..246
Sacred and the secular………………………………………………….248
Chaplaincy and resistance……………………………………………..252
Religion and spirituality………………………………………………..256
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………...260
Implications……………………………………………………………………..261
References……………………………………………………………………………....263
Appendix A: Consent Form…………………………………………………………….282
Appendix B: Interview Protocol………………………………………………………..386
11 Chapter 1: Higher Education Chaplaincy
Purpose, Goal, and Problem Statement
According to Astin et al. (2011), many students attribute importance to religious and/or spiritual quests. The importance of religion and spirituality in the lives of many students directly effects whether or not students flourish in the current context (Carson,
King, & Koenig, 2012). For example, a student’s religious or spiritual quest correlates with some good outcomes such as less depression and fewer instances of binge drinking
(Yonker, Schnabelrauch, & DeHann, 2012; Sukhwal & Suman, 2013). Campuses regularly employ professionals who are charged with cultivating the spiritual and religious life of students within their institutions—at both public and private, church- related, and faith-based colleges and universities (Forster-Smith, 2013). It is relevant to better understand the ways these religious professionals (e.g. higher education chaplains) connect with students.
The lived experiences of chaplains are not sufficiently understood in the current postsecular contemporary era. As a religious professional working within a higher education context, the work of the chaplain is linked with a student’s exploration of meaning and purpose (Daloz-Parks, 2011). A persistent problem in higher education today is that students are not having their spiritual lives nourished, and such nourishment could, if done right, contribute to the kind of educational outcome that could increase student satisfaction with their college experience (Lindholm, 2010). Often, the kind of learning that is expected of students on college campuses today is one that does not fully appreciate a student’s inner life (Harrison & Mather, 2016). Learning to appreciate a student’s inner life is a cherished value in higher education. It is a value because a 12 student’s exploration of meaning and purpose is one way to understand how spirituality can manifest itself on college campuses today (Higher Education Research Institute,
2003). One solution to this problem would be to explore the work and context of the higher education chaplain as a way to situate better a student’s inner life within the larger higher education context, while also understanding how the chaplain enhances a student’s exploration of meaning and purpose.
The work of the higher education chaplain occurs within a postsecular age. The primary definition of postsecular is the collaborative desire across competing worldviews
(both secular and sacred) to name shared values. It is the principle assertion that the postsecular turn in the United States since the early 21st century is one that arises out of a realization that modern democratic secular societies, operating in the midst of complex pluralistic forces, struggle to provide values in a cohesive manner (Habermas, 2001) .
Simply stated, there is more interest in and less suspicion of spirituality within academic circles today (Dalferth, 2010). The higher education chaplain plays a role in the spiritual and religious dimensions of the higher education institution they serve—this role affects students, faculty and staff (Forster-Smith, 2013). So, in a way, a renewed interest in and less suspicion of spirituality may provide the right scholarly context to explore the higher education chaplain’s role on college campuses today. However, aside from two studies conducted more than 50 years ago (Underwood, 1969; Gordon, 1969), which focused on campus ministries rather than higher education chaplains, little research has been conducted on the work of the chaplain in what is described as a postsecular age (Forster-
Smith, 2013; Jacobsen & Jacobsen, 2008). The goal of this study is to offer a better 13 picture of the everyday lived experiences of higher education chaplains so that we can better understand how our students succeed both in and outside of the classroom.
Findings from the UCLA Higher Education Research Institute’s study of
Spirituality in Higher Education consider the complex ways that spirituality affects a student’s sense of purpose and how students make sense of their educational journey
(Higher Education Institute, 2003). This research suggests that when higher education institutions address the spiritual formation of their students, the satisfaction, academic performance and vocational clarity of these students improve (Astin, Astin, & Lindholm,
2011). However, the data that support such findings exist as a large longitudinal national study and focus mainly on students (Higher Education Institute, 2003). A more focused, qualitative case study on higher education chaplains can provide a cohesive unit of analysis in which to interpret the larger longitudinal data from the UCLA Higher
Education Research Institute’s study of Spirituality in Higher Education (Yin, 2014).
Most higher education chaplains operate within a mostly secular institutional context (Palmer & Zajonc, 2010). This context presents a number of challenges and opportunities when it comes to enhancing the spiritual and religious dimensions of higher education students. There is also another educational problem present:
… [The] UCLA-based research team believes that academic culture has, for too
long, caused its staff and students to lead fragmented and inauthentic lives.
People act either as if they are not spiritual beings, or as if their spiritual side is
irrelevant to their vocation or work. Academic work thus becomes divorced from
students’ most deeply felt values and students hesitate to discuss issues of 14 meaning, purpose, authenticity, wholeness, and fragmentation with each other or
faculty. (Lindholm, 2010, p. 205)
The problem is that higher education is resistant to integrative education (Palmer &
Zajonc, 2010). Integrative education in this sense is the helpful connection between spirituality and learning. There is an ever-present, unreflective and highly entrenched view that higher education and spirituality are incompatible realities (Greenway, 2006).
This view obscures and detracts from an emerging interest in spirituality as an integral part of higher education’s mission (Stamm, 2006). Higher education chaplains, as religious professionals operating within a mostly secular environment are visible reminders of higher education’s mission to educate and to explore meaning, purpose and wholeness. More research is needed on the lived experiences of higher education chaplains within a postsecular context in order to understand how the spiritual and religious yearnings of students are shaped, neglected, challenged, or overlooked. We understand clearly from the data that those students entering college care about spirituality but what is less known is what is being done to nurture these concerns and how the chaplain is institutionally situated within this process.
Given the beneficial connection between spirituality and academic success in the lives of students (Astin, Astin, & Lindholm, 2011), limited qualitative research has been accomplished on the individuals who offer formative spiritual experiences on behalf of the higher education institution. Higher education chaplains are individuals who offer formative spiritual experiences to a campus community. Studying spiritually formative experiences through the context of an institutional case study, as well as the lived experiences of higher education chaplains with the context of a postsecular environment 15 represents a significant educational problem by uncovering themes and experiences not fully captured in a large longitudinal study on spirituality (Yin, 2014). The case study was employed to examine the connections between spirituality and academic life (Palmer
& Zajonc, 2010). The higher education chaplain is part of an academic institution and it is important to name the unique context of a religious professional seeking to enhance the spiritual formation of students so that learning and academic success may flourish.
Research Questions
Merriam (1991) suggests that the primary research questions should directly follow the purpose statement. This is done to state early and clearly, the reasoning behind my thought process. Further, it guides the most significant factors to explore within the study. The research questions should guide how the data is collected and they should heavily influence the questions asked in the interviews. However, Merriam
(1991) also states that research questions are not the same as the initial questions which motivated the study; “research questions that guide a qualitative study inquiry should not be confused with the question, curiosity, or puzzlement that gave rise to the study in the first place” (p. 60). This is an important point to bear in mind because the initial question that sparked the research project in higher education chaplaincy was the curiosity surrounding the impact of postsecular theory on the life and work of a higher education chaplain. The initial curiosity has transitioned to a concrete sample selection, which seeks to ask these research questions:
1. What daily tasks do higher education chaplains engage?
2. Why do higher education chaplains choose to perform these tasks?
3. How are students affected by these tasks? 16 4. How does the higher education chaplain understand their role?
These questions represent a working hypothesis in that they help to enhance and guide the measurement and interpretation of the qualitative data gathered in the study.
The purposive sampling guides the qualitative research sampling. Purposive sampling is the understanding that I “want to discover, understand, and gain insight and therefore must select a sample from which the most can be learned” (Merriam, 1991, p. 61).
Furthermore, Patton (1990) suggests that purposeful sampling guides me in selecting a case that contains more complexity than clarity and more depth than simple causality.
The cases must be chosen with the purpose of exploring higher education chaplaincies that are multifaith, diverse in cultural representation, show a facility in engaging in secular constituencies, and valuing service over religious uniformity. These are criterial, emerging signposts of a postsecular world (Dallmayr, 2008; Altinordu & Gorski, 2008).
Postsecularism
Postsecular theory’s foundational assumption is that Western liberal democracies are “rethinking the place of religion in the public sphere” (Jansen, 2011, p. 978).
Rethinking religion in the postmodern age relates to the various critiques of secularization. Secularization theory is a hallmark of modernity. Highly influential thinkers of the modern age such as Freud, Marx, Durkheim and Nietzsche argued that religion would gradually dissolve from a place of prominence in public life (Sav, 2012).
In the latter part of the twentieth century, a whole host of scholars followed suit with these highly influential thinkers and built a sturdy theoretical assumption, one that states rather succinctly the idea that religion would lose its social significance (Sav, 2012).
However, as Habermas (2008) controversially pointed out, citizens of Western liberal 17 democracies should not be compelled to “expect all citizens to justify their political positions independently of their religious convictions or worldviews” (p. 34). Jansen
(2011) sees theories of secularization as grossly undervaluing the role and influence of religion in modern life. Postsecular theory is described as a critique of secularization, it is also an emergent theory which assumes that religion is a valuable part of public life, as well as articulating the benefits of religion not as a polarizing reality in the current age but as an opportunity for coordinated acts of service and concern (Dallmayr, 2008;
Altinordu & Gorski, 2008; Davis, 2010). The higher education chaplain is a religious professional operating within a complex context of these postsecular forces. However, little has been done to understand this context through the lens of a robust, emerging and dynamic theoretical framework such as postsecular theory.
This study seeks to correct deficiencies in past literature that expresses a lack of a robust conceptual framework when it comes to understanding the role of chaplaincy within the higher education context (Speck & Hoppe, 2005). Postsecular theory provides a robust and necessary conceptual framework in order to investigate a case study of two institutions that employ higher education chaplains. Postsecular theory as an emergent theory, of the past fifteen years, seeks to understand religion’s relationship to higher education. One constituent assumption here is the link between religion and spirituality
(Greenway, 2006). Another constituent assumption is the historic link between higher education and religion (Brubacher & Rudy, 2008). Given, the relatively recent discussions of postsecularism, many scholars have engaged the topic from a wide range of disciplines and perspectives (Dalferth, Post-secular Society: Christianity and the
Dialectics of the Secular, 2010). The highly influential German rationalist/secular 18 philosopher Jürgen Habermas first used the term postsecular three weeks after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 (Altinordu & Gorski, 2008). Habermas sees the term postsecular as a descriptor, one that has a practical function when it comes to understanding a postmodern society’s relationship to religion.
The term struck a scholarly nerve. The term found currency, not as a theoretical concept used to describe abstract cultural forces in relation to religion, but rather as a way to understand Habermas’ own newfound appreciation for Pope Benedict XVI’s theological worldview (Altinordu & Gorski, 2008). Arguably the most influential secular philosopher of the late twentieth century, Habermas surprisingly had quite a bit in common with Pope Benedict XVI when the two held a debate on the pre-political moral foundations of the liberal state in 2004 (Skidelsky, 2005). There appears to be a softening between secular philosophical critiques of religion and spirituality and those who practice religion and spirituality but what does this mean for higher education chaplains on university and college campuses today?
Most higher education chaplains operate in a highly secular context. Even at private religiously-affiliated schools, not espousing a faith perspective is normative
(Speers, 2013). Habermas (2008) asserts that highly secularized societies in the West that exist in a postmodern landscape have been unable to propagate values in a coherent manner. This failure then leads to a kind of vigorous reassertion of religious and spiritual values. It is this vigorous reassertion, noted by Habermas, that heavily influences the discussion of religion’s role in early 21st century life. How has the higher education chaplain navigated a mostly secular context while simultaneously experiencing a vigorous reassertion of religious and spiritual values? Postsecularism is in some ways 19 about an undefined and not always readily apparent observation that religion is creatively adapting to postmodernity (Dallmayr, 2008). Postsecular theory provides what Merriam
(1991) calls a “heuristic” study (p. 29). A heuristic study is conducting a case study so as to uncover distinct meanings of an emergent phenomena and to “extend the reader’s experience, or confirm what is known” (1991, p. 30) Postsecular theory provides a way of understanding this research project as an intense, lively, and emergent scholarly conversations about postsecularism within the context of higher education chaplaincy.
The research project also seeks to engage spirituality as an emergent theme in higher education through the lens of a theoretical discussion of postsecularism.
Scholars of higher education have noticed a resurfacing of spirituality in higher education and have attributed this emergent dynamic to postsecularism (Jacobsen &
Jacobsen, 2008). As mentioned previously in the introduction, the national seven-year longitudinal study of undergraduate students reveals the importance of spirituality in higher education today—there may be an opportunity to interpret this data through a postsecular lens (Astin, Astin, & Lindholm, 2011). Higher education scholars are inviting secular and religious thinkers alike to explore the place of spirituality in our mostly secular institutions of higher learning (Zajonc, 2003). The case study of two higher education chaplains and their institutions enables us to explore a more thorough investigation of the practice of religion and spirituality on college and university campuses today. The case study seeks to inform chaplains on how to deepen spiritual practices, while serving both multifaith and secular constituencies.
Higher education chaplains are uniquely positioned to explore the subtle, complex and often conflicting claims of postsecular theory. Higher education chaplains straddle 20 the sacred and secular tensions within colleges and universities today (Waggoner, 2011) and are thus a fruitful population to explore when it comes to testing the durability of postsecular theory. These higher education chaplains are actively engaging the role of spirituality within mostly secular contexts in the academy (Forster-Smith, 2013). The study seeks to trace a consistent research path from continental philosophical discussions of postsecularism to higher education scholarship on spirituality all the way down to two institutional case studies. The case studies include two Presbyterian chaplains. This focused look provides a better understanding of the spiritual and religious landscape of higher education in the early 21st century. The central theoretical aim of the study is to arrive at a better definition of postsecular religion and how spirituality plays a role in higher education.
Definition of Terms
1. Secular: Harvey Cox expresses the profound paradigmatic shift that occurred in the 1960s. He writes, “we have defined secularization as the liberation of man [sic] from religious and metaphysical tutelage, the turning away from other worlds and toward this one (Cox, 1966, p. 17). Davis (2010) defines the secular “as a modern movement that, epistemological in purpose, distinctly divides objective knowing from subjective spiritual belief” (p. 73). This research project principally defines secular as a deep preference for the material world over and against an immaterial world and a constant search for objective knowing.
2. Religion: Emilie Durkheim (2008 ) defines religion as “a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden--beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a 21 Church, all those who adhere to them” (p. 47). It is the above definition of religion, defined by Durkheim in a secular age that seems to be in transition. Paul Tillich (1957) interprets the state of being grasped by what he calls an ultimate concern as the primary way religion can be understood within human experience. The primary postsecular shift in religion begins with an understanding of human concern. Religion manifests as ultimate concern (Tillich, The Dynamics of Faith, 1957). For the purpose of this research project religion is defined structurally (visible and invisible) as belief and institution, as well as the manner in which adherents/participants orient their lives to these structures.
3. Modernity/Postmodernity: Postmodernity is the transition away from the rational authoritative models found in modernity and a movement towards an emphasis on individual experience and collective action (Davis, 2010). Max Weber (2005) describes modernity as the cultural separation of religion and reason. Habermas (2001) builds on Weber’s analysis by describing the cultural separation of culture from religion as the creation of three autonomous spheres of reason: science, morality and art.
Postmodernity “involves a radical questioning of the grounds upon which knowledge claims are made” (Taylor & Winquist, 2002, p. 304). Secularism is uniquely related to the project of modernity by setting up science, morality and art as totally liberated from religion (Seidman S. , 1983). Therefore, postsecularism begins to question the ways the modernist project of secularism has devalued religious and spiritual ways of knowing.
4. Culture is defined through the lens of Durkheim’s understanding of civil religion (The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, 1954). Religion through a cultural lens is seen as a unifying or integrative force in society. Durkheim posits that there cannot be a society without a religious expression (Chriss, 1993). For the purposes of 22 this research, project culture is defined as a unifying or integrative force in society—that force is the emerging postsecular religion.
5. Chaplains are individuals who practice a faith tradition within the pluralistic landscape of early 21st century life. Chaplains’ embody a spiritual and religious worldview within the secular context of higher education. For the purposes of this research project, chaplains are individuals who enrich spiritual concerns that deepen the ethical understanding of both multi-faith and secular communities (Forster-Smith, 2013).
6. Spirituality: From a higher education perspective, spirituality is loosely defined as a dimension of a student’s inner life (Astin, Astin, & Lindholm, 2011).
Spirituality is viewed through the lens of a student’s meaning and purpose (Chickering,
Dalton, & Stamm, 2006). However, spirituality can also include a sphere of concern outside the self. By contrast, a postsecular spirituality is communal, not tied to a specific religion, and is this-worldly focused. Nouwen (1975) sees spirituality as the “creative response to the burning issues of our time” (pp. 49). In this research, spirituality is principally defined as communal care and concern for the world.
7. Postsecularism is defined as a renewed interest in spirituality in a mostly secular context. The definition includes an understanding of religion as service
(Dallmayr, 2008). Postsecularism also demonstrates a heightened sense of compatibility between religious and secular worldviews (Gorski & Altinordu, After Secularization,
2008). Postsecularism cultivates an ethical responsibility to the world that goes beyond a rationalist worldview (Davis, 2010). Postsecularism is the paradigmatic shift away from the entrenched binary conflict-oriented thinking between secular and spiritual worldviews. 23 Limitations
The study focuses on two chaplaincies. The two chaplaincies investigated are the chaplaincies of the College of Wooster and Harvard University. The study utilizes Yin’s
(2014) single case theory, described as the ability to “illustrate certain topics within an evaluation in a descriptive mode” (p. 19). The premier limitation, properly defined as
“concern” by Yin (2014) is the difficulty of generalizing the findings from a case study given that two chaplains represent a single case and a particular context. This is a valid concern. This limitation may be ameliorated by using the preliminary findings from the single case study (two chaplains) and then augmenting the study with a second round of interviews with other chaplains. This method in analyzing case study evidence is called
“pattern matching and replicating across multiple cases” (Yin, 2014, p. 145). Creswell
(2013) calls a similar method “peer screening” (p. 366). The questions from the initial interviews with the two single case study were then offered to three chaplains at another institution. The peer screening process was achieved by phone, Skype, or email so as to help with resources of time and money.
The most important limitation to keep in mind is my natural bias as a chaplain as well as the selection bias of the two primary chaplains for the case study (Creswell,
2013). The two chaplains who responded to the invitation to be a part of the case study were selected based on membership in professional chaplain organizations, length of time in the chaplaincy profession and availability during the primary data collection window I had. Overall, the concern of generalizability of this particular case study can be limited by solid methodological practices. The foundation of these practices starts with an understanding “that there is an essence or essences to shared experiences” (Merriam, 24 1991, p. 15). In the case study, understanding the essence of a higher education chaplain in a postsecular context is important. The use of phenomenology enables me to value experience and the interpretation of that experience. These assumptions help guide careful documentation during the interviews and a constant awareness of the need to provide rich and vivid description of the institutional contexts of these chaplains.
Succinctly stated, the case study is limited because it is difficult to generalize a postsecular theoretical investigation by looking at just two chaplains within an institutional context. This is why a robust theoretical framework is needed to guide the interview questions, data collection and lastly the interpretation of the data. However, it is important to note that this limitation can be minimized by these two points:
Given the many different contexts in which postsecularism can be explored, higher education chaplaincy represents a small localized and limited population in which to explore a highly complex theory. The study represents an interpretation of chaplaincy within a given moment in time, which limits the scope of the study. This is also one of the strengths of this study.
A robust interpretative framework fills out a theoretical landscape and provides a foundation in which to interpret data, but it can also overwhelm the emergent themes that arise naturally during observation and interviews. The focus in this study is postsecularism, and this is problematic when interacting with living subjects. The chaplains’ observations must be presented, no matter their congruence or dissonance with postsecular theory.
25 Methodological Introduction
In the qualitative case study, I selected two private liberal arts institutions that employ a chaplain from the Presbyterian College Chaplains Association (Merriam, 1991).
The higher education chaplains were interviewed through the lens of their concrete experience (Seidman, 2006). The qualitative interview process was guided by the research design methodology that emphasizes the building up of conversation partnerships (Rubin & Rubin, 1995). The interview protocol employed a three-tiered process of examining the chaplain’s focused life history within the institution, the details of the chaplain’s experience when it comes to interacting with various stakeholders in the institution, and, lastly, the chaplain were invited to reflect on the meaning of their role as a religious and spiritual leader on campus (Seidman, 2006). The research focused on presenting the case study data from the two chaplains at their respective institutions to a pool of chaplains outside of the these two institutions in order to provide what Merriam calls “triangulation” (1991). This is done “to establish validity through pooled judgment”
(1991, p. 169). The use of chaplains outside the case study design aided an examination of the data through a reflective lens.
The case study approach featured three phases of data collection (Merriam, 1991).
The first phase constructed a case history of the role of the chaplain at that institution. In order to construct and interpret the case history of the institution and the chaplain’s role, additional theoretical considerations were required given the religious nature of the chaplain’s role and the unprecedented change in how religion is experienced in the early
21st century (Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 2012). The unprecedented change in religion has been described as postsecularism (Gorski & Altinordu, 2008). Postsecular 26 theory was used to interpret the case history of each institution and the chaplain’s role within that institution (Jacobsen & Jacobsen, 2008). Another important consideration in the construction of an institutional case history and the role of higher education chaplaincy requires the examination of spirituality in higher education (Lindholm, 2011).
There is both a religious and a spiritual component to the role of the chaplain (Forester-
Smith, 2013). The next phase of the case history was the interview process with the chaplain. In addition to the protocols listed above the interview process relied on a phenomenological approach (van Manen, 2014). The study explored the chaplain’s lived experience within a higher education context. Another phase of the case study was the observation of the chaplain within the higher education setting and analyzing important documents that properly frame the religious and spiritual context of the campus.
In the data analysis, a descriptive process was used as a part of phenomenological methodology in which the chaplain’s work, experience, and setting was described in detail (van Manen, 2014). After presenting a preliminary framework of the case study of the institution and a description of the lived experience of chaplaincy, the data was presented as an interview to other chaplains outside the institutions studied and responded to the core interview questions. This is the phase that sought to uncover a thematic connection between chaplaincy and the higher education context (Seidman, 2006). The findings from these three phases of the case study became part of the recommendations offered for how chaplains can enhance the educational missions of the colleges and universities they serve.
27 Significance of the Study
A case study of the higher education chaplain within the context of a post-secular landscape has direct significance for four select audiences. The case study adds to the scholarly discussion of those engaged in research on post-secular theory (Gorski &
Altinordu, After Secularization, 2008; Dallmayr, 2008; Habermas, Notes on a Post-
Secular Society, 2008; Jacobsen & Jacobsen, 2008). In addition, chaplains and student affairs administrators tasked with fulfilling the educational, and spiritual, and religious missions of their institution could benefit from an intimate look at two institutional chaplaincies and could potentially improve policy or decision-making (Dalton, 2006;
Forster-Smith, 2013). Similarly, higher education scholars engaged in research that deals with spirituality on college campuses could enhance practice (Astin, Astin, & Lindholm,
2011).
Lastly, scholars of religion that are interested in the study of the deep systemic changes occurring within the religious landscape of young adults would find a descriptive snap-shot of their findings (McNamara-Barry & Abo-Zena, 2014; Arnett, 2007; Smith,
2009). Identifying the importance of a scholarly problem for numerous audiences enhances the significance of a study (Creswell, 2014). However, the greatest significance for this study is to help guide other higher education chaplains to navigate the current postsecular age in such a way that teaching, learning, spirituality and religious tolerance flourishes on our private liberal arts campuses in the 21st century. 28 Chapter 2: Review of the Literature
Introduction
The UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute’s (H.E.R.I.) study of
Spirituality in Higher Education signaled a change in our perception of spirituality on college and university campuses today. In many ways, the study appears to be part of a larger trend in postmodernity—the recapitulation of spirituality in an age where secularism has reigned supreme. The data from the HERI study suggests there is congruence between postsecular theoretical assumptions and the assumptions of thousands of college students across the country. Those congruent assumptions are: religion and spirituality are valuable components of experience and represent an opportunity to shape experience in positive ways. The study goes so far as to suggest that
“enhancing students’ spiritual growth will help create a new generation who are more caring, globally aware, and more committed to social justice than previous generations…” (2003, p. 1). The study is a call to action for colleges and universities across America, the study suggests that when higher education attends to the spiritual development of its students the quality of life and the academic performance of its students increase.
The study collected data from 14,527 students from 136 colleges and universities across America (2003). The second stage of the study was extensive interviews with faculty, as well as focus groups. These findings help us to say with a certain amount of credibility that spirituality matters, religion is widely discussed, and a vast majority of students is searching for meaning and purpose while enrolled at an institution of higher education (2003). Here are some key findings from the study that are worth mentioning: 29 77% of students defined themselves as spiritual beings, 78% of students discuss religion or spirituality with friends, and 75% of students admit seeing college as a time to search for meaning and purpose in life (2003, p. 2). What this data suggests is that a substantial number of students have a marked interest in spirituality. The study also has some important insights regarding religion. The HERI study suggests that although participation in religious activities for students may decline during the college years— this does not mean that students will not grow spiritually, actually a student’s “spiritual qualities grow substantially” (2003, p. 2) The study also recommends that opportunities for self-reflection and meditation are the best practices to enhance a student’s spiritual development.
This research project wants to build on HERI’s fundamental insights by providing a focused qualitative lens in which to show how these trends are being manifested on college and university campuses today. Higher education chaplains are important individuals charged by the colleges and universities that employ them to spiritually development students in such a way that enhances the overall educational mission of the college or university.
Spirituality in Higher Education
Spirituality is loosely defined as a dimension of a student’s inner life (Astin,
Astin, & Lindholm, 2011). Consequently, spirituality is often viewed through the lens of a student’s meaning and purpose (Chickering, Dalton, & Stamm, 2006). Religion is not synonymous with spirituality; they are related, but they are not to be unreflectively lumped together (Stamm, 2006). Durkheim (2008) defines religion as 30 a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say,
things set apart and surrounded by prohibitions—beliefs and practices which unite
its adherents in a single moral community called a church…[that] religion is
inseparable from the idea of a church suggests that religion must be something
eminently collective (p. 47).
In light of these two predominant definitions of spirituality circulating in higher education today--that the spiritual is an inner-reality and that spirituality is linked to meaning and purpose--how are we to understand the work of the chaplain within a postsecular context? Tillich (1951) described faith (a slippery However important term for both spirituality and religion) as that which “concerns us ultimately” (p. 12).
Chaplains are called in many ways to examine the collective meanings that surpass individual concerns. Our current postsecular age invites the higher education chaplain to inform communal praxis along the lines of what ultimately concerns the community
(Rohde, 2013). Given the apparent tension between Durkheim’s definition of religion as
“eminently collective” and spirituality, which is presently defined as “individual”, how are we to understand the work of the chaplain in a postsecular age?
Chaplains interact with a host of religious and spiritual concerns. These concerns often transcend particular religious institutions and can unite varied secular impulses
(service and scholarship); therefore, a postsecular theoretical framework can potentially offer a nuanced understanding of spirituality on a college campus with transformative possibilities. Abdul-Razak (2011) views the spiritual development of students as a way to develop positively a student’s “emotional stability and enhancement of mental ability, ability to discern and decide” (p. 45). Spirituality remains a powerful authority when it 31 comes to making connections between what we know and what we care about, so that the real problems of this world can be addressed in meaningful ways. Waggoner (2011) writes, “in public colleges and universities, believers abandoned religion, sought to reconcile their beliefs with ideas emerging from science and philosophy, or compartmentalized their personal beliefs and their academic work” (p. 2). The waning paradigm of secularism, which is a holdover from modernity, posits that only the verifiable and the rational can claim authority in the modern public university. There are trade-offs when it comes to this kind of paradigm. The benefit is that polarizing and dogmatic religious beliefs do not interfere with an unfettered desire to search for knowledge. The downside is a disconnected kind of learning—a learning that occurs in a vacuum without values or concerns. A postsecular environment enables us to reassess these trade-offs in a new light. The light of postsecularism allows us to investigate once again spirituality as a valuable authority in higher education.
The Rise of Spirituality
College age students are less religious than their predecessors (Pew Forum on
Religion and Public Life, 2012). The term “nones” (pronounced nuns) has been used to describe this trend, as in “none of the above,” when it comes to checking the box for religious preference. “Nones” are young Americans, from the ages of 18-29 who do not describe themselves as religious. Manseau (2015) sees the rise of the religiously unaffiliated as a complex and nuanced phenomena. He points out that the natural hesitancy to align one’s self with one particular religious expressions is often due to an individual’s broad exposure to many different religious expressions, spiritual practices and experiences. As the Pew Study (2012) indicates, nearly 23 % all Americans identify 32 themselves as having no religious preference—36% (the largest age cohort) is 18-29 range. However, of that same 23%, 40% engage in meditation at least twice a week. An important finding from this study (2012) reveals the staying power of spirituality in early
21st century life:
Most Americans (59%) say they experience a sense of spiritual peace and well-
being at least once a week, up by 7 percentage points since 2007. Moreover, 46%
of Americans report feeling a deep sense of wonder about the universe on a
weekly basis, also up 7 points (p. 89).
Supply-side indicators of religious vitality in early 21st American life may point to decline, but measuring the same phenomena with complex postsecular notions of spiritual desire and religious renewal reveals a more nuanced view.
Surprisingly enough some “nones” are going to divinity school; these religiously unaffiliated millennials are enrolling in religious graduate schools across America
(Freedman, 2015). Freedman (2015) interviewed one “none” student at Harvard Divinity
School. She explained her decision in this way: “I wanted to respond to what I saw as a crisis of isolation among young people. I wanted to create a meaningful community that came together based on a shared goal rather than a shared religious creed” (pp. 1-2). This student, though unaware, is a spokesperson for postsecular theory; her words point to the formation of meaningful communal practice organized along the lines of deep-shared concerns rather than religious beliefs.
Postsecular theory criticizes unreflective supply-side theories of religious consumption in postmodern American life; the rise of spirituality coincides with a gradual decline in religious affiliation only when certain indicators are taken into 33 consideration. The apparent rise of spirituality and fall of religion presupposes an understanding of religion that is based on a supply-side theory (Altinordu & Gorski,
2008). Supply-side, as a theory of economics, defines growth at a macroeconomic level by measuring the amount of capital invested and the level of goods and services offered
(Mundell, 1999). Therefore, supply side theory influences a sociological interpretation of religion in the postmodern age by measuring the vitality of religion by active participation and affiliation. Active participation and affiliation may not be the best indicators for measuring religious and spiritual vitality in 21st century America. This study seeks to uncover better indicators for religious and spiritual vitality in higher education by incorporating the fundamental insights of postsecular theory.
The higher education chaplain, as a religious professional, hired to enhance the spiritual lives of students, staff and the faculty, represents an important stakeholder to investigate the postsecular landscape. Higher education has become increasingly aware of spirituality as a complex, valuable, and difficult-to-describe theme—a theme that is difficult to understand fully. Spirituality represents a constituent facet of human experience and if the data is to be trusted, a significant part of a student’s experience.
The primary work of the postsecular higher education chaplain is to incorporate educational and institutional pursuits with spiritual ones.
The Decline of Religion
Religion is not synonymous with spirituality; they are related but they are not to be unreflectively lumped together (Stamm, 2006). Religion and higher education have largely parted ways in the twentieth century (Marsden, 1994). However, severing 34 the ties between religion and higher education need not totally cut the cord between secular learning and spirituality. Institutional religion solely focused on membership and participation while simultaneously engaging in controversial culture wars, may be declining. A timely example of what postsecular religion looks like is best demonstrated in the Roman Catholic Church’s new Argentinian Pope. Pope Francis has led the 1.2 billion member Catholic Church into a new age of religious and spiritual renewal. His arrival on the scene radically transformed the image of the papacy. Pope Francis chose to reside in modest accommodations, not the papal apartments. Pope Francis washed the feet of a Muslim woman who was incarcerated in an Italian jail on Maundy Thursday.
He allowed a child to sit on the papal throne while he finished a weekly homily, he kissed a man with hideous boils all over his face and he has chosen to forgo riding in the “pope- mobile” in favor of a Ford Focus.
These acts may be calculated or they may be authentic; however, more than likely they are a calculated authenticity that seeks to combine spirituality and a concern for the world. If secular means “of this world” then authenticity is be found in this world as well. Pope Francis (2013) said, “How I would love a Church that is poor and for the poor” (p. 21). This insight boldly speaks to an emerging postsecular paradigm of religion that is connected to an understanding of religion as service in the early 21st century
(Dallmayr, 2008). The actions and decisions undertaken by Pope Francis are emblematic of an emerging postsecular paradigm. Religion is no longer solely defined by holding onto rigid and exclusive belief systems in the face of pluralism, but in order to find clarity of purpose, one is called to embrace the world we live in and then seek to transform it through love. Why should postsecular religion concern itself with poverty? Postsecular 35 religion concerns itself with poverty because poverty is real. It causes suffering and it affects our global community. Postsecular religion cultivates a kind of worldliness that propels us ever deeper into the problems of this world. A postsecular religion that is built upon a secular love takes seriously the idea that concern for this world can be quite spiritual. A postsecular religion firmly situates itself in a concrete concern. Postsecular religion is grounded in a kind of relevance because of its worldliness. Pope Francis’ shift from an “other-worldly” religion to a “this-worldly” religion is part of a larger paradigm shift in religious thought that has been going on for the past 50 years. Peruvian Roman
Catholic theologian Gustavo Gutierrez articulated a bold new theological vision of religion’s role in late 20th century life.
Gutierrez’s (1973) new methodology sees secularization as a corrective lens for religious institutions and individuals. Secularization shifts the focus and concern of what religious individuals and institutions should care about. Gutierrez (Gutierrez, 1973) writes, “worldliness, therefore, is a must, a necessary condition for an authentic relationship between humanity and God” (p. 39). Therefore, if religious individuals resist this secularizing shift, they become entrenched in sectarian modes of thinking which emphasize the conflict between religion and higher education. In addition, if secularists are skeptical of religious individuals and discount authentic spiritual concerns that are grounded in this world, then they stand to lose valuable allies in addressing the deep systemic problems of this world. Therefore, Gutierrez helps us to see clearly the value of secular love, a love that expresses a worldliness and should be welcomed into the fabric of learning in 21st century higher education. Postsecular religion expresses a worldliness 36 that makes connections with other worldviews and various disciplines in higher education.
Postsecular Theory
Postsecularism is best understood in contrast to secularization. One theory of secularization analyzes postmodern society by examining religious participation and membership (Altinordu & Gorski, 2008). Given this supply-side theory of religion in the modern world, one could erroneously assume that religion and its importance is waning in the 21st century. However, such an assumption is inadequate to describe an emerging paradigm of spirituality as care and concern for the world. Gorski and Altinordu (2008) argue that postsecularism asks us to give up our entrenched mindsets that divide the conceptual world along two confrontational worldviews—the secular and the religious.
Postsecularism is the assumption that a secular worldview versus a religious worldview is not helpful when it comes to describing society in the 21st century. The problem with the theoretical discussions of postsecularism is that the scholarly discourse lacks a contextual focus (Dalferth, 2010). Higher education chaplaincy provides a contextual focus that grounds postsecular discourse within an ideal research setting. The problem with the current scholarly discussions of spirituality within higher education is that they lack a robust conceptual framework (Speck & Hoppe, 2005). This study seeks to address these problems by providing postsecular theory with a context and incorporating a much needed conceptual understanding of spirituality within higher education today.
The story of postsecular theory is one that relies on various theoretical observations that point toward religious and spiritual adaptation in the current age.
Merlini (2011) points out that religion appears to be growing across various faiths in 37 difference social contexts. As an example, he observes that Muslim women in France are wearing traditional headwear in higher percentages while maintaining many progressive
European political values (Merlini, 2011). The apparent shift from a secular world that eschews displays of religious identification to a more nuanced affinity of religion in the public square has prompted Ghatak & Abel (2013) to argue for more scholarship across disciplines due to this apparent postsecularism shift in culture. On the other hand, culture is not the only arena of investigation for this emerging theory. Wong (2012) provides an analysis of postsecular theory and economics by pointing out that complex forces of capitalism are no longer examined independently of ethical and moral concerns.
Many of these scholarly pursuits have taken root in a new historical analysis of the Enlightenment. Davis (2010) analyzes the Enlightenment and the manner in which continental philosophical discussions have debated the legacy and the utility of
Enlightenment thinking for our postmodern age. Rationality, objectivity, and scientific methods are seen as valuable, but, are no longer lifted up as dogmatic truths beyond reproach. This epistemological shift has created the space for religion and spirituality to thrive in scholarly conversation not seen since the middle ages (Muers & Higton, 2012).
The emergence of religious and spiritual discourse as a reputable dimension of human inquiry has affected many disciplines in our current age. Riegel & Ziebert (2010) discuss the social sphere of public religion and how postsecularism interacts with this sphere.
Riegel & Ziebert (2010) account for the contextual character of a social sphere and that secularization theories emerged out of the mid-late twentieth century European context.
Riegel & Ziebert (2010) have noticed that highly secularized Western European democracies are showing a newfound appreciation for religion: 38 Yves Lambert stated shortly before he died that, based
on international empirical data, there is a “turning point” in the presence
and impact of religion in Europe. Newspapers and books use headlines such
as “mega-trend religion” and “new search for spirituality” to underpin the
comeback of religion in Western societies. (p. 393)
Postsecularism appears to be a manifestation of a debate that has subsided. The cultural wars of faith and science have given way to a new conversation. There is still a debate, but the talking points are different. Jansen (2011) frames the debate between Habermas
(2008) and Mahmood (2006) as two thinkers who understand cultural and political forces that find commonalities.
Jansen (2011) sees this as a new conversation called postsecularism, which no longer focuses “on the specific intensities of belief,” held by those who espouse destructive religious worldviews, but rather assumes that the theory of secularism is outdated (p. 977). The term postsecular is alive and thriving in the realm of continental politics. Francesca (2011) gives an intimate look at what a postsecular debate looks like through the lens of Italian feminist thought and practices. Some women, Italian lawmakers, with strong political commitments to the modern feminist movement in southern Europe are also embracing religious pluralism and diversity. Similar to the political discussions of postsecularism in continental Europe, Leigh and Ahdar (2012) deftly uncover the subtle nuances of an Italian court case involving the display of a crucifix, as a formal debate of religious freedom in an age where religious rights are being protected. 39 Sav (2012) examines the experience of Western European women in light of continental philosophical debates by highlighting the gender-biased roots of secularization and demonstrating that a postsecular shift involves the awareness that
“women continued to attend the religious services and be involved in the religious community, much more so than men” (p. 128). Davids (2013) follows Sav’s observations by using postsecular theory as an important tool for understanding the experience of Muslim women and their religious identity in a highly secularized context of postmodern Europe. Various disciplines are engaging the theme of postsecularism.
McLennan (2010) offers an overview of how European culture is perceived as turning away from secularism. In a similar vein, Hansen (2013) provides a fascinating look at how postsecularism is affecting crime fiction in Scandinavia. Springs (2012) suggests that engaging in postsecular discussions provides an avenue of lessening conflict in a society by allowing religion and spiritual to enter into the moderating and peer- reviewed world of secular scholarship. However, not all scholars agree with the wide- ranging applications of postsecular theory; Korhsen (2012) criticizes postsecular theory as vastly overestimated. Dalferth (2010) criticizes postsecular assumptions by drawing a sharp distinction between individual expressions of religious and spiritual realities and communal expressions of religious and spiritual realities. Dalferth (2010) asserts that many scholars are confusing the individual with communal expressions and exaggerating a religious and spiritual renewal.
Still postsecular theory, whether exaggerated or underestimated, is primarily a scholarly problem looking for a definition. Fessenden (2014) helpfully frames the problem in this way: 40 the term postsecular describes an environment in which categories of the religious
and the secular no longer divide the world cleanly between them, and signals the
need for new ones. The problem of the postsecular, here, is a problem of
definition. (p. 156)
Religion and spirituality in a modernist worldview are seen as being opposed to rational authoritative models. Rational authoritative models emphasize objectivity.
Postmodernity’s affinity for individual experience as an authority emphasizes subjectivity. Postmodernity emphasizes subjectivity and However subjectivity is tempered by collective action and collective experience. Postsecularism comes out of a postmodernist worldview—a worldview that is skeptical of objectivity and seeks to minimize rational authoritative models. McCormick (2013) provides us with a look at postsecular theory by way of literary criticism, namely Don DeLillo’s novel Underworld.
One of DeLillo’s (1997) characters, Ismael “Moonman” Muñoz, describes the modern spiritual pragmatic malaise in this way: “Some people have a personal god, okay. I’m looking to get a personal computer. What’s the difference, right?” (p. 341) McCormick
(2013) situates Ismael “Moonman” Muñoz’s honesty within a larger framework, one that reveals DeLillo’s keen awareness of how ancient religious practices reformulate themselves:
Traditional religious ideologies can no longer provide believable answers to the
metaphysical questions that every subject confront, but a collaborative
understanding of cyberspace as an epistemological vehicle can retain the
possibility of spiritual transcendence within a postsecular framework. (p. 106) 41 A working definition of postsecularism is one that must creatively engage popular culture and theoretical discussions. An example of this comes from the film Noah (Aronofsky, et al., 2014). The film nuances in a creative way the tension between inner-purpose and concern for the world. These are two important postsecular themes (Dallmayr, 2008).
The film fits nicely with a postsecular interpretation of a Near East Ancient narrative from the Hebrew Bible. The interpretation is one that forcibly demonstrates how the inner-purpose and meaning can be lost.
The human community in this film exhibit a praxis of control and destruction of the natural world. Aronofsky deftly weaves this ancient narrative of human greed and human caretaking within the present ecological moment of climate change. A religious and spiritual thinker may be prone to identify the problem as an anthropological one— namely that humans are interpreted as a species that bends towards destruction when they forget their meaning and purpose. Aronofsky’s Noah embodies a praxis of care and concern for the world that turns the secular into the sacred. Spirituality within this particular context, one of ecological crisis, is the courage to remove one’s self from the center of existence and to change destructive ecological habits. A transformative praxis of spirituality in a postsecular age resembles a Noah-like figure: a figure on the margins, a figure who understands clearly what is at stake and then embodies a praxis of care and concern through a monumental undertaking. However, Noah is a religious person, one who adheres to a creed, a ritual and habitus of communicative acts with the divine. How can a higher education chaplain understand the current “zeitgeist” of religious and spiritual commitments within the context of ecological crises? The elusive definition of 42 postsecularism may find clarity within the movements of chaplaincy on our college campuses.
Postsecular theory points to a renewed sense of praxis (Dallmayr, 2008). The next step for a postsecular spirituality within higher education is to move toward a praxis of care and concern while simultaneously moving away from the margins and toward an integrated and collaborative center. The role of the chaplain is one that is situated within the larger cultural decline of religion. How does the higher education chaplain experience the decline of religion? The decline of religion in higher education occured gradually in the twentieth century (Marsden, 1994). One observation is that while the influence of religion waned in the twentieth century, it was at this same time that higher education chaplaincy emerges as a profession (Schmalzbauer, 2014). The profession of chaplain fills the religious and spiritual vacuum as secular values take hold within institutional leadership. As Schmalzbauer points out, “clergy Presidents served as the spiritual leaders of their institutions, presiding over daily chapel services attended by the entire study body” (p. 4). The higher education chaplain operates within a context of decline when it comes to the religious affiliation. However, postsecular theory problematizes this assumption by demonstrating the staying power of religious and spiritual realities emerging within secular contexts. A more focused look at the higher education chaplain may provide us with a richer understanding of the current cultural moment when it comes to religious and spiritual matters within a secular context.
The Higher Education Chaplain Today
Schmalzbauer’s (2014) national study of college and university chaplaincy was funded by the Lilly Endowment and provides an expansive view of the higher education 43 chaplain in the early decades of the 21st century. Much like the Higher Education
Institute’s national longitudinal study on undergraduate spirituality, Schmalzbauer’s study reveals the contours of a large landscape. The forest emerges in these two important studies. We clearly see the forest of undergraduate student spirituality in its variety and its multiplicity (Higher Education Research Institute, 2003). H.E.R.I. guides us to an unexplored section of the forest. Suddenly, we see the assumptions of first year students emerge. First year students yearn for institutions of higher education to engage their meaning and purpose. Spirituality appears as a newly discovered species of tree, clumped together amidst other familiar trees of higher education, such as picking a major, calculating a return on investment or worrying about student debt. Schmalzbauer (2014) builds on the H.E.R.I. study by investigating the higher education professional tasked with the spiritual development of students—the chaplain. The forest emerges once again—broad and expansive as Schmalzbauer surveys 335 chaplains.
Schmalzbauer (2014) situates college and university chaplaincy historically, as well as pointing out that chaplains in the 21st century are mostly women, increasingly non-ordained, and exposed to “new forms of religious pluralism” (p. 1) He asks an important question, “what is the future of college chaplaincy? (p. 1) The answer could be found not in a landscape view of the forest but in the thicket of qualitative analysis, in a focused case study interpreted through a postsecular lens. The leaf not the tree, the bark not the copse is the helpful research transition suggested here; the present study seeks to build on two national studies that focused on spirituality and college and university chaplains by providing a detailed analysis of the experience of two chaplains at two 44 private institutions. The chaplains chosen for the study represent two institutions with highly secular impulses.
Both chaplains serve undergraduate populations that are categorized by the
Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education as:
FT4/MS/LTI: fall enrollment data show at least 80 percent of undergraduates
enrolled full-time at these bachelor’s degree-granting institutions. Test score data
for first-year students indicate that these institutions are more selective in
admissions (our analysis of first-year students’ test scores places these institutions
in roughly the top fifth of baccalaureate institutions). Fewer than 20 percent of
entering undergraduates are transfer students. (Carnegie Classifications, 2015, p.
21)
Both institutions are geared toward research and non-sectarian interests. The institutions are national leaders ranked well within the top one hundred of undergraduate education in the U.S. (Morse, 2015). These private institutions are selective and feature an arts and science focus.
The two chaplains chosen for this study represent what Schmalzbauer (2014) described as the changing face of chaplaincy; “though a relatively young profession, the chaplaincy has changed much over the past few decades. Once dominated by white male clergy, it now includes women and lay people from a range of cultural backgrounds” (p.
3). The studies that have looked at college and university chaplains come from a period of history where the profession was dominated by white, Christian, heterosexual, married men
(Cunningham, 1947; Hammond, 1966; Smith, 1954). The two higher education chaplains are women; as Schmalzbauer points out, “more egalitarian than the local parish, the 45 chaplaincy has a much higher proportion of women in leadership than do American congregations” (p. 5) The higher education chaplain within a postsecular context looks much different than the typical higher education chaplain even thirty years ago. This study seeks to account for demographic changes in the profession of chaplaincy while also proposing two themes well positioned to interact with a postsecular and multifaith context of the 21st century: the formation of vocation and facilitating transformative education.
Vocation
A central task of the higher education chaplain is to be a visible catalyst on campus for discussions of meaning and purpose (O’Connor, 2013). Meaning and purpose on a college or university campus is related to a student’s choice of vocation
(Daloz-Parks, 2011). The choice of a vocation is related to choosing a major, but it is more than that. As Holland (1997) points out, the choice of one’s vocation is related to one’s personality and unique skill-set; these attributes exist within a new college environment. The higher education chaplain can help the student to “know thyself” as a way to gain a better self-understanding so that the choice of a vocation is congruent with one’s personality (Holland, 1997). The exploration of meaning and purpose involves deep self-refection (Clydesdale, 2014). This type of deep self-reflection requires a trait called “grit” by positive psychologists (Seligman, 2011). Spiritual resiliency is a kind of grit (Wicks, 2015). The higher education chaplain provides the space and the programming for students of all religious and spiritual commitments to gain the grit to explore one’s gifts in relationship to the vocational options on campus. Habermas
(2008), as the chief intellectual architect of postsecular theory, notices that the absence of a robust religious and spiritual center in modern life, a common phenomenon for Western 46 societies, is having a deleterious effect on the meaning and purpose exhibited in society.
Clydesdale (2014) explains the positive benefits of purposeful exploration in this way:
“[it] produces a pattern of examined living and positive engagement with others, thereby increasing the odds that emerging adults will flourish after they graduate from college”
(p. 18). The postsecular landscape is an opportunity to equip students with grit by utilizing the higher education chaplain as an important catalyst for vocational exploration through dialogue on meaning and purpose.
The choosing of one’s vocation, in addition to one’s salary, job prospects and prestige, also includes the meaning and purpose one derives from performing the tasks associated with one’s vocation. Since the mid-1990s, millions of dollars have been spent on campuses across America for the exploration of purpose and vocation (Roels, 2014).
Could this investment have affected the emerging postsecular landscape by fostering discussions of meaning and purpose on our mostly secular campuses? The Lilly
Endowment has given $220 million dollars to 183 campuses so that young adults could
“develop meaning, purpose, direction, and practices that could shape life-defining decisions and prepare them for lifelong leadership” (2014, p. 8) The initiative introduced, into a largely secular landscape, a host of theological voices to ponder, such as “Augustine, Aquinas, Dorothy Day, Mahatma Gandhi, Gustavo Gutierrez, Martin
Luther, Eboo Patel [and] Howard Thurman” (2014, p. 8). These theological, spiritual, and religious voices interact with students who desperately need an ethical and moral dimension to their higher education experience. Vocation often emerges in the midst of conflict and struggle. The path of meaning and purpose often lingers in the valley of self- doubt and worry. The higher education chaplain is often a trusted guide in the 47 treacherous waters of vocational decision-making. Often the chaplain asks the student,
“What do you care about?” In order for this line of questioning to reveal a deeper movement of meaning and purpose, the student often has to experience a “transforming moment.” Vocational coaching by the higher education chaplain can give way to transformative education. Loder (1981) sees a transforming educational moment as an event that produces powerful responses within the human psyche.
Loder draws connections between knowledge and experience because it is the integration of knowledge and experience that primarily gives rise to a transforming moment. He sees these two concepts converge within the transforming moment in such a way that gives rise to a kind existential awareness of the self. In a transforming moment, what it means to exist is known and experienced in such a way that learning becomes a window into the deepest parts of human life. Loder’s insight invites a novel way of exploring vocation. The higher education chaplain can invite a student to “tell their story” in such a way that it reveals the power of a personal narrative as a way to discern gifts and skills that then may lead to a deeper meaning and purpose. Loder (1981) says,
“Knowing anything is to indwell and to reconstruct it in one’s own terms without losing the essence of what is being indwelt” (p. 167). Loder shows us that our experience of something and our knowledge of something are never identical. A secular landscape values knowledge over experience (Davis, 2010).
A postsecular landscape has learned to value knowledge and experience
(Fessenden, 2014). Loder (1981) nonetheless maintains that there is unity in both our knowing and in our experience. The difference between this knowing signified as an indwelling moment and our reconstruction of this knowing moment is the difference 48 between self-reflection and communal reflection. Postsecular theory invites the integration of secular knowledge with religious and spiritual experience. This integration is beneficial for explorations of meaning and purpose. The higher education chaplain can help students explore and plumb the depths of their transforming moments in order to arrive at a better understanding of vocational clarity.
Daloz-Parks (2011) sees the faith development of college age students not as a solitary or private endeavor. Rather, she understands the importance of community when it comes to developing meaning and purpose in college. Faith development within a postsecular framework invites the higher education chaplain to assume a mentoring posture. Faith is more than personal belief, according to Daloz-Parks; faith is the ability for one to make sense out of the world and to live in that world with deeper purpose.
Daloz-Parks (2011) gives us a useful way to understand our postsecular context by bestowing a phrase upon us, “meaning-making.” (p. 7) The phrase is well suited to interact in a religiously diverse and pluralistic environment. First, the phrase opens up a broad conversation along multiple religious traditions. Second, the term provides us with a developmental way of understanding the emergence of an adult, or mature, faith. Faith helps us to make sense of what is outside of us while simultaneously resonating with what is within us. Meaning-making is best understood within this framework as a communal practice in which a student and a mentor interact.
Daloz-Parks (2011) shifts the discussion from “what do you believe?” to “how can you develop a critical perspective of what you believe?” in order to arrive at meaning. Meaning for Daloz-Parks (2011) is the coherence of thought and action, the integration of the human person within the larger community. What specific role does 49 the higher education chaplain play within this process and how does a postsecular landscape change this process? These questions highlight the importance of vocational discernment in the life of undergraduate college students. The exploration of vocation is related to communal and personal meaning making. The choosing or being chosen by a vocation is often an intense and lasting experience. The higher education chaplain can be a reliable guide within this process. The next theme, which represents an essential role for the higher education within a postsecular landscape, is the presence of transformative education within the undergraduate experience.
Transformative Education
Higher Education chaplaincy at its best is a story of transformative education.
This takes place when chaplains are at the forefront of helping students navigate the complexity of learning and living in an integrated way. The integration of learning within one’s concrete experience is an example of transformative learning (Dirkx, 2011).
O’Sullivan’s (1999) Ecozoic vision of education requires a commitment to the holistic quality of life for both the planet and the learner. Transformative education, an important part of a higher education chaplain’s work, occurs within the context of a postsecular age, an age that requires a renewed perspective on religion and spirituality. The reformulation of religion and spirituality in a postsecular age requires a multifaith and interdisciplinary higher education chaplaincy.
The work of the chaplain is not to change or convert others based on any cognitive claim of truth but rather to encourage the unification of ideals. A concrete example of this is Pope Francis’ encyclical on climate change (Davenport & Goodstein,
2015). The Pope is asking us to incorporate our care for the earth into our spiritual and 50 religious traditions. The work of the chaplain on a college campus operates in a similar way. The higher education chaplain seeks to incorporate multiple disciplines into a large ethical framework. The goal is not to arrive at certainty of belief but rather the quality of our lived response in relation to a pressing concern in the world.
However, the question remains: how are we to understand religion that is compatible with science, service-oriented, and finely tuned to the secular problems of our time? Spirituality has resurfaced as a highly influential component of a student’s experience while in college (Astin, Astin, & Lindholm, 2011). In addition, how are we to incorporate religion and spirituality into the existing conversations of transformational education? A critical, multifaith, highly adaptive, and multidisciplinary theology is required in order to promote transformative learning in the present postsecular age.
Postsecular theology has transformative potential in the higher education classroom of the 21st century because it asks students not to believe something per se but to act.
Dallmayr (2008)suggests that religion is returning and is not related to a simple supply- side calculus of membership and participation in an institution. Dallmayr (2008) lifts up a renewed interest in religion as directly related to embodied practices toward others and this world—i.e., a religion of service. This is a foundational assertion within a postsecular framework. Given that my definition of spirituality is linked to care and concern for the world, Dallmayr’s insight helps to define a postsecular spirituality for higher education. It is important to note here that not all reassertions or renewed expressions of religion in a postsecular society are equal; just in the same way that we have seen the rise of Muslim extremism or a hard Christian right manifestation in 51 politics, the preferred manifestation of religion in a postsecular context is a multi-faith and pluralistic perspective that encourages care and concern for the world.
A postsecular approach also has a corrective dimension, in that by taking religion and spirituality seriously, we are better able to look at the reigning paradigms of secularism with a healthy dose of skepticism. One example of a corrective approach comes from Brinkmann (2014) who suggests that postsecularism moves psychology from an unhealthy anthropocentric worldview to a moral holistic and collective worldview.
Postsecularism seems to have a corrective function. The corrective process is one that seeks to dethrone long held secular assumptions from modernity when it comes to interpreting 21st century society in the West. In this case, the assumption challenged would be the unchecked paradigm that psychology is solely related to an anthropocentric worldview. Dalferth (2010) points out that postsecularism at certain level means that societies and governments in the West are no longer religious in a historical fashion, but that individuals still embodying important notions of religious identity. Rivett (2013) disagrees with Dalferth by pointing out that in America since 9/11 there has been a pronounced return to religion. This tension clearly demonstrates the complexity and disagreement when it comes to postsecular theory, and a qualitative research may help shed some light on this disagreement. Ziebert and Riegel (2010) boldly claim that the reigning paradigm of modernity with its overemphasis on secularization is waning. These thinkers point out that we in fact live in a deeply religious age. The point of this study is to sort out these claims and to assess their validity through an examination of the lived experience of chaplains in higher education.
52 Conclusion
UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute’s findings on undergraduate spirituality points us in the right direction when it comes to articulating why spirituality is important and how it can positively affect students. Spirituality in higher education appears to have the staying power that religion lacks in the 18-29 year old age demographic in U.S. society. The rise of spirituality coincides with a perceived religious decline only in so far as we describe religious decline with a supply-side theory bias.
Indeed, meaning and purpose among undergraduates remains an important vocational and transformational educational opportunity. Higher education chaplains are operating at a cross-roads moment in the culture. The rigidity of secular and religious worldviews are giving way to a new cultural synthesis. Postsecular debates are gaining traction in a host of disciplines: politics, literary theory, cultural analysis, and higher education debates.
The postsecular moment is best understood as an event in which secular and religious concerns operate more compatibly. The higher education chaplain occupies a unique vantage point from which to understand our cultural moment. They are religious professionals tasked with the spiritual development of their students within a context of perceived religious decline. The work of the chaplain as a higher education professional within the postsecular landscape is best described as a counselor, mentor and educator.
The work of the chaplain converges in two important ways: when undergraduates explore vocation as a way of articulating meaning and purpose as well as facilitating the possibility of transformative education. The exploration of vocation and the potential for transformative education are twin tasks of the higher education chaplain within a postsecular framework. The literature review suggests that an intimate and sustained 53 look at the work of two higher education chaplains may provide clarity and theoretical precision. Discovering how chaplains view their work and understand their role at the university was invaluable data within this postsecular environment. Ultimately, the literature review suggests that the role of chaplain has changed over time; in the midst of this change, how are the religious and spiritual needs of their students being meet? These questions now point us toward a detailed research methodology.
54 Chapter 3: Research Methodology
Rational for a Qualitative Approach
The rationale for a qualitative approach was an easy one. The work of chaplaincy is a patchwork of intimate snap shots best uncovered through a qualitative lens. An example of occurred in the early fall of 2015, when PBS aired a two-hour documentary called Chaplains: On the Front Line of Faith (Doblmeier, 2015). The documentary explored the tension between an individual inhabiting a particular faith tradition while also being a source of spiritual guidance for others regardless of their religious affiliation.
Interestingly enough the documentary explored hospital chaplains, military chaplains, prison chaplains, police chaplains, corporate chaplains, a U.S. Senate Chaplain, a retirement home chaplain and a NASCAR chaplain but the higher education chaplain was curiously absent. This pithy example gently suggests that higher education chaplaincy remains hidden from the larger social awareness at a crucial moment for religion and spirituality in public life.
The large longitudinal data on spirituality among college students points us towards a nuanced and complex notion that the “spirit” is an expectation that a student brings to campus, but not much guidance as to how an instituion can meet that expectation (Higher Education Research Institute, 2003). The data from this study suggests that spirituality is important, but what remains is how we can concretely understand the function and the roles associated with the daily task of cultivating a spiritual reality with students. Understanding and exploring the role of chaplains in higher education may be a way to concretize H.E.R.I.’s work on spirituality. 55 Forster-Smith’s (2013) multifaith exploration of chaplaincies at eighteen higher education institutions provided a much needed window into the religious and spiritual expressions occurring on campus. The book features essays thematically linked by reflections that are offered by the chaplains. The first theme is change—the changing face of religious attitudes among millennials (Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life,
2012). The changing face of higher education arises from students who enter college from diverse cultural and racial backgrounds in higher percentages (Reason & Renn,
2013). With this diversity also comes religious pluralism—college campuses across
America are educating students that represent all the major and most of the minor religions on Earth (Porterfield, 2008). The culture of higher education is rapidly changing given the presence of greater scrutiny from accrediting agencies and a host of economic challenges (Cummings, et al., 2004). The chaplains in Forster-Smith’s book engage the work of chaplaincy in the midst of rapid change.
However, there are two constants that emerge when looking at the work of chaplaincy (Forster-Smith, 2013). Chaplains serve their institutions by caring for the individual and playing a valuable role in improving the overall campus climate. These two tasks, care of the individual and the improvement of the overall campus climate are taking place in the midst of deep change. Whether it is the diversity expressed or the pluralism embodied in the lives of their students, chaplains see themselves as mentors, educators, religious professionals and higher education administrators committed to the daycare of both individuals and the larger institution.
This study seeks to uncover the day-to-day role of the college and university chaplain. Also, how has this role evolved since the emergence of a postsecular 56 phenomenon? A qualitative study of higher education chaplains is related to how chaplains view their work, how they define success, and, more importantly what they are doing to meet the religious and spiritual needs of their students. The interviews conducted in this study would like to tease out stories of success and failure in the life of the higher education chaplain. This qualitative research project desires to name and better understand what challenges the higher education professional encounters in their work.
One reason a qualitative approach is best suited for this study is that my lived experience is a key instrument in the interpretive process (Creswell, 2014). Given the unique role of higher education chaplaincy, data collection relies on the knowledge and the experience I possess as a chaplain. The knowledge and the experience I offer allows for reflexivity. Reflexivity is the experience I provide and how that experience interacts with the interpretation and meaning ascribed to the data. Creswell (2014) suggests that data collection should occur in a natural setting, the natural setting would be the campus on which the chaplain serves. This study examined two higher education chaplains at two private undergraduate institutions. The institutions chosen represent a particular institutional context. The two private undergraduate institutions comprised the primary case study setting. The higher education chaplaincies were selected based on the multifaith contexts of the institutions they serve and the depth of experience of the chaplains so as to give a more nuanced experience of postsecular theory. In addition, choosing institutions with religious diversity and a pluralistic setting are important for examining chaplaincy within a postsecular context (Jacobsen & Jacobsen, 2008). 57 In this case, the higher education chaplain helped to construct a case history of the institution. I provided a descriptive account of the institution and then the real focus of the data were the interviews conducted with the two chaplains. A phenomenological approach will be used to interpret the data from the interview with special attention paid to the conscious experience of chaplains (van Manen, 2014). The primary population examined in this study is two college and university chaplains; a commonality for each of these chaplains at the two institutional settings are that both chaplains are ordained pastors of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A).
The researcher is also part of this denomination, and this commonality built a trust and an openness in the interview process as it did in the site selection process (Savage &
William, 2008). The study was an intentional examination of the work of higher education chaplains within a postsecular framework. Special attention placed on the conceptual ways chaplains make sense of culture, religion and spirituality within the higher education context. The two institutions chosen for the case study are the College of Wooster in Wooster, Ohio and Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The two primary historical sources used to better understand these institutions at a broad historical glance are Wooster of the Middle West and Education and Politics at Harvard.
(Notestein, 1971; Lipset, Riesman, & Carnegie Commission on Higher Education, 1975)
The sources above, as well as department webpages, and assessment reports or documents given to the researcher by the higher education chaplains informed the case history of the institution from the limited perspective of the chaplain.
The qualitative approach offers the researcher an opportunity to explore whether and how the widely held the conceptual framework called postsecular actually manifests 58 itself in the lived experiences of chaplains in higher education. The study observed the conscious experience of chaplains by viewing chaplains as conversation partners (Rubin
& Rubin, 1995), and the data gathered from these interviews sought to explore the utility and explanatory power of postsecularism as a theory. The primary value of such an observation is that by examining the lived experiences of chaplains the researcher may be able to grasp the nature of postsecularism in a concrete and embodied way. A qualitative approach through a phenomenological lens affords me the opportunity to study the phenomena of postsecularism with a conscious and focused philosophical/theological assumption. The study seeks to return to a traditional task of philosophy/theology by looking beyond the narrow confines of secular and religious perspectives that oppose one another and limit meaningful discussions. Phenomenology, as a formative 20th century philosophical movement, claims that consciousness is linked to reality (Creswell, 2013).
What this means is that how we view reality may be the most important thing in understanding reality. Objectivity is not the operating paradigm in phenomenology.
Subjectivity is far more instructive in the task of interpreting reality. To this end, postsecularism represents a subject-object relationship in the consciousness of both the theorists and the observable populations. The question becomes what are the differences between these two populations? How do chaplains experience postsecularism? What do they experience that would warrant the label postsecular? Overall, these are important questions to keep in mind as we go forward, but first we must look at how phenomenology played a role in the interpretation of the data
59 Phenomenological Method
One of the many ways that a qualitative approach can be employed in a research methodology is to become aware of a particular experience and to name that experience as worthy of further investigation (Vagle, 2014). The experience of being a spiritual mentor and the experience of being a transformational educator appear to be defining experiences of a postsecular higher education chaplain. The lived experience of mentor and the lived experience of transformative education was studied through a phenomenological lens. These two experiences must be further reduced or, as Husserl
(2002) suggested, “bracketed.” Bracketing is the intentional suspension of judgment and the purposive exploration of a phenomena through descriptive experience (Moustakas,
1994). In this case, the phrases “spiritual mentor” and “transformative educator” both presuppose a being—an actual embodiment. The phrases are best understood if they are stripped away and laid bare in the human experience. An example would be to shift the phrases mentor and educator to a more basic or “bracketed” term such as wonder or joy.
What is the core experiential descriptor for the task of higher education chaplain as spiritual mentor and transformative educator?
These are the questions a phenomenological researcher seeks to uncover. Husserl
(2002) understands that individual experience contains an essence and that this essence is related to a universal purity. The interpretation of the individual experience requires the researcher to take seriously the intentionality of consciousness. In other words, Husserl
(2002) maintains that the interpretation of a conscious experience is a respectable way to gain a general understanding of reality. Herein lies the appropriateness of a phenomenological approach when it comes to evaluating the utility of postsecular theory 60 as a facet of a higher education chaplain. The researcher must describe the common experience or as Husserl would say the “conscious experience” of chaplains so that the theoretical model can be refined and tested. In order to engage fruitfully phenomenology as a viable philosophical research model, I must step outside the theory and assumptions and seek to examine what the subject thinks and experiences. The reflexive model of interpretation and gathering of data requires me to share my own experience.
Creswell (2014) describes the intentionality of consciousness as a key component of phenomenology. Consciousness is an intentional process in that it is always directed towards an object, meaning that reality is intricately linked to one’s perception.
Unpacking the philosophical assumptions of the phenomenological method requires the researcher to problematize the subject-object distinction so inherently imbedded in empirical research methods. This is important when examining a higher education chaplain’s relationship to students as mentor and educator within a postsecular landscape—it is important because a relational experience is not often clearly defined along subject-object delineations. Husserl (2002) describes consciousness as being directed toward noema and noesis.
Noema is objective reference or “consciousness of something” (Husserl, 2002, p.
270). What is the higher education chaplain aware of most poignantly as they engage in their work as mentor and educator? Noesis is the structural dimension used to derive meaning (Moustakas, 1994). How do higher education chaplains construct meaning in a pluralistic, diverse and secular landscape as religious professionals? In the phenomenological method, there is more than subject and object—there is a subject as consciousness directed towards a perception of objectivity. For the purposes of this study, 61 the subject-object dichotomy is a curious and complex interplay between postsecularism and the experience of the higher education chaplain. From my perspective, the intentionality of consciousness is best understood as directed toward postsecularism through the lived experience of higher education chaplaincy. The subject is the conscious experience of the higher education chaplain as spiritual mentor and transformative religious educator. These important tasks are best articulated within a postsecular landscape as joy or wonder.
The use of a case study approach also provides the opportunity for the researcher to explore whether generalizations of the work of the chaplain actually function with the institutional context (Creswell, 2014). The research design framework requires that the literature review provide a broad and expansive orientation before engaging in the qualitative study of the role of the chaplain in the religious and spiritual dimension of a university (Creswell, 2014). A phenomenological methodology was used along with a hermeneutical approach. The chaplains interpreted their own experience and not just recounted their experience (Vagle, 2014). The interviews were coded using a narrative coding (Saldana, 2013). The higher education chaplains examined were all ordained pastors in the Presbyterian Church (USA) to delimit the qualitative sample and provide for deep investigation of a particular religious community using a postmodern approach for faith communities (Savage & William, 2008).
The study provided some much-needed clarity on how religious and spiritual questions can enhance or detract from the learning that can take place within a postsecular context on a college campus today. The primary research question is: how does the lived experience of a chaplain interact with the larger institutional goals to 62 educate its students? Given the primary research question, there are four important themes in the literature review that gave the researcher the framework needed to investigate the primary research question. The first theme in the literature review is the role of spirituality within the institutional setting of a college or university (Lindholm,
2010). The second theme is the role of religion within the institutional setting (Jacobsen
& Jacobsen, 2008). Lastly, what is the role of the chaplain in the religious and spiritual dimensions of an institution? (Forster-Smith, 2013). In addition, special attention was given to instances where religion and spirituality contribute to the transformative teaching/learning moments on campus (Dirkx, 2011). Lastly, a theme that is needed for a timely interpretative framework to explore both the lived experience of chaplains and the context of a higher education setting are theoretical discussions of postsecularism (Gorski
& Altinordu, 2008). Given the relatively recent discussions of postsecularism, many scholars have engaged the topic from a wide range of disciplines and perspectives
(Dalferth, 2010).
The study recognizes that postsecularism is an undefined observation that religion and spirituality are creatively adapting to postmodernity (Dallmayr, 2008). The literature review seeks to provide better clarity and definition of religion and spirituality to provide a case study that has greater explanatory power when it comes to understanding the chaplain’s role within a higher education institution. The point of connection here between postsecularism and higher education is the possible notion that chaplains are experiencing a paradigmatic change in religion and spirituality (Dallmayr, 2008). The last theme of the literature review is the substantial amount of research conducted on the spiritual dimensions of a higher education institution (Astin, Astin, & Lindholm, 2011). 63 The essential methodological insight is purposive focus on the experience of higher education chaplains as spiritual mentor and transformative education in such a way that the data provides a more coherent narrative of the actual lived contexts for college and university chaplains within a postsecular landscape than the theoretical assumptions.
Research Tools
The qualitative approach is one that values “face-to-face interaction over time”
(Creswell, 2014, p. 45). In order to facilitate a deeper discussion of the concept of postsecular theory the researcher must examine the lived experience of higher education chaplains. Creswell (2014) acknowledges the importance of the researcher in the qualitative method. I must situate myself in such a way that behavior can be observed, documents interpreted, and interviews can be conducted in an open-ended fashion. The central reason a qualitative approach is best suited for this particular study is that a qualitative approach helps facilitate an examination lived experience of chaplains. The lived experience of chaplains was analyzed through a postsecular prism. As Creswell
(2014) correctly suggests, in order to evaluate the utility of a theory the researcher must demonstrate the connections between the real live subjects and the theoretical model so that we can examine the partial or sometimes inadequate ways theory gets it wrong.
The basic methodological structure included observation of the physical space, interviews with the chaplains, examinations of spiritual and religious life programming, budgets associated with the office of the chaplain, and institutional missions. The basic methodological structure observed the important facets of chaplaincy named above by
“arriving at a sense of the current self-understanding of a religious community” (Savage
& William, 2008, p. 73). Interviewing the chaplains in order to understand the theory of 64 postsecularism as a lived response to the larger cultural and historical forces in the early
21st century required a robust and well-thought-out interviewing technique. The interview was viewed as a relationship (Seidman, 2006). The researcher employed the three-interview series (Seidman, 2006). This interview methodology examined the experiences of three Presbyterian chaplains in higher education. The defining theoretical feature of this study is testing the utility and validity of the phenomena of postsecularism.
The idea here is to examine the theory of postsecularism by way of the conscious experience of chaplains by engaging in purposeful sampling (Seidman, 2006).
Hermeneutic Approach
The interviews were examined by using a hermeneutic approach which is a subset of the phenomenological method (Vagle, 2014). Vagle (2014) draws on the work of van
Manen in defining how to use a hermeneutic approach in phenomenological studies. The hermeneutic approach emphasizes the way a professional practitioner can provide the researcher with interpretative insights that can help construct a larger narrative when it comes to understanding complex external forces such as cultural and historical events
(van Manen, 2014). In this case the professional practitioner is the Presbyterian higher education chaplain and the complex external force is postsecularism. Vagle (2014) succinctly unpacks the central points of van Manen’s hermeneutic approach: 1) choosing a phenomena that seriously interests the researcher, 2) investigating experience rather than conceptualizing, 3) reflecting on essential themes of the phenomena, 4) creatively engaging the phenomena, 5) keeping a pedagogical orientation, 6) holding together the context of the phenomena by considering the part and the whole. The hermeneutic approach provides the creative latitude to explore postsecularism in an open-ended 65 However disciplined manner. In the paragraph that follows, the researcher specifically addresses how this study engaged all six of van Manen’s points of a hermeneutic approach.
The study of postsecularism through the lens of the conscious experience of
Presbyterian higher education chaplains is ideally compatible with the research aims of the hermeneutic approach. I am interested in how postsecularism influences and interacts with chaplaincy. Given the lively, complex and often confusing theoretical discussions surrounding postsecularism in the early 21st century, it would be helpful to approach the theoretical with an intentional method based on the conscious experience as a way to provide clarity. The study reflects on the themes of postsecularism, especially as these themes intersect with the data from the observations of the physical space, interviews with the chaplains, examinations of spiritual and religious life programming, budgets associated with the office of the chaplain as well as the institutional missions of the college and university examined.
Phenomenology as a research method requires a commitment to creativity. The creativity required in such a study is the desire to examine rigorously religious and spiritual experience within a larger research context (James, 1982). The specific creativity of scholars like James (1982) bring to their research methodology a bedrock assumption, one that states that human experience is a kind of authority, one that can explicate phenomena and deepen our understanding of complex themes. The pedagogical orientation of the study is one that takes seriously the idea that postsecularism is the teacher and the researcher is the student. Vagle (2014) mentions the pedagogical character of a hermeneutic approach. Lastly, a hermeneutic approach reminds the 66 researcher to take note of the part in relation to the whole. In this approach emergent themes from the part are seen as “contextual givens” that contribute to a better understanding of the whole (2014, p. 60).
Reflexive Model
In addition to collecting data from the two case study sites of Harvard University and the College of Wooster, data was collected from my present institution as well. The foundational assumptions present in reflexive theory are well positioned to aid the current research project. A reflexive methodology stresses ambiguity (Alvesson & Skoldberg,
2009). The lived experience of chaplaincy is an ambiguous entity. Acknowledging ambiguity at the onset of data collection and before the interpretation of that data is wise.
Postsecularism is an ambiguous theory. The theory posits that postmodern society has difficulty providing cohesive values. The research assumption is that higher education chaplaincy and the lived experience of chaplaincy provides hermeneutic of care both to students and to the larger institution.
Lifting up ambiguity as a theoretical assumption frees the researcher to include his or her own interpretation of the data. All research interviews feature the unstable character of language. The unstable character of language is a fundamental insight of the reflexive method (Alvesson & Skoldberg, 2009). Uncovering the lived experience of chaplaincy as a way to see the cohesion of values in a postsecular context is an unstable process. Per reflexivity, I claim an interpretative stability of language by highlighting the contextual dependency of language. Chaplaincy as a lived experience conveys a language all its own. The context of this language emerged in the interviews. The emergence of theory and the interpretation linked to observations and data are interrelated 67 in the reflexive method. Postsecular theory is an emergent theory, a theory which understands culture and religion interacting a certain way—albeit a complex way. The present so-called postsecular moment is one that expresses a cohesion of shared values.
The central task is to see how these values emerge within the lived experience of chaplaincy.
There is no such thing as interpretation-free, or theory-neutral-facts—they do not exist in the reflexive method. The word “care” as a guiding theme in chaplaincy is a theory, one that comes from my lived experience. This interpretative fact is not neutral because it is tightly woven into the larger postsecular discussions.
Alvesson and Skoldberg (2009) hold that facts are theory laden and admit that certain phenomena are always perspectival. What this means practically is the knowledge cannot be separated from the knower. This provides a general critique of the objectivist scientific worldview that is deeply entrenched as a preferred method of research in the academy. This is not a scientific study; this is an experience-oriented and interpretative view of the lived experience of chaplaincy in the postsecular age. Still, I freely admit that data mostly agrees with my own premises. That is why, in chapter 5, I reflexively explored my own experience as chaplain and stressed the importance of reflection on data as a way of probing an emergent theory.
The reflexive model pushes back against unrealistic assumptions of objectivity and understands that most data collecting and processing requires a highly sophisticated reflective model. A reflexive methodology challenges an objective stance. Reflexivity challenges objectivity because it understands interpretation as a representation of reality.
The examination of a lived experience of chaplaincy requires a theory-laden and 68 reflective approach. The fruitful model requires a nuanced understanding of the honored research terms of induction, deduction and abduction. These three terms describe a relationship between data and theory. A brief look at how the reflexive method understands these three terms is important to the larger scope of the research project.
Per Alvesson and Skoldberg (2009) define induction as an observation from a single case to a general assumption or a general rule from a set of observations. Whereas, deduction is understood as a primary general rule or assumption that explains a single case and then explains more cases. The term abduction is where a single case is interpreted from a hypothetical over-arching pattern that uses both induction and deduction. Abduction is the process chosen for this research project. Within this framework, theory is refined and adjusted during the interpretation process. This is why I have chosen to interpret the other two case studies through the lens of his or her own experience at their institution. The research still deals with data inductively, but also does not reject theoretical assumptions from the deductive standpoint. Ideally, within the rubric of abduction, the source of inspiration and the pattern of discovery within the data keeps elaborating and developing theory as the reflexive model unfolds.
The reflexive method understands research as reflection on several levels directed at specific themes. In this case, it is the theme of care as embodied within the lived experience of chaplaincy during the current postsecular age. Given this approach, the research process constantly assesses the relationship between knowledge and the ways of interpreting knowledge. Reflexivity performs two important movements: careful interpretation and reflection on the data. This method understands that any relationship to data is the result of interpretation. Because of this, the careful reflection turns inward 69 towards my own epistemological assumptions. The beauty of reflexivity is the reflection as interpretation, which is a critical self-exploration and a highly evolving process. The researcher is invited to reflect on textual, political, and cultural circumstances that form a backdrop—in this case, the backdrop is the postsecular moment in higher education.
The deliberate task of gathering date while simultaneously refining theory helps, to examine the often taken-for-granted assumptions and blind spots in culture, as well as research circles. The reflexive model is compatible with both case-study research and phenomenological studies. The reason for this compatibility is due to the similar sources of inspiration within the reflexive method with these other research approaches.
The reflexive method used hermeneutics at every stage of theory formulation. The hermeneutical bent asks, “What is the meaning of the data when we are aware of the researcher’s assumptions?” The reflexive method is sensitive to critical theory.
Moreover, the influences of postmodernism arose when it came to understanding the overarching principles of authority operating within an institution. A healthy dose of skepticism is required and value is placed on the subjective experience in research. The reflexive method seeks the clarification of the primacy of interpretation (Alvesson &
Skoldberg, 2009). The research is driven by the researcher’s hermeneutics and this process becomes an important form of reflection. The reflection is a kind of awareness of the political-ideological character of research. The critical theorist who uses a reflexive model exposes the assumptions that are not neutral in the research process but are rather part of certain political and ideological conditions.
Postmodernity influences the reflexive model by understanding reflection in relation to the larger problem of representation and authority. Postmodernity admits that 70 the text lives its own life. The text and its meaning is a drama of chaotic and mutual influences. The researcher’s claim to authority is not part of some extrinsic reality; rather, the researching subject and researched object are both called into question
(Alvesson & Skoldberg, 2009). Given this nuanced understanding of research, one’s understanding of the philosophy of science comes into vivid relief. Within the reflexive model, there emerge t three reference points: post-positivism, social constructionism, and critical realism. These three reference points map the central ideological fault lines present in research methodologies today. Alvesson and Skoldberg (2009) make the widely accepted claim that positivism and postpositivism as research methods have dominated the philosophy of science. This domination includes the formulation of theory, the gathering of data, the process of induction or deduction, as well as law-like statements concerning either verification or falsification. The reflexive method seeks to offer a corrective lens to the positivist and postpositivist research dominance.
Reflexivity understands the role of theories as related to common concepts of grounded theory—especially as it relates to social constructionism. Reflexivity understands social constructionism as a reality that is socially constructed, a common understanding among various research disciplines. However, the reflexive model looks at how research constructions emerged in their present form. This approach is not a particularly theory-oriented, and unlike the positivist and postpositivist views, social constructionism focuses on the social disclosure of the phenomena in question. The reflexive model is one that understands the tension between postpositivism and social constructionism and seeks to create a space for a new synthesis to emerge. 71 Reflexivity challenges the theory of critical realism when the theory suggests that the world is independent of human beings. Whereas reflexive methods affirm critical realism when the theory suggests that there are deep structural patterns in the world.
Mostly these structural patterns are represented by theories that emphasize patterns across complex and nuanced phenomena. Therefore, the reflexive method has similarities with both hermeneutics and critical theory while also carving out a distinct interpretative voice through the value of human experience. The question of how the lived experience of higher education chaplains create cohesive values within a postsecular context requires a research method that takes seriously the vantage point of the researcher.
The overall thrust of the reflexive method understands itself as a critique of both positivism and post-positivism. The reflexive researcher questions the overall purpose of scientific activity. Reflexivity no longer privileges a research method that unreflectively puts together a statistical analysis of a surface phenomenon and calls such a process an observable reality (Alvesson & Skoldberg, 2009). Reality is wedded to the researcher and the interpretative process rather than the data alone. This is because the reflexive conception of reality views the deeper-lying process interpretation as the best expression of an observed reality. This insight admits that the observed reality is not all there is, which is why the present analysis of postsecularism through the lens of the lived experience of the higher education chaplain requires the researcher to reach behind and reveal more fundamental layers of interpretation.
This is precisely why postpositivism comes up short, it did not allow me to use experience as a heuristic aid to find or analyze theory. A reflexive method is a generative one when it comes to theory; whereas postpositivist researcher does not encourage the 72 intensive study of a small number of cases. This is precisely what is happening in this research project. This research project included a small number of cases (four higher education chaplains, myself included), examined with the assumption that in order to retrieve data through analysis, the researcher must be free to explore the underlying patterns in surface structures. The central difference is that postpositivism promotes theory legitimation over and against theory generation. The research project seeks to interpret the emergent values of chaplaincy within a postsecular context as a way to engage generatively current theoretical discussions.
Pilot Testing
I conducted two preliminary interviews before visiting the sites in the case study.
I used the interview protocol from day 1, session 1 to interview two local pastors— changing the questions from higher education chaplain to parish pastor. This pilot testing component improved my interviewing skills.
Data Collection
The methods used to collect the data was document analysis, site observation and interviews. Each chaplain was contacted to set up a face-to-face interview with me. The interview was part of a visit to the institution. During, the planning phase I asked the chaplain what documents such as public meeting notes, personal notes, or any other relevant documents would aide the researcher in understanding the work of the chaplain at their institution (Merriam, 1991). These documents, were given to me prior to the site visit and the interviews so that ample time was spent analysing the documents. Merriam (1991) points out that once documents are gathered they must then be analyzed to determine if they are authentic and valuable to me. The first step in this process is to ascertain how the 73 data was collected in the document (1991). Merriam (1991) also provides a twelve step process for determining authenticity and this process was used. The documents that are of particular interest are planning documents for interfaith worship services, the number of students who attend religious and spiritual programing events, departmental budgets, and a copy of a sermon or lecture on a particular topic.
I observed two institutions that employ higher education chaplains. Merriam
(1991) provides this helpful rubric for being a careful observer while doing qualitative research, “Observation is a research tool when it (1) serves a formulated research purpose, (2) is planned deliberately, (3) is recorded systematically, and (4) is subjected to checks and controls on validity and reliability” (p. 95). In this case, the research questions guided the observations. I focused my research on two streams of data, interviews with the chaplains and observing at least two events that illustrated the religious and spiritual dimensions of a chaplain’s work. In the case of the College of
Wooster, I observed a multifaith student group discussion. At Harvard University, I attended morning prayers in Appleton Chapel. These site observations were coordinated with the higher education chaplain in advance. The goal was to have at least one descriptive observation per site visit. The methodology that guided these observations came from Merriam (1998). Merriam (1998) provides a helpful checklist for what she calls the “careful observer” (p. 97). The researcher should carefully observe the
“physical setting, the participants, activities and interactions, conversations, subtle factors, and your own behavior (Merriam, 1999, pp. 97-98). It is also important within this context to state explicitly the relationship between the observer and the observed. 74 There are four possible stances for me as the observer in this situation: “complete participant, participant as observer, observer as participant, and complete observer”
(Merriam, 1998, pp. 100-101). In this case of morning prayers at Appleton Chapel,
Harvard University, I was what Merriam (1998) would call a complete participant. I arrived at morning prayers with my identity concealed. The only individual who knew my role as researcher was the higher education chaplain who attended the service as well.
In the case of the College of Wooster’s Interfaith meeting, called “Interfaith Scholars,” I was introduced to the group at the beginning of the meeting where I was invited to explain the nature of my research—in this case I was what Merriam (1998) would call an observer as participant. An observer as participant is a research stance where the group is aware of my role and I am able to interact with the group intentionally as an individual who is collecting data, in this capacity I participated in the conversation but my participation in the group was secondary to my role as researcher. Both of these methodologies worked well because one was a worship service and the other situation was a closed meeting of students. The observations from both cases requires a coherent plan to report the data.
I was a careful observer. Merriam (1998) suggests, the level of data analysis, in this case, the data gathered from two site observations at Wooster and Harvard, related to the original focus of the observation. In this instance, both the Morning Prayer service at
Harvard and an interfaith conversation at Wooster provide an opportunity for me to focus on my original research questions. These insights guided my analysis of the data when it came to the site observations. What themes emerge from observations that help me understand the tasks in which higher education chaplains engage? What role does the 75 chaplain play in these two situations and what tasks are associated with these roles? How did these two situations impact students? The research questions help foster a selected focus for the later data analysis.
Selecting a focus is important; Merriam (1998) suggests that the selection of a focus flows out of the original purpose of the study. The original purpose of the study is to examine the lived experience of the higher education chaplain in order to gain a better understanding of how students gain salience and attribute importance to religious and spiritual quests while in college. Since chaplains are religious professionals offering spiritual advice to students, chaplains represent a dimension of the student experience not often studied. The focus used while collecting the data from two observations from my cases studies, observed the chaplain at work in and among students and noticed how these interactions form an integrated vantage point. The integrated vantage point, as outlined in my literature review, is a framework that uses postsecular theory (a current theoretical model of religion and spirituality) and addresses the lack of appreciation for a student’s inner life, which is a problem in higher education. Inner life is a culturally nuanced term that is compatible with the terms religion and spirituality in a broad sense and as these terms are described in the literature review. The focus of the observation both in the data gathering and in the data interpretation phase is to look for signs and or movements of a student’s inner life that occur during these interactions with chaplains.
Lastly, and more importantly are the actual interviews conducted with the higher education chaplains. This occurred in two stages. The first stage included two higher education chaplains at their respective institutions. The interviews occurred over two days. Day one was be a two one hour sessions. The day one sessions examined the 76 chaplain as a religious professional. The questions centered on the early experiences of ordination and ministry. The first session sets a baseline for who the chaplain is as a pastor, preacher and theologian. The second session for day one moves to the investigation of the religious professional as a chaplain. This session examined how higher education became the context for the religious professional.
The day two sessions centers on the day-to-day experience of being a higher education chaplain. The joys and frustrations of chaplaincy come to the forefront on day two. The first session for day, two focused on the higher education chaplain as a part of a student’s educational experience on campus. The second to last session is one that seeks to broaden the context of the interview by looking beyond the chaplaincy toward the larger institution, community and world. The last session featured questions that seek to determine how the higher education chaplain makes sense of their work in an institutional and possibly global context. After these two day interviews with the two chaplains representing the primary case study, the data was analyzed in order to provide a better cross-analysis interview approach (Seidman, 2006). The three chaplains selected for this study are members of the Presbyterian College Chaplains’ Association. All interviews were conducted on an Olympus digital voice recorder, model DM-620.
Organization, Analysis and Synthesis of Data
The data is thematically organized. The themes come from the four interview subjects, as well as the reflexive model I used in the study. Two of the interview subjects are from the case study. Two subjects are outside of the case study for four chaplains.
The study includes the observation of two campuses, one from each case study. The site observations and the interviews form the streams of data collected in this research 77 project. As stated earlier, this qualitative case study used a phenomenological analysis.
Merriam (1991) suggests that this analysis used within a case study format seeks to uncover “the essence or basic structure of phenomena” (p. 158). In this case, what is the basic structure of a higher education chaplain tasked with providing a spiritual and religious reality to students on a 21st century campus? The central theme is one of care.
The chaplain extends care to the individual and the institution in order to form cohesive values in a postsecular age.
The reflexive approach thrives when multiple interpretations are present and ambiguity is a constant part of the data analysis. The goal is to provide a coherent description of an experience, namely the higher education chaplain within a postsecular context—or, how did the experience of the higher education chaplain come to be what it is? As Merriam explains, “you purposefully select an instance of the phenomenon to see if the hypothesis fits the case” (1991, p. 160). The themes present in the research questions as well as postsecular theory form a tentative hypothesis. The hypothesis is this, providing a thriving spiritual and religious experience for students on a 21st postsecular campus requires a chaplain to engage in spiritual mentorship and transformative religious education, and to do it as a multifaith and secular constituency.
The chaplain cares across many situations.
The transcribed and coded interviews use the “hypothesis coding”method
(Soldana, 2013). Hypothesis coding is “the application of a researcher-generated, predetermined list of codes to qualitative data specifically to assess a researcher- generated hypothesis” (Soldana, 2013, p. 171). Theory-driven codes in this case centered on expressions or terms associated with the overall thematic term of care. How the 78 chaplain expresses care forms the interpretative framework of the data. The data is further organized from the “hypothesis coding” step to another important qualitative coding procedure, referred to as “holistic coding” (Soldana, 2013). Holistic coding finds the emergent themes present in the interview data and organizes the data by hypothesis coding themes.
79 Chapter 4: Analysis of Data
Care as the Overall Theme
I define care as the attention, the response, the listening, and the making of space for the other. Each chaplain lives out the theme of care as these chaplains go about their work. The work of the chaplain is the work of care, the experience of care, and the way this care intersects the other. The other in this sense can be an individual or it can be the past heritage of an institution, it can be a group, or it can be a constituent reality or designation used to categorize humanity. The constituent realities of race, gender, sexual orientation, cultural heritage, and religious affiliation designate the formal ways humanity embodies and experiences otherness. This experience with otherness occurs in a postsecular context. The postsecular is the cultural encounter of secularism and the religious and spiritual forces present in social and academic life. The other is that which is outside the self and the self—grounded in a communal reality is a curious mix of secular and religious and spiritual forces.
The higher education chaplain extends care to the other, the secular other, the religious other, and lastly the institutional other, which is a complicated amalgam of all these forces. The higher education chaplain extends care to the other. However, it is the encounter of that which is beyond the self and outside the consciousness of one’s self that express the deep core of otherness. Otherness is the reality of the individual, the communal, and the institutional.
Care as it thematically arises in the data appears to be the core task of the higher education chaplain. This core task strikes at the deep center of experience across the institutions studied and the individual chaplains interviewed. There are numerous 80 tensions, there is conflict, and there is paradox in the extension of care as a higher education chaplain. The lines of care, extended to individual and institution are blurred and not easily separated, but the data suggests that the overall thematic glue of care has explanative power, especially from an experiential point-of-view. The research suggests that care to both the individual and care to the institution are interrelated tasks, not easily separated but, nonetheless, separate tasks. The experience of the researcher as well as in the interviews from the first case study provide the groundwork to examine and cross- examine the themes and experiences of the two chaplains from the remaining case study sites. Care is the emergent theme, an unexpected one given the literature review, but as an organizing theme, care came about because of the investigation of the data.
Introduction to the Data
The data comprises 12 hours of interviews with four chaplains, the observation of three religious and spiritual events on three college campuses, and numerous multi-day visits to the case study sites. The analysis of the data starts with a notion, an honest and limited realization that the researcher plays a pivotal role in the compiling, the coding and the interpretation of data. Aside from the data collected, there is the looming experience of being a higher education chaplain. I am going to take a “consciousness and experience-oriented” approach in this chapter (Alvesson & Skoldberg, 2009, p. 89). The data analysis requires that my own experience as a higher education chaplain at my current institution, Muskingum University, play a pivotal role in analyzing the data. To this end, that data collected on the chaplaincy at Muskingum is comprised of two interviews—one with a current chaplain intern and another with a retired campus minister. The primary emergent theme, seen throughout the data, is the concept of care. 81 The higher education chaplain is a practitioner of both institutional and individual care.
Institutional care is the care extended to the college or university the chaplain serves.
Individual care is the care extended to the faculty, staff and students within the institution.
The remaining parts of this chapter examine the chaplaincies of Muskingum
University, the College of Wooster, and Harvard University. The Muskingum University portion starts with an experiential survey of the research questions. The research questions in chapter one guide the reflexive narrative structure. The reflexive process of engaging the research questions through my experience as higher education chaplain at
Muskingum provides the readers with a survey of my fundamental insights, my inherent biases, and my belief that any phenomena is always perspectival. I hope a consistent pattern of what I value as a researcher emerges so that as we investigate together the rest of the data, we can begin with a more authentic picture of what the experience of a higher education chaplain looks like in a postsecular environment. The Muskingum case study includes two interviews (one from a current chaplain intern and one from a retired college minister) in addition to the narrative structure.
The case studies of both the College of Wooster and Harvard chaplaincies feature interviews with the chaplains as well as an observation event from each case study. The observation event from the College of Wooster is an Interfaith Scholars conversation in which students representing various religions engage in a conversation facilitated by the chaplain. The observation event from Harvard University is a daily Morning Prayer service at Appleton Chapel. The interviews and the observations at these sites represent the heart of the data. The gathering of this data represents the best way that the 82 researcher chose to unpack and explore the lived experience of a higher education chaplain within a postsecular environment. Let us begin with a reflexive exploration of the chaplaincy at Muskingum University
Case Study #1 Muskingum
Care and navigating the unknown.
The emergence of care as a thematic reality of chaplaincy occurs during moments of crisis. The section below is a description of care in the midst of disorientation and crisis. I received the text at 12:20am. I would consider the disorienting task of being awoken in the middle of the night in order to care a rare occurrence. It takes more than a text to wake me up even if my phone it set to chirp when a text arrives. The text was first, but the subsequent phone call that shook me from sleep. I looked at the phone. It was my boss—the vice President of Student Affairs. “Hello?” I said. “Sorry to wake you, Professor So-and-so died tonight; the President wants a meeting in the morning.”
“How did he die?” I ask with clinical detachment. “Not sure, a heart-attack,” came the wearied response. “Ok,” I said flatly. Her next statement came quickly, biting off the
“k” sound from my ok, “I’m out of town right now, so I wanted to let you know.” “Got it, thanks for the call.” I replied. We hung up. The text came from the President. The text requested a meeting, gave a time, and gave a location. I tapped my reply, “see you then!”
The exchange above is what I call the “caring in the midst of crisis” task. I am grateful it is not a daily task. There is nothing routine about it. I have had about a dozen nightly tasks as a higher education chaplain. The time two young lovers decided to take a hike. Both of them Muskies and the boyfriend decided that was the moment to ask his 83 girlfriend to marry him. She said yes and they continued hiking. The trail rounded a cliff face, she lost her footing and she fell four stories. She was transported by helicopter to the hospital an hour away, her situation severe. As providence would have it, I was minutes away from the hospital that day traveling. I arrived first. I remember her parents and I remember her boyfriend. I still see them. The helplessness I felt in that moment grips me even now. She did not make it. Then there was that time when a baby was born alive and placed in a trashcan to die by a student who had just given birth in her sorority house. The young football star who died five weeks into the spring semester because he was texting and driving. I am so grateful that I do not engage in these tasks on a daily basis, for they take something out of me; they exhaust me and these occurrences have worked their way into my quiet moment of reflection.
Care and the unpredictable.
I wince easily at the mundane. Often, the trivial and absurd events at faculty meetings make me restless. However, it bears mentioning that the higher education chaplain enters in these moments of loss, grief and death as a way of framing the daily tasks. The daily tasks are the expected ones: sauntering in the office, stopping by staff and faculty offices along the way, ponying up to my computer and responding to my emails. Grading, teaching, advising, counseling and pitching in to help with a buffet of student affairs programming—these are the daily tasks of the chaplain. There are moments when the daily tasks become rare, hallowed if you will, by a presence and an intensity that verges on the experiential terroir of death, loss, grief, and pain. The student who painfully admits that his belief in God is something that he can no longer accept.
The young man who confesses his addiction to internet pornography. The student who 84 steals and lies in order to get more Adderall. I am not a mental health professional, nor am I a licensed counselor. I am painfully aware of it in fact. Nevertheless, inevitably, I sit in my chair as a student plops down, slumps off his or her backpack, smart-phone in hand to tell me something hard, something difficult and something altogether vulnerable.
Care during trouble.
One time, late on a Saturday night, with pure resentment in my heart for not being at home with my family, I sat next to an international student who was Facetiming his girlfriend who had just dumped him. Rumor was that this man was suicidal. After a stay at a local mental health clinic and hours spent on the couch with the numerous therapists, there I was—the ultimate last resort. Poor kid. I knew from our conversation that religion, spirituality or God was not a part of his worldview. There is rarely resolution in such occurrences. I sat quietly next to him as he chain-smoked and Facetimed. Over the next couple of weeks, he would pop into my office and we would chat. I would make time to go for a walk with him. I asked him about his home country, his family, and his beliefs. I did not have a strategy and from my limited professional opinion, he did not look to be getting any better with his mental health. I strained to make out his English.
However, he always seemed to understand me. When I would visit him on campus, I was always shocked at what his fraternity house looked like on the inside. The broken furniture, the random scribblings on the wall, the way trash piles up in the corners and one seems to be constantly walking on stained carpets. There is nothing that feels daily when I am with this young man—our encounters have that nightly quality. There is a looming grief observed, a tender wound at the center, and once again me feeling powerless in the face of it. Over two months I saw him about once a week. The time we 85 spent together was filled with complex emotions, sudden understandings and more than a few bewildering revelations.
Care for students’ God talk.
It was on the Quad, that he saw me and waved, students buzzing by us on the quad. I walked over to him and extended my hand and asked how he’d been feeling. He dismissed the question and asked, “Tell me about God, how can I know Him?” My first thought was mild embarrassment, a question like that is hard to stomach in broad daylight, in public no less and with people about. His use of the word “him” to refer to
God rubbed me the wrong way; I wondered whether my talks with him had contributed to a kind of unreflective patriarchy. It strikes me as absurd to react the way I did. I honed in on his question in such an unreflective way. As I look back, the moment, tinged with emotional baggage, summoned in me a brief second of mental quiet as I answered him.
Fielding a question like that “flat-footed” and in public is an awkward situation.
I began slowly. “I believe God is love and this love is known through our love of self and our love of others. Love is believing that you are worthy of care, love is extending care to others,” I stammered out my answer with many awkward pauses and a couple of glances over my shoulder to see if someone was listening. He did not get it. I was spinning my wheels. “George,” I said, beginning again. “I believe that God’s love was shown to us in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ who was human and was God. Jesus healed others, taught peace, welcomed the outcast, the lonely, and stood up for the poor, and Jesus called me to be a part of his work in the world and his work is love—that all of us are in this together and we must be compassionate people.” I felt like a street preacher holding up a sign that said, “Repent or die!” He held my gaze for a 86 moment. He shook his head slightly in a nod. He grasped my hand and bowed for a quick moment and then he walked off. It was awkward. I felt exposed on the Quad.
Care as encounter.
The daily tasks are for me windows into the larger reality of encountering other people. It means seeing them, even if that means beholding their problems and struggles.
Most of the time the students I see outside of the classroom are struggling with something, wrestling with a problem or going through a difficult moment. In many cases, I get one opportunity to connect with them, since not many of them return to talk a second time. My daily tasks are not much different from a professor or student affairs professional. The daily tasks that define my identity are the ones reserved for my vocation as a religious and spiritual guide. On the surface, these encounters are conversations. They are much like so many conversations that we in higher education engage. Being a chaplain does not entitle me to special conversations per se—but what I have experienced in my many encounters with students is that they expect me to consistently welcome the gentle nagging question of “who are you?” and “what shall you be?”
The resources we humans use to answer these questions are uniquely ours and paradoxically communal. I would like to think that as a higher education chaplain I am helping students receive a holistic education. I see my task as providing an education where learning incorporates our deepest spiritual longings, which at their root is the longing to belong in this world, to feel at home in the diversity of human experience. I am not sure how I fit together deep spiritual longing within the framework of daily tasks—I have just come to believe that they go together. How we live each day is the 87 culmination of what our life means in its summation. The daily tasks are a part of that, as are what I call the nightly tasks of grief, loss, and death.
Care as motivation.
The week had been a perfect storm. It was the last week of classes. The rhythm of the semester had taken on the feel of riding a train that had jumped its tracks and was now engaged in a slow motion careening crash. I knew that this train ride of a semester would come to an end, but before that final lurching screech of a stop it would be bumpy, chaotic, and exhausting. Four public events, a stack of ungraded final papers and exams as well as a cadre of meetings spread out through the week was all that stood before the winter break and me. Worn thin, the week described above forces me to ask the question,
“Why do I do it?” Busyness alone does not force questions like this. Having things to do and doing them well is undoubtedly a worthwhile task in higher education. No, the question of why is a deeper question than what or how. The question of why is the question that mocks me, entices me, and confronts within the whirlwind of work. Why do I do the work of the chaplain? Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1909-1945) a German theologian and chaplain to the resistance against the Third Reich asked the question of why while sitting in a Tegel Prison cell. Bonhoeffer (2015) wrote:
Am I then really that which other men tell of?
Or am I only what I myself know of myself?
Restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage,
Struggling for breath, as though hands were compressing my throat,
Yearning for colors, for flowers, for the voices of birds,
Thirsting for words of kindness, for neighborliness, 88 Tossing in expectations of great events,
Powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite distance,
Weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making,
Faint, and ready to say farewell to it all.
Who am I? This or the Other?
Am I one person today and tomorrow another?
Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others,
And before myself a contemptible woebegone weakling?
Or is something within me still like a beaten army
Fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?
Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.
Whoever I am, Thou knowest, O God, I am thine! (p. 47)
The boyfriend was deeply religious and rather certain in his beliefs. He rubbed me the wrong way and I let it get to me. Our talks would take a combative tone, as if we were two adversaries locked in a formal debate. The boyfriend kept coming back for counseling even though I knew another counselor would have better served him. This is the narrative he brought into my office week after week—different angles and snippets, but the same themes: she died because it was God’s will. He would see her soon in heaven—all things happen for a reason. Maybe it was his condescending tone, or the arrogance with which he extolled his past sins now forgiven by God or the neat and tidy theological narrative to which he doggedly stuck, but I wasn’t having it. I pushed back; I challenged him to ask why and not to have an answer. I did more damage than good.
“You don’t know why she died, I know that is hard to say, It is hard for me to say but 89 holding onto a certainty does not mean the grief or pain will go away anytime sooner,” I said (or something along those lines). His response is much clearer in my memory,
“What do you know about grief or pain? I am the one who had to dig her broken teeth out of her mouth at the bottom of the cliff so I could make out what she was saying before the ambulance got there!” Our combative talks had finally ended—thankfully so for me.
Years later, I saw him after a chapel service. He came up to me in my office.
“You know, I have forgiven you for the hurtful things you said to me, things like I’m never going to see her again,” he said. His words stung as if an old wound were opened up and roughly probed with force. I thought to myself, dear God did I say that to him?
“Well, Mark—I’m really sorry that you feel that way and I apologize for any words I spoke to you that harmed you—it certainly wasn’t my intention,” I responded. He stared at me for a long while, it got uncomfortable. He stiffly approached me and wrapped his arms around me, he craned his head toward my shoulder and, given that he was a full head taller than I was, I know that the hug was as awkward as the silence we had both experienced. He let go and quickly walked out without turning back. I learned not to be so convinced of the importance of my whys. Mark did not need my why. I thought he did, but time and grief has taught me humility with my whys. I don’t need to push my why on someone. Being right is often the least attractive accomplishment when it comes to being a chaplain. I don’t know why, but Mark taught me to let go of myself. Each person has his or her own why. I agree with some and disagree with others. I am the one who listens to the whys shared with me. I listen with openness and compassion. I listen to the why that is before me.
90 Care and grief.
The day started with a morning meeting with the President. As mentioned in question one above, a midnight text and phone call had preceded the meeting. We needed to make certain that the all the immediate family has been notified before letting the whole campus know. The professor had died at home. He was a longtime leader with a huge footprint on the institution. My interactions with him normally included a random encounter in a hallway or on the quad. A gruff, “Hello, Will!” was the extent of our contact. We ran in different circles. When I arrived at the institution, he was nearing the end of his nearly four decade’s career. I was just beginning. He was a scientist and I was a theologian. Differences aside, I knew that he was a tireless worker, a mentor to many and a plainspoken “tell it like it is” leader. He was months away from retirement.
He had given so much to the institution. It gave me pause, I wondered if I could work that long and that productively. I thought about my own vocational identity as I walked into the meeting. He never enjoyed retirement. Though I am 25 years away from such a possibility, I could not help but take stock of my career and my place in the grander scheme of time and commitment. The why nudged me in that moment. Why be the one who has to bury others, why should I get the nightly text, why walk through the valley of sorrow so habitually and so resolutely for years and years? I asked myself why? I asked myself why as I walked into that meeting that morning. Why do I do it?
A prayer service for the professor would take place the next day; it would feature an opportunity for the campus community to share stories about the recently deceased.
There would be an open microphone, people could share, laugh, cry and begin to heal.
The President and I would visit the widow on her farm later that day—take food, spend 91 some time with the family and see if we could assist in any way with funeral preparations. I set about visiting the faculty whom I knew were close to him. I wanted to have a handful of people ready to speak at the prayer service as a way to get things going.
Preparations for the prayer service was a way to reach out behind the scenes to those who were hurting. The department in which the recently—deceased professor (whom I will call Mike) had worked was visibly grieving as I walked through their building. I stood in stairwells, doorways, hallways, and offices for most of the morning listening to stories about Mike. “Mike would show up at 5:30am to tutor me.” “Mike took me fishing a couple months back.” “Mike told me that I needed to push myself and get three more publications before the end of the year.” “Mike believed in me.” “Mike told me to get my shit together.” “Mike loved his farm.” “Mike would dress up like Santa and give my kids presents each year.”
Care as love.
I heard their stories. Grieving colleagues embraced me. People held my gaze as they tenderly recounted the worth, the dignity, the flaws and the beauty of another human life. The connections made that morning were real and moving. I lost track of time. I felt held by something greater than myself. My heart was full. A stillness inside of me permeated my daily tasks. I saw the fall colors, I heard the shuffling steps of students on the quad—I took a deep breath of the crisp autumn air. Why? A theologian once said that suffering without love is demonic and love without suffering is cheap. What this means is that deep down at the center of things is love and suffering. Love and suffering are somehow paradoxically bound together. Why? I don’t know. Nevertheless, I do know that people loved Mike and that was why they were suffering. However, they were 92 not suffering without love—they had love and the love was the life, the meaning, the purpose, and the uniqueness of Mike. Why? The question emerges, but instead of doubt there is a certainty. The reason I do it is better expressed as an irresistible urge that I cannot suppress. Why am I a chaplain? Why do I do the tasks associated with being a chaplain? The answer requires a visit to Mike’s family farm.
The visit to the widow’s farm was the first time I had spent time with the new
President. She drove as I held her smart phone programed with the directions. The car ride was cheerful, considering the circumstances. We chatted easily. It was uncharted territory for me, making a chaplain house call with the President. We were loaded down with food as we walked up to the door. The farm was gorgeous. There was a lake, three barns and a flock of sheep in the front pasture. The main house was a cabin with an impressive stone porch. As we entered the home, Mike’s family welcomed us with heavy hearts but also with a sense of genuine warmth. We sat around the kitchen table. We talked, we hugged, and we swapped stories of Mike. The family wanted the funeral to take place on campus. I was asked to coordinate the funeral. I remember feeling a sense of calm as we navigated the details of the service. Making our way through the motions of planning the service provided a helpful way forward.
Care and role.
Grief is chaotic and overwhelming. So often, as a chaplain the day-to-day routine of working at a university confronts me with a problem. What is my role? What is my task? However, sitting around that family kitchen table, witnessing the raw grief and sudden shock of loss. I surrendered myself to the moment. I felt called to do nothing more than to be present, to respond to tears, to laugh when a fond memory emerged, and 93 to do my level best to care for each person I encountered. The President did not need to take me along. However, she did and that paved the way for a deeper understanding of my role.
I had been at Muskingum for seven years before she became President and
However this was the first time I had been invited to do this sort of intimate work in tandem with the President. Within a month of her first semester as President, there I was sitting at a table with a grieving widow. It is no one’s fault, many Presidents have no idea what a chaplain is supposed to do. I don’t blame the previous President—each have their own way of utilizing their staff. Nevertheless, I could not help remembering the interview I had seven years before. I had asked the previous President was she expected of me as chaplain. She responded that she expected me to lead the university through times of public grief. I took that to heart. Always to be ready, as difficult as that may be, for the moment when the world turned and the emotional landscape shifted dramatically, for the moment when people step out of their normal roles as educators, students, and administrators and enter a new fragile space of awareness.
Care and tension.
The space where we acknowledge the fragility of human life and the supremely difficult idea that we are vulnerable creatures is the place of care and tension. I left the farm having been washed in the waters of loss. The car turned down the dirt road and headed back toward campus. I rode back in silence. I knew something had changed in me on the way back to the sturdy brick academic buildings and the neat crisscrossing sidewalks of the quad. I was being asked to navigate the public avenues of institutional grief and the worn foot-trodden paths of private grief. I had not expected this. I am sure 94 many a parish pastor is chuckling at my naiveté. My role before the farm visit was mostly a functional and public one when it came to grief. Meet those who mourn with posted times of counseling, organize a service and provide the space on campus for grieving to take place—that role felt known. Something was different. The role of pastor is one that seeks out the other without a rigid awareness of institutional boundaries. I had been a pastor once and I knew that role.
When my current institution first hired me, it was the role of pastor that I was gently asked to modulate, temper and keep in check. This institution is not your church and you are here to serve the students in the same manner as other student affairs professionals. I was asked to provide programs and to advise students. The message was, “If they come to you for religious advice then give it but above all you must fit in here—and fitting in here means that you acknowledge religion as a lightning rod for conflict and a potential problem”. “Chaplaincy as professional” term is meant to stabilize the messiness of religion—institutionalize it and formalize its function within the larger campus community of professionals.
At a certain level, being a chaplain places an institutional boundary on my work.
There is real tension in this institutional designation. Sorting out religious beliefs within the mostly secular context of a university requires sensitivity and openness, while at the same time a dogged determination to value religion and the pluralistic movements of the
Spirit. What does it mean to grieve? How can I provide hope in a time of crisis? How do we understand death? Dare I broach the resurrection? Religious beliefs are deeply wedded to the way a chaplain approaches her work, yet the boundaries erected in the face of religion and spiritual matters are subtle and reinforced at a university. These 95 boundaries exist for many good reasons. An academic community is healthy when it can examine truth without a coercive religious structure that prohibits learning.
A university is healthy when it does not favor one religious path at the detriment or expense of other religious paths. People should be valued, promoted, heard, and respected without consulting their religious commitments. However, what do we do when one’s religious beliefs are deeply intertwined with the way they go about their work? What if the answer to the question of why I am a chaplain is conceived and experienced as a call from God to serve others? This is where it gets messy. The primary boundary institutionally placed on me, as chaplain, is that my primary role is to meet the religious and spiritual needs of the students. This is a wonderful role and I claim it with little reservations and no hesitations. Nevertheless, one of the problems with this boundary is that I am often discouraged from serving those who are not students. The message that was given to me early and often when I first arrived at the university was to stay in my lane—serve the students. Can I be a chaplain to the whole institution? Yes, but for me, it took years. It took building that trust and taking the long road of coming alongside others. This is why I am a chaplain, because I have come to take stock in the idea that my calling is to serve my institution and that calling comes from a place greater than ambition or professional skill.
Caring with others.
Chaplaincy is in no way different from the elderly woman who works in food services, the young man who tends the grounds, the vice-President who leads a division, or the President who has the mind-boggling responsibility for everyone; we perform our tasks and largely remain silent as to the whys, the deep questions of why we do what we 96 do. Chaplains ask why. I know, because I have asked myself that question a time or two.
I have also had the deep privilege of being paid money by an institution to ask others why they teach, why they learn, why they care, and on that one crisp autumn day, along a backcountry road I asked a widow why she mourns. I am no idiot. You cannot ask,
“Hey, why are you mourning?” But really, that is how it works in my line of work. The why of her mourning was answered when I heard from the widow who Mike was to her, what his life meant and what she lost. The widow told me why, because with a relish tray in hand and the President holding a tray of cold cuts in hers, we walked into that stunning hand hewn cabin; we entered into the delicate and enormously important task of caring for others.
Care as experience.
Days later, after the prayer service, after the funeral, after countless phone calls and a couple of visits back to the farm. I called Mike’s widow. We chatted easily, like two people who had been through something together—like a car crash, but one of us was more seriously injured. She has fractures, internal injuries and hideous scars from the accident; I had walked away with only minor bruises. We set up a time to meet at her farm. I needed to drop some things off and she needed to give some things back to the university. I arrived later that same day of our phone call. We sat in the kitchen. The moment came quickly; it is the moment when the person tells you what happened the day the person they loved died. Although the recounting of the death is a common occurrence in such circumstances, I never expect it and I am always surprised by how the words arrive. The story comes tinged with the clarity and magnitude of a well-known narrative. 97 The terms used, the pauses between them, and the stillness that follows speaks of a deep mystery. It was that mystery that enveloped me there. With elbows propped on the lacquered cherry wood kitchen table, I listened as she spoke the final hours of Mike’s life into being for me. She created that reality for me and in some way for herself. She remembered. To “re-member” is collate the disparate fragments of memory into a whole.
The “re-membering” of someone is the deliberate task of breaking apart and pouring out of what is no longer, so that what is lost is transformed into something paradoxically absent However profoundly present. She did that work. I listened.
Care and stories.
He had loaded two five-gallon buckets with water and with fish to stock the farm’s pond. Placing them in the back of a four-wheeler, he set out on that beautiful fall day. He dumped the first bucket in the cool green water among the swaying cattails. He turned, his waders partly stepping through the pond’s edge of muck teeming with life under his booted feet. He turned back towards the house, emptied the bucket in hand and he died right there. He fell, bucket in hand, at the water’s edge. When they found him later that night, they saw the other bucket in the cargo hold of the small four-wheeler.
They finished his task, the fish alive and swaying in the bucket’s water. His son lifted the bucket from the back of the tiny truck’s rear bed and poured the fish in. As I heard this story told through a widow’s tears, I knew why I was a chaplain and I accepted my present task with humbling gratitude because of what I had been told. I know why. We all knew why.
Later, sitting at that table of truth revealed, she said that his ashes had been delivered from the funeral home just hours ago. She paused, as if steadying herself for 98 words not fully formed. She looked at me, smiled and began again. “The box they handed me was warm. What was left of Mike was still warm.” A long pause, “I know it sounds weird, but it comforted me to feel the warmth in my hands,” she finished matter- of-factly. I understood what she was saying. I understood the deep troubling mystery of what can comfort someone so presently stung with loss. We parted, and once again I made my way from the farm to the busy college quad. On that day, I did not ask myself why I do the tasks of a chaplain; the answer had been gifted to me once again. Everyone has a why. I am not there to challenge the why but to bear witness to its power, its lingering hold on our lives, and our irresistible urge to tell our whys to one another.
Care and students.
I will be the first to admit that cataloguing an accurate account of how students are affected by my work as a chaplain is a lesson in subjectivity. Fortunately, the reflexive model allows for such limitations. The danger we face by uncovering the work of the chaplain through the lens of student experience is that we are not dealing with the experience of students per se, but rather the chaplain’s perception of that experience.
This need not be a weakness. As the reflexive model reminds us, the imaging of the other and the serious reflection required to step into the experience of the other is entirely congruent with the overall purpose of research project. What is the lived experience of the higher education chaplain? An important part of answering that organizing question requires me to think about, to remember, and to reflect on my interactions with students.
The penultimate task of describing how students have been impacted by my work is necessary to the ultimate question of what exactly is the lived experience of a higher education chaplain. The impact can be positive, it can be long lasting and it can reveal 99 how important the work of the chaplain is at this particular moment in American higher education. However, the impact—as my experience painfully recounts—is sometimes adverse, short-lived and riddled with misunderstandings. I want to give a full reckoning.
I want to provide a robust account of my impact on students. Through the lens of my perception, my limitations, and my expectations, I want to provide the data of my impact on students in order to help navigate through the larger question of the lived experience of the higher education chaplain.
“All you Presbyterian pastors are the same in this regard, so careful with your words when it comes to Jesus Christ. I always have such a hard time figuring out what you believe.” He spoke forcefully, as if he had been holding something in for some time.
The young man was deeply religious, quick-witted, and a good student. He was a part of a family that had many graduates of the university he now attended. Every activity sponsored by religious life found him there. Although quietly unassuming in a group and reserved in a crowd, he always seemed to blend in during a worship service, Bible study, or the occasional fun activity; but now in my office his presence swelled, his voice full and his look intense. I knew that my words, my actions or something I represented troubled him. “What exactly do you believe?” he asked. I had met this student within a week of becoming chaplain.
I had been a chaplain for less than three days before he stood in the doorway of my study in the basement of Brown Chapel. My answer was abstract, intellectual and rambling. I delivered my credo with the finesse of a big city news anchor describing a county fair event he had never attended. I could not be this student’s chaplain. He knew that, but did not seem to be handling it well. I was not handling it well because, looking 100 back, I refused to accept that I could not be his chaplain. My fundamental lack of awareness was born of a refusal of sorts—one too painful to accept. How could I not be this deeply religious young man’s chaplain? I perceived it as a failure on my part. The failure was mine in part. The present conflict of our colliding religious worldviews was being worked out—slowly.
Care and vulnerability.
The moment pointed towards something inside of me, a working out of my worldview that required time and struggle. However, the student was unaware and I was only dimly aware that our interaction was a successful and pivotal moment for both of us.
How do we live with difference? In what ways do we accept one another across the sometimes-unwieldy gulf of experience and belief? I know now that if that same student crossed my path our interaction would be much different. I could be wrong, but I have the feeling that he and I were talking over one another, around one another, and it was frustrating for both of us. What I did not know at the time was how I could have answered his pointed questions with vulnerability. Vulnerability in this case, as it pertains to the lived experience of a chaplain requires the delicate task of telling my story.
The telling of my faith story, not abstractly or with theological precision (which is what seminary trained me to do) was something I lacked. A deeper glimpse into the ways I have experienced faith across my lifetime was sorely needed. The telling of one’s story is obviously a deeply personal process. His pointed questions created in me a barrier (or I allowed his question to do so), a natural hesitancy to really engage him where he was. However, the student’s questions lacked vulnerability and a mutually- affirming investigation into his own story that should not have prevented me from 101 undertaking a different response—a response that is more human and more affirming of the life-changing story of faith in my own life. Looking back, I realize that chaplaincy requires one to engage certainty, scrutiny, and conflict with vulnerability. Here is what I should have told him, and since that interaction I have learned to tell this story in ways that I hope is appropriate and beneficial for the students like the one mentioned above.
Care and faith.
She left the hills of Kentucky when she was 16 years old. She learned to rivet the aluminum skin on the wings of B-29 bombers right outside of Marietta. After the war, she got a job at a General Motors plant in Dayton, and in a letter to her coal-mining father still in Danville, Kentucky she wrote, “Daddy, I’m installing the dashes on 46
Fleetmasters, and I’m earning $1.50.” A couple of months later a letter snaked back up the Cumberland Gap from Kentucky to Ohio, and the coal-mining Daddy from Danville responded to the dash-setting young daughter in Dayton like this, “$1.50! You had better never quit that job!” The average hourly wage for a factory worker in 1946 was 92 cents.
She did not quit that job; in fact, she did it for 42 years.
While working there at G.M., some of the other women on the line would apply their glossy red lipstick and stand near the men during their smoke breaks so as to flirt— but she did not do that, she went up to the break room. As a southern white woman, she started a Bible study with two black women who were the janitors at the factory. The dash-setting young daughter from Danville was called some pretty choice words for being a white woman who hung out with black folk during her break time. Nevertheless, she did not care. She could set a dashboard as good as any of them, she could work hard and she could finish strong at the end of her shift, and ultimately what set her apart all the 102 days of her beautiful life was the compassionate love of Jesus deeply lodged in her fiercely gentle spirit.
She was no stranger to suffering. Her first husband died unexpectedly when my father was only three and in her grief, she married a man who turned out to be an alcoholic. When he left her years later for another woman she said, “I think I’m pretty much done with men.” Therefore, she was single until she met the man I called Grandpa as a child. She had finally met a man whose spirit and whose life was as beautiful and gentle as hers was. I do not think I ever heard the daughter from Danville who made dashboards most of the days of her life ever say a bitter word. I am sure she did, but never to me. She sang to me about the love of Jesus, she took me on long drives though the back hills of her childhood home in Kentucky.
As an adult with a family of my own, I went to see her once in the hospital. She was going blind from her struggles with diabetes. She told me, “I miss so bad reading the
Bible, I got these tapes but they ain’t no count.” I told her that I could read something to her and she would not have to rewind or fast-forward me to the right place. She smiled and told me to read from Ruth, chapter 1, verses 16 and 17:
But Ruth said, "Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you!
Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my
people and your God my God. Where you die, I will die-- there will I be buried.
May the LORD do thus and so to me, and more as well, if even death parts me
from you!"
That is the part of scripture she wanted to hear. When I think of what I believe, I think of her. When I remember the dash-setting daughter of a coal-miner from Danville, I 103 think of the faith that has been gifted to me. The kind of faith that picks me up and moves me, the kind of faith that doesn’t lose its bearings when death comes.
When I struggle to articulate what faith is, especially when the hardships come—I remember her constant and steady way of living. When I think of faith and the love of
Jesus, I think of my grandmother who was once the dash-setting daughter of Dayton who grew up in Danville, Kentucky. The faith I have is a part of the faith she lived and died holding. The powerful notion I hold as I go about my daily tasks is that she is with me.
Her presence is with my interactions with students.
I was hesitant to tell that story. It just did not occur to me. I have no way of knowing whether the interaction would have made the interaction any different.
However, as a chaplain part of my task is to help students tell their story. Telling the story of my grandmother and the faith I affirm may have helped this young student understand that having a deeper relationship with God means having a deeper relationship with one another—there’s is no way around it, it is the way God created us.
I held my own story at arm’s length, possibly because of a fear of rejection or an uncaring response.
Nevertheless, that interaction many years ago, in my office with that student, helped me to affirm my story. That interaction is one that, in many ways, started my journey as a higher education chaplain and it taught me to answer the question of what I believe by telling my story. I missed that opportunity the first time, but since then I have tried my level best to make up for it. I also try to tell that story without being too pushy or flippant, by first asking others to tell me their story, in their own way and in their own time, because I think that is the best way to figure out what someone believes. The last 104 time I saw the dash-setting daughter from Danville, the last time I saw my grandmother alive, she had wild long gray hair, her hospital gown fit her badly, she could not see me because of her blindness, but she knew I was there and she told me, “If you love the Lord and if you love other people then everything will be just fine.” She is right; my experience bears this out, and the interactions I have with students regardless of their faith commitments bear this out.
Care as collaboration.
The role of chaplain is varied and complicated. I imagine most roles in higher education are like this. One minute there is clarity about how one goes about their work and the next moment there is a struggle to live out one’s role. The moments of clarity about my role are appreciated. When those moments arrive, I savor them, even if the tasks associated with that role are difficult or mundane. Often, the clarity of my role as chaplain is quite elusive. I have broken up a fight on the quad. A faculty member, a close friend, once texted me with an urgent request to show up at his classroom. When I got there, we spent the next thirty minutes dealing with a severely drunk student. One time I was asked by two vice-Presidents to retrieve university property from a deceased faculty member’s home. Recently, I led a wine-tasting event for students during alcohol- awareness week; seminary did not prepare me for the work of a sommelier!
As a student affairs professional, you never really know what you are going to get yourself into on any given day, and that is part of the joy I derive from my work at the university. I participate on a regular basis in more stable activities. My efforts to make my role neat and tidy doesn’t always work, but if I had to explain my role to another higher education professional I would divide my role into three primary areas: a spiritual 105 and religious role, an academic role, and a student affairs role. It is hard to compartmentalize these areas; they are constantly blending into one another, informing one another and, yes, at times conflicting with one another.
The breaking up of fights, working with parents during orientation weekend, serving midnight finals breakfast to hundreds of students, talking about alcohol with fraternities and sororities, or leading a panel discussion on sexuality (it would seem a great deal of programming revolves around these two themes!) is largely about being a part of a team of student affairs professionals. This role is fast-paced, collaborative, and intense. Standing shoulder to shoulder with the dean of students, the director of residence life, university counselors, and other individuals tasked with supporting our students is a deep joy of mine—even with its problems. They are my tribe so to speak, we work hard, we grumble about the students (and the faculty) and most of the time go out of our way to support one another.
I want to share a story that reflexively examines my role as a higher education chaplain through the lens of the student affairs dimension. We call it Muskie Preview.
Just saying the phrase “Muskie Preview” to a fellow student affairs staff member conjures up a whole host of emotional responses. Muskie Preview are the days set aside for the orientation and academic scheduling of the incoming freshman class. The program occurs a couple of weeks following the intense madness of graduation, just when we are settling into summer—Muskie Preview! Six intense sometimes 12-hour days are nestled right in amid the end of May and the beginning of June. Why do we call it Muskie Preview? Muskie is the primary nomenclature of a student at Muskingum
University. We call them Muskies. Our mascot is the fresh water fish the Muskellunge. 106 Since Muskellunge is a weird word, the mascot is the Fighting Muskie. The fish has an elongated body with an impressive set of teeth—it is considered a predator in the rivers and lakes of Ohio—but I digress. There is one particular event that occurs during Muskie
Preview that is both rewarding and grueling—we call it “The Outside the Classroom
Panel Presentation.”
A panel of student affairs professionals give a presentation to the parents on the opportunities in which their students can engage once the fall semester arrives. There are no incoming students in the room. I can see the worried looks and the trepidation on the faces of parents. They want to know what to expect and what exactly are they committing to by sending their son or daughter off to college in the fall. The panel is one part the giving of practical information and the other part assuring parents that their students are safe. The other part, the part in which a panel of student affairs professionals ensure that the supervision and development of their students will take place is nothing more or less than a dose of a good old fashioned in locos parentis (Brubacher & Rudy,
2008). So much time and care has been poured into these young men and women, a great deal of financial resources are being scraped together—I have been there, I know how this feels, having sent my oldest daughter to college. The parents want to know that this is all worth it.
The panel consists of a good cross-section of student affairs staff. There are a mental health counselor, the career services director, chief of campus police, the director of residence life, director of food services, director of athletics, the Dean of students, and
I—the university chaplain. Once, early in my career I was asked over the summer to come up with a slide presentation with pictures and information for each speaker. 107 Working with a student, I had a blast [pun intended] giving each speaker an opening 15 second musical introduction. The chief of police saunters up to the theme song to the network drama “Law and Order.” The counselor walks up to the lectern with the Fab 4 belting out the song “Help!” It is a great deal of fun, we’ve updated tracks over the years—laughed about dancing our way up to the lectern. My song has not changed in the six years I have worked at Muskingum—“Gotta Serve Somebody,” by Bob Dylan. My
Dylan obsession is deep and pathological. The first time it played my colleagues slightly bent their heads in muted surprise. They wrinkled their noses and lifted their chins as if to hear better and make sense of the song. The Nobel Prize Laureate sings:
You might be a rock ’n’ roll addict prancing on the stage / You might have drugs
at your command, women in a cage / You may be a businessman or some high-
degree thief / They may call you Doctor or they may call you Chief / But you’re
gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed / You’re gonna have to serve
somebody / Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord / But you’re gonna
have to serve somebody. (Dylan, 1979)
The song is strident. The song is not a lesson in pluralism. Dylan’s theological vision is binary. I like the song a great deal, not because of its strident affirmation of Christianity.
I have spent a great deal of time and energy living and working as a pluralist.
The song resonates with me as a chaplain because of a core message beneath the strident affirmation of religion. Dylan points toward the inescapable dilemma of serving.
We serve something, each of us—sometimes it is many things, ourselves, or others.
Dylan’s song points me in the direction of Paul Tillich’s (1957) theological concept of
“ultimate concern.” Tillich describes ultimate concern as that which concerns us 108 ultimately—not the preliminary or evolving concerns, but rather the concern that forms the ground of being for us. The ultimate concern often appears as a response to an existential question—questions such as what is my purpose, or how can I overcome meaninglessness? Dylan’s lyrics summons the seriousness of our service and its inescapable reality. We, each of us, must serve something and what we serve concerns us, calls us to action, and guides us through many tasks in a day.
I remember the first time I bobbed up to the lectern at Muskie Preview with the song playing loudly, Dylan’s whine raw and piercing. There was a moment before I began, I weirdly cleared my throat, I nervously adjusted the microphone and I began without even introducing myself. I don’t remember what I said, thankfully so, but if memory serves me right it was strained and awkward judging from the looks on the parents’ faces. I read from my notes in a verbatim mostly head down way, all while my colleagues sat behind me beholding it all. I was used to a pulpit, a Bible, a sermon on themes in which I had been trained—but this was altogether different. I had not really understood my audience. Higher education was a new beast—one that I really had not grown into a deeper contextual awareness.
I shuffled back to my seat, the chief of police leaned over as the next person on the panel jumped up to a blast of music, “You know, the last campus minister would blow everybody out of the water with his stories, he talked about the right and left brain and the typical problems with college roommates—you’ve got big shoes to fill, you had better get on it.” I swallowed hard, shook my head up and down in a slow arc and melted into my chair letting the words sink in—deeply. After the panel, I got a few weak smiles and a couple light pats on the shoulder as if I had just tripped on the wet pavement of a 109 parking lot. The dean of students walked up to me, “Hey, next time remember to tell them who you are—I mean there is only one of you on campus—you are kind of a big deal.”
Two phrases stuck me as I walked out of that auditorium: “you have better get on it and you are kind of a big deal.” It takes time to wrap your mind and heart around higher education. I took that time. During the next two semesters I learned my role as best as I could and I am still learning my role. As the police chief suggested, “I got on it,” so to speak. When the dean of students let loose the “you are kind of a big deal” remark, I took it to heart. To this day, those two comments, though they were not easy to hear and came when I thought I was not up for the task of being a higher education chaplain, are phrases that I relish and think about even when my day falls well below my expectations. An academic year blew by and once again I found myself walking up to the lectern with my student affairs colleagues sitting behind me. This time I smiled and introduced myself. I told the parents that I was the power-lifting coach. My delivery was good but the laughter came because I look as if I would have a hard time carrying a gallon of milk in each hand from the car to the refrigerator.
I eased into my talk because “I’m kind of a big deal” and all. I told them I was the chaplain and then I told them an old story—which in my opinion are the best ones. In the Old Testament, from the Book of Deuteronomy, there is a great story of love and acceptance. It is a story between God and the Israelites. God is depicted as a fierce and nurturing Mother eagle. The children of Israel are eaglets. The Mother eagle has cared for the eaglets and with her mighty talons she has fended off predators and snatched up fish. She has spent the long nights in the rain and sat in the sweltering heat on the rim of 110 that nest. But there comes a time when the eaglets must learn to become eagles, they must learn to fly.
The Mother eagle swoops into the nest and with her mighty talons she snatches up her eaglets and bears them aloft as she races toward the horizon. She lets go. She loosens her grip on the eaglets. It is a dangerous but necessary process—the eaglets flop and turn and tumble toward the ground. The Mother eagle snatches them mid-air and races even higher into the sky and then repeats the process. Over and over it goes until that splendid moment when the eaglet becomes the eagle and flies. This is what each of us must do for our students, snatch them when they tumble down and fly a little higher, and keep dropping them until they soar. So the task before each of you is a hard one, but also and exciting one, have a splendid summer with your eaglets and then come fall release your grip and wait for them to soar. I stopped. I paused. I had memorized my talk. The clapping began hesitantly and then resounded around the room. I was immediately embarrassed inside. It would seem that shuffling back to my seat the previous year with a pervasive silence was easier to deal with than suddenly being at the center of applause.
Care as communal.
The memory does not require embellishment what it requires is a reflexive awareness that my interpretation of this event is representative of a reality that is central to being a higher education chaplain (Alvesson & Skoldberg, 2009). More than just giving a polished piece of public speaking, I needed to understand my role as chaplain.
The food director spoke of the dining options, dietary restrictions, and the hours of operation. So and on and so forth, the presentations came with vital and important 111 information—good stuff, necessary stuff. When the chief of police tells you he wants to keep your student safe and then tells you where they can and cannot park, parents pay attention. Each has their role—the building up, caring for, the keeping accountable, the maintaining of health, nutrition and fitness—the student affairs professionals at that panel do the hard day to day work of educating the whole person.
I had to connect to the parents and remind them of the hard and necessary work of saying goodbye to their students—not that they had forgotten about this looming task, but to support them in the midst of it. The chaplain seeks to express and name the powerful connections present within the higher education world: the connection between learning and joy, the connection between service and transformation, the connection between church and academy, the connection between spirit and mind. And in that moment, with the recounting of the ancient story of a mother eagle from the Hebrew Scriptures, I sought to name the connection between the parents and those student affairs professionals who sat before them. I wanted to connect those who raised, loved, supported, and nurtured their sons and daughters to the daunting but gratifying work of the student affairs professionals when it comes to our work with students. It is different work. I am not their parents. But connections remain. Care is expressed.
The next role is the one that strikes at the heart of my identity, as it perceived by others. I am the chaplain. Before me, the title was campus minister and when I arrived at
Muskingum, during the first year, my title was campus minister before being changed to chaplain. My email name came from computer networking services with “Rev.” on it. I lead the community in prayer during public events. There is chapel worship every
Thursday during the academic year. Students often make their way to my office for 112 counseling, for advice, and for the occasional check-in. The religious and spiritual role of my work sets me apart at the university. This setting apart has trade-offs. Often, the religious and spiritual tasks are viewed as things that I alone do, so collaboration is rare, whereas the student affairs component of what I do is highly collaborative. The spiritual and religious tasks of prayer, worship, and counseling can be viewed as tasks that I am solely responsible. There was a wonderful moment when the religious and spiritual became a communal task, a collaborative task—a shared task.
The collaborative event started when a group at the university formed to find a way to celebrate the holidays inclusively. The group consisted of a Wiccan student affairs professional, a Jewish student, a student on senate, two Christian students (one
Evangelical and the other Catholic) as well as a student that I would call a “none;” that is a student with a religious preference of “none of the above,” (McNamara-Barry & Abo-
Zena, 2014). We sat out to plan a holiday tree-lighting ceremony on the quad. A student who was a member of senate and a spiritual life representative approached the President with the idea, which she loved. It evolved into a rather large event. The lighting ceremony was open to the public and advertised. There would be refreshments on the quad. There would be three trees with lights—huge pines right on heart of the quad. A sound system would need to be ordered for the event, and a script created as well as finding some candles and helping three students work on their speeches.
During the planning of this event the 2016 Presidential election occurred. The candidate that I supported did not win. This has happened before in a U.S. election, but it was different this time—I felt adrift, fearful and angry. When I walked into the next planning meeting the following week, I nurtured a secret, I did not really give a damn 113 about a tree-lighting ceremony anymore. However, as chaplain I felt this was not the time to be vulnerable and authentic about how I was feeling. I still needed to process some things, work through my emotions and make sense of my country in a way I had never had to do. The students, the other student affairs professionals, and I talked through the ceremony. Each tree would have a theme: love, charity, and light. These themes would be explored through a diverse understanding of religious traditions. Two students volunteered to cover love and charity. The room feel silent, the Jewish student asked me, “Chaplain, would you be willing to talk about light?” My first thought was: “I would like to talk about how pissed I am and how absolutely fed up I am with people who cannot seem to accept others who are different from them!” But what I said was much different. “I would be honored; how long should the talk be?” I asked. “Short, five minutes is fine,” said my student affairs colleague. I smiled. Short, but not sweet, I thought.
The students did well, I mean really well. Sometimes it does not work and sometimes it works when you have students speak. I am not trying to sound unduly critical or jaded, but from my own experience I have been present at events where I count the minutes until the student stops speaking at a public event. This was not such an occasion. The Catholic student spoke of a starry sky under which she and her older sister had walked years ago during the holidays. She spoke of love, trust, and a deep belief that this planet affords us so much opportunity for connections and wonder. The student spoke of love as that which forms us in our family, follows us through our development, and then calls us to love deeply in this world. 114 The crowd was thick that night. The night cold but calm. When she finished her talk, the signal was given and the first tree shimmered with light. I welcomed love into my awareness in that moment. My spouse and my daughters had walked up to the quad to be a part of the tree lighting. It was wonderful to see them. I love them so much. I almost forgot that I would be speaking in a few short minutes. It is one of the downsides to being a religious and spiritual leader—when others are able to be present in such a moment I am mostly thinking, “Okay, so after this I will have to go up.” The next student walked up to the lectern. I knew him well, a kind student who smiles quickly and frequently, the kind of student that makes you feel hopeful for this world.
He spoke well that night. I thought to myself, “two in a row, wow I guess the bar has been raised.” He spoke of his hometown, a small rural West Virginia town. As he did, my heart that had just been filled with love constricted and I thought, “Oh yes, I know the kind of town you speak of and I know how they voted a couple weeks back!” I shelved my blame and tried consciously to let go of my raw pain. He continued, “There was no place to play basketball in my town.” He talked of the heroin epidemic, the poverty, and the lack of a basketball hoop anywhere in sight. He kept going—he painted a gritty picture of people down on their luck and not making it any better for themselves.
Then he pivoted.
He remembered the summer late in his elementary school years when a local church put up a basketball hoop. The church even put a fence around it and kept the lights on late. He and his friends suddenly had a kingdom, a field of dreams, and a frontier to traverse. He told that group assembled in the cold and the dark with one lit tree of love behind him that, without that hoop, he would have never made it to college. 115 He told us that charity is not scraps from what is leftover, but a gift for others to build on and to grow. He finished, the tree of charity popped on, and I knew it was my turn.
I have often struggled with a nagging awareness that has persistently followed me since seminary. Am I depressing to listen to? Do I dwell on gloom and doom? Am I, as
William James (1982) so insightfully diagnosed, one who cultivates a “sick-soul” spirituality? I buried these questions as I approached the lectern and told the Christmas story I thought the campus should hear. I told them that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot as he stood leaning against a second story Memphis hotel railing just outside his room and that there had been a book folded in his back pocket when he died. I painted the picture with my words spoken next to two lit trees and one huge unlit pine. I said, “as
King crumbled to the ground, blood soaked the outside edges of the book written by
Howard Thurman.”
In that November darkness, on the verge of Trump’s America, I needed to remember Dr. King’s life and savor Dr. King’s words that were a radiant light of love against the darkness of hate. I told the group that King’s light was passed to him, given to him, and offered to him from the rich spiritual tradition of the Southern Black
Christian tradition. I told them that King had loved Thurman’s words and that there can be no greater testament than having a book with you the moment you die. On that night, during that Holiday Tree Lighting Ceremony I had been asked to speak about the Light and so I told them that Howard Thurman (1984) had written this about light:
I will light candles this Christmas; candles of joy despite all sadness, candles of
hope where despair keeps watch, candles of courage for fears ever present,
candles of peace for tempest-tossed days, candles of grace to ease heavy burdens, 116 candles of love to inspire all my living, candles that will burn all the year long (p.
247)
I pondered Thurman’s words, soaked in King’s blood on that dark November night. I believed that we as a community had gathered to bear witness to the light. We cannot force the light, we cannot create the light, all we can do is stand in its beam and hold its warming gaze. I held to the notion that the light of our deepest hope burns within us, around us and through us. I told them that they are the light, we are light, we shine, we glow, and we turn our heads to the flickering reminder that love, charity and light begins within the human heart.
I was ready for the expectant light of our final tree and the soon-to-be-light of the candle in our hands. I made space within my own mind that the light means something different to each us of, but in that moment, here’s what I hope it means: The Light means that now is the time to celebrate our differences, now is the time to embrace our traditions, now is the time to accept the Light that shines in all and each of our journeys.
The light we hold and around which we gather around means that everybody is welcome, that no one is turned away from charity, from love, from the light.
The light reminds us to feed the hungry, to sit with the lonely, to embrace the broken, to stand up for the bullied; the light speaks to us to welcome the immigrant, to reach out to our Muslim brothers and sisters, to accept our Gay and Lesbian neighbors; the light is light and it comes to us all, regardless of our race, our religion, our sexual orientation, or our culture. The light spread from candle to candle and the tree towered over us in light. I finished with raising my candle up a bit and I said, “Behold the Light, be the light, hold the light, carry the light. You are the light. We are the light. May the 117 light of this final tree bear witness to the Light in our midst. Peace to each of you and
Merry Christmas. Amen.” That’s mostly what I said. I remember it well because my two daughters were there holding candles as I said it. It is just a little speech. I know it is not much, but it is what I can do. I know it is just words but don’t our words push us toward living a certain way? Do not words matter? They matter to me. As a chaplain, they matter very much.
Care and teaching.
I teach. This is a remarkable privilege. The three courses are a theology course, an ethics course and a Christian education course. Theology for me is best expressed, simply, by asking two questions: who is God and how should we live? I try to open up conversations with students. I use those two guiding questions as a way to introduce a tradition with many different voices to them. It is important to me to expose my students to Christian theological voices that come from people of color, from women, and from thinkers who live and work in the global south. I place these often—overlooked or marginalized Christian voices right next to Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, Augustine, and John Calvin. I am often troubled by the lack of religious knowledge the students bring into the classroom. The religion I often hear about in the classroom is indicative of a vague awareness, a warm-fuzzy “everything goes and it is nobody’s business anyhow” kind of thing.
The students are hungry for meaning so I persist. I sense that the students are done with worn out and over-used answers, yet I am completely overwhelmed by the daunting task of teaching theology in a post-theological world. As a teacher there are so many things of which I am often unaware during class. But I am keenly aware of the 118 student who is gripped by the material, who sees something for the first time and is focused like a laser-beam to get answers. For every student like this there are at least twenty students that groan about the assignments, itch for their smart-phones, and look as if they are nursing a monster hangover.
I want to tell you about a laser-beam like student and how she helped me to become a better teacher and chaplain. She played on the basketball team. I knew this because there was a group of them, dressed in warm-up suits, duffle bags in tow that entered class at the same time, sat in the same grouped seats, and left as a herd when class was over. Of the three basketball players, she was the quiet one. Though often silent, she turned her head towards whoever was talking, jotted notes and came with a creased, marked-up textbook (that she had purchased new and unblemished). Her papers read like a travel blog to an enchanted land. I am not exaggerating.
The enchanted land was sometimes a trip to Julian of Norwich’s Showings or
Augustine’s Confessions but she went there, she explored and described what it felt like to read something new and fresh. She noticed things about a text that had taken me a whole lot more in student loans and degrees to grasp. I returned the mid-term essays at the end of one class. She had chosen to explore the Trinity through the lens of Rosemary
Radford Ruether’s (2012) feminism. Theology, as a discipline invited the student into a deeper reflection of meaning and purpose. She explored the discipline as a way to grow both intellectually and personally. Theology is a resource of care for the higher education chaplain.
The paper was a gem—a delicate balance between personal narrative and the exploration of the original goodness of humanity, the understanding of evil as an external 119 structure, and the human task of struggling for loving relations (Ruether, 2012). After class, a handful of students hung around to ask some questions about their grade on the paper. The basketball group assembled and moved to exit the classroom. She stayed seated. The handful of students, at various levels of satisfaction and dissatisfaction, asked their questions and, still clutching their papers, walked away from me into the hallway.
When I looked up she was still seated. She approached me. I congratulated her on a strong essay. We talked. She came from a religious home, a strict home. She did not know what she believed now. She told me she felt guilty about not going to church.
She looked me in the eye and said, “I could never believe the things that my dad is in to.”
“Really, like what?” I asked. There was a pause. She looked down. She exhaled and then she flipped her wrist that was holding her phone and then looked into the face of her phone. “Sorry, I got to get going, I got practice in a few, thanks for talking with me!” she replied quickly.
The semester rolled on. Weeks passed and she continued to perform well in class, but we did not visit our previous conversation until an event gave us a chance to resume our conversation. There was a former U.S. Army chaplain, a Muslim Imam, who had spoken out against the treatment of Muslim detainees and prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.
Not surprisingly, the Army had discharged him on false pretenses and labeled him a terrorist. I heard that the Imam and former Army chaplain was giving a talk at Ohio State
University. I was interested in going, so I advertised the event on campus so that some
Muskies could go. The day of the event arrived. We would need two vans because a group of students had decided to go. I went to pick up the keys to the university vehicles. 120 The campus police officer asked to see my driver’s license. He looked at it and shook his head and handed it back to me. “Chaplain, it looks like you are not driving a campus van today, you have a Florida driver’s license,” he said. Nice. The assembled group of students snickered. We found two drivers, students who had watched the video required for driving a campus van and had a valid Ohio license. During this process of sorting out the drivers, more students arrived. As they were piling into the vans the seats filled up. “I’ll follow you all. I will take my car,” I said. I walked up to the passenger window and asked for the clipboard that goes with each vehicle and I started to plan the route with the student driver. “I’ll ride with you!” I heard the voice from inside the van.
There was a shifting of book bags and the movement of knees and the unbuckling of seat belts as one student made her way to the side door of the van. She nearly tumbled out onto the pavement as I was filling out some paperwork. It was the quiet basketball student in my theology class. It was the student with the unfinished conversation and the great writing skills. I hadn’t even known that she was going on the trip. “Sure,” I said.
“I hope you like Bob Dylan,” I said. “Who?” she replied. “Never mind, let’s get going,”
I smiled as I spoke. She would know some of Dylan by the time we hit Columbus, I thought.
When she got into the car she was nervous. She was fidgety in her seat and made awkward small talk, sometimes tripping over her words. Immediately I had the thought,
“I shouldn’t have allowed a female student to ride in a car with me, alone.” I dismissed the regret as I looked in my rearview mirror to see a white university van behind and through the front window, another van in front of me. Our car ride was a rather public scene. In the back of the van in front of us, as we drove down the highway, we saw one 121 student doing some sort of dance routine with his hands. We pointed back and laughed.
I gave her a task, asking her to punch in the address to my GPS. She settled down. We were caravanning to Columbus as Bob Dylan played softly in the background and she soon picked up where she had left off weeks ago after class. To me the story is a familiar one and even though each story is unique, I heard a familiar trajectory in her words. The religion of her youth was no longer tenable to her. The arc of her story started with a painful argument she had over the summer with her parents.
As I think about it now it seems like a lifetime ago, but the argument this young woman had with her parents was during the summer of 2008 and an election cycle was in full swing. She told her parents that she would be voting for a certain candidate and the response came swift and sudden—you are a Christian you can’t vote for said candidate— besides we don’t even know if said candidate is a Christian, he may be a Muslim! So the conversation went on that warm night between this student and her parents. The ground covered in that conversation sounded epic and explosive: “Why doesn’t our church have female pastors?” “What’s wrong with a woman having a say over her body?” “So what if he’s a Muslim?” On top of that, this little nuclear family finished up with a discussion on race. As she told me what had happened, I could see the bridges crossed and burned, words spoken in anger and truth, and lastly a young woman ready to create meaning for herself.
It was not lost on me that we were driving to hear a Muslim speak. I wondered what her parents would think of this conversation and our little trip to hear a Muslim. As she talked about these big ticket political items, I got the sense that she was still talking around the deeper issue. The story of her argument with her folks seemed like a warm-up 122 for the main entrée. She was moving quickly, covering ground at a feverish pace, in order to arrive at a clearing in the dense growth of remembered conflict. “Look, I’m worried about my parents,” she said. “I mean things calmed down and we somewhat moved on. We mostly decided to not talk about it, we did not make a conscious decision we just walk around now like it never happened,” she stopped. I could feel her looking at me. “Sure, sometimes we think it is easier to ignore conflict, but really that just delays it for a while, but tell what you are worried about with your parents?” I responded. “I don’t think I’m into boys,” she flatly replied. “Alright, tell me about not being into boys,” I said. “I’m worried about it, what my parents will think, what God thinks about it,” she said slowly and carefully. There was nowhere else to journey in the conversation; we had come to the place she needed to be in the talk. “I think I’m gay,” she said. I called her by name and I turned toward her with one eye still on the road and said, “Maria, I’m so grateful that you have shared this with me, what can I do to help you?”
The contours of dialogue shifted between us as she reflected deeply on her life and I tried my best to help her make sense of it all. She did most of the work. As we talked for the remaining car ride I could not hear the worry or fear she had before the disclosure. When she talked about her parents it was laced with a weary sadness. She had to know why, as a Christian, I was able to accept her as a Lesbian. She wanted more than “I’m just a cool liberal chaplain.” She really wanted to know what I believed as a
Christian, especially as a chaplain, when it came to accepting someone who was either
Gay or Lesbian. I took my time. After the event, she walked briskly to my car and waited for me to unlock it with one hand on the car door handle. 123 She knew all those really difficult passages from the Bible by heart—the ones that stand out and wound the conscience, the ones that have been peddled and bandied about and appear to say that God hates homosexuals. I am not a Biblical scholar. But I did my best. God doesn’t hate people who are Gay and Lesbian; in fact, God loves these individuals as they are created to be and blesses their sexuality. One by one we surveyed the difficult passages, we talked about Sodom and Gomorrah, Romans chapter 1, and
Aquinas’ natural law. No, that story is really about hospitality. No, if you look at the
Greek, the word that is used in that passage it actually means sex between an older man and a young boy. No, Aquinas is really relying on Aristotle rather than scripture when he makes that claim.
She was curious and persistent in her replies. I could see the wheels churning— years of worship, hours of Sunday school and millions of small messages from her childhood were being upended. I felt nervous. Like I was sabotaging her past. I imagined her in a future conversation with her parents in which I was cited—chapter and verse. I pictured her dad, wearing a blue sweater from Land’s End and beige kakis, shaking his head, as his daughter talked, asking himself why he bothered to spend so much money on tuition so that some Godless charlatan could poison his daughter’s conscience. I know it is not true—me being a Godless charlatan—but I still think it from time to time. It is dangerous and risky work telling other people that God loves them just the way they are; you can get into trouble for saying things like that.
We talked weekly outside of class after the car ride. She told me near the end of the semester that she was transferring to an art school. She wanted to focus on learning the ins and outs of advertising in a bigger city. She also wanted a school where she could 124 be a Lesbian from day one. I was excited for her. After graduating from art school, she fell in love with a remarkable young lady and they married recently. I am so damn proud of her. We keep in touch and when I think back to that car ride nearly nine years ago, I am still grateful for what I was told. You do not have to be a chaplain to play the role I played—to listen, to care and to remind the other of their worth and dignity. However, looking back I know that she needed to examine her religious conscience, it was a part of her growth and maturation as a human being. The role of teacher affords me the opportunity to examine theological and ethical structures. In this case, teaching gave me the opportunity to play a positive role in the life of one talented, fiercely bright, and powerful young woman.
Retired (Chaplain) College Minister Interview
Before moving to the next section from the Muskingum University case, I want to begin this section by reflecting on a retired college minister. I interviewed John.
However, the interview was more a conversation about an institution that both of us know well. Given my reflexive methodology and that John served at the same institution
I currently serve, the interview is in my voice. The reflexive nature of this interview grows out of my own experience as an undergraduate. In this opening section, I reflect on John’s ministry specifically his role as a mentor. John was my college minister. The title was not chaplain and the institution was not a university. The title was campus minister and the institution was a college. John served Muskingum College as campus minister for over 20 years. I was a first generation college student, and his mark on my undergraduate education was deep and lasting. The long talks, the quick chats, attending chapel, and taking a few classes from the campus minister was a formative experience. 125 Looking back, with his help, I learned the value of inclusivism. Inclusivism, as he defined it, is the hospitable desire to extend compassion and understanding to all backgrounds and faiths. John taught me that being inclusive goes beyond mere tolerance—it requires the enlarging one’s sphere of moral concern to include faith perspectives and backgrounds not your own. In fact, he boldly went about his work of being inclusive because he believed it is the best way to nurture diverse religious and spiritual communities.
The right mentor.
John loved to teach Muskies the value of questioning one’s beliefs. He encouraged me to explore, investigate, and question my religious and theological tradition as a way to deepen my appreciation of the Christian faith. Through his care and many others, my experience of the religious and spiritual life on campus flowered into a vocation and a discipline of thought. The campus minister encouraged me to ask important questions and to look for answers within a wide spectrum of thought, from modern critical theory to medieval mysticism. In my early twenties, at that critical stage of my life, religious and spiritual life programming and mentoring opportunities helped equip me to respect diversity, explore ideas, and to be joyously present to those around me no matter the background or faith tradition represented. I also learned not to fear doubt, confusion, and restlessness—these uncomfortable experiences have their place in the complex process of spiritual formation.
My undergraduate years taught me the ancient roots of my faith tradition, which was not always a gentle process. John, most times gently and sometimes not so gently, divorced me from countless cultural myths that I had unwittingly accepted as bedrock 126 assumptions. It was during this time that I was introduced to two life-altering themes: race and privilege. The campus minister helped me to make room in my theological imagination for the voice of the oppressed and the marginalized. It was during this time that I painfully started to let go of a Christian tradition that privileged male, white,
American, heterosexual normativity—I know this is a lifelong process but it started at
Muskingum with John’s help. I continually witnessed John interpret texts, provide pastoral care, and preach with a deep concern for Gay and Lesbians, the experiences of women, the poor, and people of color. Such truths are not so easily forgotten. We have kept in touch from time to time and he reluctantly agreed to be interviewed. I think his verbatim response was, “Sure, I guess, you might as well ask me questions before I become senile.”
Care and conversation.
In this section, I want to unpack and examine John through the lens of his own words. John prepared for the work he did on campus. John talked of being a chaplain as much like other professions in higher education—it requires preparation. Higher education knows a thing or two about preparation. For the professor that means a whole host of tasks: grading, reading, preparing lecture notes, and research and writing, to name a few. How can we separate what it takes to prepare for a day versus what we are preparing for? What are we doing when we are not preparing while at work? The answer can vary from day to day, but what we do that is not preparation is what we prize, value, and respect. The question framed, rather differently, can be stated as such, “what must we do to be prepared for our day?” John framed the issue well. John has a certain way he gets ready. For some it is when they are teaching, that is the moment they have 127 prepared for with care. For others it is administrative meeting where major decisions will be made or the research proposal that will be sent off. John prepares himself for the caring conversations that will take place that day.
John, the retired campus minister prepared for a conversation. John says, “But what I really look forward to is what I call the ‘drop in conversation.” John is preparing for an encounter, an informal one that cannot be scheduled or forced but emerges. It happens on the quad, in the cafeteria, while in the student lounge or wherever he has a conversation with a student. He wants to be ready for that encounter. Such a conversation is best understood as a ministry of presence. The chaplain is present to the students in that moment. It is an informal event, and those who do it best are casual about the whole encounter. It should not drip with sincerity or be too intense. However, predictable small talk is not the aim of this conversation. John is always getting ready for this conversation because it is the thing he prizes, awaits, and, yes, is really good at doing. How does he prepare for this conversation? By having a spiritual conversation each morning through the established practices of his religious tradition. He prayed. It may sound bizarre that a higher education professional starts the day with prayer, but that is how he prepares for his day and the expectation that he will have a meaningful conversation with a Muskie.
Care as prayer.
“I start my day by leading daily prayer in the chapel,” says John. The first
“professional” conversation he has is the one that intersects his meaning and purpose as a religious professional. It is an important conversation to have with oneself and others, because this conversation forms the vocational identity of a chaplain. It also creates a 128 tension within a mostly secular environment of learning. Prayer, within the context of higher education, may make us squirm, in that such a religious practice seems out of place, but at a church-related institution, the connection between devotion and vocation is a natural one. John’s role is to be present to students, faculty, and staff. In this role, the chaplain regards students, faculty, and staff as worthy of sacred concern. The sacred care expressed here has a future-oriented goal, when it comes to the students, which is to help lead them along the road of learning so that they may lead vocationally productive lives.
How does prayer prepare a chaplain for this kind of work? Prayer, as a task, represents a primary conversation with the Ground of Being (Tillich, 1957). The lived experience of the chaplain is one that seeks to orient itself toward a unified understanding of the world.
This is done not out of a kind of intellectual certainty but rather out of a desire to be centered in the midst of the busy and chaotic world of higher education.
The chaplain engages in this first and primary conversation as a way to untangle the web of concerns demanding one’s attention. This time of prayer is a moment of care, potentially finding the one thread of concern that leads to the other. How much different would the work of chaplaincy be without prayer? John realizes in his work that there are words that help us to be resilient and words that make us crawl back into ourselves, lonely and hurt. Prayer as a conversation is one that invites the chaplain to rise above the fear. John Calvin (1967) understood prayer as the chief exercise of faith. Within the current postsecular era, prayer is a spiritual conversation that prepares the chaplain to have meaningful conversations with others. Prayer invites the chaplain to rise above the noise. The chaplain as religious professional prepares for meaningful conversations with 129 others by having a spiritual conversation with God. Prayer, for John, is a daily conversation that seeks to capture a connection with others. It is a way to get ready.
Collaborative care.
John said, “On most days, I coordinate with [the] Student Affairs staff for pastoral care concerns, you know, students that need help with the loss of a family member, struggling with grades and so on.” The chaplain works as a member of a larger team.
This is the collaborative conversation the chaplain has with his or her colleagues. The heart of this conversation is built on collaboration. The chaplain functions as a resource within the larger student affairs division. The role of chaplain is one that occurs alongside the other roles in student affairs. The theme of collaboration came up frequently in John’s story. Collaboration as a theme is one that manifests itself informally and formally. According to Kezar and Lester (2009), collaboration within the context of higher education is a set of practices that improve student learning across multiple departments. Furthermore, Kezar and Lester (2009) understand that these collaborative practices are established through dialogue and coordinated action. Lastly, dialogue and actions, used to establish the best collaborative practices, flows out a sense of mission. Mission is essential here. The mission, in this sense, must be more than an abstract statement at the beginning of the university’s website.
John’s university addresses the collaborative nature of chaplaincy by stating in its mission that it is important “to offer quality academic programs…in the context of a caring community…” (Muskingum, 2017). Learning and care are related. John sees them as related and when his colleagues afford him the space and knowledge to care for students they are living out the larger mission of the university. When collaboration 130 takes place the chaplain potentially improves student learning. Let us look at a specific example of how collaboration is able to improve student learning through the lens of care. The context of a caring community is of supreme importance when tragedy strikes a campus. The theme of student learning seems not so important when students die.
However, the chaplain struggles and labors to find meaning and purpose during times of grief and the chaplain knows that grief can teach—in fact some lessons learned in the midst of suffering linger far beyond the kind of classroom learning we are equipped to facilitate.
Near the beginning of John’s time at the college, a van carrying members of the women’s basketball team slid on the late November ice of the highway and collided with a tractor trailer. Two passengers were instantly killed—a team manager and a student.
Five others were critically injured. John recounted the story in a matter-of-fact tone. He paused numerous times to get the words out carefully. He told the story carefully. The theme of care emerged not only in the content of the story but also in the context of its telling. In the midst of this hard story that occurred near the first part of his ministry, there was a residue of emotional attachment that lingered. He knew the names of two women, killed, over twenty years later. John described a lasting experience, one that placed his role alongside other roles in the student affairs division.
The collaborative conversation took place between the John and the dean of students. They met to sort out the notification process. The names of the injured and killed were divided between the two—they made the phone calls in separate but adjacent rooms. “It was a truly difficult task, one that made me feel vulnerable and at a total loss for words,” said John. With many long hours of grief counseling, hospital visitations, 131 and funeral arrangements behind him, John set out to plan for the next crisis. “If that is even possible,” he said. As the crisis of tragic van crash turned from a raw moment of pain to a near-distant memory of grief, John worked tirelessly to come up with procedures and plans for the student affairs staff to follow the next time something like that happened. It was important for him to revisit this process with the whole division staff. He wanted to know what worked and what could have been improved. Some staff were initially uncomfortable with the conversation; they felt such conversations were better suited for other programming events, not death!
John carefully walked them through what it means to be a caring community in times of grief and loss. “I helped the student affairs staff develop a plan for notification and support of the student body,” said John. He paused a bit and gave a muted smile with pursed lips. “I remember going to the hospital right after the wreck, talking with the parents, holding students as they wept in the lobby for their injured or dead friends.”
Later that night with some other student affairs staff, John found himself sitting in a side office at the hospital, everybody exhausted and quiet. John described that moment in this way:
The rest of the team walked into where we were sitting and just sat down on the
floor, there were no chairs left in that tiny broom-closet of a room, the whole
room was filled with students, quietly sitting in that cramped room. We prayed
together, we laughed and we then we left. I remember that night.
The student affairs staff and John did their work that night, together and side-by-side.
The work was part of a larger mission of care, the kind of care that comes from collaboration and trust, the kind of care that springs from entering into the collaborative 132 conversations that improve the lives of students no matter what happens. The chaplain, as a higher education professional, improves the lives of students by constantly entering into collaborative and caring conversations with his or her colleagues.
Confidential care.
John sat at his desk in the basement of the Chapel. A junior appeared at his door one afternoon. After exchanging some awkward greetings, she sat down in a chair near his desk and asked, “What does the Bible say about homosexuality?” This is the start of a certain kind of conversation for a chaplain. It is not a prayer conversation, nor is it a collaborative conversation. It is, as the interview with John suggests, a confidential conversation. It is a privileged piece of communication between the chaplain and his or her student. The confidential conversation recounted by John concerned a deeply personal question of ethics and sexuality. The theme or topic can be anything though, as long as it concerns the conscience of the one who shares the information. The chaplain holds this information within a sacred framework.
The understanding of confidentiality goes deeper than propriety and etiquette when it comes to private knowledge. The confidential conversation is such that the chaplain understands his or her role as standing in for the divine—the chaplain cares for the spirit. No, chaplains are not divine, and the data at every turns supports the frailty and limitations of chaplains. What is meant by “divine” is that the chaplain gets to overhear a conversation between God and a student. The chaplain gets to play a role in the conversation between the human conscience and the reality beyond the human conscience. In this specific instance, the term beyond the human conscience means a sacred text, a belief one holds of God or a theological interpretation of a certain religious 133 tradition. The chaplain gets to listen. The chaplain gets to respond. John in this care responded with wisdom and humility. John responded with just enough grace and grit to help this student navigate a complex topic. Let us look at how John handled this confidential conversation with his student.
The question was asked, “What [does] the Bible say about homosexuality?” John looked at her, smiled and thanked her for coming to see him and honoring him with such an important question. “I chose to not answer her question either too directly or quickly,” said John. John wanted the student to get to a certain point where she could frame the question within a context. When embarking a gentle patience and a graceful opaqueness are important on the part of the chaplain for conversations of this nature. The chaplain needs to understand the context in which the question is asked. There is a context. It is rare that such questions are asked for purely speculative purposes. After a healthy pause and a couple of leading questions, the student quickly arrived at the context. John described the context in this way, “She thought she might have romantic feelings for another student, but wanted to be a ‘good Christian’ and did not know how to reconcile the two.”
Here is where the tender questions of the human heart seek to intersect the impossibly complex realm of religion. What does God say about X? This is an impossible and ridiculous question to answer. Yet, it is a sincere and honest question to ask? The chaplain must lead the other to answer—the confidential space is a guiding space, a space to point to something or to nudge toward a clearing in the dense fog of the unknown. In the confidential counseling space, the student asks what or who or why.
Often, the question of who God is, or why God is, or what God is, is intricately woven 134 into the personal context of a live question, a burning curiosity of which no casual or quick answer will suffice.
John sensed the urgency of the question. John sense the delicate nature of the question and the intimate ramifications of whatever answer they would arrive at in the moment. John spoke of God. She had asked what the Bible said about homosexuality and he answered with who he thought God was and is. “God is that which is greater, more loving, and more gracious than we can imagine,” he said. She nodded. She wanted to keep going. “What about the story in Genesis about Sodom and Gomorrah?” she asked. Together they probed, wrestled, and approximated the meaning of an ancient text, a text whose context was much different than the student’s context. The confidential conversation is one that dwells within a sacred boundary. It is the boundary between the student’s deep longing for meaning and the limitations of meaning itself. The chaplain does not speak for God. The chaplain seeks to create the space for the student to create meaning on the way to God. The caring and confidential conversation is the conversation that chaplains have with students who are on the way to God.
Care and conflict.
There are times when chaplains interact with competing religious worldviews.
There are moments when the predictable sacred and secular arguments surface. There are times when the chaplain cannot escape conflict. The chaplain is sometimes called to have difficult conversations. John told me of the time a fundamentalist student screamed at him because the student came to realize that he did not believe in a literal hell. John also spoke of the difficult conversation he had with a faculty member who publicly challenged why the college even employed a campus minister on the grounds that 135 religion was an outdated relic of the past with no place on a modern campus. These conversations are tinged or saturated with conflict, and they happen for a variety of reasons Often the conflict is religious in nature (between two religious folks) and some of the conversations arise because of the manner in which religion divides American culture. The division here is the classic tale of conflict between the religious person and the secular person (Campbell & Putnam, 2010).
The chaplain’s institutional role is such that they are tasked with serving the religious and spiritual needs of the entire campus. The role is one that accepts diversity and embraces pluralism. This often causes friction between the chaplain and students with religiously conservative worldviews. The chaplain is often perceived as not religious enough by such students. John bridged the gap between religion and learning by cultivating a deep appreciation for science. John valued science. As an engineer and a vocal advocate of evolutionary theory, John taught a course entitled, “Religion and
Science.” John promoted science and he promoted religion—it was a healthy academic expression. Given that the chaplain serves as the institution’s spiritual leader on campus, there are some who see this role as promoting religion. The secular crowd views the chaplain as too religious. Let us take a look at how John navigated what appears to be a
“lose-lose” situation.
“A student came to see me, distressed about baptism…she was looking for a spiritual home and had attended a couple of local churches,” explained John. It would seem that the young woman’s church attendance had created more questions and less clarity on the issue of baptism, hence she was sitting distressed in the chaplain’s office.
“Two local pastors told her that she was going to Hell unless she was baptized in their 136 respective traditions,” he continued to explain. John talked with her a number of times.
The theme was consistent with each visit, she was filled with fear—fear that she might be on the road to hell unless she sorted this out. John sought to address her fear:
We talked about different religious traditions and how sometimes they become
exclusive. We talked about the greatness of God, whose power and love could
not be regulated or controlled by humans. I tried to address her fear by gently
offering her a different vision of God.
As John listened and responded, things slowly improved with the student’s fear until such a time a direct question was asked. The student asked John, “Do you believe in Hell?”
“No, not so much, but I’m not sure. I just know that hell doesn’t make much sense to me most of the time,” said John. The conversation veered in a new direction. The student was deeply offended. “How could this be?” she asked. John’s gentle demeanor and careful articulation did not reach the student. She had made up her mind, to her such an admission was a betrayal of a deeply held religious conviction. There is always a risk when we share our beliefs, even if honestly done with utter sincerity. The student never returned for another counseling session, but later in her college career decided to make one final attempt at swaying John’s heretical belief of hell. It did not end well. John’s patience, persistent honesty and gentleness were rewarded with a loud and awkward screaming session by the young woman. The conversation that veers into conflict is difficult but inevitable from time to time when it comes to the work of chaplaincy.
Chaplain Intern Case-Study
Joan is a recent graduate from seminary. As the chaplain intern she has been a part of the university for a little over seven months. She has been at Muskingum before. 137 She is an alumna. Joan was a business and accounting major. She grew up in southeastern Ohio. She is a first generation college student and a hard worker. She has a
“straight-shooter” style about her—graciously blunt. Joan has an enormous capacity for remembering and processing details, she is task oriented. She is an awesome intern.
Joan’s experience is a unique one. This is her first position in higher education and chaplaincy. Joan lives in one of the residence halls among the students, she is in her twenties, and one important part of her story includes a dog. The dog lives with her in the residence hall and, as the interview demonstrates, the dog is a recurring motif in the data. The lived experience of Joan is a window into the evolving work of chaplaincy in the 21st century. Let us look at what it is like to live in the residence hall among students.
Care as relationships.
Joan starts her workday by turning on some music in her office (modern country).
She then powers up her computer, launches her electronic calendar, and then sifts through her emails, finger poised over the delete button. “I try to make sure the office looks inviting for students,” says Joan. She pulls open the curtain to her large office window, pushes he door open wide and turns on an electronic scented candle. At some point, with the room flooded in light, music playing and the room beginning to smell of fresh linen on the line, she finds a good old fashioned yellow stickie note and writes down her to do list for the day and smacks it on the plastic rimmed edge of her computer monitor. Her office is in a high traffic area right in the heart of the student affairs division. This is how she gets ready for her day.
In reality, she started her job around two hours earlier. “The moment I most look forward to is when I am able to talk to students as fellow human beings rather than as the 138 “chaplain” (she really draws out the word with added emphasis). Joan typically accomplishes a great deal by the time she arrives at her office in the student affairs division. “As I was walking out of the building in the morning, to let Rae out [the dog], I saw a young woman sitting on the sidewalk crying. My dog ran up to her before I realized she was sobbing. His tail was wagging and he was already licking her face by the time I tugged on the leash,” she said. The three of them gathered around one another.
Joan apologized on behalf of Rae. The young woman moved closer to Rae and began to hug and pet the dog. A bond formed that day between Rae and the student. “After talking with her…I knew she was anxious and depressed,” said Joan. The student and the chaplain intern talked often, two or three times a week. Sometimes one-on-one, sometimes with a group of other students, but Rae was always there. “While I would like to believe that it was my presence and words that helped this young woman adjust to the first couple weeks of college…this interaction showed me how important our furry companions are and how they can impact our mood,” Joan continued to explain.
Incognito care.
Joan, as a millennial, exhibits some classic millennial traits, such as a skepticism of institutions (Arnett, 2007). Joan, in her first position as chaplain understands that this role makes her stick out in a secular culture. She understands her primary role as relating to students with a keen attention to mutuality. Joan often finds the role of chaplain cumbersome in her dealings with college students. A lasting experience for her on the job is the casual encounter—the mutual interaction, a moment that feels natural. “Living among freshman, I have realized how much seeing a happy dog can…break down barriers with student,” says Joan. “I have found it beneficial to not have many students 139 realize I am a chaplain,” she continued to explain. Joan is a chaplain who is incognito.
She works around the margins of the sacred and the secular. She is subversive in a creative way when it comes to her role as a religious and spiritual practitioner in higher education. Living so close among the students requires finesse when it comes to understanding the role of chaplain. Joan sees the nitty gritty underside of students living in a dormitory. “Let’s just say I smell a lot of pot, It is cool and all, but I just wish they were smarter about it,” she spoke with a wry smile. She wants students to know that she is approachable and the label of chaplain is perceived by her as a barrier to achieving that goal. She is young woman with a dog when she is near the residence hall. It is this desire to remain incognito as chaplain that has enabled her to build an easy rapport with many students.
Joan understands her role as being one that cares for students. It is a relational role. “Most of the interactions I have with students are in the residence halls where they are more relaxed,” she explains. The incognito chaplain theme is one that captures the ambivalence many students feel about religion. Joan as the incognito chaplain cultivates a non-hierarchical presence, one that seeks to extend care and concern from a place of mutuality. “I have had a number of students knock on my apartment door, asking to walk or play with my dog,” says Joan. The benefits of relating to students in such a human way is that by the time they figure out that Joan is the chaplain, a core connection has been established. The dynamic of equanimity that she has established by living so close to freshman is one that has enabled her to ease the ever-present tensions between the sacred and the secular that take place on campus. 140 Context is everything when it comes to Joan’s role as chaplain intern. Her role is a temporary one. Her contract, like all chaplain interns, lasts for one to two academic years. Though she minimizes her official role when interacting with students in or around the residence halls, it is a different situation when she arrives in her office at the student affairs building on campus. Her office is in a highly visible location in the heart of the student affairs division. However, the other staff are not sure how to interact with her. “I get the friendly hello, the occasional check-in but when it comes to pulling me into the day to day operations that hasn’t happened,” says Joan. Joan sense of disconnect from the other student affairs staff flows out of the natural tension between sacred and secular forces at a university (Waggoner, 2011). Her strategy keeping her “religious” role a secret as long as possible while strolling among the students near the residence halls cannot come to her aide while working in a highly visible student affairs division.
Summary of Findings Case Study #1
The two interviews and the one reflexive narrative represents a small snapshot of chaplaincy. The work of chaplaincy visibly comes into focus through the lens of care.
The phenomena of care represents an organizing theme throughout this case and as the reflexive model suggests, care provides the interpretative lens to look at the other two cases in the study. Care as a phenomenological experience of chaplaincy highlights the tensions present in this kind of work. An important tension to name would be the tension between care for the individual versus care for the institution in the work of chaplaincy.
Care, extended in these two contexts, is not mutually exclusive. It is helpful to understand this important distinction of context. The first case is about moving beyond 141 mere description so that summary findings reflexively suggest that the theme of care helps us to interpret the conscious experience of the chaplaincy within a larger context.
Assuming that consciousness links us to reality, the phenomenological investigation of care as a core constituent theme of the lived experience of chaplaincy, further launches the research along fruitful paths of interpretation (van Manen, 2014).
Let us examine more closely the interconnected and emergent themes from the interview data of the first case as it grounds us within the unifying theme of care. Care is a term that has deep significance in phenomenological discussions. Van Manen (2014) frames the unique role phenomenology can play as a research method by saying,
“phenomenologists…display ‘styles’ that seem very personal and at the same time universal” (p. 47). The personal manner in which care, contextually embodied by the two chaplains in the first case, demonstrates the wisdom of Van Manen’s claim.
Nevertheless, what about the later part of Van Manen’s the claim—the universal claim?
Before engaging in a nuanced cross case analysis, let us attend briefly to a universal understanding of care.
Martin Heidegger (1996) understands care as a premier structure of meaning for the human being. For Heidegger, the human being, or Da-sein, as he prefers, (literally being-there) properly explains the nature of lived experience. Heidegger (1996) describes the central predicament of Da-sein in this way:
The more Da-sein is absorbed on awaiting what is taken care of and, not awaiting
itself, forgets itself, the more time that it ‘allows itself’ is covered over by this
mode of ‘allowing’. In everyday ‘living along’ that takes care, Da-sein never 142 understands itself as running along in a continuously enduring succession of pure
‘nows’. (p. 376)
The importance of care emerges in the three fundamental ways we understand time: past future, and present. Heidegger creates a phenomenological account of time. Heidegger understands time as a facet of human experience, namely (thrown into a situation of universal care) humans care for things. All cares are competing and these cares are complex. Care in the phenomenological sense does not acquire a moral or ethical disposition.
However, chaplains seek to foster an ethical and moral sense of care in the
“thrown” nature of higher education. The emergence of care arising from a specific subject, namely one individual, is described by Heidegger (1996) as “disposedness” (p.
85). Chaplains who form a core ethic of care in the midst of the thrown nature of competing cares within higher education are disposed to a certain receptiveness of the other. The chaplain as Da-sein, as a profession, lives an ethic of care for the other. although it is epistemologically jarring to move from Heidegger’s account of time and being to a grounded discussion of higher education. It is necessary to state that higher education is a matrix of competing cares, each of which has an advocate and an opponent. Uncovering the lived experience of the higher education chaplain is a way to understand an ethic of care within the larger culture of higher education. If this can be done, then the theoretical discussion of postsecularism as a moment of the cohesion of values can be further expanded and critiqued. The ethic of care shown by the higher education chaplain is an important value to understand in our postsecular age. 143 The higher education chaplain enters into a wide range of tasks. As seen above, these tasks are unforeseen and unpredictable. This is not to say that the lived experience of the chaplain is an unstable data stream, rather that the chaplain’s tasks often enter the fragile space of the many vicissitudes of human life. The chaplain enters when someone on campus dies—this is a prime example of the vicissitudes of life. Regardless of the task, care emerges as a common experience with the many tasks. Let us look at some specific instances of care as a way to formulate a deeper understanding of the lived experience of chaplaincy. I see care as a unifying experience for the higher education chaplain, especially as Heidegger helps us to understand in a universal sense. The contours of this care form along two fault lines: care of the other and care for the institution. Examples of care for the other include the one-on-one encounters with students, faculty, and staff. The contextual contours of these one-on-one encounters of care vary, but they also form along predictable lines: grief, conflict, celebration, and vulnerability. The ethic of care that emerges within the lived experience of chaplaincy along institutional lines are categorized as such: collaboration, interfaith opportunities, hospitality, and public theology. Let us take a closer look at the broad themes of individual and institutional care along the lines spelled out above.
The chaplain enters into the grief of others, not as a way to resolve the grief, nor as an agent of resolution, but to embody an ethic of care during times of loss. This ethic of care extended during this time supports the individual, and the institution understands and supports this task of chaplaincy. The chaplain, unless otherwise credentialed, is not a mental health professional. She is one who comes alongside the grieving not as practitioner. The chaplain establishes an ethic of care as a form of solidarity with the one 144 who grieves. The chaplain interacts with students, faculty, and staff when conflict is present. An ethic of care in the midst of conflict is a difficult one to maintain. Often, in higher education, as in many situations, conflict brings about the least amount of care for all those involved.
The work of chaplaincy is the experience of conflict, infused with a greater awareness of the needs of the other. The chaplain enters into times of personal joy and insight. The chaplain mentors and advises students and colleagues. The overall thematic glue, binding all these one-on-one instances of care extended to the individual is the presence of vulnerability. The chaplain’s work is such that care requires authenticity and the ability to appropriately share one’s story. Chaplaincy within the one-on-one context requires a healthy amount of self-worth. The worth of the self is integral to the extension of care to the other. Valuing the self is integral, it correlates with valuing the other.
Vulnerability is learned. The chaplain learns to value the moment when authenticity emerges. Vulnerability in this sense is not strength, intellectual prowess or moral perfection. Vulnerability is a requirement of true hospitality—the chaplain allows the other to enter into a space of honesty. The theme of care is a core constituent value within the work of chaplaincy in a postsecular moment.
Case Study #2 the College of Wooster
Care within an interfaith context.
Care is a value that helps build community on a college campus. This is true at the College of Wooster. Deliberate and intentional care, practiced as a way to forge community, creates solidarity in the midst of religious difference. Cora, as chaplain, is care-full. Her words are not careful; rather they are care-full. She speaks with robust 145 regard for the religious minorities on her campus. She exhibits care while acknowledging the dignity of difference when it comes to religious identities. Care, far more than an abstract theme, emerges by the way the chaplain shepherded an assortment of “third- spaces” on campus for Jewish students, Hindu students and Muslim students. In fact, care, built within the fabric of her daily interactions and conversations, exhibits excellence on campus. Cora is an excellent chaplain because she cares deeply for the religious and spiritual lives of her students.
Care forms the backbone of her interfaith ministry. She knows her students by name more quickly than your average professor. She is full of care when it comes to her students’ academic life and their social opportunities that promote growth and development. Cora knows that culture is a creative spark. Religion is a part of that creativity. Cora educates herself about the culture and the religious beliefs of others. It is part of her success as an interfaith chaplain. Cora understands and appreciates the academic culture of which she is a part and her sense of care refines itself in many ways.
The mega-theme of care explodes into view with her energetic and vibrant spiritual leadership.
Introduction.
The College of Wooster’s chaplain is an interfaith leader. Interfaith means establishing a place of welcome for various and diverse religious traditions (Morgan-
Clement, 2013). Practically speaking, interfaith work means facilitating a conversation between various traditions. However, a single conversation is not enough. An isolated or poorly planned conversation is not good enough. The conversation must become a habit of the community, a praxis of the larger student culture. Cora, as the chaplain of the 146 college, conceived of the need for this interfaith conversation and nurtured this conversation until it flowered into a vibrant campus ethic; people took notice of her work.
Cora guided her college in a twenty year dialogue and exploration of the worth and enchantment of interfaith ministry. She did this at a college with a deeply secular pathos.
Today, Wooster’s interfaith network is a vibrant piece of a larger student culture. The chaplain’s role in this context is to shape the entire campus community to embrace the interfaith ethic. An interfaith ethic is a much-needed value in our postsecular climate.
Cora helped students find and provide hospitality to one another—amidst the many religious, racial, gender, and class barriers of our fragmented culture. Cora supported and encouraged students to step out of their comfort zones and have lasting encounters with one another, encounters that enable these students to be better global citizens by the time they graduate. Let us examine how she did it by unpacking the lived experience of the higher education chaplain at the College of Wooster.
Reading the culture.
Cora is the Chaplain and Director of the Interfaith Campus Ministry at the
College of Wooster. Wooster is a premier private liberal arts college located in northeastern Ohio. The average ACT score is 27, with 75% of its students earning above a 30 (Review, 2017). The tuition is steep and the educational experience is described as intimate and challenging. Cora had her work cut out for her in such a high-performance
“work hard—play hard” ethos. Religion is not on many people’s radar. Cora knew that for her work to be meaningful she would have to connect to the culture at Wooster in a highly compatible way. She knew that the institution she served prides itself on undergraduate research and an ethical commitment to diversity. Cora’s interfaith 147 ministry is an experiential opportunity for students to learn about other religious traditions. This kind of learning occurs when a group of student sit around and speak to one another, look one another in the eye and form a relationship. As a researcher, I attended an informal lunch discussion with Cora and a group of five students (each representing a different religious tradition). The students gathered around the table chatting excitedly—everybody knew one another. This was not a stuffy “interfaith dialogue” with a panel of religious experts taking questions. This was a group of students, like many groups of students we can see on campus, sharing one another’s lunches, commenting on a particular assignment and settling down for the task-at-hand.
At this table was a Muslim, a Jew, two Christians, and a Hindu.
Cora and I sat down, I was introduced and warmly welcomed, and then a ritual commenced. Each one shared a struggle from the week. They shared; long papers to write, a sick grandmother, a messy roommate, and how terrible the food at the dining has become—common struggles. Until the last student shared—“I am afraid of death, I can’t stop worrying about it—I’m so weird.” The room grew hushed. A few nodded. The energy shifted in the room, each student grew still and concentrated on what was just spoken. After a healthy pause, Cora responded, “What about the rest of us, how do we understand death?” For the next hour, each student shared the wisdom, the doubts and the complexities surrounding the reality of death from their own lived religious tradition.
It was remarkable to behold and deeply humbling to witness. I asked myself, “how does this happen?” You do not just throw students from different religions and races in a room and suddenly they are discussing the reality and meaning of death. No, Cora helped to 148 facilitate that reality—she nurtured it and has worked for two decades to bring it about.
Let us look at the work of chaplaincy through the experience of Cora.
Caring center holds.
I spent a twelve-hour day with Cora. We started at 9 a.m. and I said goodbye to her in the parking lot at 9:10 p.m. that night. Our first interview occurred mid-morning.
When we sat down she walked me through her day before she arrived in the office. Cora said, “My special discipline is I am trying really hard to wake up 15 minutes early to go for a walk with my husband.” She does some stretches; she quiets herself and does what she calls “centering myself.” Cora struggles with checking her email until sometimes midnight. She guiltily admits that she finds chaplaincy a consuming task and often walks herself through her work schedule for the next day when she is at home. She describes the pull of chaplaincy when not on campus as holding something at bay. She mentions the word discipline. Discipline for her is the ability “to not think” about work while she is at home. Cora calls her morning ritual her center; it is her bedrock attempt of self- awareness and perspective. Cora has an enormous amount of energy and focus. It makes sense that her centering activity is movement. She used words like “walk” and “stretch” to describe this morning ritual. As described by Cora, this is her center. Will this center hold?
By the time, she sat down with me at 9 a.m. she had had breakfast with a colleague, been a part of three work-related conversations with others in her division, and had checked her email and calendar on her smart-phone. Cora is a centered laser beam of activity, a seamless integration of efficiency and connection with others. She tells me that the day we spent together is a typical one. Cora tells me that, “people don’t like it 149 when you don’t answer [emails].” Cora does not appear stressed out. Cora does is deliberate and patient in her interactions. Cora’s words and actions appear centered.
Cora’s center is her commitment to the morning ritual that enfolds her with inner-care.
Cora is aware of her busyness. Cora has a perspective of how demanding and consuming her work is. Cora embraces the multiple during her day which require her presence and her care. The caring center for Cora is the awareness of her busyness and the discipline she cultivates to not let it consume her. The breakfast she has with a friend at work, the walk with her husband, the deep breath she takes before flipping through her smart phone and the orienting conversations she has in the morning, all point to a caring center that holds on most days. The highlight of her day is when she participates in a small group discussion. The lunch conversation she led with the interfaith students is an example of what she anticipates having in her daily line-up of events. The next major movement in her experience as a chaplain is the delight she takes in her work, the kind of work that brings people together around deep questions.
Caring for deep questions.
The small intimate gatherings of students or colleagues for a meaningful discussion is what Cora anticipates most in her day. She delights in these moments.
Cora describes these moments in this way, “…they are the places when you get goosebumps.” These are the moments where Cora understands the reality of her religious vocation. She sees these conversations as a window into in a lived experience of religion.
Cora says, “This is when religion isn’t separated from life.” Something comes together in that moment for Cora. These conversations often occur randomly. These kind of encounters are not scheduled. Therefore, these conversations represent the unknown 150 variable of chaplaincy. Cora recounted a passing encounter with a Muslim student that is illustrative of when “religion isn’t separated from life.” Cora was working at her standing desk, zipping through her emails, when the student knocked on the door. He said, “I have wanted to ask you a question for a long time. I do not think Muslims should hate Christians anymore. I do not think I can be Muslim anymore. What should I do?”
The intensity and the random nature of the question did not trip Cora up. She paused as she recounted the encounter and she smiled, in fact (she beamed) as she said, “Who gets those kind of questions, I mean…they are the deepest, richest, theological questions…”
Cora gently pushed this student towards a deeper question, which leads us to examine the role of deep questions in the midst of the work of chaplaincy.
Cora knew this was a real question—a deep question. The question included
Muslim and Christian relations both personally and globally. The question included hate and how one reckons with such a destructive religious impulse. This young Muslim student asked a question of agency in the sense of how is my identity tied to other
Muslims who may embody a different worldview than my own. How can there be diversity within a tradition and how do I fit within that tradition if there is a difference.
These are the questions that Chaplain Cora is situated to explore. Cora’s role is to enter the messiness of religion as a trusted guide and a reliable conversation partner. Cora’s task is not simple, but it is clear. Cora has to show the nuances within a tradition, the limits of our understanding of that tradition, and the larger perspectives outside that tradition that often hide from our awareness.
151 Role of honor.
When the Muslim student entered her office and asked a question, a far-reaching question with real implications, she properly understood her role because she welcomed the “goosebumps” as she calls it. Cora in that moment described the incident and the question as a moment of honor for her. “I always feel so honored,” she said. Honor is an ancient and powerful emotion to feel. However, for our modern age, this term seems passé and outdated. Recent interest has emerged in various interdisciplinary research circles around our understanding of honor. Political theorists, ethicists, and historians have reengaged this term and such an interest may have postsecular influences. Johnson and Demetrious (2016) see honor as understood in three primary ways: having a good opinion of others, seeing another person as having God’s favor, and the internal struggle of the individual for integrity. Honor is what Cora recognized, extended and affirmed in her interaction with the Muslim student.
Cora, as chaplain recognizes the power of cultivating a good and healthy opinion of others. In this case, as a Christian in the United States, the cultivation of a good and healthy opinion of a Muslim has lasting social and political implications. This is not just warm feelings for a particular Muslim student. No, this is a transformative posture, one that enables Cora to engage the other from a standpoint of honor—I honor you and I honor your tradition; I have a good opinion of you and your tradition. This is the work of chaplaincy and it is the lived experience of honor. The cultivation of a good opinion quickly moves toward a religious sentiment. Cora prays with the Muslim students on
Fridays. She has cultivated a relationship with the students, a sacred relationship that honors not only the Muslim students at Wooster but their tradition as well. The honor 152 she gives is the honor returned to her. The Turkish-Chinese Muslim male student trusts the Asian-American Christian woman chaplain. This is how she explains it:
It is an unearned trust in many ways. I am not his religious leader…the [trust] is
not structurally earned. He comes from a Chinese minority that is persecuted and
comes from a Turkish background that is very closed, and that is what he was
taught. I mean he is ISIS material. So, I don’t think this structure could ever
correct that. But, I think what cracked, it was the fact that every Friday, I take my
scarf out of the closet, and I come out into the hall, and I greet the people
gathering for prayer, and I say ‘Asalaam Alaykum’. We put up the curtains and
then the women can be on one side and the men can be on the other
The above story is a story of honor. Cora honors the Muslim students by acknowledging that they have God’s favor. Her ritual participation in their gathering honors their tradition. The extension of honor provides the context for a greater connection with this
Muslim student. Let us look further at how honor helps to facilitate a deeper discussion of integrity.
The internal struggle for integrity is a core component of extending and receiving honor. Reaching beyond the barriers of religious tension to establish a connection and a deference for the other creates a space for understanding to take hold. The religious tension described above manifests along racial lines as well as gender. Cora reaches past the barriers—artfully and bravely. Honor in many ways, for a chaplain, is providing spiritual and religious support for all of your students. The integrity of a chaplain’s actions and words is the seamless nature in which various religious traditions are honored on campus. Cora, describes her work in this way: 153 I always go for the underdog and I feel like in Wooster the Muslim community is
the underdog. So it feels humbling, it feels like radical hospitality, it feels like,
for me, theologically, it is the core of Christianity. I do it because I am a
Christian. We are the siblings of Abraham.
The honor of her own tradition inform the honor given to another tradition. The Muslim male student extended honor to Cora by voicing his doubts, his concerns and his own tradition to her. The honor extended by the student to Cora was the result of a ministry of presence. She attended prayer time of another tradition as a sign of respect and deference for that tradition. This display of honor between these two individuals, one female and one male, one Christian and one Muslim, is a formulaic expression that can be broadly applied. The nature of interfaith work requires a contextual nuance. Attending the rituals and ceremonies of another religious tradition is not the only way to show honor.
However, in this case, the chaplain was able to show honor to another tradition by helping a student navigate an uneasiness about that tradition. Cora is able to bear witness to the worth of another tradition by maintaining a position of honor towards the other.
Gender, paradox and tension.
Cora is an Asian-American. She considers herself a feminist. As a part of both an academic and an interfaith community, Cora experiences a paradox. She is an insider and an outsider within her context. Going back to her story with the Muslim community at Wooster, she gradually, over time, using a ministry of presence and a consistent ethic of honor, began to pray with Muslim women. A curtain separated the men from the women during Muslim prayer. The ability to welcome the other in the midst of one’s exclusive community is an expression of hospitality. The theme of hospitality looms 154 large in the work of chaplaincy. Hospitality is an entryway into the tensions of chaplaincy. Cora sees her role as an agent of hospitality: “it is hospitality wherein I can help create and model safe interfaith space and at the same time as they have to welcome me into the space.” When she shows up for Muslim prayer and pulls the head-covering over her and begins to be a part of the ritual she is utilizing the hospitality that she helped facilitate. It is not a tremendous tension but it does suggest a curious paradox within interfaith chaplaincy. Cora is able to be present to other traditions because she extends hospitality on their behalf as a formal entity of institution. She is an insider (formal entity of the institution) and she is an outsider (Christian woman) who participates in a different tradition’s ritual. Both of these things are true and both of these things are
(when intellectually examined) contradictory. The chaplain is insider who is always the outsider.
Gender plays a role in the work of chaplaincy for Cora. As stated earlier, she considers herself a feminist. What does it mean for a feminist to attend gender— segregated Muslim prayer? Cora, once again, clearly sets the scene:
People could say “no, you are a woman and you can’t be there.” And It is taken
six years to get that. At first, I just opened the door. Then I started saying
“asalaam alaykum” for a few years. Now we have some women in our [Muslim]
community and I said to them that, “you do not need to pray alone, I will pray
with you.” And we have a whole group of women from all over that prays with
us. We have a Saudi woman, a North African woman, a Bhai woman and a
Christian woman on our side of the segregated screen. 155 On that side of the screen is a group of women, praying in a Muslim tradition in solidarity with one another. Cora, as a feminist, struggles with Euro-Western notions of gender, especially those commonly held in academe. Certain scholars in higher education view the integration of gender in a residential space as preferred way to adjust students to a college environment (Enochs & Roland, 2006). The curtain separating the praying
Muslim men from the women at the College of Wooster represents a tension within interfaith work, one that highlights how the customs and practices of religious traditions are not always congruent with the established patterns of thinking in higher education.
Cora enters this tension by showing solidarity with Muslim women.
The chaplain as insider negotiates the space within the institution for others to practice the free exercise of religion on campus. She does this as a matter of principle— namely hospitality. However, creating a space is not good enough for Cora. She desires a deeper extension of hospitality. She wants to give and receive honor as an outsider of the institution with those for whom she serves and alongside whom she prays. Cora notices one tension in her prayer time with the Muslim women, she calls it “when a majority moves to a minority space.” The majority in this sense is the religion of her region—Christianity. However, she knows that many of the students at the college do not claim Christianity as a lively or noticeable facet of their daily living. She is a hospitable buffer between these women and the larger religiously indifferent individuals of the academy. Cora further explains that, “as a feminist I should say there is something really nice about being divided by the sexes!” As a woman and a self- proclaimed feminist in the academy, Cora acknowledges the tension of moving into a gender-segregated space. The gender-segregated space of Friday Muslim prayer 156 transcends the gender tensions Cora experiences and has been academically trained to critique. Chaplaincy, within an interfaith context, requires the chaplain to sometimes critique Western norms. Interfaith chaplaincy within a postsecular context enables the chaplain to question established ideological habits. Yes, there is a curtain that separates the Muslim men from the Muslim women; but what does that mean within the larger hegemonic reality of Christian culture? Cora’s decision to pray in this way challenges the hegemonic Christian culture, a religious culture that is located within a rigidly secular context of a private, elite liberal arts college. Cora navigates the tension of gender identity with an eye for the other—namely the women of Muslim faith and a heart for a tradition not her own. In her words, “I’m always looking out for the little guy.”
Cora understands the tensions within her role as chaplain, tensions that pit her as both insider and outsider, depending on which constituency she interacts. As a Christian pastor she is, by default, an outsider to the Muslim community at Wooster. Outsider in this sense is not a pejorative reality alone. Outsider within the context of interfaith work is the default position, it is the practical and realistic awareness of difference and otherness with the disparate realm of religious experience. She bridges this distance by providing a space for this religious community to practice their tradition. She further engages and transforms her outsider status by seeking to honor Muslim notions of gender by embracing her female Muslim students. This movement may have positively impacted the male Muslim student who approached her with doubts and concerns. She inhabits a role that fosters a reality of welcome and hospitality. Cora admits the tensions surrounding gender, but seeks to do so as an insider who has built significant relationships within the Muslim community. Cora describes this experience like this: 157 There is so much that’s not said because if they said it they would fight. So It is
very much about being united because they are minority. I mean they have other
things too. I mean they are scientists and that’s another kind of paradox in
today’s world. How can you have a devout scientist? And they are not like new
world scientists.
Cora understand the complexities within religious communities. This is at the heart of her skill as a religious professional. The Muslim community has many of the same tensions that other religious communities have within a postsecular context. She helps these students to navigate authentically these tensions—that is an important role the chaplain models for others.
Honor and tension.
As a Christian leader and as a chaplain, she navigates many tensions. Cora, as chaplain, questions, critiques, and problematizes her own tradition. Christianity, as a religious tradition within the context of college life, provides many rough edges for her to smooth over or avoid. How can you be faithful to your own tradition and simultaneously welcome another tradition? In what ways has Cora demonstrated to her students that being faithful to your own tradition sometimes requires a healthy skepticism of that tradition? Cora knows that these questions are not abstract intellectual questions. These are the kind of questions that must be lived in community. Her primary community is a group of learners committed to an interfaith reality. One facet of an interfaith reality is the constant movement of honor—given and received. Cora describes the transactional movement of honor within an interfaith context in this way, “We honor [one another] and then we are role models as a way of leading others to do the same.” Honor is not the 158 same as being nice or giving deference in an unreflective way. Cora sees her task as learning to honor a tradition by becoming more familiar with that tradition. She further explains this kind of learning: “take on the responsibility of studying enough about Islam so that I have a sense of [that]religion.” Cora understands honor as the time she spends studying another tradition, becoming proficient in its tension, beauty, and complexity so that as she says, “when I get back to the [Muslim male] student, I can address his question respectfully.” Cora is able as chaplain to challenge and frame the student’s concerns within a larger interfaith perspective. His question becomes her question. His tradition becomes a tradition of careful and deliberate concern for her. This is the primary movement of honor within the lived experience of the higher education chaplaincy.
Furthermore, as chaplain, Cora has experienced enough of that tradition to be able to speak of the tradition in respectful and However limited ways. She never speaks as one who is not a Christian. Cora is a Christian who is committed to reality of interfaith work. Cora knows the deep value of religion within the larger context of learning. Cora is committed to a holistic concept of learning. What this practically means is that she values students holistically. The Muslim male who approached her is both a scientist and a Muslim. Her role is to acknowledge the competing values of science and religion by framing both ways of knowing as a valid reality within an interfaith context. The Muslim student scientist (whatever way we want to frame this identity) are two facets of the same human being.
The chaplain addresses the human, and the way she seeks to connect to that center is by honoring that student holistically. There is always tension present when we honor 159 another religious tradition. Cora’s vocation as a religious professional within the context of a secular academic community creates unavoidable tension. Cora’s particular religious identity in the midst of a pluralistic interfaith community creates tension. These two expressions of tension are creatively navigated by a sustained ethic of honor. An ethic of honor, embodied by the higher education chaplain, is a premier value to emerge within a postsecular context. The overall student learns in a holistic manner because of this value.
Caring for the university’s soul.
Cora’s tasks vary. She goes about her work in much the same manner as her colleagues on campus. There are meetings and more meetings and the endless email inbox that clamors for her attention. The inescapable fast-paced rhythm of campus life demands much from her. She feels the pull between self-care and care for the other. She describes this process as “a little confusing.” The process includes mentoring a staff, maintaining a budget, and keeping her eye on the overall direction of the college’s mission. Mission alignment for her is framing her day-to-day tasks with a larger ethos in mind. As she describes this work she circles back toward a word that concretely expresses a posture for her to maintain. She sees her role as one that seeks “to listen and to nurture.” A helpful way to understand this role is to frame it through the lens of the institution as an organic structure. Cora feels called to do “institutional soul work.”
What does this look like? Cora says that this “role, for me, is presence and discernment of voice…to be present across campus.” Cora looks at her institution in a particular way.
She believes that her campus has a soul.
The richness of this belief is best explained as buying into the notion that this is an immaterial or spiritual part of the college. Cora understands the tricky and 160 problematic nature of such a claim. However tricky or problematic this notion may sound to secular ears, goes about her belief and her work with real intentionality. Cora attends to soul of the college by:
Listen[ing] to the faculty person who is really burned out and disrespected,
opening up and letting my custodian sit on the couch and cry because she lost her
brother this year and talking to an evangelical student about how she is going to
hold on to her faith. And make[ing] sure that throughout the year we open up the
space for the Muslim students and then pulling in a Bhai student and saying “ok,
It is time for you to fast, how can I help you fast?”
These are the tasks associated with the soul. The soul navigates grief and loss.
The soul cries out for rest and support. The soul struggles with faith and meaning. The soul fasts. Cora attends to the soul, not as a solitary figure isolated from the whole, but rather as one who listens and nurtures within the institution. Chaplain Cora does soul work with others. She attends to the immaterial reality of those around her while she is scrambling like everybody else to get to the next meeting and to respond to the next email. To be clear, others do this work without the intentional understanding she has;
However, she knows she is not alone in this work. There are other professors and staff members who engage in this kind of immaterial task with others. Cora has allies across campus when it comes to soul-work. Cora has a cadre of kindred colleagues who understand the importance of the soul within the life of the campus.
Higher education chaplaincy acknowledges the soul of the individual and the soul of the institution. This acknowledgment infuses Cora’s daily tasks with an intentionality and an ethos of care. She further elaborates on the theme of the soul, “this is how I 161 understand the soul of the institution—both its possibilities and its positive light side and its dark side.” The “this” she is referring to in the above quotation are the many ways she publicly does soul-work on behalf of the institution. Cora sees soul work as including but not limited to times of public prayer or a meeting with university leadership. Cora describes such work in this way, “when I offer prayers or when I meet with the President, it bleeds back into everything. I’m trying to create a sense of community and connection.” The soul of the university is the intangible encounter with the deeper values and the often hidden pathos of what binds the campus community together. Cora as chaplain nurtures those bonds. She realizes every day in her work that what we say as a university and what we do as a university does not always align. Cora invokes a communal presence and a sense of purpose that often challenges the shallow consumerism that pervades higher education today. Cora knows the university has a soul and she nurtures this spirit by reminding the campus community of a reality beyond the material reality—a spirituality reality. According to Cora, the soul of the university remains hidden, until such a point that you care enough to see the university as not just an impersonal entity that allocates resources but, rather, a living, vibrant, social organism that deserves our best efforts.
Cora spoke of a time that the soul of her university was shrouded in darkness.
Cora braced herself as she said:
There was a science professor who was playing the institutional game brilliantly.
She was driving home with the last of her purchases to get ready for a weekend in
which she was going to get to see her 2 year old and have a birthday party and she
got hit by another driver in town—she died instantly. 162 Cora unpacked the story carefully, pausing numerous times as she recounted a complex story. The story was of a young woman who poured countless hours into her professional life. It is a story of a young professor excelling at a demanding institution, an institution that can exclusively claim center of our lives—the soul. Cora further elaborated, “her life was so incredibly fractured.” The science professor worked non-stop and her colleagues noticed. Cora sat with the department after her death, story after story emerged, her colleagues were angry. “She had died after having spent a week of not having seen her
4-year-old son because she was putting it on hold so she could finish a grant,” continued
Cora. “It was a poignant story of how she walked around and how she would grade papers while she was at her 4-year-old’s T-ball games,” she said. Cora sat in that room for hours as the department unpacked details of this young professor’s life and how it was spent toiling away from her two children. The pain was evident in Cora’s face as she spoke. The darkness thickened in the days after the tragedy. Cora heard the cautionary tales of working too much, of giving too many hours, of rushing past the ones you love in order to achieve something at the college. Nurturing the soul of both the university and the individual requires a chaplain to step into such situations and to acknowledge the fragility of our lives. Soul work is both individual and communal work according to
Cora. She maintains that attending to the soul of her college is a primary daily task for the higher education chaplain.
Care and competition.
Near the end of the interview, Cora wrestled with a word often used in higher education circles—success. Cora was asked how she measured success in her interactions with students. The theme of success triggered a panoply of hesitation on her 163 part. Cora thinks the word success is part of the problem but, the far deeper problem is the constant drive to measure success. Cora explains:
I don’t think we can know if we are successful. It is one of the things I struggle
with. I won’t pretend I don’t have an ego because I do have an ego. There is a
student life culture, part of the larger institutional piece that says this is how we
measure. We are an assessment college and I kind of push back. I am like you
know what unless you let me wait until they have all died and I go find out what’s
happening to them after they are dead I won’t know.
Sarcasm aside, the response succinctly describes the difficulty of chaplaincy when it comes to the larger culture of assessment. Retention, persistence, and completion rates are measures of success. However, how do you measure the arc of a human life?
Chaplaincy often deals with the ultimate ends and significance of human life. Such a data set is beyond observation. However, Cora settles on two fundamental ways to measure success—helping students overcome their problems and helping students become good global citizens. Cora sees these two measures of success as an ever-present awareness that infuses her daily tasks. As chaplain, she cares for the individual but within that context she holds onto a larger institutional perspective. As a chaplain, she provides individual pastoral care. Cora mentioned helping students during times of suicidal ideation as a success when students did not take their life.
Cora describes the many hours of walking with students during times of grief. To her, success is better judged by future events. “When they come back after 10 years for their reunion and they send me an e-mail and they say I am going to be on campus and you have to be there. I have to see you. And then they come back and they say like I was 164 a mess,” is how Cora described success. She further explains, “when they can carry the weight but they are whole in their woundedness” is a form of success for her. Cora defines success when it comes to students with problems as providing them with a way forward. Cora sees the success language as related to a culture rooted in competition.
The intangible nature of her work, as it manifests in the one-on-one interactions with students, demonstrates a wait and see dynamic.
Cora’s desire to move beyond the success metrics that permeate higher education is not the result of cynicism. No, she desires a community that is not built on competition—even if that competition happens to be one’s self against the metrics of your previous semester. Cora as chaplain to the entire college measures her success by what she calls, “creating global citizens.” Global citizens for her are students who are able to navigate the complexities of religion with openness and charitability. This role requires her to be more than a chaplain to the students; she is the chaplain to the institution and it is the institution’s role to prepare men and women to be global citizens.
I take seriously the task of being the chaplain to the institution and not a student
campus minister. And I don’t mean that in an arrogant way, I just think It is the
institutions desire to be so much less than it could be from my perspective.
Because that is where I would say as a chaplain I fail. And I don’t know that any
chaplain today could succeed either so It is not like I totally beat myself up but It
is like a two kingdom thing. To succeed at the institutional level you can—if
that’s your God, if that’s the primary game you want to play--then you can’t
succeed at the God level because those two games today are antithetical. 165 Cora’s wariness of success is not because she is not successful. Cora’s ambivalence when it comes to success is largely about her reticence to embrace competition as the thriving pathos of her work.
Her task demands a great deal from her, and she summons the daily courage to care for both the individual and the institution. Curiously, she reminds students that they can be more than the problem they currently face while also playing a role of reminding the institution that it can be more than the metrics of success born of competition. Cora is not a counselor alone and she is not an institutional leader alone—she sits astride these two roles. She points to a place of self-awareness and institutional awareness that moves beyond measures of worth defined by success. Cora guides both the individual and the institution to care about more than competition.
Summary of Findings for Case Study #2
Cora as a higher education chaplain facilitates a spiritual and religious reality on campus while concurrently acknowledging the central task of learning and care.
Learning motivates and permeates her daily tasks as a chaplain. She is a part of a community of learners. Deep at the heart of this learning community is learning to accept others with dignity—to care in the midst of difference. Dignity in the midst of difference is an important value that Cora exhibits as she goes about her interfaith work. Cora has a keen sense of discernment—she has read the culture around her. As a result of this observation, she sets out to create a caring interfaith community. Why? Because she knows that this is how we prepare global citizens in the 21st century. As chaplain, working at a rigorously academic and patently secular institution, she properly read the culture around her by creating a space for religious and spiritual learning. 166 Cora knows that her job is demanding. Nevertheless, her task as chaplain is more than a job; it is a calling. She is called to care. Part of that calling is the deep awareness of her own spiritual journey. Cora must attend to her sense of wholeness. The busy pace and the hurried stride of modern life takes a toll. However, the higher education chaplain seeks to find a balance between self- care and the other cares of the world. The caring center of Cora’s life holds amidst the pressure and tension of her vocation. She is a guide for others. She knows the busy terrain ahead and she knows where the stillness can be found. Chaplaincy adapts to the culture in which it finds itself, and yet, if it is to be authentic it must resist that culture. Cora resists the restless busyness of professional worry. Cora cares for herself. Cora cares for others. These movements form the sturdy stillness of her well-fed spiritual life—Cora’s caring center holds.
Cora listens to the questions of others. She cares about questions. The questions she engages are of the variety that speak of meaning and purpose. Cora delights in the questions of others. She is not quick with an answer. The answers usually come from a collaborative encounter. The answers, if they arrive, come with effort, conflict, and a yearned-for resolution by both the speaker and the listener. The chaplain as a religious professional, according to Cora, is more about bearing witness to hard questions, questions filled with doubt and questions that yearn for community. She listens and tries her best to be present to the questions that so many in academic circles are hesitant to entertain. The higher education chaplain approaches deep questions of meaning and purpose with an inveterate delight. The honest exchange of questions formed, received, and answered with honor is an important facet of interfaith work. 167 Cora understands the role of honor within an interfaith encounter. Honor for Cora is the sustained practiced of moral concern. Students of varied religious traditions extend moral concern to one another through ever-expanding circles of regard. Honor is having a good opinion of others across religious boundaries. Honor is seeing the other person who practices another religion as having God’s favor. Lastly, honor is the internal struggle of the individual within an interfaith community for integrity. Integrity in this sense is the alignment of one’s internal desire for regard of the other with one’s actions within a community. Cora’s spiritual leadership extends honor to others. It takes more than words and an idea of inclusion to foster an interfaith environment. Interfaith work requires a sustained practice of honor that is shared and constantly extended. Cora, by helping students from various religious traditions practice their piety, signals an awareness of God’s inclusive favor. Honor starts as a good opinion of others and through her mentorship, flowers into a genuine sense of community. Cora understands the role of honor as an essential virtue within a postsecular interfaith context.
Cora’s role as chaplain includes her facticity. Heidegger (1996) understands facticity as the constituent parts of our humanity—the unalterable facts of history embedded within our existence. As an Asian-American woman, Cora navigates the tensions surrounding gender within an interfaith context by claiming the limits and gifts surrounding her facticity. Her encounter with a male Muslim students reveals the difficulty she faces with conflicting understandings of gender. Cora provides a ministry of care regardless of these differences and seeks to extend hospitality within this complex context. Cora faces a paradox. She is both an insider and an outsider as a chaplain.
Given her institutional position she represents the interests, guidelines, and culture of the 168 college. Cora is a part of the power structure of the student affairs division. However, she seeks to advocate for the other.
Cora has a deep theological commitment to value and honor the religious minorities she serves. She is aware of the unequal power dynamics between her Muslim students and the larger secular and vaguely Christian culture. Cora is also an outsider to most of the religious students she serves. This outsider status is furthered amplified by gender, religious, and culture realities. Cora navigates the paradox of her role and the tensions of her facticity by embodying a sense of honor for other students and their religious traditions. The paradox of being both insider and outsider as a chaplain highlights the importance of honor as a religious professional. She extends honor both as a way to facilitate a spiritual and religious reality on campus but also as a way to engender and model the giving of honor for her students. She practices a lively and robust hospitality with her students. This is her primary form of care. The sustained practice of honorable relationality builds community across religious boundaries and minimizes the tensions that arise from disparate perceptions of gender. The higher education chaplain confronts paradox and deals with tension by becoming an honorable insider and outsider.
Cora acknowledges a reality beyond enrollment numbers, the size of the college’s endowment, and the worth derived from academic skill. Cora works for a deeper awareness than the material benchmarks so often measured in higher education today.
There is a risk when undertaking such work. She can be seen as irrelevant and antiquated. The salience students find in spirituality and the meaning so many derive from religion reveals a relevant and timely opportunity. The soul is the ancient concept 169 that first formulated a reality beyond the visible. The soul is the watchtower of existence.
The soul is the deep self-awareness of both human potential and human finitude. Cora’s work is a signpost for the intangible and elusive inner landscape of the university. Cora creates a space for soul work. The conversations she encourages, the encounters she facilitates are expressions of the soul. The soul can be understood as the desire for inner- harmony and outer-recognition. This soulful desire motivates the chaplain to create community. The university’s soul is not the abstract notion we have been led to believe from secular theorists. The tending of the university’s soul is the groundwork for a holistic education within a postsecular context.
The need to distinguish oneself and stand out from others is an intrinsic part of the higher education experience. There are many healthy and reasonable facets that flow out of this kind of competition. However, there are darker forces at work in a culture that primarily manufactures its worth out of academic competition. Learning to care within a competitive environment is vitally important. Cora, as chaplain seeks to move beyond the competitive spirit that diminishes the worth of others. Cora exhibits a high ego with low ego needs. This is a healthy combination for a higher education chaplain. She sees her work as imbued with an inherent dignity. Cora defines success differently than many of her colleagues. She has a long-term way of evaluating her work. Cora sees the accreditation culture as form of competition with the self. Cora knows that accreditation culture in higher education is here to stay. However, she remains vigilant in her stance of measuring success in much more personal and intimate ways. Cora is skeptical of the competitive nature of academe and the limited ways that success is often measured. 170 Measuring success in this manner tends to overemphasize the material realities of an institution while downplaying the often-hidden spiritual realities.
Case Study #3: Harvard University
Care and chaplaincy.
Care emerges once again as an overall theme in our next case study. The contours of care chart a roadmap of spiritual leadership at Harvard University. Chaplaincy within this particular context requires a shifting of capacity. The chaplain must be aware of the different contexts in which ministry takes place. Capacity in this sense is the focus and the energy to care in the midst of highly complex situations. Harvard’s only full-time chaplain must constantly engage her surroundings with a focused care. The focused care in this sense is a determined awareness to engage fully the multiple stakeholders at the university. The chaplain, in order to thrive within this context, must be a leader who exhibits care broadly across the institution while simultaneously focusing her care individually when needed.
Chaplaincy invites students, faculty, and staff into a particular kind of spiritual and physical space. The spiritual in its most practical sense is an embodied act. As is often the case, a chapel functions as the physical space for a cultivation of the spirit. This is especially true at Harvard. Appleton Chapel, like many of the structures on campus, catches the eye. The white columns, the brick, and the sheer size draws the observer into a liminal space. What is the purpose of this space? The chaplain invites people into this physical space so that a certain type of experience can unfold. Ellen, the chaplain at
Harvard, describes this space as a place for grace. Grace, as a word rooted in the
Christian tradition, takes on new meaning in postsecular environment. Grace, as 171 commonly expressed in the Christian tradition, implies a particular stance God takes when dealing with humanity. The posture God assumes is as host, arms flung wide in welcome. Grace in this sense is inclusion and radical hospitality offered at the door of the chapel. There is real tension in this understanding of grace on Harvard Yard, and the tension is not entirely related to an unreflective aversion to the Christian tradition. The tension is rooted in understanding of grace as a welcome to all regardless of the person.
On a campus where the invitation to come and study is given only to the few, a concept of grace can be disconcerting. The chaplain seeks to care for the campus community by providing a space where a radical and hospitable sense of welcome can emerge. Grace as a space on campus is one of the ways that the chaplain, within this context, cares for the academic community, by extending an inclusive welcome to all.
Care emerges not only through the lens of spiritual leadership and providing a welcome, but also in fostering a dialogue when there are real difference on a campus community. The chaplain, within this particular context creates a way to care for one another across the many barriers and divisions of race, culture, political affiliations, and religion. The chaplain ensures a neutral space where hegemonic ideas and traditions are minimized, so that a spirit of open inquiry and dialogue can emerge.
The chaplain also enters into the process of providing spiritual care in the midst of conflict. Care and conflict are not antithetical. They are related concepts. Conflict is often the impetus to growth, and care in the midst of conflict is a way to heal the often toxic habits a community can embody. Chaplaincy knows how to care when there are arguments and divisions. The extension of care emerges powerfully in this case. It emerges in the chaplain’s institutional leadership and in the chaplain’s ability to care, 172 regardless of the stakeholder or situation. Care emerges in that physical space that the chaplain creates and extends to all. Care is a core theme of Harvard’s chaplaincy.
Introduction.
The case study focuses on the chaplain rather than the institution. Ellen is a national leader in higher education chaplaincy. Her work on chaplaincy illuminates the tensions, the challenges, and rewards of providing a spiritual and religious reality on a
21st century campus. She has broad collaborative relationships within higher education.
Ellen is a mentor to many chaplains. Ellen’s current role is one that requires administrative and pastoral sensibilities. Given the context of her work, Ellen encounters nationally recognized scholars and leaders within higher education. She supervises a large staff, serves as a chaplain to the university as well as a senior minister to Memorial
Church, located on the university campus. Ellen’s schedule, like so many chaplains no matter where they labor, is full and robust. The insights and experiences she shares track well with the insights of those in the previous case studies. However, Ellen’s story provided an added layer and an extra dimension when it comes to the experience of the higher education chaplain within a postsecular environment.
On the day of her interview, the walk to Ellen’s office invoked the uncanny.
Harvard University’s perimeter is a brick fence. The brick fence features walkways, wrought iron metalwork, and archways. Once on campus, the walkways, large trees and numerous quads flow from once section to the next. The place felt mysterious, and yet there were students with backpacks, cigarette butts on the ground, and grass trampled into dirt—in other words, a college campus. Memorial Church is near the center of campus, and huge. Finding the correct door was a challenge. After circling the building twice, I 173 finally noticed a basement entrance with a sign that read chaplain and upon entering, a warm greeting by a receptionist immediately followed.
Leadership as care.
The lived experience of the higher education chaplain starts with a particular moment. In Ellen’s case, it starts in Appleton Chapel. Ellen’s first experience of the day is the daily Morning Prayer service. Appleton Chapel is located in the chancel area of the
Memorial Church. Ellen sets the scene like this, “it is the very first thing I do when I arrive. It is a fifteen-minute service…that invites leaders from the Harvard community to a five-minute reflection on the topic of their choosing.” At this brief service, the choir provides music and there is some liturgy and a few prayers. The service is traditional.
The choirmaster wears a robe, the music is sacred music, and the service follows a printed bulletin with numerous responsive readings. However, in the midst of these traditional movements there was a deviation from the overtly traditional Christian prayer service. A speaker leads the community in a brief meditation—an academic reflection.
Academic is not a pejorative description—this is Harvard University, after all. The morning I attended the prayer service, a faculty member spoke briefly of Martin Buber’s dialogical ontology. She reminded the community of how our encounter with one another forms the basis for our understanding of who and what we should be. The reflection was insightful, scholarly, and However also possessed a warmth. The faculty member briefly mentioned her Jewish roots. In the stately chancel of Memorial Church, behind the rood screen called Appleton Chapel an interfaith moment unfolded—one that I did not fully expect. Nestled within the Christian liturgy and enfolded by Christian hymns, a Jewish woman spoke of Martin Buber. This is not a revolutionary thing, nor is 174 it a novel occurrence—but it does reveal, in the words of Ellen, the “privilege of hosting… a robust, engaged and diverse community.” Ellen provides the leadership for other spiritual leaders to share their wisdom.
I asked Ellen about a particularly poignant or lasting memory from the daily prayer services in Appleton Chapel. She did not hesitate; the response came directly following a smiling nod. Ellen set the scene:
One that has stuck out to me was a professor from Harvard Divinity School, who
did a very moving talk, using the Biblical text about the healing of the blind man,
with the spit and the soil and the dirt and how taking what would be considered
sort of dirt and filth and using those elements for healing and he began to talk
about his own experience of vulnerability as a professor here at Harvard.
Vulnerability. The word emerged. Ellen’s work as a religious and spiritual leader on campus facilitates an engaged, diverse and robust exchange of wisdom. A wisdom that includes multiple religious traditions and seeks to include both sacred and secular impulses. The short prayer service serves as a space of communal possibility, a possibility of deeper awareness and welcome. Ellen invites the collective wisdom of the campus to Appleton Chapel. This wisdom is embodied by those who give a handful of minutes to the community. Ellen, as a spiritual leader on campus, draws other spiritual leaders together. She helps to create a space traditional enough to honor the context of
Harvard’s historic Christian roots while also honoring the secular and interfaith context of the 21st century. Let us take a closer and hopefully more illuminating look at the discussion of vulnerability that so memorably emerged for Ellen. 175 Ellen’s daily experience begins within a context of collaborative prayer. Ellen typically begins her work by drawing together a robust, diverse, and engaged religious and spiritual community. This launches her into her day. She describes this beginning and orienting moment as a deep privilege. Why does she consider it a privilege? What is it about this experience that provides her with the insight and energy to go about her work? Ellen remembers that morning when a professor spoke of vulnerability:
[The professor] had observed somebody harassing another person, another faculty
member harassing another faculty member in a hallway in a public place. And he
had observed it and not done anything about it. He realized that in some ways,
stepping into vulnerability, as Jesus did with that blind man is so important for
that blind man, and in some ways Jesus took on vulnerability by using elements
that were so, you know, so untoward for healing.
Vulnerability, in this case, is the awareness of our imperfections. Vulnerability for the faculty member above is speaking to the community about a moment when he should have acted otherwise. The story above demonstrates in a small way how wisdom is experienced in an academic community. Wisdom for this faculty member is opening the possibility that what we have left undone in the past can be collectively accomplished together in the future. The faculty member wisely sees the mud and spit Jesus used to heal the blind man as somehow mysteriously connected to his “dirty and shameful” disclosure of a moment when he failed to do the right thing. The morning prayer service is a moment of spiritual leadership for Ellen and for the entire campus community.
Those few precious moments when someone shares their wisdom expresses the robust, 176 diverse, and engaged spiritual and religious community that Ellen is deeply privileged to lead.
Constant shifting of capacity.
The day-to-day experience of chaplaincy, expressed through Ellen’s daily rhythms, reveals a chaotic tension. Ellen must attend to two different kinds of conversations within a normal day. These two conversations reside on a continuum; they are related, and yet they are in tension with one another. Ellen has “administrative and pastoral” conversations throughout her day. The administrative conversations occur often in higher education today. These conversations happen in meetings. “I don’t like my days that have 9 or 10 meetings in a row with no breaks. It just exhausts me. It is so tiring,” says Ellen. At these meetings, staffing concerns, budgetary issues and organizational planning form the bulk of the administrative conversations.
As Ellen reflects on the administrative conversation, it is apparent that she expresses a vulnerable insight—the work is tiring. Ellen leads a staff of 16 individuals.
Administrative conversations within the world of higher education chaplaincy often occur in larger institutions with more resources. The administrative conversations create a fast- paced and hurried context for her day. Ellen knows that she cannot give herself over totally to the administrative conversation. She knows the conversation is important and vital to her work, but she also knows the limitations inherent within this kind of conversation. Ellen describes the administrative conversations as intense, focused on problems to solve and grounded in the practical considerations of her work. Ellen has to pivot out of, or shift from, this kind of conversation to another conversation—the pastoral one. 177 Ellen calls it “a shift in capacity.” Capacity, understood in this particular context, does not suggest the ability to contain something. Ellen seems to be suggesting capacity as an ability, on her part, to perceive something, to make note of it, and to gain contextual knowledge. A student struggling is not a “problem to solve” or a “resource to allocate.”
The higher education chaplain must pivot out of one set of conversational norms to another. This does not imply a disjointed or fragmented self that goes through the day being one thing in one context and being something else in another context. No, it means cultivating an awareness and perceiving the difference and shifting toward a new context.
Ellen values the administrative conversation, but she finds meaning and purpose within the pastoral conversation. Both conversations must be valued for a holistic spiritual leader in higher education today. Ellen preserves her pastoral sensibilities during the administrative conversation: “I am able to bring humor and…grace and involve them with engagement with other staff, making sure that people are connecting with each and building a sense of team and community among our staff and that’s very gratifying.” The shifting of capacity is not a shifting of perspective, but of perception.
Ellen’s perspective remains intact while her capacity shifts and her perception shifts.
Ellen leads her staff in much the same way she engages in pastoral conversations.
She is active and engaging. Ellen describes her life as full and enriching. When she reflects on her administrative and pastoral role, she invites the themes of meaning and purpose into her reflection. Meaning and purpose emerge as a stable perspective in the midst of a shifting perception. Meaning and purpose form the raw material that builds a structure within both the administrative and pastoral conversation. When she frets over how to engage her staff, or when she engages a struggling student, she holds to the 178 commitment that meaning and purpose are inherently interesting. Placing these important themes within the context of a person invites curiosity. Ellen knows that her staff and her students have potential and so she invites them into a space that promotes growth.
Ellen’s spiritual leadership within both the administrative context and the pastoral context are secure and inviting. Ellen struck me as a reliable explorer, one who has explored the densely-wooded trails of endless meetings before and knows how to point out the often-obscured scenic and quiet spaces within higher education. She knows the view. She knows how hard it can be to climb to the right spot. Ellen is aware of how easy it is to tire and give up. As chaplain, she can lead others to explore the mystery of purpose, meaning and grace—no matter how hectic the day. Ellen holds to a kind of rugged optimism, one that can be tiring for her, However she holds to the realization of how learning changes us, transforms us and creates something new within us. The central tension in Ellen’s professional life is the structure imposed on her administratively and her fierce desire for spontaneity. Ellen knows that there is tension between administrative discipline and pastoral spontaneity. Ellen is constantly navigating the boundary of this creative tension. She describes her best moments in the day as a moment where things could go either way and However, she is patient enough to walk into the troubled situations with students. In many ways, her chaplaincy is an experience in the wise practice of freedom. Ellen goes from meeting to meeting knowing that there is something that goes before her. It is this something that we now turn to—the elusive guiding and welcoming presence of grace within which Ellen grounds her work.
179 Care, space, and grace.
Harvard’s reputation is built on more than those who are admitted and graduate.
This institution’s reputation solidifies on the countless students not admitted. To call this school selective misses the point. Competition and academic excellence define the student experience. Ellen shared this insight: “I think my purpose is, my deep sense of vocation or calling, my call from God is for me to be in this place and to be about bringing a sense of grace.” This is a big-ticket item for Ellen. The sense of grace and a space for grace is part of the constant perspective she maintains throughout her daily tasks. Given Harvard’s context, grace appears to be a much-needed commodity. “And to bring this grace to an institution that often thrives on achievement, and self- aggrandizement. A place that has us rely fully on the self and our capacities,” explains
Ellen. Grace in its purest formulation is the favor and acceptance extended to someone regardless of his or her achievement. Ellen suggests that grace counteracts the inordinate worth we derive from money and academic prestige. The wisdom here is that Ellen knows that, without grace, our relationships grow less important. Chaplaincy reminds us that we do not care about one another, as we should— just the money on the financial report or the G.P.A on the transcript catch our eye. In fact, in an extremely competitive environment like an Ivy League college, happiness is easily sacrificed so that greater achievement can be obtained. This leads to feelings of loneliness. Ellen seeks to create community out of a sense of grace.
Ellen defines grace as, “a beautiful space but there is a graciousness and a holy hospitality to all that comes through the door, whether it be grief or loss, or whether it be high-achieving and you got to push it forward and even that needs to be welcomed.” 180 Ellen’s words point to an enduring value. Grace is not abstract, nor is it a word that lingers only in religious circles. Ellen speaks of a practical grace. Grace is hospitality.
Grace is the common awareness that we (college students) “don’t hang” with one another, because we think we are better served by trying to compete with one another.
Ellen, given her many administrative conversations, knows that if all we care about is the bottom-line, the money, the tangible side of life, our relationships will suffer. Students without grace are more stressed, more controlling, less healthy; they will play less and sleep less. The chaplain gently suggests that learning without the presence of grace is wearisome and fragmented.
Ellen, as chaplain, reminds us that academic life often entices us to become more enamored with stuff, things, money, projects, while our spiritual lives shrivel. She feels this truth in her bones. Often, on a college campus, we find ourselves pulling away from our own spirits until the desire to be spiritual seems ridiculous. When Ellen speaks the word “grace” she talks like this: “for me, as I sit with a student, or as I sit with a colleague…even doing menial tasks, of budget plans and all that kind of things…I realize that this is all at the end of something larger than all of us. Which is this sense of giftedness, of a holy perspective, a larger purpose.” Grace is a movement experienced within other movements not when we are isolated from ordinary experiences. Modern life often sets up an inveterate binary logic: there is grace and there is competition.
However, Ellen problematizes such simple logic. Ellen wants to find the balance. She wants to work, have her budget meetings, sort out complex staffing issues, and still hold onto the notion that grace is transformative. Ellen holds onto a sense of grace. However, what does a space for grace look like in higher education chaplaincy? 181 Ellen understands grace not only as a sensible entity, i.e., something that points toward a shared inner-awareness; she also understands grace as a hospitable welcome to come into a concrete space. Her office is a space of graceful hospitality. Ellen described a moment when a student entered that space:
I am not quite sure how she found me. I was pretty new. This was a student who
had been sexually assaulted, not once but twice in her time here at Harvard. She
was sexually assaulted in a date rape situation by her best friend. Then about a
year later she was standing out on the street and was assaulted again by some
stranger. So, she came in. She sat down on my couch.
Ellen’s office became a sacred space. When the student shared her story of pain, violence, and the lingering emotional scars, Ellen shifted her perception. This is not a problem to solve or to quantify. Grace is the uncomfortable encounter with another person’s suffering. The encounter for the chaplain is an opportunity to bear witness to another person’s pain, and to a certain extent, mysteriously enter into the pain so that the person can know something other than pain. The pain of this woman’s story emerged,
Ellen explained:
The whole conversation was this shame and guilt. It is a classic situation, it came
out of her upbringing and her religious community that were giving her some
pretty forceful messages about God having a plan for your life and this is in God’s
plan and which sort-of ventures into that scary territory of blaming the victim and
God is this blaming agent like she should not have been there.
The young woman wrestled with her assault. The event took on religious significance given her upbringing. The work of chaplaincy in this specific moment is about how to 182 help another person make sense of their suffering. This must be done without rationalizing the suffering, blaming the victim or minimizing their pain. It is delicate work, and it is exhausting. In the case of this young woman, in addition to the trauma of the assault, she wrestled with God’s role in her assault. The assault and the resulting pain of that assault took on a theological dimension. Ellen named the issue. This student felt crippling shame and guilt. If grace is the experience of acceptance and worth, then it is clear that this grace must find us when we feel rejected and worthless. In order for this student to experience grace, her conception of God had to shift, to change, to undergo a transformation. Ellen knows how onerous this work can become—the stakes are high.
Ellen facilitated a space for grace by entering into this student’s pain. But entering into the student’s pain was not enough. Acknowledging the student’s pain is a necessary task for the chaplain along the road to an experience of grace. However, acknowledging the pain and wrong done to this student is not sufficient for the emergence of grace within a pastoral encounter. What is sufficient in this case for the emergence of grace within the context of the chaplain office as a hospitable space is the presence of a theological dimension. Theology, in this sense, asks two basic questions: who is God and how should I live? These two basic questions invite the student to examine her conceptions of God. Ellen described that process, “then there was this moment when we basically moved into the territory of love. How could a God who loves you so deeply allow something like this or make something like this happen? How can
God accompany you not only into the dark valley but lead you to the light or to the grace, to the fullness?” Ellen seemed transfixed by her reflection. She focused on her words as 183 she carefully remembered this encounter. Ellen’s space for grace is the possibility of theological transformation.
Chaplains deal with the theological questions of students that often emerge out of the pain of their experiences. As meaning-making creatures, humans desire a notion of
God robust enough to account for their complex and painful stories. Given this, the formation of theology, within the Christian context, arises out of a series of questions.
Theology arises out of our deep questions about who we say God is and how we should live because of this knowledge. This is an ancient process, it is called catechism. The examination of one’s conscience through the asking of questions—in this case, primary and original questions of why has this painful event occurred and how can I reconcile this event with God’s love of me? Ellen asked the questions that created a space for something new to emerge. What was needed was a way forward—past the worn-out conceptions of God as the withholder of grace. The young woman, after numerous visits pivoted towards a graceful understanding of God. Ellen described the pivotal moment like this:
She sat there and tears just started streaming, it was like something got
reconfigured for her in that conversation and it wasn’t necessarily anything I was
saying. I think she was ready to let go of what was encumbering her and holding
her in that very scary place, a kind of prison of her own spirit with all these
messages there were confusing her. Because they were messages that came out of
her religious community.
The space for grace was the place for questions to be asked, pain to be understood and transformation to take hold. Ellen opened her office as a space for grace to emerge; she 184 acknowledged the pain of the other and offered her theological training to this student.
This process demonstrates the need for grace in the various spaces of higher education.
The neutral zone of caring.
The higher education chaplain provides a spiritual and religious reality on campus. Students come from a host of different spiritual and religious backgrounds.
Like so many other campuses, the outside world interacts with the religious and spiritual realities present within the lives of students. In Ellen’s case it was the intersection of politics and religion that prompted her to enter into an important conversation with undergraduate students. Ellen recounted a time that an Israeli-Palestinian student group asked her to moderate their discussion. Why would a student group ask a chaplain to moderate their discussion? More importantly, why would a group of Jews and a group of
Muslims, who want to enter into a dialogue about the Israeli-Palestinian situation, ask a
Christian woman to lead them?
When I first came here, I had the privilege of being invited into a conversation
that was prompted by the Israeli-Palestinian situation. It was five Islamic students
and five Jewish students. Who wanted to get together to have some really honest
but difficult dialogue around their understanding of what was happening in that
region.
Ellen calls the opportunity a privilege. Ellen understood that the group wants to have a difficult dialogue. Ellen correctly sensed that the group is about honesty. Ellen’s task here is not to be an expert in Israeli-Palestinian relations, she is not a Near-East
International Relations expert—she is a religious professional at an institution of higher learning. Why did the students approach her? Ellen adds another layer to the students’ 185 motivation to approach her. Ellen explains it this way, “so students come to see but I also go see them! I think I need to be clear it is not all a one-way direction [process].” Ellen as chaplain builds relationships with others. Not as a means to her own goals, but rather as a way to create a community at her institution.
The word chaplain acknowledges the inherent diversity of religious perspective.
The word chaplain speaks of a plurality of meaning. Chaplains know the tension, the challenge, and the rewards of being a part of a religious and spiritual community of difference. Ellen has a long-term motive in leading the dialogue with these Jewish and
Muslim students; she wants “to make sure people [are] being heard [and that there is] respectful discourse.” Ellen correctly understands the opportunity she has, an opportunity she calls a privilege. She can help these young men and woman become agents of true discourse on a topic that is fraught with conflict. The desire to approach a chaplain in order to facilitate dialogue when it comes to real differences is an important postsecular value. Let us look at how Ellen became a part of this important process.
Dialogue, as these two groups of Jewish and Muslim students understand it, is not the process of a leader in a room talking about the Israeli-Palestinian situation as they passively listen. No, it is about a collective desire to engage differences with meaningful discourse that is student-led. The process of engaging students to understand and then facilitate a meaningful discourse on a sensitive topic requires work. Ellen works hard and, because she works hard to engage the students at her institution, she paves the way for discourse in the midst of difference. Ellen knows what she has to do.
The reason students come to see me is, partly has something to do with my
involvement and my role as a person who is graying—I’m getting older! I have 186 more perspective. They see me as a seasoned professional. Somebody who is
trustworthy or at least has a reputation so far on campus as being someone who is
trustworthy.
Chaplaincy, at its core, is about the integrity and virtue of the individual and his or her commitment to engage this role with good will. The fruits of such labor emerge slowly and steadily for Ellen. The students approach her because of her stance when it comes to difference—she is a chaplain to all. The students relied on her due to her unwavering commitment to discourse no matter the conflict surrounding it. She also understands the gift of her experience; she knows the hard-won wisdom of many decades in chaplaincy.
The reputation of a chaplain is positively indispensable. If the chaplain appears to favor one religious perspective over another or one political stance at the expense of the other, then it is much more difficult to create what Ellen calls a “neutral space.” The creation of a “neutral space” is essential for discourse to emerge within the context of difference.
The task at hand for Ellen is to provide the mentoring needed and to guide a group of students to have a meaningful discourse. The students seek to have a discourse that is difficult and honest. Honesty in the midst of difficulty is a common movement for chaplaincy. Ellen unpacks what a neutral zone is:
It is a deep sense of longing for someone on this campus, some people on this
campus, to be present in those sort of neutral zones. Those zones where dialogue
can happen and then become a new way of talking to each other. Not the kind of
academic conversation that is so positional
Ellen knows that the students wanted a discourse that led to honesty rather than knowledge. Neither side wants to win or overpower the other’s side; these groups of 187 students, Jews and Muslims who bear in their hearts the confusion and fear of this situation, want a space to be honest, a place to be vulnerable. Ellen worked tirelessly to create this neutral space for honesty by training the students to engage in difficult discourse. The neutral zone for Ellen is a space for newness to emerge. Newness in this sense would be the possibility for each side to be honest. One student did just that and, because of that, another student responded with raw honesty.
Ellen said that it took five sessions, not counting the two meetings she had with the Muslim student leader and the Jewish student leader for a moment of radical honesty to emerge. Ellen remembers it in this way, “a Muslim student [said], “I’m terrified of
Jews.” And then one of the Jewish students said, “I grew up in a situation where my family thought that all Muslims were harmful human beings and I know that’s not true and I’m a Harvard student, I’m not stupid, I know that’s not true but I still carry that fear.” The above statements are not often ones that occur in an academic space; they can occur and the truly gifted teachers in higher education allow for vulnerability in the classroom, but such comments are nonetheless rare. The rarity of such honesty is not a glaring deficiency in the academic classroom as much as it is a reminder of the
“something more” a chaplain can provide the academy. Ellen beautifully explains the importance of moments like the one mentioned above:
My role [is] to really allow them to sit with fear…and with this disclosure to
name it as courageous and then to move from safe space to brave space. In that
space, we are learning to have a conversation that we will carry with us out into
the world. 188 It takes a neutral space to begin a difficult discourse. It takes a neutral space to have an honest and vulnerable discourse. Ellen’s integrity as a chaplain and her willingness to engage the students and not wait for students to approach her speaks of her deep character and forward-looking wisdom. Ellen wants these students to begin a life-long transformative conversation with those they fear, with those they judge, and she wants this conversation to carry them out into the world in more honest and holistic ways.
Ellen is teaching these students to occupy a brave space and to carry that space into the world.
Care and conflict.
The salience students find in spirituality is well known; numerous research projects attest to this reality. However, how do chaplains experience spirituality? In this case, how do we describe the salience Ellen finds in spirituality? “I find that sometimes the most spiritual moments in my work are actually times of conflict,” said Ellen. The prominence of spirituality emerges within the context of conflict. Such an insight challenges a tame and benign understanding of spirituality. Spirituality, conceived as inner-peace or solitude, remains distant from an understanding of spirituality as powerfully present in times of conflict. Ellen challenges a typical understanding of spirituality and, in doing so opens up a potentially rich discussion of her professional life.
Ellen takes special care to delineate the different kinds of conflict she has experienced.
She names two kinds: inner conflict and conflict with another person. She then sets out to describe the spiritual salience she finds in conflict.
Ellen does not set out to find conflict and, like most of us, she does not enjoy or relish the experience of conflict. However, she understands the value of conflict. She 189 starts with a pivotal narrative, one that traces an arch of conflict from her childhood past right up to the present moment.
One of the things that is true about me is that I grew up in a very traditional and
conservative Baptist family in Iowa…conservative in the sense that there is one
way to God through Jesus. My family were teetotalers. We had a strict aversion
to people drinking or smoking or dancing…all sorts of restrictions, a strict moral
code. Pre-marital sex was off limits. Sex was dirty until you got married.
Ellen is aware of the moral codes of her past. She names clearly the not-so-hidden assumptions present in her ethical reasoning, especially when it comes to pre-marital sex and the abuse of alcohol. She names the pervasive presence of alcohol on campus and the abuse of alcohol as an issue that touches that tender part of her past. She experiences inner conflict when dealing with students who abuse alcohol. However, it is more than just the abuse of alcohol that intersects with her moral perspective and creates inner conflict. The presence of alcohol and its connection with sexual assault, a common experience, creates a deep sense of conflict for her. The conflict is one that exposes remarkable vulnerability for her. Ellen grew up in an environment that did not look charitably on those who drank too much. Though she has many experiences under her belt that allows her to contextualize alcohol abuse within higher education, she knows that she still possesses a pejorative view of those who abuse alcohol. However, the inner conflict runs deeper than a judgmental assessment of those who abuse alcohol.
“I find this sort of inner conflict is around alcohol and some of it is that I am a sexual assault survivor,” said Ellen. Ellen names her wound. Ellen claims her perspective. The wound has healed, but it is still and always will possibly be tender to 190 the existential touch of alcohol abuse and its correlation with sexual assault. Ellen’s remarkable frankness results in a spiritual awareness of sorts. “I realize that I project a lot of my early history, judgment, and inner discomfort on these types of situations,” says
Ellen. Ellen pivots from her painful past with a different set of moral assumptions to what she calls a “challenge and the hearing of different perspectives.” This is where conflict becomes the spiritual event for her. Ellen maintains a healthy awareness of her limited and ever-evolving worldview. Ellen practices care and concern for those who happen to reside outside of her “moral standard.” Ellen knows that her experience of sexual assault has profoundly shaped her. These are the deep events of her experience and they form and constitute her awareness of the other. She uses these experiences to interpret the other, make sense of the other and to gather meaning on her journey. Ellen is not free of inner conflict as she engages in her professional work and she seeks to use this conflict as a way to grow in deeper awareness of herself and the other. Ellen describes the hard-won spiritual experience in the midst of conflict as a special kind of awareness. She describes it in this way: “we all make mistakes and we are all broken.”
The task of a higher education chaplain is not one of a removed moral exemplar chastising wayward undergraduates toward moral behavior. Ellen finds salience in her pain and in her limited worldview as an expression of her shared humanity.
Ellen chooses to negotiate a difficult inner dialogue when she interacts with students who often act in broken ways or suffer at the hands of others. Ellen sees the conflict around her as irritant, it chafes her morality, and causes her to revisit pain but it also provides her with a remarkable opportunity to be present to others. “It is in those moments, where it feels like a challenge at my core—something personal that I often feel 191 the most engaged sort of spirituality,” explains Ellen. Ellen calls this process aligning oneself to something larger than the self. She describes the experience as one in which there is energy within her. Ellen admits that in the rush of inner conflict there is also a resonant experience of power that comes upon her from outside of herself and cannot be rationally explained. Ellen gathers even more momentum in her explanation; she expresses a belief in an abiding presence in the midst of struggle. She names this presence as God’s Spirit, and it is this experience that propels her forward in the midst of pain and conflict.
Summary of Findings for Case Study #3
Ellen provides spiritual leadership by inviting others to share their insights with the larger community. This is how she cares for the whole community. Ellen practices wisdom by seeking a collaborative integration between the sacred and the secular. Care is a partnership—a shared endeavor not owned by the chaplain. The Morning Prayer service is a moment of religious and spiritual collaboration. She understands the academic culture and provides a way for these collaborative forces to animate and infuse the community. As chaplain and senior minister at Harvard, Ellen is constantly shifting her capacity in terms of perception. She correctly perceives her context while maintaining a perspective committed to the exploration of meaning and purpose. The tasks set before her are complex and varied. Some tasks require a keen attention to detail while others require a reflective stance. Ellen has to maintain a balance in the midst of these conflicting professional moments; she feels the tension between her administrative and pastoral roles. 192 The balance she finds in the midst of her administrative and pastoral roles is one that maintains a focus on grace. Grace is the care extended to all. Although the concept of grace expresses a reality far removed from higher education language and norms, Ellen clings to it tenaciously. Grace for her is a sense of deep acceptance and the responsibility she feels for providing a space for others to experience this acceptance. Grace is a tangible encounter with the other—grounded in a concrete expression of hospitality and welcome. The meaning and purpose she clearly states relate to the expression of grace.
Grace for her speaks of her interiority and it claims a primary role in her external relations with her institution and others. As a religious professional laboring at an academic institution, Ellen works hard to teach students to dialogue. The dialogue she seeks to pass along to her students describes a discourse on difficult things.
She teaches her students to extend care in the midst of difficult conversations. In order to discuss difficult things, interlocutors must embrace honesty. The work of chaplaincy is embracing students, reaching out to students, and creating trust with students so that you can mentor them. This is how Ellen teaches students to discuss difficult things with honesty—by gaining their trust. A chaplain’s integrity and trustworthiness is indispensable to their work. In order to model honest discourse a chaplain must help students create a neutral space. A neutral space is a space where none of the conversant members is favored. The higher education chaplain navigates the many differences we encounter in the other as an opportunity for honesty and growth.
Lastly, Ellen understands that conflict is inevitable in her line of work. She does not shy away from it, nor does she have an unhealthy need for conflict. She has learned to care even when the road is littered with conflict. Ellen’s capacity to shift her 193 perception and to gain her students trust flows out of a concerted effort to know her limitations. The spiritual moment for her is the moment born of inner conflict. Spiritual growth is a process of deeper awareness of self that informs an individual’s acceptance of another person. As chaplain, she acknowledges the brokenness of herself and others.
Ellen navigates her personal pain as an opportunity for growth and greater awareness.
Given this insight, she embraces spirituality not in spite of conflict but through an authentic struggle with it. The higher education chaplain embraces conflict as path to greater spiritual awareness.
Cross-Case Comparison of Care
Care as a shared value has the potential to improve higher education institutions— especially those that employ a chaplain. The cohesive nature of care is a premier structure of meaning for the human being (Heidegger, 1996). Piecing together the distinct ways that each of the chaplains studied here embodied care and, therefore, created a cohesive value represents an important way of framing the data. An explicit cross-case analysis is necessary before interpreting the data within the larger lens of a postsecular moment. The unique manifestations of care, displayed in the three cases, provides us with a roadmap to navigate the lived experience of chaplaincy. The theme of care is broadly expressed throughout the data. However, care is contextually embodied given the particular culture of the institution that the chaplain serves.
The reflexive nature of the first case study is important to note here. I studied my own experience and then expanded that study to include a retired campus minister and a chaplain intern at my institution. The theme of care is the interpretative lens and glue of a larger reflexive process. Unpacking the nuances of care, present within each case and 194 embodied uniquely by each chaplain, represents the core purpose of a cross-case analysis.
Chaplaincy at Wooster and Harvard frames the theme of care within a larger landscape.
Finally, in Chapter 5, the theme of care emerges within the meta-narrative of postsecularism.
Care as a shared value has the potential to improve higher education institutions— especially those that employ a chaplain. The cohesive nature of care is a premier structure of meaning for the human being (Heidegger, 1996). Piecing together the distinct ways that each of the chaplains studied here embodied care and, therefore, created a cohesive value represents an important way of framing the data. An explicit cross-case analysis is necessary before interpreting the data within the larger lens of a postsecular moment.
My lived experience at Muskingum University is an unwieldy piece of data. It is difficult to untangle this experience in ways that a provide a neat and tidy research narrative. Care, as a durable word of concern and energy focused toward something of value, provided the necessary thematic focus to explicate and unpack my lived experience. Fortunately, the phenomenological contours of care situated a whole host of disparate encounters into a new framework. The distinct highlights of this new framework provided an interpretative model throughout the cases. Let us explore some of the contours of care present in the first case study.
Care helped me navigate the unpredictable. Care facilitates the movement beyond the self. There is a feeling of surrender when you care for something or someone. How will it end? What will the response be? The questions never go away when you care—I mean, really care for something or someone. The most difficult task I confronted was the 195 opportunity to care when others seem uninterested or unable to care. I discovered care as a daily encounter with others and myself. I realized that practicing self-care was an essential way to care for others. Behind the moral imperative to care is not a demand but rather an invitation. As a chaplain, the moral imperative to care arises not out of a sense of obligation or an external demand, but rather as moral act of becoming. I held on to the notion that humans care and that humans are more fully human when they care, whatever the object of the care may be. Therefore, the primary motivation to care arose for me in the principle awareness of my desire to become more fully human. The impulse not to care is to become less human. Care is the possibility of connection in the midst of grief and tension. Lastly, care became for me a sacred task, one that was expressed by telling your story and inviting others to do the same.
The individuals who helped us explore chaplaincy within the larger Muskingum
University case study were John and Joan. John expressed care through his understanding and his ability to facilitate meaningful conversations. John, a retired campus minister from Muskingum was always getting ready for a conversation. John did not want to be too busy for a conversation. John was ready for a conversation that demonstrated the deep contours of care. Being available and present for conversation created a culture of care. This culture of care helped him to facilitate a collaborative spirit with multiple stakeholders across the institution. John used his conversational presence of care to navigate conflict and to enter into the chaos of grief. In a similar way,
Joan, the chaplain intern, understood the importance of forming relationships. Joan, as a millennial, knew well the barriers between college-age students and the pejorative understandings of religion. She tried not to stick out as a religious professional. Her 196 primary way of caring for students was to enter their reality, rather than inviting them to enter hers. Care for Joan was a complex opportunity to practice care in new ways. Less formal opportunities to care for others is an often-overlooked tool for chaplaincy in a postsecular context.
The next case study was a look at the College of Wooster’s chaplaincy. Cora’s robust understanding of care emerged within an interfaith context. She was an interfaith leader who sought to teach, facilitate and embody care across religious differences.
Given the ambitious aspirations and the heavy professional demands of a complex interfaith context, Cora needed a deep center of interpersonal care to succeed at Wooster.
The caring center she embodied defined her as a campus leader. Her staff looked to her for a caring perspective and her students routinely felt cared for in her presence. This caring process has far-reaching implications. As a religious professional, within the
Christian tradition, her personae of care helped to form a pattern of behavior within an interfaith context. The extension of care often includes the messy interplay of gender, race, and religious identities. Cora, as a Christian woman, navigated the contours of care by acknowledging the differences that surround gender within her interfaith context. The posture she assumed was one that constantly sought to honor the other. Cora’s ability to show honor and respect to religious minorities is a powerful form of postsecular care.
The last case study comes from Harvard University’s chaplaincy. Ellen extended care primarily through the practice of her leadership. Spiritual care as leadership manifested itself in two primary ways: creating a space of grace and the constant shifting of capacity. Leadership as care comes about most clearly through a larger institutional lens. Ellen provided the necessary leadership for the campus community to gather for 197 spiritual and religious renewal. Care as providing a space for grace is a unique facet of this case study. Grace as a theme within a highly competitive and selective environment creates a deeper appreciation for hospitality and welcome. Ellen’s care was a complex process of shifting her capacity to address a wide range of situations and issues. The chaplain practices care in both the sacred and secular realm.
Care must be exhibited in the details of a myriad administrative tasks. Ellen also provided a necessary task within a postsecular environment. She gathered together individuals from two conflicted historical and religious trajectories and invited them to listen to one another and to be vulnerable. The creation of a neutral space for the free exchange of experiences and the deep listening of conflicted viewpoints fostered a climate of care. Ellen’s spiritual and religious leadership is a seminal example of care within a postsecular context.
There are distinctions of care that emerged across the various cases. Many of the distinctions arise out of the contextual uniqueness of each institution represented here. In the Muskingum University case study care emerged primarily as a relational encounter between people. The expression of care always begins within the framework of relationships for all of the cases. However, given the reflexive model employed in my methodology, the personal relationships of care vividly emerged throughout my account of Muskingum, as well as John and Joan’s account. The personal dimension of care includes grief, conflict, and the ability to share one’s story. Grief and conflict are present across the cases. On the other hand, the contours of Wooster’s context reveals a side of care as it interacts with religious difference. Wooster has more religious and culture diversity so interfaith care looks unique when compared to Muskingum’s mostly 198 homogeneous population. The care expressed in the Harvard University case study is mostly tied to an institutional narrative. The contours of care interact differently on an
Ivy League campus. The distinction here is the emphasis on space, even if an overtly
Christian word of grace is coupled with it. The emphasis here is the location, the physical place where care occurs. Ellen’s role as campus leader further solidifies an understanding of institutional care as a means to provide a religious and spiritual opportunity for students. 199 Chapter 5: Interpreting the Chaplain and Postsecularism
Introduction
The primary purpose of the study is to provide us with a better understanding of the lived experience of higher education chaplains. The examination of the lived experience of higher education chaplains across the three cases provides a better understanding of how students gain salience and attribute importance to religious and spiritual quests while in college. The overall theme of care explains how the higher education chaplain provides a spiritual and religious reality on a 21st century campus.
The central theme of care is present across the various cases. Care represents a cohesive value in a postsecular age. Through the data, we are able to understand the lived experiences of chaplains so that the current postsecular contemporary era reveals an important moment. The moment is an opportunity for chaplaincy to help collaboratively create a culture of care on campuses in the 21st century.
The qualitative methodology employed a reflexive interpretation. The cases examined were windows into the lived experience of chaplaincy. Hermeneutically care emerged as an interpretative lens. Care facilitated a discussion between the lived experience of chaplains and our current postsecular age. Because I used a phenomenological method, the theme of care emerged in a robust way and then provided the thematic focus to unpack the lived experience of the chaplains across the three cases.
The structured interviews were also open-ended, in the sense that questions reflected the research questions but allowed the interviewees the freedom to negotiate meaning. The literature review set the stage for an informed understanding of postsecularism as an important piece of the larger current landscape of higher education. 200 The work of the higher education chaplain occurs within a postsecular age and we are invited to understand the cultural moment with a different perspective, given that the primary definition of postsecular is the collaborative desire across competing worldviews
(both secular and sacred) to name shared values. The chaplains studied here present a unique opportunity for the institutions they serve—they can help create values that improve campus cultures. However, the principle assertion of a postsecular turn in the
United States since the early 21st century is best understood as a struggle to provide values in a cohesive manner (Habermas, 2001). Therefore, the higher education chaplain can provide cohesive values that help to improve the lives of students and the institutions they serve.
The higher education chaplain represents a transformative praxis of religion and spirituality. The current postsecular age (Dallmayr, 2008; Habermas, 2001) affords educators a renewed perspective on religion and spirituality that promises a greater integration with higher education (Arends, 2014; Fox, 2006; Goulah, 2007; Ikeda, 2010;
O’Sullivan, 1999; Sefa Dei, 2001). The chaplain, as seen in the data, represents this important educational process. The postsecular turn in the United States since the early
21st century is one that arises out of a realization that modern democratic secular societies, operating in the midst of complex pluralistic forces, struggle to provide values in a cohesive manner (Habermas, 2001). The work of the higher education chaplain is to provide these values in a diverse and pluralistic manner. Let us look at the important values that emerge from the work of chaplaincy in our current postsecular age.
Care emerged in data as a way of being in the world. Chaplains demonstrated care when they offered hospitality. Chaplains exhibited an ethos of care by engaging in 201 transformative interactions with students. For the chaplain, the transformative nature of care within a postsecular age reveals an affinity for social justice with deep theological roots. In order to interpret the lived experience of chaplains, we are required to attend to theological voices and various models of spiritual and religious leadership. The two theological voices that help us situate and interpret the lived experiences of chaplains are
Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Gustavo Gutierrez. These theologians provide us with the interpretative framework to understand the nature of care within a postsecular framework.
Next, the chaplains studied here demonstrated a particular kind of leadership while on campus. The data suggests that the nature and significance of this leadership flows out of a robust sense of care that is able to engage multiple commitments. The chaplains here embraced the secular. They did not separate themselves from the multiple and competing concerns within higher education. One chaplain demonstrated leadership by embracing the worth and value of science. Another chaplain sought to refocus her academic culture away from an unhealthy preoccupation with success. Religious and spiritual leadership within a postsecular age requires a transformative quality. The data gathered here will be interpreted through the lens of an important religious leader of our current postsecular age—Pope Francis. By weaving together the larger narrative of Pope
Francis’ leadership with the lived experience of the chaplains studied here, we will be better able to understand fully the significance of this culture moment.
The care demonstrated across all three cases manifests itself in four primary ways: hospitality, transformation, leadership, and wisdom. The central task of the proceeding chapter will be to demonstrate how these primary ways become cohesive values for our current postsecular age. The lived experiences of the chaplains studied here provide us 202 with an important window into the worth of religious and spiritual development. Let us begin with a look at care manifested as hospitality.
Postsecular Hospitality
Hospitality is an important part of what is means to care. The ethical reality of extending care through the movements of hospitality is an important moral reality within our current postsecular moment. Ellen wove care and hospitality together—she called it grace. Ellen created a space for grace. Within the context of Harvard University, the creation of such a space helped foster a culture of hospitality. Cora worked tirelessly to value the religious minorities on her campus. She wanted Muslims and Jews to feel welcome. The movements of these two chaplains exhibit hospitality. The primary value that emerges from the work of chaplaincy is hospitality. The data suggest that the higher education chaplain practices academic hospitality, invites students to incorporate religious and spiritual concerns into their learning and encourages students to embody values both in and outside the classroom (Berry, 2001; Pope Francis, 2013; Strand,
2014). The chaplain labors within the current postsecular age, which has shaped the renewed interest in spirituality in higher education (Astin, Astin & Lindholm 2005;
Jacobsen & Jacobsen, 2008). The colleges explored in the data mostly exhibit a secular worldview. The secular worldview, viewed by certain educators, is neutral (Glanzer,
2004). This taken-for-granted secular neutrality in higher education does not often enhance the salience students find in religious and spiritual quests (Astin et. al, 2005).
Chaplains work to enhance the salience students find in religion and spirituality.
Across the United States, chaplains embody a sustained practice of academic hospitality within a postsecular context. This kind of hospitality invites religious and 203 spiritual insights into the process of learning that is occurring on higher education campuses (Bennett, 2003; Dewey, 2013; Nouwen, 1966). For the chaplain, academic hospitality is the process by which individuals form an inclusive intellectual community of learners that agrees to be bound together by shared values. The negotiation of shared values, which makes hospitality possible, are best summarized as the care and concern the chaplains extend to both their institutions and their students.
Chaplains appear to use an understanding of hospitality which draws on moral development theory (Gilligan, 1982; Hersh & Kohlberg, 1977). In order for hospitality to take root within our current postsecular age, chaplains invite students to name and struggle against the “insistent individualism” in the higher education classroom of today
(Bennett, 2000, p. 85). The chaplains explored in this research project see religious and spiritual experiences as part of a larger praxis, a transformative communal process, which moves beyond a view of spirituality that emphasizes inner development or a student’s meaning and purpose alone (Poe, 2014). Chaplains appear to encourage a healthy concern for moral development that is coupled with a kind of spiritual worldliness.
Moral development, according to the chaplains examined here, represents the best model for religion and spirituality to thrive within a postsecular age on secular campuses. The work of chaplaincy, in its day to day manifestation, is the consistent manner in which the chaplain encourages discourse which integrates sacred and secular concerns.
Hospitable discourse.
When Ellen gathered Jewish and Muslim students for a discussion on the Middle
East, she created a hospitable moment on campus. The chaplain takes this a step further and encourages hospitable discourse. Hospitable discourse cuts along secular and sacred 204 boundaries in order to create the space and honesty to engage in fearless communication
(Nouwen 1966). Fearless communication is the process by which we can be vulnerable, honest, and authentic in our religious and spiritual commitments and receive care and concern from the chaplain. The Harvard students were able to communicate their fears and this is a facet of hospitable discourse. The essence of the chaplaincy is the emergence of values within a diverse and pluralistic democratic society that is comprised of complex and competing forces.
Repeatedly, the chaplain creates a space of dialogue and potential transformation on campus. The chaplain invites students of all faiths to wrestle with meaning and purpose. This is not an individual process alone but also a communal one with practical implications for America. The chaplain teaches hospitality, the welcoming of the other, and the listening to the other, and invites students to stand in solidarity with the other.
Hospitality as discourse is the radical notion that each and every student regardless of religious differences deserves, the care and concern of the entire campus community.
Academic hospitality.
The overall work of chaplaincy is a lesson in hospitality, the creation of spaces on campus for true listening and understanding to take place. Ellen does this by promoting grace in the midst of exclusiveness. Cora does it by making sure that every religion has a space in which to feel welcomed. Before the work of chaplaincy can be discussed in today's mostly secular classrooms, the academy must learn to practice academic hospitality (Bennett, 2003). This hospitality requires an authentic regard from both sacred and secular forces. Hospitality, in this sense, is similar to John Dewey’s (2013) observation that “understanding and knowledge also enter into a perspective that is 205 religious in quality” (p. 24). Hospitality, according to Bennett (2000), is a “healthy collegium…a community of individuals linked through mutual, covenantal relationships.
The important concept here is covenant, not social contract. Membership means…each gives the right to criticize and each accepts the obligations to listen” (p. 91). The two operative words that capture an important function of hospitality in the work of chaplaincy are covenant and mutuality.
Covenant is a peculiar word to use in a secular setting. The Judeo-Christian origin of this word points to an agreement that is binding, an agreement that is indissoluble and in its most religious sense, initiated by the Divine. The covenant of hospitality, advocated by the chaplains studied here, is built on a postsecular foundation that posits the Divine as an experience, one that is understood as the deep recognition of the other. Hospitality is what we extend to and receive from others. It is a binding agreement that empowers chaplains to teach, to preach, to counsel, and to guide in the midst of many sacred and secular narratives (Glanzer, 2011). Chaplains find their space in higher education because, as Dewey (2013) points out, true dialogical hospitality engenders a religious quality to understanding and knowledge. The religious quality at which Dewey hints is a shared intellectual and spiritual experience. The work of chaplaincy can only be incorporated into the larger discussion of holistic learning when the institution takes seriously the commitment to education as a “cooperative human endeavor” that is a foundational for the success of our students. (Dewey, 2013, p. 24).
Academic hospitality is a cooperative human endeavor, as well as a binding agreement between students and faculty that seeks to practice mutuality in the classroom.
206 Hospitality and mutuality.
The data from each case suggests that hospitality is more than saying you are welcome into a particular space. Cora befriended and entered into a shared practice with her Muslim students. In this, Cora understood that hospitality requires mutuality, a true give and take relationship with shared power and a commitment to the equality of regard.
Mutuality in this sense is the dogged determination both to listen and to critically assess the worldviews present in a postsecular classroom. Hospitality within an academic setting incorporates the concerns and experiences of both the faculty and the students into the larger framework of academic life.
The recognition of the concerns and experiences of both the faculty and the students is integral to achieving the goal of holistic learning (Ikeda, 2010). However, as
O’Sullivan (1999) asserts, such recognition is lacking. Thus, the chaplain cultivates a hospitable encounter among various students and their worldviews. The chaplains studied here understand mutuality as the process of providing a space for students to be vulnerable. However, mutually is more than providing a space, though this is important.
The chaplain seeks to engage students on a level that requires reflection and intentional listening.
Hospitality and fearless communication.
Once again, when Ellen set out to mentor a group of Jewish and Muslim students so that they could meaningfully engage the religious and political tensions surrounding their two communities, she created a space for fearless communication. The chaplain as an agent of hospitality extends to students the possibility of authentic communication.
When conflict arose in the cases above, the chaplains sought to provide the means for 207 communication to increase rather than decrease. Authentic communication requires both the listener and the speaker not to fear the other and to trust that the best interests of the other will be preserved. Chaplains seek to foster communication that moves past the impediment of fear. The fear of rejection, the fear of discrimination, or the fear of being valued less cheapens and complicates discourse on our campuses today. Fear is antithetical to learning, to growth and to achieving a holistic education (Loder, 1981).
Fear is the experience of anxiety embodied within the bounds of a specific object (Tillich,
1951). Fear is anxiety with an object. Anxiety is the faceless, indeterminate restlessness that resides within us (Sartre, 1956).
The relationship between anxiety and fear plays a role in the dynamic interplay between learner and teacher. Typically, educators use the term anxiety to refer to specific triggers, such as tests, interactions with professors, or class presentations that hamper a student’s ability to perform well (Moscaritolo, 2009). As an example, Moscaritolo
(2009) suggests that nursing students with test anxieties could benefit from peer instructors and mindfulness training. Suppose this anxiety emerged due to the recent loss of a loved one and now the nursing student is dealing with the reality of being in close proximity to death as a vocation. The moment when one Jewish student was able to name her irrational fear of Muslims and the Muslim student was able to admit her unreflective distrust of Jews a moment of true reckoning .
Once again, let us look at the nursing student example, taken one-step farther. Let us say that this nursing student harbors a deep restlessness, a wearisome faceless anxiety about death that manifests as a fear. Anxiety becomes fear. The numinous anxiety of death takes the form of that which is easier to confront. The nebulous anxiety of death 208 manifests itself as something, which can challenge the student. Failing a test is preferable to living with unresolved pain in the face of death. The nursing student is fearful of taking his or her nursing exams or of interacting with his or her nursing professor.
The chaplain helps us to confront our fears. The existential confrontation with the reality of death is not an isolated theme to encounter when engaging in the work of chaplaincy. The example of the nursing student above reveals, albeit clumsily, that some students require religious and spiritual tools to deal with anxiety. Why? Because students often experience a host of persistent and nagging anxieties as they go about their educational journeys. Anxiety in this sense is not a clinical term used by a mental health professional, but rather a philosophical term used to describe the lived experience of students. The chaplain is able to bear witness to a student’s anxiety, help the student name this anxiety, and work to formulate a meaningful response in the face of such events. Henri Nouwen (1966) offers a specific model for how the chaplain and the student can work together to do the hard but meaningful work of addressing anxiety.
Nouwen (1966) uses the phrase “fearless communication” to describe the trust that emerges when radical honesty occurs between student and chaplain (p. 85). Deep religious and spiritual commitments are welcomed into such discussions and these encounters facilitate a greater awareness of self and a greater awareness of community.
Sefa Dei (2001) sees self-knowing and communal knowing as interrelated. Helping the nursing student make sense of death may seem like a roundabout way to improve tests scores or improve the completion rate, but chaplains know that such conversations are intimately related to holistic learning. Deep existential conversations, ones that carefully
However unflinchingly examine the anxieties of students, help to improve the lives of 209 students (Daloz-Parks, 2011). Such conversations cannot be mandated or assessed, but they can be hospitably offered to students as a potential resource. One modest goal of the higher education classroom is to recognize that “schooling is a moral enterprise” (Hersh
& Kohlberg, 1977).
Hospitably sorting out our shared values with fearless communication involves the hard work of learning. The hard and hospitable work of learning is integral to the larger task of living in a thriving democracy (Mezirow, 2003). Hospitality in this sense is the commitment to practice empathy based on the concrete human ethic of care for the other (Gilligan, 1982). The work of chaplaincy in a postsecular context is to welcome hospitably fearless communication as a resource to address the deep anxieties of our students. Therefore, it is important to acknowledge the work of chaplaincy as an expression of the ethic of care in higher education today.
Hospitality and connection.
Ellen spoke of claiming a neutral space as a way for individuals to connect with one another across the barriers of religion and politics. The chaplain works with the larger realization that the individual learner moves toward a community of learners only as the individual learner becomes more aware of “the other.” The acknowledgment of the other is “the beginning of friendships in which a diversity of voices can speak and be heard” (Anderson, 2013, p. 102). The work of chaplaincy seeks to address the isolated learner that is often found in the secular landscape of higher education. Hospitality is an event that values a connection to the other. This is important not only in higher education but in many facets of human life. Hospitality’s importance in human life has ancient roots
(Bennett, 2003). Chaplains, with the deference and care extended to students, create the 210 hospitable space for learning to occur. Bennett (2003) sees hospitality as a powerful antidote to the rampant secular individualism present in modern academic life. The work of chaplaincy values the “mutual openness and intellectual reciprocity” present in learning (Bennett, 2003, p. 47).
Chaplaincy extends hospitality by practicing religionless concern and worldliness; these two postsecular virtues promote holistic learning by freeing us from the grasp of an outdated and brutish game of competition between secular thought and religious thought.
Valuing hospitality in higher education today has the power to diffuse conflict by providing a corrective lens to the hierarchical and credential-obsessed culture that pervades most institutions of American higher learning. Chaplains hospitably welcome a student’s religious and spiritual commitments as a resource because chaplains foster an ethic of care and concern. Hospitality, as a central task of chaplaincy with a postsecular age, acknowledges that as knowledge increases, so should our concerns for the others deepen. The process of knowledge becoming concern is essential to the lifelong application of virtue. Knowledge that unfolds as a concern for others is an important virtue to gain in the education. Knowledge as virtue is an ancient proposition, one that was argued by the narrator Socrates in Plato’s Republic. Plato (1974) sees virtue as knowledge—techne in the Greek. Techne is the indispensable awareness that the welcoming of, the listening to, and acknowledging of the other is an important task in higher education. Hospitality is a supreme virtue, one that is sorely needed at this particular moment (Derrida, 1998). Cora employed a steadfast understanding of hospitality in her dogged pursuit of befriending her Muslim students. She knows that her 211 knowledge of the other is a kind of virtue. Cora’s work bears witness to a truth, simply put--to know the other is to value the other.
Hospitality and compassion.
Repeatedly, these chaplains extended compassion to those who were grieving or struggling. All the cases featured accounts of grief and the quick and sure response of compassion from the chaplain in the midst of the grief. The work of chaplaincy creates opportunities for holistic learning because hospitality flows out of a deep commitment to compassion. Miller (2001) sees compassion as an important spiritual perspective to maintain in higher education. Compassion forms a relationship between the acquisition of knowledge and the deepening of one’s concern. Knowledge and concern should be viewed in tandem as conjoined goals in the work of chaplaincy. If one outpaces the other, we run the risk of receiving a fragmented and lopsided education—one that leaves us disconnected and unsatisfied. Compassion is a corrective lens to the incessant need to quantify and classify the abilities of students. Chaplaincy, as a religious profession, dedicated to the cultivation of spiritual resources in the educational process, admits the messiness of life. Death is the ultimate chaotic messiness and in each of the cases studied here, the chaplains freely entered into that particular messiness with compassion.
Chaplaincy bears witness to the frailty of human reason and action. There is something broken about the way we do higher education today (Willimon, 1995). There is no data spread sheet, professional workshop, or leadership model that can fix it either.
There is little pessimism in such realizations from a chaplaincy perspective. Chaplaincy admits the basic premise that we can make things better and we can make things worse on campus—but, ultimately, the remedy is compassion. Cora called out the hollow ways 212 that her faculty friends chased after success only to be left feeling hollow and empty. She did not point out this truth as a disinterested observer, but rather as one wrapped up in the game as well. She wanted her colleagues to care about more than their professional success. To care is about embodying a robust concern beyond the self. Compassion helps in this regard. Compassion is the dogged determination to widen one’s sphere of moral concern, even when it bumps up against differences and disagreements. The work of chaplaincy thrives within the context of abundant compassion and withers with a deficit of compassion. Ikeda (1996) offers compassion as a key quality of a global citizen. Ikeda, as a Buddhist, understands compassion through the lens of the lived experience of the Buddha. A Buddhist education of the self is richly woven together with the context of the larger world in such a way that learning is described as an awakening.
Compassion is the hard-earned and necessary trait of a global citizen eager to bridge the divide between sacred and the secular. The Buddha for Ikeda, and Jesus as the Christ for
Bonhoeffer and Gutierrez, represents a compelling juxtaposition of compassion as necessary postsecular global trait.
Chaplaincy and Transformation
Chaplains work one-on-one with students. A successful chaplain cares for the student in a holistic way. Students often seek out the chaplain in order to make sense of the world and their own religious and spiritual journeys. Within the chapter 4 case study, the data suggests, across all cases, that students often approach a chaplain with a problem. The problems deal in some cases with a religious understanding of sexuality, difference or one’s larger purpose. Often when this occurs, chaplains seek to shift the perspective of the student to be more inclusive and charitable. In order to understand and 213 interpret the work of chaplaincy in that moment we must attend to a theological understanding of transformation.
Cora sought to transform the culture of her institution to care more deeply about religious minorities. Ellen sought to transform the culture of her institution by reminding students, faculty, and staff one’s worth is not dependent on one’s abilities. John sought to transform the religious perspective of a student. Joan whole-heartedly engaged in relationships with the students around her because she believed that community can transform us. Why do chaplains believe in the possibility of transformation? Dietrich
Bonhoeffer helps us to understand the possibility of transformation and the manner in which chaplains hold onto this possibility. Bonhoeffer, (1971) a German Lutheran pastor imprisoned and later executed by the Nazis, wrote from Tegel Prison: “it is only when one loves life and the world so much that without them everything would be gone, that one can believe in the resurrection and a new world” (p. 157). Bonhoeffer’s theological vision represents a foundational way of understanding the role of chaplaincy in higher education today. Why does Bonhoeffer’s theology help us engage the current work of chaplaincy? Bonhoeffer’s theology requires a shift in one’s religious worldview, while at the same time requiring an integrated synthesis of spiritual and secular concerns.
The shifting of one’s worldview is sometimes seen as a constituent part of education (Arends, 2014). The intersection between religious and spiritual concerns and transformation is an ancient narrative. In the Christian tradition, the story of St. Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus reveal a change in character and habit. More subtle examples, such as Anselm of Canterbury’s influential phrase which describes medieval theology as faith seeking understanding, reveal an intellectual transformation of some 214 sort (Anselm, 1998). Each religious tradition is gifted with such stories of transformation
(a shifting of one’s worldview) and it is in the gentle investigation of these moments that chaplains seek to make sense of how we can change—hopefully for the betterment of others.
In many ways, the work of chaplaincy is an educational process. The work intersects with transformation in the same way as most other disciples. Transformation occurs when a learner expands his or her sphere of moral concern and is able to practice critical empathy (Freire, 1972; Goulah, 2007). Fowler (1997) described the maturational growth of faith as taking place on a continuum. This developmental continuum is the process by which an individual passes through ever-increasingly complex levels of moral development (Fowler, 1997). An important connection to make between the work of chaplaincy and the current postsecular age is the preferred movement of an individual from a place of fear and conformity to a place of openness and complexity. What is being transformed is the individual learner—hopefully the student who paradoxically increases his or her awareness of how religious and spiritual beliefs conflict with other religious and spiritual beliefs while simultaneously choosing to affirm the humanity of the other. An example of this is the Interfaith Scholars Program at the College of
Wooster. This process of transformation is best described as a developmental process in which critical empathy can be communally practiced and each member expands the sphere of their moral concern.
As the data suggest, the chaplain labors along these lines: the expansion of more concern and the increasing of one’s critical empathy. Cora practiced critical empathy by understanding the gendered implications of befriending various Muslim students. 215 Furthermore, the work of the chaplain is often institutionally valued because their work affects the whole person both within and beyond the classroom (Dirkx, 2012).
Bonhoeffer’s theology, much like the work of chaplaincy, beckons us to look beyond the recent past where religious concerns and spiritual practices, as defined solely within a secular worldview, lead inevitably to a rigid polarization (Campbell & Putnam, 2010).
Chaplaincy enables institutions of higher learning to engage deeper levels of integration within a student’s spiritual and secular concerns, as well as inviting students to analyze multiple worldviews more holistically. This is seen in the transformative conversations between chaplains and students in chapter 4. The chaplain promotes religion not as a way to divide students or to impede the educational process, but rather to give a more holistic education.
Transformative education.
Chaplains work on college campuses. This is not a novel observation. However, it is an important observation. Chaplains seek to help students learn. The data from the first case study at Muskingum featured a narrative of theological transformation. A student was able to understand and interpret her own identity through a new theological lens. Chaplains possess transformative potential in the higher education classroom of the
21st century because they ask students not to believe something per se but to act. The ability to move beyond the acquisition of knowledge to the application of that knowledge is part of what Dirkx (2011) calls transformative education. Arends (2014) defines transformative learning as a shift in one’s worldview. One of the central tasks of chaplaincy is to engage the higher education student and to help them reflect on their worldview. The reflection on one’s worldview potentially creates a shift in that 216 worldview. The shift occurs in the learner’s interpretation of reality. Arends' insight builds upon the multidisciplinary foundation that broadly asserts an understanding of education as affecting the whole person within a context that is larger than a classroom.
In addition to understanding the chaplain’s role as one who promotes a shift in one’s worldview, the chaplain seeks to be a part of a deeply holistic process—the chaplain welcomes and invites human experience to play a valuable role in education
(Mezirow, 1990). Many private liberal arts colleges and universities see the exploration of religion and spirituality as related to providing a holistic education, but an articulation of the explicit ways in which the chaplain interacts with students to achieve this kind of education is sorely lacking. Given the collaborative and multidisciplinary nature of chaplaincy, once again Bonhoeffer and Gutierrez prove to be insightful dialogical partners for the present postsecular age.
Social justice.
Care is a constituent theme in the lived experience of the higher education chaplain. Care is exhibited in such a way that it can address social problems and remedy injustice. Chaplains work to help students enter the world with a deep sense of care for the other within a social framework. The instances where chaplains honored and respected gay and lesbian students speaks of care within a larger context. This has social implications. When Ellen worked to create a space of welcome regardless of the ways
Harvard or society assigns worth, she was practicing a core value of social justice. The work of chaplaincy also intersects a robust understanding of social justice (Brown, 2004).
Just as Bonhoeffer helped us understand how religious and spiritual concerns can be grounded with a secular context, the work of Gustavo Gutierrez can help understand the 217 chaplain as an advocate for social justice. In order to understand the chaplain as a higher education professional committed to social justice, it is helpful to attend to an important theological voice.
Gutierrez (1983) a Peruvian Catholic Priest, understands religious and spiritual concerns as addressing “our economic, social, political, and cultural world; therefore it is an appeal for a revolutionary transformation of the very basis of a dehumanizing society”
(p. 57). The point of religion and spirituality, according to Gutierrez, is to create a greater awareness of our economic, social, political, and cultural predicament, and then to call us to act collectively on behalf of the oppressed. The resonant theme of social justice in both Gutierrez and in the data demonstrated by chaplains invites us to embark on a new discourse in higher education when it comes to religion and spirituality.
What is meant by discourse is a specific kind of conversation; discourse is “that
[which] transforms problematic frames of reference…sets of fixed assumptions and expectations (habits of mind, meaning perspectives, mindsets)—to make them more inclusive, discriminating, open, reflective, and emotionally able to change” (Mezirow,
2003, p. 58). The work of chaplaincy enters into the problematic boundaries between faith and action, secular and sacred, the personal and the public—in such a way as to transform the higher educational community. The work of chaplaincy, in this regard, is the interpretive process by which a community reflects on the content of religious and spiritual commitments in relation to the problems of this world. The gentle suggestion here is that when we interpret a student’s religious and spiritual commitments through the lens of the problems of this world, we are doing education in a potentially transformative way. 218 However, how can we better understand the work of chaplaincy on a campus without in some way advocating or endorsing one religious worldview over another?
This is where an examination of the lived experience of chaplaincy plays a pivotal role.
The work of chaplaincy is not about the endorsement of one religion over and against another. Chaplaincy is concerned with the propagation of values, values in relation to a democratic, diverse, and pluralistic society, work that is sorely needed in this current postsecular context (Habermas, 2001). It is a problem, then, that this project explored only Christian chaplains. Christians cannot do Jewish theology, amd Muslims cannot do
Hindu theology; each faith tradition is bound and empowered to examine the historic content of its faith within its current social, political and cultural context. Cora understood this reality well within her interfaith context. The work of chaplaincy operates most authentically within the lived experience of each religious tradition.
Chaplains labor within the context of larger democratic society.
The chaplains studied here attest to the reality that it is the responsibility of those who hold religious concerns and spiritual practices to articulate how communal values emerge within their tradition. The conscience ought not be dictated. The negotiation and articulation of values across religious and spiritual traditions require the work of chaplaincy. The four chaplains studied have to work in the midst of pluralism—other religious traditions. All of them are Christian. The work of chaplaincy requires an understanding of how he/she will engage other religious traditions and the adherents of these traditions. The Christian tradition has operated within three distinct approaches: pluralism, exclusivism, and inclusivism (D'Costa, 1997). The four chaplains operated within the inclusivism approach, which understands that religious concerns and spiritual 219 practices can become a part of what Mezirow (2003) calls “discursive democracy which includes a moral dimension” (p. 62). The free expression of religion relies on religious dialogue, tolerance, and mutual respect.
In my own case, the process of telling my story became a necessary task for enabling students to do the same. When I discovered the power of telling my story and my grandmother’s impact on my life, care was extended to anyone who seeks to tell their story. Chaplains welcome the faith stories of students. The chaplain believes, trusts, and commits to specific religious concerns. So, it is helpful to see Bonhoeffer’s religionless
Christianity as part of a lively and rich experience of faith. The chaplain’s theological praxis within this context does not suggest a post-creedal Christian movement devoid of faith content, but rather connects to Bonhoeffer’s theology, when he said that the
“intimate connection between Christology and a non-religious expression of the witness for Christ” is at the heart religious integrity (Bethge, 1968). In other words, non- religious expression and religionless Christianity are the two terms that emerged from
Bonhoeffer’s theological vision while in prison (Bethge, 1968). The postsecular moment suggests that these words spoken over 50 years ago still resonate and help us understand the present work of chaplaincy.
Getting into the details is required at this moment. There is a disagreement over what Bonhoeffer mean when he spoke of religionless Christianity (Bethge, 1968).
German-speaking theologians prefer the term non-religious expression. English-speaking theologians prefer the term religionless Christianity. Given that Bonhoeffer was unable to fully articulate his theological vision due to his execution, clarity can be found in a 220 profound question he asked in August, 1944: “How do we speak in a secular way about
God? In what ways are we ‘religionless-secular’ Christians” (Bonhoeffer, 1971, p. 153).
Bonhoeffer’s words have a prescient quality when it comes to describing the work of chaplaincy at the beginning of the 21st century. In order to understand the lived experience of the higher education chaplain today we have to unpack the roots of
Bonhoeffer’s theology. The theological roots of Bonhoeffer’s non-religious expression can be traced to a neo-orthodox understanding of religion in the modern age (Barth,
1933). In neo-orthodoxy, religion is defined in a pejorative way. Religion is unbelief.
Religion is a human response to a transcendent idea. Religion is viewed as manufacturing one’s significance at the expense of someone else.
In each of the cases, religion is not acknowledged as a reality with only positive benefits for the institutions. Religion can be a mixed bag—chaplains know this. The majority of the conflicts present in each case deal primarily with Christian chaplains having conflict with other Christians. Through this interpretative lens it is easy to see why Bonhoeffer yearned for a religionless path or a non-religious way to embody his deeply held convictions. The same fundamental insight is grounded in the day-to-day work of chaplaincy. The secular age has given us a definition of religion that is a pejorative one. Nevertheless, “religionless Christianity” does not mean the absence of religion but rather the transformation of religion to include secular aims and concerns.
For Christian thinkers such as Bonhoeffer and Gutierrez, it is the revelation of
God that determines the qualitative difference between institutional religion and the experience of faith (Jenson, 1997). Given this difficult acknowledgement that faith is intimately related to the revelation of the Divine, it is problematic to build a postsecular 221 understanding of the work of chaplaincy on abstract principles—such as the service of others (Dallmayr, 2008). Such a project would be doomed to failure given the difficulty this vision would have explaining the reality of evil (Niebuhr, 1955). There are real problems in this world and it would seem that many of those problems arise from the human heart, from human interaction—namely from us (Tillich, 1951). Racism, sexual violence, and sexism exist on college campuses today and it is unrealistic to assume such problems arise out of a lack of education and training alone. The work of chaplaincy labors in the midst of evil, so the deep awareness one can have of their work requires an acknowledgement of the presence of evil. The chaplain accepts the reality of evil and the complex way we participate in its structures.
A postsecular chaplaincy requires a robust understanding of evil. Such language is not entirely welcome in a secular context. Beyond the secular university’s inability to grabble with evil, chaplaincy asserts that the work it offers to the student is built upon more than a post-Enlightenment foundation of service to others. Such a foundation would be woefully inadequate to express the wonder, mystery, and transcendence often expressed in various religious traditions (Otto, 1958). All of this begs the question.
What is the theoretical foundation for a postsecular chaplaincy? An interpretative choice must be made. The foundation would need to be inclusive enough to hospitably welcome multiple faiths. The foundation would require a creative synthesis of both sacred and secular tensions. Lastly, a postsecular foundation for the work of chaplaincy must welcome the concrete expression of shared values—a praxis that forges consensus and action within a pluralistic and diverse democratic society. There is wisdom in doubting that such a foundation could ever exist. However, in the face of hateful rhetoric, religious 222 violence, and political division, how can we afford not to do the hard theoretical work that leads to a better understanding of how the chaplain can enhance education in the 21st century?
Once again, Bonhoeffer provides a theoretical insight for work of chaplaincy in the postsecular age. It may be helpful to see the foundations of the postsecular as beginning in a Tegel prison cell in 1944. Bonhoeffer, imprisoned by a fascist regime, yearned for the transformation of German society, and this yearning is a foundational reality that cut across Jewish and Christian barriers at the time. Chaplaincy seeks to welcome the other, to provide a place for grace that is, the acceptance of the worth of the other regardless of what they have done or who they are. This is important in higher education, given the emphasis on performance. Ellen’s work at Harvard is an expression of hospitality within the context of an exclusive culture. The work of chaplaincy also finds resonance in Gutierrez’s work with the poor on the streets of Lima in the late 1950s.
The work of chaplaincy seeks to extend hospitality to students as a way to transform the academic community. Such work must be winsome enough to capture the faith and praxis of both Bonhoeffer and Gutierrez while at the same time building powerful inroads with the larger institutional mission of the university or college the chaplain serves.
Chaplaincy is practiced in the midst of secular and sacred tensions; navigating such a landscape is no small feat. The work of chaplaincy is not so much a focal point, but rather a pivot towards a more collaborative process of learning that occurs on campuses across America.
Why does Cora engage the religious other as a primary way to embody care at her institution? In order to answer this question, we have to get to the root of a philosophical 223 understanding of otherness and the moral implication therein. The foundational theme on which to pivot for the inclusive and multifaith work of the chaplaincy would be the categorical acknowledgement of our “limitless responsibility for the other person”
(Anderson, 2013). The limitless responsibility we cultivate for the other brings about a transformational possibility, one that enables us to encounter the transcendent in our infinite responsibility for other human beings (Levinas, 1987). Anderson, (2013) drawing on the existential ethics of Levinas, understands care for the other as pointing us towards an event in which we participate in a Divine encounter, a transformative experience, described in this way:
Rather, the otherness of other persons enters our world on its own account; above
all the infinite (God) turns our world inside out by coming into our world and
causing a rupture in our powers of representation. The ‘in-finite’ may be
understood as which comes ‘into the finite’, and it breaks in through the face of
our neighbor, calling us to limitless responsibility for the other person. Thus God
is not an object of the powers of correlation of our mind, but ‘comes to mind’. (p.
85)
Chaplaincy, at the present moment, encounters students with various religious traditions.
The guiding insight for such work admits a larger sphere of concern that one’s particular religious tradition.
Chaplaincy holds to the strange and utterly awkward idea that the Divine is present and available for both the student and the institution. The work of chaplaincy hold that encountering the divine through the experience of our infinite and limitless responsibility to others is more than a simple reduction of religion as service to others, it 224 is a pivotal theoretical move that propels us past the failed Enlightenment project of seeing religion as rationality or ethics. The theoretical foundation present in the work of chaplaincy is the principled notion that values can be shared across sacred and secular divides. The theoretical foundation for the work of chaplaincy is the charitable idea that multiple religious expressions can play a positive role in the higher education. The theoretical foundation for the work of chaplaincy is also the belief that democracy requires a moral dimension and that education demands a religious and spiritual option.
Chaplaincy admits that any moral dimension is negotiated through critical reflection. Engaging in discourse that aims to improve our communal bonds and make us more tolerant of differences are at the heart of acknowledging the worth and dignity of the other. Critical reflection and discourse are important skills in the transformative classroom (Mezirow, 2003). However, theoretical tidiness and interpretative clarity do not automatically translate into an observable praxis. The work of the chaplain asks the audacious question, “what does this encounter of the Divine through the face of one’s neighbor look like?” Where do we see it practiced in today’s world? Does it even exist?
In order to frame the somewhat localized reality of the higher education we must look at the larger religious and spiritual landscape. Just as Bonhoeffer and Gutiérrez helped frame the work of chaplaincy through a theoretical lens, a practical and well-known example of religious and spiritual leadership in the postsecular age is required.
Social justice, hospitality and transformation.
Providing a spiritual and religious reality on campus today requires applied ethics.
Social justice in this sense relates to hospitality. The work of chaplaincy seeks to ground religious and spiritual concerns within a framework of social justice and care for the 225 individual and the institution. Traditionally, religious leaders have advocated care and concern for the sacred (Durkheim, 1954). The sacred in this sense implies a number of things: theological uniformity, the preservation of religious authority, and the salvation of its members. Chaplains as religious leaders are a part of a religious tradition, which includes these sacred concerns. Nevertheless, the work of the chaplain requires real tension between the sacred and the secular. The work of chaplaincy, as the data suggests, live and labor with a professional framework where secular concerns are important.
Specifically, the two organizing secular concerns for the higher education chaplain are social justice and care (individual and institutional). The chaplain hospitably welcomes secular concerns into the work of providing a religious and spiritual reality on campus.
The work of the chaplaincy within a postsecular age is highly compatible with secular educational theory. Educational theorist O’Sullivan (1999) advocates a biocentric view of spirituality in the 21st century. The chaplain understands that to care for the world is to express a deep religious and spiritual commitment. The chaplain appears to embody this theological insight at this particular postsecular moment. The combination of religion, interested in the problems of this world, and a religion disinterested in the doctrinal and institutional problems it often faces, represents a transformational vitality for students to thrive in today’s higher education context.
Chaplains do not labor in a vacuum. There appear to be cultural, historical, and theological forces that inform their work. The interfaith work at the College of Wooster and the Harvard chaplain’s practical desire for a space for grace on one of the most competitive Ivy League campuses points to a care and concern for both the institution and the individual. The care and concern that professional religious and spiritual individuals 226 extend to people and to institutions help us understand the role of chaplaincy in the 21st century. This work has deep roots. Why does the work of chaplaincy understand its religious and spiritual commitments as grounded in a largely secular environment? In order to explore this question, it is helpful to frame historically the work of chaplaincy in higher education. The lived experience of chaplaincy arises out of religious and spiritual commitments within a secular context.
In order to make better interpretative sense of the data, which is the lived experience of the chaplain, it is important to contextualize broadly the religious and spiritual commitments of the chaplain. The research suggests that there is an orienting theoretical structure to this work. The religious and spiritual commitments of two important individuals emerge as a way to guide the interpretation of the data. Dietrich
Bonhoeffer and Gustavo Gutierrez represent two pivotal stories of the 20th century religious landscape that help us to understand how the chaplain extends care and concern to individuals and institutions during times of enormous change. Properly interpreting the data requires a brief look at these two important theological voices in the 20th century.
This task will help us to interpret the experience of the higher education chaplain within a more robust lens within the current postsecular moment. The resonant theme is hospitality. Chaplains practice hospitality on a number of levels. The insights of
Bonhoeffer and Gutierrez can help us understand the data, which suggests the importance of hospitality for work of chaplaincy. This is why chaplaincy resonates with
Bonhoeffer’s (1971) theology, in that he advocated for a religionless Christianity—a way of living in the world that deeply acknowledged a this-worldly and secular focused expression of Christianity. Religionless Christianity is a way to practice hospitality on an 227 academic campus. Gutierrez helps us understand the role social justice plays in the work of chaplaincy. These two thinkers will help us navigate the data.
Transformative theology.
Ellen believes in the power of grace. I believe in the power of telling one’s story.
John believed in the compatibility of Christianity and science. Joan believed that connecting to students is more about authenticity than religious labels. Cora believed in the worth and dignity of the other. It is nearly impossible to interpret the data in chapter
4 with a theological account of the beliefs held by these chaplains. The work of chaplaincy requires a theological heritage and a worldview that is passed along. In this case, the chaplains studied were Christian. This is not an opportunity for religious exclusivity, but rather for interfaith inclusivity. Chaplains have theological roots that nurture their work and grow their perspectives. Once again, Bonhoeffer offers a fresh theological perspective for a postsecular age, which is unique in its ability to define how we may hold a concern for the world that does not depend on the rigid structures of religious dogma. This is a primary concern for the higher education chaplain.
Bonhoeffer (1971) describes the intersection of the secular and the spiritual as a religionless concern—a concern that is not tied to a specific dogma. Marsh (1997) frames Bonhoeffer’s primary concern in this way:
…We cannot get back home, back to a time when religious authority laid claim to
the totality of life in the world. What is required instead is “ultimate honesty,” the
sober recognition that we must live in the world as mature men and women, etsi
deus non daretur—as though God were not given. (p. 47) 228 Bonhoeffer was a theologian who understood modernity—that the modern world has come of age.
Bonhoeffer’s notion of a world come-of-age anticipates the 1960s theology of
Vatican II, which defines modernity as a “new humanism, one in which man [sic] is defined first of all by his responsibility toward his brothers and his history” (Tanner,
2005). The world come-of-age is mature and secular. In a world come-of-age, modern life sees itself as incompatible with the dogmatic structures of religion. Harvey Cox
(1966) expresses the profound paradigmatic shift in this way: “we have defined secularization as the liberation of man [sic] from religious and metaphysical tutelage, the turning away from other worlds and toward this one” (p. 17). Bonhoeffer’s theological method not only anticipates these crucial shifts in the modern understanding of religion, his theology is congruent with a sustained encounter with the deep problems of the day.
Bonhoeffer’s theology turns toward the world and offers us a constituent component of postsecular theology, a praxis that seeks to overcome the barriers of religion while simultaneously opposing unjust social structures—in his case, the horrors of a totalitarian regime. Bonhoeffer’s concept of religionless concern is an integral part of the work being done by chaplains.
The manner in which Bonhoeffer was imprisoned and later executed by the Nazi regime in 1945 reveals the authenticity of his theological praxis. Bonhoeffer, along with millions of others, experienced first-hand the horrors of a ruthless totalitarian regime. In a secular and a religionless age, the question is, how can we claim an authentic religion and spirituality? In 1942, before he was imprisoned and executed, Bonhoeffer, (1971) as 229 a theologian and member of the German Resistance, decided to write a letter to his fellow conspirators:
We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds: we have been drenched by many
storms; we have learned the arts of equivocation and pretense; experience has
made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open; intolerable
conflicts have worn us down and even made us cynical. Are we still of any use?
(pp. 16-17)
The question Bonhoeffer heroically asks is terrifying: “Are we still of any use?” With utter simplicity, his unifying and clarifying question strikes at the heart of religion’s relevance in the modern age. Transformative education benefits from a praxis that is grounded in postsecular understanding of chaplaincy where concerns are compatible and relevant in our current age. The work of chaplaincy within higher education is highly relevant because it is a process that invites students to develop what Goulah (2007) calls critical empathy. Bonhoeffer courageously criticized his own religious tradition and his nation, and by doing so, he empathically addressed the horrors of his age. Chaplaincy encourages critical empathy. Critical empathy is important given the rampant cynicism within higher education today, which in many ways reveals the lack of connections between our perceived usefulness and our actual helplessness as educators (Fox, 2006).
The work of chaplaincy as a transformative praxis of religion and spirituality encourages concern for a world that has come-of-age. When the world came of age,
Bonhoeffer’s religionless concern emptied religion of its pretense and metaphysical superiority. Chaplains must surrender a religious superiority if they are truly to embrace the other. Chaplains help to ensure the relevance of religion and spirituality in a 230 postmodern context by letting go of contentious cognitive claims (Dewey, 2013) and focusing on praxis (Crook, 1999). The present postsecular age requires a new religious and spiritual humanism that opposes unjust structures and practices a critical empathy.
Bonhoeffer struggled with the legitimacy of any religious worldview that would accept the horrors of Nazism. How could one be “religious” and However disavow oneself from the responsibility of confronting the Nazi regime? Rather than simply blaming individuals for their complicity in either actively supporting the Nazi regime or passively standing by, Bonhoeffer interpreted religion as a barrier to expressing authentic concern—namely, any concern that is not squarely focused on addressing the trials and the tribulations of human history. Like O’Sullivan’s (1999) Ecozoic view of spirituality,
Bonhoeffer (1971) argued for a religionless Christianity, which is a kind of faith that is able to make room for other faiths. Cora was deeply committed to making room for other faiths. Her commitments to interfaith work flowed out of her deep theological commitments, much in the same way that Bonhoeffer’s care and concern for his Jewish brothers and sisters flowed out of his Christian Theology.
Theologically this makes sense because, to Bonhoeffer, religion (in the traditional pre-modern sense) encourages people to surrender their present predicament in favor of a future otherworldly reality. Overall, Bonhoeffer’s theology transforms because it acknowledges the cognitive limits of religion (Dewey, 2013) while emphasizing the role of religion in a world come-of-age (Tanner, 2005)—a role that emphatically views relevancy and praxis as interrelated. As a result, Bonhoeffer’s concept of religionless concern creates a highly adaptable and nuanced role for religion in our current postsecular age, a role that provides a sustained empathic criticism (Goulah, 2007) when 231 it comes to addressing the problems of the 21st century. The work of chaplaincy gains both relevance and clarity when it operates within a theological framework that fully engages the problems of the here and now.
The beliefs and the theological convictions of chaplains are more than abstract ideas. They represent a praxis of care and concern for the other. Gustavo Gutierrez used his theology to address “large scale suffering and poverty” in Latin America in the late
1960s and early 1970s (Anderson, 2010). Brown (1993) understands Gutierrez as an architect of a new theological school: liberation theology. In the words of Archbishop
Oscar Romero, liberation theology asks, “What good are beautiful highways and airports, all these beautiful skyscrapers, if they are fashioned out of the clotted blood of the poor who will never enjoy them?” (Brown, 1993, p. 35). Liberation theology asks us to possess a deeper awareness of poverty, and it reminds us that theology is always contextual--in other words, theology from the perspective of the oppressed is different from a theology that arises from privilege. Liberation theology, as a praxis of change, is connected to the chaplain’s work as a potential facet of transformational learning.
The chaplain helps student to explore their conscience. The exploration of the conscience is an important task in gaining ethical insights. The chaplain’s call to examine the conscience is echoed in Paulo Freire’s (1972) concept of conscientization, which describes a foundational movement in the transformational learning process.
Conscientization describes a conscience-raising experience that contributes to the expansion of one’s sphere of moral concern. All the chaplains studied in this research project offered opportunities to serve communities deeply impacted by poverty. Given this unique opportunity, the student opens herself to the suffering of others. One also 232 hears echoes in Ikeda’s (2010) perspective of the global citizen, a socially contributing individual fully awakened and engaged through wisdom, courage, and compassion. The chaplain seeks to prepare global citizens. When students become more fully aware, their concerns are enlarged and extended beyond the self.
The enlargement and extension of one’s moral concerns asks us to move beyond the concern for self, and this transforming event can be a deeply religious movement.
Loder (1981) explores the rapid expansion of one’s moral concern as a deep learning event in which the individual gains transformative knowledge. Albeit, the process of conscientization does not necessarily require a single transformative moment, as Collister and Dencev (2010) point out: “transformation is iterative and continuous” (p.180).
Nonetheless, the moment, explored as a transformative event, whether gradual or instantaneous, produces powerful responses within the human psyche. Indeed, both liberation theology and transformative learning point to an event in which we are opened up to the world and to the self in a completely different way.
The chaplain as a conduit of service beyond self and as a facilitator of opportunities where students reach beyond their privilege speaks of the importance of chaplains in a postsecular context. This importance resonates throughout the theology of
Gutierrez. Gutierrez (1973) used his theology of worldliness to enlarge the sphere of religious faith to interact with the world problems. Gutierrez’s (1973) new theological methodology sees secularization as a corrective lens for religious institutions and individuals. Secularization shifts the focus and concern of what religious individuals and institutions should care about. Gutierrez (1973) writes, “Worldliness, therefore, is a must, a necessary condition for an authentic relationship between humanity and God” (p. 233 39). Therefore, if religious individuals resist this secularizing shift, they become entrenched in sectarian modes of thinking that emphasize the conflict between religion and secular thought. In addition, if secularists are skeptical of religious individuals and discount authentic theological concerns that are grounded in this world, then they stand to lose valuable allies in addressing the deep systemic problems of this world.
Therefore, Gutierrez helps us to see clearly the value of a theological worldliness.
Chaplaincy expresses a worldliness that makes connections with other worldviews and various disciplines in higher education. In conclusion, Gutierrez’s liberation theology is transformative within a postsecular age because it practices a worldliness. Gutierrez is concerned about poverty and his theological method functions as a moment of conscientization for the learner (Freire, 1972). The postsecular age demands a higher education chaplaincy that encourages a secular perspective, a perspective that provides a corrective lens to the unexamined privilege that operates within postmodern religious thinking. Unexamined privilege, according to O’Sullivan (1999) is a major barrier to transformative learning.
Chaplaincy and Leadership
Ellen’s leadership at Harvard University provided an expression of institutional care. Chaplains are religious leaders on campus for whom the campus looks in order to understand the worth and importance of religion in modern life. How can we understand the task of religious and spiritual leadership during this particular postsecular moment?
Pope Francis, the current leader of the Roman Catholic Church is an important person to help us understand the work of chaplaincy. Pope Francis’s words and actions illustrate a postsecular understanding of the work of chaplaincy. To be clear, the Pope is not a 234 chaplain and chaplains are definitely not Popes! This is not the connection that is helpful.
What is helpful is to add another dimension to our conversation, namely one that shows us what a religious leader, such as Pope Francis, embodies in this present postsecular age.
The chaplain functions as a religious leader within a higher education context. Pope
Francis (2014) has expressed religious and spiritual impulses within a secular context.
Also, it goes without saying that the Pope’s actions are not necessarily or explicitly informed by Bonhoeffer and Gutierrez, but interpreting the Pope’s religious leadership lens through the twin concept of religionless concern and social justice helps us to understand the current postsecular moment, a moment that illuminates and enriches our understanding of the chaplain’s lived experience.
In Pope Francis’ ecological concerns—namely, climate change and a biocentric spirituality that is articulated and lived out in secular ways—there appears to be a salient theme of environmental concern occurring within our current postsecular age. Care and concern have largely been viewed as a secular concern. The chaplain asks, “How can we speak in a secular way about God?” The chaplain as a religious leader, starts the conversation about care and concern for the world. When a chaplain speaks, either to students individually or to the institution as a whole, about care and concern, there is a nascent challenge offered. Gutierrez challenged the pro-colonial Catholic Church of his day. We can see Gutierrez’s liberation theology as a direct forerunner of what we now call social justice now. It is through the lens of Gutierrez that we can see the creative adaptation of religion in the early 21st century.
Chaplains understand that religion in the present moment is undergoing transformational change. Chaplains are religious leaders who welcome the faith and the 235 traditions of others. Cora’s care for her interfaith community bears witness to this fact.
The data suggests that religion is changing and chaplains know this. The change is occurring across religious traditions. Strand (2014) describes Soka Gakkai Buddhism as a transformative religious practice for the 21st century. Soka Gakkai Buddhism is transformative because, as a religious practice, it seeks to draw its adherents into a deeper awareness not only of self but also of the deep systemic problems of the planet. Patel
(2010) affirms his American Muslim heritage as a way to achieve the well-being and health of the larger pluralistic community of faith. As an Ismaili Muslim of the Shia branch of Islam, he understands his faith as transformative because it seeks to share common values with other religious perspectives. Sacks (2003), as an Orthodox Jew, understands his faith as vitally related to his criticism of global wealth inequality. Sacks’
Orthodox Judaism is transformative because it practices hospitality across race, culture, and religious traditions.
Religion is creatively adapting to postmodernity because there is a sustained multifaith perspective that emphasizes the dignity and the worth of the other (Levinas,
1987). The deep affirmation of the other is centerpiece of the chaplain’s work of care and concern. The creative adaptation of religion in the 21st century is a premier facet of postsecularism (Habermas, 2001). The paradigmatic emergence of postsecularism describes rapid and complex religious change, a change that results from religion’s willingness to adapt to outside cultural forces. If Pope Francis provides us with a timely illustration of religious concerns embodied as secular practices, one question that arises is this: when has the Christian tradition creatively adapted to secular trends? In other words, when has religion changed its relationship to secular impulses? 236 Embracing the secular.
The chaplain lives and labors on the university campus. Ellen called the ability to shift capacity as an important task to perform on campus. The shift, as described in the data, is largely the movement from the sacred to the secular. The chaplain can feel at home in both the sacred and the secular. The primary way that the sacred meets the secular on campus is the important task of education. The relationship between the work of learning and the task of religion has deep historical roots. To illustrate the deep roots of religion in higher education and to demonstrate how each discipline informs and adapts over time, let us take a look at one of the most influential students in Western culture—Thomas Aquinas. Zajonc (2003) offers a lively medieval example of a student who integrated secular and religious impulses and brought about an intellectual transformation. Thomas Aquinas was the student—arguably one of the most important academic minds in the West. Aquinas would sneak out of the orthodox Notre Dame cathedral school and make his way to the forbidden streets of rue du Fouarre in order to hear cutting-edge secular lectures on Greek philosophy. According to Zajonc (2003),
Aquinas navigated the secular and religious divide by formulating a new synthesis called
Scholasticism. In contrast to Aquinas’ scholasticism, postsecular theory modestly offers a more practical synthesis when it comes to religion and learning in the 21st century: it seeks to welcome hospitably religious and spiritual concerns as a way to bring about holistic learning.
The medieval university was vastly influenced by the Thomistic synthesis of religion and Greek philosophy—a new relationship between the religious and the secular.
Postsecular theological praxis in the early 21st century is akin to Aquinas’ medieval 237 impulse in reverse. The higher education chaplain reaches out to the secular student who has had her fill of beer and circus at the university and now seeks a way to live in the world (Sperber, 2001). Secular students are awash in data sets and debt, struggling to find a way to articulate their purpose and to live out that purpose in concrete ways
(Daloz-Parks, 2011). The chaplain in the postsecular age asks us to claim a religion and a spirituality that promotes learning, and then encourages the moral resiliency necessary to act in transformative ways that address problems of the world.
Chaplains ask higher education institutions to move beyond the conceptual horizon of seeing religion and spirituality as contrary to scientific claims or reducible to individual meaning and purpose alone. Effective chaplains invite students and faculty to articulate a praxis of care and concern for the world using religious and spiritual resources. Aquinas provided us with an example of how secular concerns can shape religious and spiritual impulses within the medieval context. Aquinas lived, learned and labored in the midst of two powerful forces—the sacred and the secular. He chose to integrate them and use these forces in a creative tension. The postmodern world is experiencing the integration of the sacred and the secular through the religious and spiritual leadership of Pope Francis. The lived experience of Pope Francis as a current religious leader can help us to elucidate how chaplains can shape the experience of religious and spiritual concerns. The religious concerns and the spiritual practices of Pope
Francis (2013) illustrate in our historical moment what Bonhoeffer’s and Gutierrez’s thought looks like in practice. Higher education chaplains embody and reflect these theological influences as they go about their work in a postsecular age.
238 Science.
John, the retired chaplain, cultivated a deep appreciation of science. This is an important postsecular impulse for a higher education chaplain. Chaplaincy within the context of a postsecular age requires a renewed perspective on religion and spirituality.
The reformulation of religion and spirituality in a postsecular age requires a multifaith perspective and a commitment to an interdisciplinary methodology. One way to frame the current discussion is to understand the postsecular impulse as a “unification of ideal values that is essentially imaginative in origin” (Dewey, 2013, p. 40). Dewey articulated an understanding of the religious impulse as an event which fills experiential meaning with a depth of purpose while simultaneously advocating a religious impulse emptied of cognitive claims. Dewey’s foundational insight was that religion is transformative only if it does not espouse competitive cognitive claims, and this perspective tracks well with the intellectual assumption that religion should not contend with scientific claims.
This is of particular interest, given Pope Francis’ (2015) encyclical on climate change. Dewey’s claim profoundly resonates with the lived experience of higher education chaplains. However their work is constantly being reexamined in light of our mostly secular educational systems. Religion and higher education have largely parted ways since Dewey’s analysis in the 1930s (Marsden, 1994). However the question remains: how are we to understand a kind of religion that is compatible with science, service-oriented, and finely tuned to the secular problems of our time? Chaplains intuitively know that spirituality has resurfaced as a highly influential component of a student’s experience while in college (Astin et al., 2005). Also, the chaplain asks, “how are we to incorporate religion and spirituality into the existing conversations of 239 improving the educational experience of our students?” The chaplains studied here represent a critically engaged, highly adaptive and multidisciplinary project that promotes holistic learning in the present postsecular age.
Transformative leadership.
As previously mentioned, religion is undergoing rapid and complex change.
Chaplains work in the midst of this rapid and complex change. There are more students in higher education today than ever before who do not affiliate themselves with a particular religious tradition (Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 2012). How are we able to navigate and understand this change? Once again, in this situation, an understanding of chaplaincy based on Gutierrez’s worldliness and Bonhoeffer’s religionless concern help us both navigate and understand where religion is headed in the
21st century. What do the values of a postsecular chaplaincy look like in a modern religious leader? Where can we see a concrete example of postsecular understanding of religion and practices hospitality and a renewed praxis of care and concern for the world?
A timely example of what is called postsecular religion is best demonstrated in the
Roman Catholic Church’s Argentinian Pope.
Chaplaincy, in a modest sense, resembles in miniature, the religious leadership of
Pope Francis. Pope Francis has led the 1.2 billion member Catholic Church into a renewed understanding and praxis of religion in the postmodern age. Religion in the postmodern age has experienced an ideological revival (Habermas, 2001). It remains to be seen whether this ideological revival will entice 18-25 year olds to participate in institutional religion. However Pope Francis’ arrival on the scene radically transformed the image of the papacy. For instance, Pope Francis chose to reside in modest 240 accommodations, not the papal apartments. He washed the feet of a Muslim woman who was incarcerated in an Italian jail on Maundy Thursday. He allowed a child to sit on the papal throne while he finished a weekly homily. He kissed a man with hideous boils all over his face; and he has chosen to forgo riding in the “pope-mobile” in favor of a Ford
Focus.
These acts may be calculated or they may be authentic; however, more than likely they are a calculated authenticity that seeks to combine religious faith with concern for the world. Postsecular religion can play a transformative role in 21st century life because it acknowledges and seeks to practice compassion (Fox, 2006). Pope Francis (2013) said,
“How I would love a Church that is poor and for the poor” (p. 21). This insight boldly speaks to an emerging postsecular theological paradigm that understands religion’s role in promoting and living out compassion in the 21st century. The chaplains featured in this study appear to be mirroring many of the sensibilities and habits of the current Pope.
Given that the actions and decisions undertaken by Pope Francis are emblematic of an emerging postsecular theological vision, the question remains what are the larger implications of practicing and discussing religion in a larger pluralistic and democratic society. Rice (2008) a senior scholar for the Association of American Colleges and
Universities, suggests that more learning and conversation about religious diversity is required if we are to build a flourishing democratic society for the next century.
Chaplains are the strongest advocates for religious diversity. Such an insight is contrary to earlier suggestions that discussing religion in higher education is a “conversation stopper” (Rorty, 1999). As demonstrated by Pope Francis and the chaplains studied here, religious and spiritual authenticity is no longer solely defined by holding onto rigid and 241 exclusive belief systems in the face of pluralism. Rather, the role of religion in a diverse and democratic society is to promote a clarity of purpose—a purpose that calls us to embrace the world we live in and then seek to transform it.
Chaplains intuitively understand postsecular religion, because it is a religion grounded in a kind of relevance, defined by worldliness—such a praxis cannot be unreflectively dismissed by secularist thinkers in higher education. Stout (2008) points out, “not all religious people are theocrats. Why, then, should we take religion as such to pose a threat to democracy” (p. 234)? Postsecular religion is transformative because it can navigate the diversity and pluralism present in a democratic society. Chaplains can undoubtedly aid this much-needed process of understanding and charitably interpreting pluralism. Chriss (1993) wisely distinguishes between conservative Evangelicalism, which in many cases seeks to subvert democracy, and religious communities that accept pluralism and diversity. The postsecular religious change demonstrated in Pope Francis’ shift from an “other-worldly” focused praxis to a “this-worldly” praxis is part of a larger paradigm shift in religious thought that has been going on for the past 50 years.
Chaplains have been a part of this shift since the 1960s.
It should be no surprise that Gutierrez influenced Pope Francis. In fact the
Peruvian Roman Catholic theologian Gustavo Gutierrez articulated a bold new theological vision by describing secularization not as a threat to religion but rather a corrective lens. Pope Francis appears to have peered through this corrective lens. In any case, Bonhoeffer’s religionless concern helps frame the pragmatic and deeply spiritual practices of Pope Francis’s religious leadership in the 21st century. These are the deep currents swirling in our present postsecular age and chaplains appear to be well 242 positioned to help students navigate this change. As demonstrated by Pope Francis,
Paulo Freire, Daisaku Ikeda, Tsunesaburo Makiguchi, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Gustavo
Gutierrez, Edmund O’Sullivan and the chaplains studied here, the way forward is a postsecular theology that is shared, mutually affirming, spiritually diverse and multi- religious. These various scholars and the higher education chaplains in this research, point us towards a postsecular theological understanding of transformative education.
Chaplains realize that spirituality can play a pivotal role in transformation. This recognition provides a wonderful opportunity for chaplains to practice transformative leadership. As previously stated, spirituality is loosely defined as a dimension of a student’s inner life (Astin et al., 2005). Because of the emphasis placed on the inner life, spirituality is often viewed through the lens of a student’s meaning and purpose
(Chickering et al., 2006). These definitions continue to explore the role spirituality plays in higher education. However there appears to be a movement in higher education today that seeks a deeper and broader utilization of spirituality (Astin et. al., 2005).
Spirituality is also tied to an emerging postsecular commitment to creating meaning and purpose within a larger community. Chaplains want to help create a spiritual community.
Ellen gathers the community together for spiritual reflection.
Cora provides the vision and implementation of an interfaith ministry. These events help us frame how chaplaincy cares for the community. Chaplains understand spirituality as a robust dimension of care and concern for the world. Waggoner (2011) writes, “In colleges and universities, believers abandoned religion, sought to reconcile their beliefs with ideas emerging from science and philosophy, or compartmentalized their personal beliefs and their academic work” (p. 2). Indeed, without a postsecular 243 understanding of spirituality there is potential for a disconnected kind of learning—a learning that occurs in a vacuum without values or concerns. Chaplains embrace the necessary values to help students feel connected to their education.
Ikeda (2010) describes one of the primary tenets of Soka education as the recognition that “a university’s mission is not to produce people of authority, but people of true ability, intelligence and conviction who will dedicate themselves to the good of the people” (p. 217). In order to discern the good of the people, students will require a greater awareness of self and the larger world. Take the case of Hick (1989), who sees the primary interpretation of religion as the movement from a self-centered reality to a reality-centered perspective. Thus, spirituality within a postsecular age must clearly be understood as an individual and communal response to greater levels of awareness. How does our current postsecular age interact with spirituality in a higher education setting?
The primary way it can interact is through the work of chaplaincy.
There is no denying that students bring spiritual questions to campus (Astin et. al.,
2005). Spiritual questions and ways of approaching knowledge seem to be resurfacing in higher education (Martin, 2005). Furthermore, beyond the walls of the academy is a world where religious and spiritual commitments continue to shape world politics both negatively and positively (Berger, 1993). Therefore, it would seem our postsecular age invites us to explore anew the relationship between spirituality and the academy by using spirituality as one part of a larger critical pedagogy. Breaking the silence of faith and spirituality in higher education is an important way to bring about transformative learning
(Forester-Smith, 2013). 244 The work of chaplaincy represents a possibility in the 21st century, a possibility for our higher education institutions to embrace a renewed understanding of religion and spirituality. A religious or spiritual reality is conceived individually or communally; regardless, both conceptions invite diverse learners to change for the better. The work of chaplaincy in our present age has at least something to do with religious experience and the cohesive formation of shared values. Our current postsecular moment, if Habermas is to be believed, means that spiritual and religious pluralism in the West flows out of our secular rights and freedoms. Because of this, educators have a unique opportunity to welcome hospitably competing religious worldviews into the classroom, not as a way to promote religion but rather as a way to fulfill our democratic responsibility of critical inquiry. The transformation of critical inquiry into critical empathy may, in fact, be the most important movement in our current social and political climate.
Chaplaincy invites learners to express religionless concern based on deeply held tenets of faith. I experienced this first hand when a student challenged my faith. I learned the importance of telling my faith story and inviting others to do the same. The work of chaplaincy helps learners to thrive in climate of worldliness where problems and issues are named because they affect the entire community. Chaplains provide the necessary mentoring to expand a student’s worldview. The chaplain wants to situate a student’s faith within a pluralistic and diverse democracy. Chaplaincy does not work to make religion gain power and privilege within an institution. In fact, for the avowed secularist, the worldview advocated by the chaplains studied here adapts well to Dewey’s
(2013) insight that religion is transformative when it neither makes cognitive claims nor contends with science. 245 For the pragmatist, a chaplaincy within a higher education context promotes a biocentric view of reality as advocated by O’Sullivan (1999) and helps us to understand the utility and compatibility of a religious concerns and spiritual practices grounded in the problems of planet earth. For those who yearn for religion to be welcomed hospitably into our higher education institutions, chaplaincy enables us to embrace the reemergence of religion and spirituality in the postmodern. This embrace is a way to grapple with highly complex problems—religion becomes relevant in a way that it has not been in the higher educational scene for some time now (Dallmayr, 2008; Habermas, 2001).
Discussions surrounding the lived experience of chaplaincy and the role they play in our institution must engender the growth and development of students. The chaplains studied here advocate for a concern and care for the self and the world; hence, the best way to understand religion and spirituality in higher education is to practice hospitality
(Bennett, 2003; Dewey, 2013; Nouwen, 1966). The transformative character of higher education chaplaincy grounds religion and spirituality within a communal praxis framework.
In addition, our current postsecular age is one where religious concerns become spiritual practices, and those spiritual practices reemerge on campuses across the United
States as a transformative praxis of care and concern for the world. Lastly, chaplains are embodying these practices in robust and transformative ways in order to help students discover a religious and spiritual reality on their 21st century campus. The theme of care, practiced and embodied by each chaplain across each case is a visible reminder of a durable value, a value of care that provides a much-needed cohesive ethic within our current postsecular age. 246 Chaplaincy and Wisdom
Wisdom emerges in the care and concern chaplains have for their academic communities. Wisdom is a word that was often associated with higher education, but it lost its traction in the previous secular age. Given the present postsecular age, wisdom reemerges as a practical expression of knowledge. Wisdom is the knowledge of living— it has a practical function, rooted in a theoretical body of knowledge. Various religious traditions claim wisdom as an expression of divine revelation. For our purposes here, wisdom is the knowledge that thrives in a religious and spiritual environment.
Cora had a practical wisdom. She embodied an ethic of honor and hospitality within her interfaith context at the College of Wooster. Hospitality is one of the most ancient and durable practices of wisdom. Learning the rhythms of hospitality and honor are the best way to invite wisdom into our current postsecular moment. In many ways, the central purpose of the higher education chaplain is to offer a holistic education built on care and concern that emphasizes a renewed praxis of religion and spirituality. The theoretical framework appears to be one that is grounded in bearing witness to the lived concerns of students. Given that this concern manifests itself as a discourse on spirituality that is usually grounded in a particular religious tradition with various experiential implications, the work of chaplaincy requires an ethical component.
The ethical component could be described as the work of chaplaincy as a way to create a community of learners bound together by mutual care and concern. Higher education scholars Speck and Hoppe (2005) see spirituality as a pivotal resource in any institution’s desire to create a “legitimate notion of community” (p. 284). A learning community is bound together by outward concerns that seek to live out a renewed 247 commitment to wisdom (Fox, 2006). Wisdom, an ancient word with resonance in both religion and philosophy, is a helpful word to ponder in the midst of this postsecular age.
Wisdom is the communal sorting out of meaning, meaning that has been handed down, adapted and refined in each successive generation.
Wisdom implies the voice of the past wedded to the present moment. The chaplain seeks to sort through wisdom in his or her work. Each conversation with a student, each presentation on vocation, every greeting extended to the incoming freshman class is an opportunity for the chaplain to extend wisdom. The chaplain is not wise per se or some “sage on the stage”—rather, the chaplain seeks to remember the ancient conversations that still resonate now and pass them along. The kind of wisdom that typifies the work of the chaplain is best described by Frederick Nietzsche (1992)
The essential thing in ‘heaven and on earth’ seems to be, to say it once more, that
there should be long obedience over a long period of time and in a single
direction: given that, something always develops, and has developed, for whose
sake it is worthwhile to love on earth; for example, virtue, art, music, dance,
reason, spirituality—something transfiguring, subtle, mad and divine. (p. 291)
The recognition of the role that wisdom plays in higher education requires dialogue and it requires the inclusion of both sacred and secular voices, particularly voices that call for meaningful communal engagement when it comes to addressing the problems of this world. Speck and Hoppe (2005) ask an important question: “How can individual spirituality, which depends on personal preferences, give rise to any legitimate notion of community” (p. 284)? A community of holistic learners requires more than a sectarian religious voice or an interiorized spiritual voice—it requires a critically engaged 248 postsecular voice. Chopp (1997) describes the central context of discourse that seeks wisdom in our age as “located in small grass-roots communities” (p. 410). Within this context, the search for wisdom becomes more than personal enrichment or religious preference—it can potentially become a transformative holistic educational experience that is multifaith, grounded in problems of today, and able to create a community.
Sacred and the secular.
Wisdom is not the sole domain of the sacred or the secular. Wisdom resides in both of these realms. The chaplain is the person on campus who knows both sacred and secular wisdom. Ellen is a great example of this when she invites scientists, psychologists, and economists to lead the daily meditation in Appleton Chapel at Harvard
University. The data demonstrates, across all the cases, that the chaplain knows how to welcome the secular into the sacred, and vice versa. John welcomed science into his spirituality. Cora welcomed her secular understanding of feminism into her theological narrative. Ellen welcomed two disparate political and cultural groups into a space of dialogue. Higher education chaplaincy provides an orienting framework in the explication of religion and spirituality in the postmodern era. Creswell (2014) understands the use of extant literature as an orienting framework in the broader examination of a scholarly problem; interpreting the lived experience of chaplaincy through the lens of postsecular theory helps understand the vital role the chaplain plays in higher education.
The extending of care and concern to the other is the foundation of chaplaincy.
The idea of social justice guides the chaplain in creating a community in the midst of an often hostile world. Lastly, the concept of hospitality creates the space for meaningful 249 conversations and interactions to take place on campus. Hospitality is an important piece of wisdom for our postsecular moment. The chaplain practices academic hospitality
(Bennett, 2003). This is an important theme to explore, given the frequent secular hesitancy to include religious and spiritual concerns in the postmodern secular classroom.
Hospitality is a form of sacred and secular wisdom within the lived experience of chaplains.
As stated in chapter 2, Habermas (2001) argued that the primary function of religious faith in the postmodern era is to provide “clearly defined identities…and existential security” in an age of complex pluralistic forces (p. 6). The term postsecular was used by Habermas three weeks after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001
(Altinordu & Gorski , 2008). Habermas (Skidelsky, 2005) sees the term postsecular as a descriptor, one that has a practical function when it comes to understanding 21st century society’s relationship to religion. Habermas (2001) asserts that highly secularized societies in the West which exist in a postmodern landscape have been unable to propagate values in a cohesive manner. This failure leads to a kind of vigorous reassertion of religious and spiritual values that is sometimes unhealthy and sectarian.
This vigorous reassertion, noted by Habermas, heavily influences the discussion of religion and spirituality in early 21st century life. Postsecularism is, in some ways, about an undefined and not always readily apparent observation that religion and spirituality are creatively adapting to postmodernity (Dallmayr, 2008). Postsecular theory names the shifting cultural and academic landscape that affords chaplains a renewed relationship with education in the early 21st century. In order to understand why 250 postsecular theory is an important tool to interpret the lived experience of chaplaincy we need to look at theoretical conversation between Habermas and Dalferth.
Is there such a thing as a secular society? Has this secular society shifted in its understand of religion and spirituality in the past sixteen years? These are two questions that place us firmly within a lively debate, a debate that frames the lived experience of chaplaincy in two ways: the chaplain as a product of the secular and the chaplain as a product of the sacred. Dalferth (2009) challenges Habermas’ definition of a secular society. Once again, it is helpful to remember that Habermas’ (2001) promotes the notion that religion and spirituality are reemerging in the West due to a secular democratic society’s inability to form cohesive values. Dalferth (2009) define the term secular in such a way as to problematize Habermas’ assumption of the secular.
Habermas is describing a shift or trend in secular democracies that is in some way related to the re-emergence of religion and spirituality and this shift or trend is aptly named postsecular. Dalferth contends that Habermas has erroneously conceived the secular.
Dalferth (2009) defines the secular society as a process of “social differentiation” (p.
318).
Social differentiation assumes a social distinction between religious and non- religious spheres of life. This differentiation is understood as people choosing to engage in religious activities or not, whereas they must engage in certain non-religious ones
(politics, economic, and education). This accounts for the widespread but false belief that religion can decline, but non-religion cannot. (Dalferth, 2009, p. 319) Dalferth is arguing that no recognizable shift can occur from a religious sphere to a non-religious sphere (or vice versa) because in the West there is no way of holding onto social 251 differentiation when it comes to religious and non-religious activities. Dalferth (2009) lifts up many secular habits as embodying religious and spiritual significance, “sacred music performed in concert halls…studying a theological idea in a secular document…visiting a museum…or relaxing at the beach” (p. 319). Dalferth (2009) problematizes Habermas’ assumption that the reemergence of a kind of “relaxation of secular suspicion toward spiritual questions” is somehow due to the reemergence of religion but rather a modern secular societies has and will continue to safeguard religious freedom (p. 320).
The safeguarding of religious freedom is an essential part of a secular society
(Dalferth, 2009). In essence, the thrust of Dalferth’s critique of Habermas is the recognition that a “postsecular” society would be a society that no longer safeguards religious freedom. Chaplaincy experiences the tension and the synthesis of sacred and secular impulses. The chaplain, as a religious professional, working on a higher education campus, admits that the boundary between the sacred and the secular is largely an artificial one. The chaplain seeks to safeguard religious freedom as a way to enhance a student’s holistic education.
The work of chaplaincy is the lived experience of seeing the acquisition of knowledge as both a sacred and secular enterprise. The sacred and secular tensions present in higher education is not a problem for the higher education chaplain to resolve.
It is the preservation and the integrity of each of these tensions that helps the chaplain to achieve the greater aim of a holistic education. The role of religion and spiritual serves both sacred and secular aims. As Craft (2011) suggests, students use religion as spirituality to achieve the secular aims of making sense out of tragedy, guiding out-of- 252 class leadership decisions, as well as picking a vocational pursuit. Chaplaincy, when it is effective is able to move between the sacred and the secular in highly fluid ways.
The lived experience of chaplaincy is one that occurs within a larger understanding of how religion and spirituality manifest itself on a secular campus.
Dalferth’s critique nuances the meta-narrative that surrounds postsecular theory.
However, what is lacking in Dalferth’s account that Habermas is so generously able to provide is a reasoned account of how a secular society expresses religious concerns and spiritual practices in a way that seems remarkably congruent with democratic freedoms of expression. The higher education chaplain, laboring in the United States, is part of a larger democratic context.
The overall framework best suited to make sense of the work of chaplaincy is one that understands the rigid limitations of emphasizing a particular religious tradition over and against other religious traditions. The chaplains studied here invite their students to understand Christianity as a religion that “will not be reduced to a private spiritual dimension” (Riegel & Ziebertz, 2009, p. 294). The chaplain extends care and concern to each, regardless of religious or secular commitments. The extension of care and concern is a communal habit, a treasured movement in a society that often accepts division as inevitable. The work of chaplaincy seeks to establish a healthy praxis among religious traditions as well as promoting mutual respect between religion and secular commitments.
Chaplaincy and resistance.
Wisdom knows when to resist the unhealthy habits embedded within our culture.
The higher education chaplain wants to encourage students to resist apathy and to engage 253 courageously the pressing problems of planet Earth. The chaplains studied here care deeply. Cora asked her colleague to resist the dangerous notion that their worth is defined by their professional success. Ellen resisted the urge not to address the Israeli and Palestinian issue with her Jewish and Muslim students. The robust care they exhibit is wide and emergent throughout their work. Once again, a detailed look at Bonhoeffer and Gutierrez helps us to theoretically situate the lived experience of the higher education chaplain with our current postsecular age. Bonhoeffer entered deeply into the problems and struggles of his age. Bonhoeffer’s spiritual praxis was a resistance to Nazism.
Gustavo Gutierrez’s theology challenges a detached and otherworldly spirituality by calling into question oppressive economic structures.
The chaplain is an individual on campus who has her eye on the problems of this world. There is a tradition within higher education as seeing the chaplain as a rabble- rouser for a host of causes (Forster-Smith, 2013). Although this image is mostly associated with the Baby Boomer generation during the turbulent Vietnam Era within higher education (Oliver, 2013). Oliver (2013) uses the famous Yale chaplain William
Sloan Coffin as an example of spiritual resistance to war and racism in the 1960s. Such movements of resistance find their locus in the 20th century habits in many religious thinkers, but the work of chaplaincy as a form of spiritual resistance can be seen primarily in Gutierrez and Bonhoeffer.
Gutierrez’s spiritual praxis was a resistance to the dehumanizing structures of poverty. One way to understand the spiritual praxis of Gutierrez is to link it to other social justice theorists in education, such as O’Sullivan. O’Sullivan’s (1999) concept of an Ecozoic vision of education asks us to acknowledge the deep “wounding of our world 254 and the tearing of the very fabric of life” (p. 235). Acknowledging our wounded world transcends religious boundaries. O’Sullivan sees education as occurring within a precarious context—namely a planetary crisis. Bonhoeffer and Gutierrez see religion as unfolding within a precarious context as well—political and economic crisis. O’Sullivan is not content to offer an intellectual criticism of the forces that contribute to this planetary crisis; he asks us to understand human economic and social development as a way to restore a distributive balance between humanity and the planet.
Bonhoeffer was not content to offer a theological critique of the ills of the Third
Reich, but actively opposed Nazi oppression (Marsh, 1997). Ikeda, as a Buddhist, shares more than ideological commitments in the face of violence; rather, it is his rich praxis of compassion that engages the problems of the world. Similarly, Gutierrez (1973) was quick to point out the differences between traditional first-world ideologies that do not properly understand the plight of the global poor. Chaplaincy, drawing the spiritual resources of resistance, seeks to resist seeing religion as a benign force or to understand spirituality as timid in the face of oppression.
Chaplaincy, when it is at its best, understands learning in the 21st century as enhanced when students are encouraged to extend transformative care and concern to the world. O’Sullivan’s (1999) Ecozoic vision of education requires a commitment to the holistic quality of life for both the planet and the learner. Gutierrez’s vision of theology requires a commitment to the liberation of the poor (Chopp, 1997). A central problem facing higher education today is the notion that religion and spirituality are not legitimate concerns when it comes to bringing about positive change. Given this problem, higher education’s hesitancy to engage theology is inadvertently hampering students who 255 possess a transformative theological praxis. Chaplains express concerns that actively seek to care for the world. Higher education is afforded a new opportunity to explore the problem of inequality in light of the emerging paradigm of postsecularism. Often, the work of chaplaincy is unreflectively interpreted as private, religious and other-worldly focused. By contrast, the primary work of chaplaincy is communal, not tied to a specific religion and is this-worldly focused.
The work of chaplaincy which allows theological commitments to play a role in preparing students to engage the problems of this world with positive action secures a brighter future for higher education in the 21st century. The postsecular age, as an emerging paradigm, offers a new relationship between higher education and chaplaincy
(Waggoner, 2011). Chaplaincy can shape institutional practice with a kind of learning that welcomes both the heart and the mind. The education of the heart is central to Fox’s
(2006) understanding of transformative learning. The chaplain as a religious profession seeks to educate the heart for transformative purposes. An example of higher education entering into a sustained dialogue with religious practice would be the Ikeda Center for
Peace, Learning and Dialogue (formerly the Boston Research Center for the 21st
Century). Speaking at the Ikeda Center, Hickman (2002) offers a compelling connection between John Dewey’s understanding of democracy and the Buddhist practice of Soka
(Kyoiku) Gakkai founding President and educator, Tsunesaburo Makiguchi. This is an important connection to make due to Strand’s (2014) understanding of Soka Gakkai as a transformative practice that has fostered a religion for the people, not people for the religion, which has been the norm. 256 The work of chaplains empower us to see the problems of this world as deep cries for help and opportunities for theoretical discussions. Chaplains promote a kind of transformative learning, much like theories of O’Sullivan (1999), which openly acknowledges the ecological crisis facing the planet. Chaplains challenge any notion of spirituality that is inadequately conceived as inner-meaning and purpose alone and, consequently, calls into question any notion of religion wrapped up in its own doctrinal concerns. From a transformative learning perspective, chaplaincy creates a context and a practice for that which is outside the inner-self—i.e. the world, which becomes the primary object of care and concern.
Religion and spirituality.
Seeing religion and spiritual as integrated entities is a wise observation for our current postsecular age. Chaplains see wisdom in both inner development and outer practices. Chaplaincy is about beliefs and praxis. Without incorporating the insights of a postsecular age, spirituality is loosely defined as a dimension of a student’s inner life
(Astin et al., 2005). Chaplains understand spirituality as the conflagration of the inner life and outer life of a student. Meaning and purpose are deeply wedded to the inner life of a student (Daloz-Parks, 2011). Higher education research on spirituality tends to emphasize meaning and purpose and therefore emphasizes the inner life of a student
(Astin, Astin, & Lindholm, 2011). Consequently, spirituality is often viewed through the lens of a student’s meaning and purpose at the expense of the outer life of a student
(Chickering, Dalton, & Stamm, 2006). The outer life is the collective action and response to problems of this world (Francis, 2015). Chaplains understand religion as more than a conduit for a student’s meaning and purpose and thus more than a part of the 257 inner life. Religion is not synonymous with spirituality; they are related but they are not to be unreflectively lumped together (Stamm, 2006). Given Durkheim’s (2008) definition of religion, we see two predominant definitions of spirituality circulating in higher education today. The primary definition is the spiritual as an inner reality and that spirituality is linked to meaning and purpose, namely, how we understand a chaplain’s primary role in a postsecular age. Tillich (1951) describes “the first formal criteria of theology” as that which “concerns us ultimately” (p. 12). Because chaplains seek to help students examine concerns that surpass individual concerns, our current postsecular age invites a robust understanding of religion and spirituality.
Given the apparent tension between Durkheim’s definition of religion as
“eminently collective” and spirituality, which is presently defined as “preeminently individual” within higher education circles, how are we to understand the work of chaplaincy in a postsecular age? Chaplains seek to examine concerns that manifest themselves as concerns that transcend particular religious institutions and varied secular impulses; therefore, chaplains can potentially offer a collective response with transformative possibilities.
Religion can play a valuable role in higher education today. Chaplains are practitioners of religion within a postsecular context. How can religion positively affect students in today’s context? One example is Poe (2014), who in a recent article from The
Atlantic suggests that universities are failing their students. The failure has nothing to do with not achieving a passing grade for a course; rather, Poe argues that these institutions have neglected to teach their undergraduate students how to live. Poe advocates for teaching the practice of religion. Chaplains, as practical theologians, approach religion 258 primarily through embodied practices. Chaplains know that praxis involves both reflection and action; in fact, praxis has been described as the tension between reflection and action (Brown, 1993). Praxis is needed when it comes to understanding how religion and spirituality can productively function in the current higher education classroom.
Chaplains help students to orient themselves to principles and habits that can affect their lives and within their academic environments.
Poe (2014) is not advocating for institutions to endorse religious beliefs or for students to accept religious beliefs; rather, Poe is encouraging students to inhabit certain spiritual practices that are associated with various religious traditions. Poe (2014) frames the issue in this way: “American higher education has, however, one glaring deficiency: it does not teach undergraduates how to live” (p. 9). The solution Poe offers is one that takes seriously how various spiritual practices from a host of religious traditions can afford students a renewed praxis of care and concern for both self and world. Poe encourages students to study theology regardless of whether they believe in
God. The emerging phenomena of engaging in religious practices without confessing certain beliefs are a vital part of the work of chaplaincy within a postsecular age.
Poe (2014) senses the need for a new practice of religion on campus because he recognizes that the practice of religion enhances the daily habits and practices of students.
As Small (2015) points out, the integration of religion, spirituality, and faith in the classroom can be as simple as exploring the various definitions of these concepts in classroom discussions. A “religionless Christianity” such as Bonhoeffer (1971) advocated in the 1940s is of particular interest to chaplains at the beginning of the 21st century (p
78). Chaplains help students to religion, spirituality, and faith—so that the larger 259 community can proclaim a “transforming praxis in personal and social life” (Migliore,
1991, p. 121). While Bonhoeffer (1971) asked the chilling question, “Are we still of any use”, Poe is also wrestling with that timeless question in his own way and in his own context (p. 17).
Chaplains seek a vitality, not a utility, when it comes to a healthy expression of religion on campuses today. As a professor at a large research institution, Poe (2014) says that most of his colleagues have a three-tiered structure as academics: research, teaching, and service. Most—if not all—of his colleagues prefer the research part of their jobs. Next in line would be teaching, although, with graduate assistants and a “two-two” load, Poe’s interactions with undergraduate students, were limited. Lastly, as Poe suggests, is the universally-loathed facet of service. Poe, in his half-hearted attempt to fulfill his service obligation, decided to accept a position as director of academic advising at his institution.
In this capacity, Poe (2014) had hundreds of in-depth conversations with undergraduates. What he learned about the undergraduates at his university was bewildering. Students had issues with alcohol, drugs, debt and depression. Chaplains are allies in helping their institution care for their students and their struggles. As the research suggest, Chaplains are well-equipped to enter into the pain and struggles of students. Moreover, as Subbiondo (2011) points out, spiritual growth in students can improve academic performance and enhance the overall college experience. Chaplains offer a praxis of concern, a concern that addresses the core problems facing students by offering a renewed relationship with the self and the world. This new relationship is built on a praxis of care and concern for the world while anchoring the student in formative 260 religionless practices of spirituality. Chaplains understand the examination of theological praxis as a way to enhance education and promote the deepening of concern for the self and the world, which leads the way on the road to a new understanding of religion and spirituality in our postsecular age.
Conclusion
The data gleaned from the three case studies suggest that the lived experience of the higher education chaplain in our current postsecular age reveals a robust form of care.
This care is situationally unique and However broadly embodied across the cases. Care manifests itself in the daily tasks associated with chaplaincy: standing next to those who grieve, encouraging a dialogue between those separated by religion and politics, teaching theology, leading a prayer, or addressing parents during orientation. The work of chaplaincy is a broad and multivalued task of care. The expression of this care takes on a particular significance in our postsecular age. A consequence of secularism is the loss of shared values. Cohesive values embodied by a community and practiced across multiple stakeholders is an indication of a thriving academic community. Chaplains help to create a cohesive set of institutional and individual values that help students learn.
The primary value that emerges from the care a chaplain embodies on campus is that of hospitality. Hospitality is an important cohesive value for our current moment.
Welcoming spirituality and religion into the fabric of academic life is not about exclusivity or favoritism. The wisdom of hospitality is one that demonstrates a transformative potential. Chaplains practice a model of religious leadership based on embracing the secular, resisting fragmented cultural norms and seeking communal transformation. In conclusion, the work of chaplaincy, expresses a robust desire to care. 261 The chaplain as a religious leader on campus practices a transformative, hospitable and wise care for the other.
Implications
The study above has a couple of important implications for higher education within this particular postsecular moment. The first of which is how important it is to practice hospitality in the midst of religious differences. A commitment on the part of a higher education institution to foster care in such a way among its many and varied members creates the space for hospitality to evolve and flourish. Hospitality is more than mere tolerance it is a genuine ethic of care as chaplains invite students to name and struggle against the “insistent individualism” in the higher education classroom of today.
The study painted a complex picture of how religion, spirituality and culture are interacting on college campuses today. By using the theoretical lens of postsecularism, the research suggested some ways that religion and spirituality could enhance a secular education without being disruptive to the diversity and pluralism we have come to value in a democratic society.
Through a robust understanding of care, the role of chaplaincy can enhance the lives of students. Another important implication is the gentle understanding that large reams of longitudinal data cannot uncover the lived experiences behind the student who craves meaning and the chaplain that is tasked with caring for this need. The lived experience of chaplains, explored here, in a qualitative and reflexive way, may in fact help institutions to consider allocating their resources differently.
Lastly, in a secular mode, religion and higher education fear one another. A relationship infused with fear plays a debilitating role in in higher education today. 262 Postsecularism gives us the scholarly tools to look behind the entrenched fears and to see the value of spiritual and religious quests in the lives of students. Such quests can help students succeed in the classroom and to become more caring global citizens. Through the examination of care above, it is my hope that the confrontational anxiety between the sacred and the secular can be lessened. The lessening of fear and mistrust creates a climate of care. We saw such a moment when one Jewish student named her irrational and unhelpful fear of Muslims right in the middle of one of the most prestigious classrooms in America. That event of raw and honest vulnerability was mutually reciprocated when the Muslim student was able to admit her unreflective distrust of Jews.
These are the true implications of care. It my hope that such care is embodied deliberately, flourishingly, and consistently in our higher education classrooms.
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282 Appendix A: Consent Form
Example of an Ohio University Consent Form
Adult Consent Form With Signature
Title of Research: The Higher Education Chaplain within a Post-Secular Context: A
Case Study of Providing a Religious and Spiritual Reality on a 21st Century Campus
Researcher: William E. Mullins
You are being asked to participate in research. For you to be able to decide whether you want to participate in this project, you should understand what the project is about, as well as the possible risks and benefits in order to make an informed decision. This process is known as informed consent. This form describes the purpose, procedures, possible benefits, and risks. It also explains how your personal information will be used and protected. Once you have read this form and your questions about the study are answered, you will be asked to sign it. This will allow your participation in this study.
You will receive a copy of this document to take with you.
Explanation of Study: The purpose of this study is to examine how higher education chaplains view and address their work in a postsecular age.
This study is being done because: aside from two studies conducted more than 50 years ago which focused on campus ministries rather than higher education chaplains, little research has been conducted on the work of the chaplain in what is described as a postsecular age. Therefore the goal of this study is to offer recommendations for higher education chaplains on how they can facilitate the spiritual and religious dimension of their campus within the current postsecular landscape that enhances the educational missions of their institutions. 283 If you agree to participate, you will be asked to engage in one site visit as your institution over a two day period. In advance of the site visit you will be asked to gather any documents such as reports, budgets and or assessments of chaplain spiritual and religious ministry plans that will help the researcher. These documents will part of an initial site preparation plan. Examples of the documents suggested are public meeting notes, personal notes, or any other relevant documents that would aid the researcher in understanding the work of the chaplain at your institution. Next will be two site observations at your institution. Particularly of interest will be events that demonstrate the religious and spiritual dimensions of a chaplain’s work: worship services, service project, a lecture, a visit to a group of students or administrative meetings with staff. The areas to be observed will be coordinated with you in advance of the visit.
You should not participate in this study if you do not want the name of your institution or your name as a higher education revealed as being a part of this study.
Your participation in the study will last for two days.
Risks and Discomforts: no risks or discomforts are anticipated in this study except for recounting and/or reflecting on past experiences within the work of the chaplaincy which may produce vivid or lasting emotions.
Benefits: This study is important to society because it provides a clearer picture of the valuable and important work of the higher education chaplain. Individually, you may benefit from a structured reflection on the life and work of your chaplaincy within a specific institutional and cultural moment.
Confidentiality and Records: Your study information will be kept confidential by the researcher at all times. The data will be secured on a password protected computer and 284 kept in a locked office in not occupied by the researcher. Additionally, while every effort will be made to keep your study-related information confidential, there may be circumstances where this information must be shared with:
- 149 - Revision date: August 14, 2015
* Federal agencies, for example the Office of Human Research Protections, whose responsibility is to protect human subjects in research;
* Representatives of Ohio University (OU), including the Institutional Review
Board, a committee that oversees the research at OU;
Compensation: No compensation will be provided.
Contact Information
If you have any questions regarding this study, please contact the investigator
[William E. Mullins, [email protected], (740)826-8120] or the advisor [Dr. Pete
Mather, [email protected], (740) 594-47754. If you have any questions regarding your rights as a research participant, please contact Dr. Chris Hayhow, Director of Research
Compliance, Ohio University, (740)593-0664 or [email protected].
By signing below, you are agreeing that:
• you have read this consent form (or it has been read to you) and have been given the opportunity to ask questions and have them answered;
• you have been informed of potential risks and they have been explained to your satisfaction;
• you understand Ohio University has no funds set aside for any injuries you might receive as a result of participating in this study; 285 • you are 18 years of age or older;
• your participation in this research is completely voluntary;
• you may leave the study at any time; if you decide to stop participating in the study, there will be no penalty to you and you will not lose any benefits to which you are otherwise entitled.
Signature Date______
Printed Name______
286 Appendix B: Interview Protocol
Preparation for Interview:
Setting choose at the discretion of the interview subject though the setting should minimize distractions, provide comfort for researcher and subject and ideally be a location that is familiar to the subject, aka., a natural setting. The subject will be presented with consent form (all aspects of the consent form will be presented and explained—purpose, goal, risks and benefits, etc.) and a signature will be required for the interview to progress. A brief test will be performed on the Olympus recorder to demonstrate that is it working properly. During the first interview, the overall format of the interview will be explained as a two day, one-hour per session, two sessions per day for a total of four one hour sessions for this interview protocol.
Type of Interview: The interview will primary follow the “standardized open-ended interview” approach (Patton, 1990, pp. 116-117). The wording of the questions will be negotiated with the respondent so as to enhance the knowledge and the understanding of the question that is asked.
Purpose:
The purpose of interview is to understand and interpret a higher education chaplain’s concrete lived experience within the context of a postsecular environment. The interview seeks to uncover how chaplains choose to do their work. Specifically, the researcher wants to learn how chaplains interact with student and how chaplains make sense of their work in light of these interactions. Also, the interviews will focus on how chaplains attempt to improve their interactions with students and how they evaluate success within these student interactions. In addition to gaining a better understanding of student 287 interactions, the researcher wants to gain a better understanding of how chaplains, as religious professionals tasked with the spiritual development of students, navigate the conversation around faith/spirituality within a postsecular context. Lastly, the researcher hopes that the interview will uncover a deeper awareness of the day to day experiences of the higher education chaplain.
Preparation for Interview:
The interview takes place in the chaplain’s office. The chaplain’s office is the natural setting. As mentioned earlier in the purpose, the “concrete phenomenon under investigation” is the lived experience of the higher education chaplain (Vagle, 2014, p.
79). The chaplain will be presented with consent form (all aspects of the consent form will be presented and explained—purpose, goal, risks and benefits, etc.) and a signature will be required for the interview to progress. A brief test will be performed on the
Olympus recorder to demonstrate that is it working properly. During the first interview, the overall format of the interview will be explained as a two day, one-hour per session, two sessions per day for a total of four one hour sessions for this interview protocol.
Type of Interview: The interview will primary follow the “standardized open-ended interview” approach (Patton, 1990, p. 118). The data-gathering protocol will follow a phenomenological methodology (Vagle, 2014). The wording of the questions will be negotiated with the respondent so as to enhance the knowledge and the understanding of the question that is asked.
Interview: Day 1, Session 1, 1 hour
Goal: To better understand the experiences of a religious professional in higher education 288 Questions:
1) When you arrive in the office how do you start your day?
2) While on campus, what do you typically look forward to in a day, what don’t you look forward to?
3) Who do you interact with during your work day, describe them?
4) As a chaplain, what are the tasks that you engage in during your work day?
5) Describe a lasting experience from a day in which you worked as a chaplain?
Interview: Day 1, Session 2, 1 hour
Goal: The goal of this session is to better understand the chaplain and his or her interactions with students
1) Why do students come to see you?
2) How do you interact with the students that come to see you?
3) How do you know if your interaction with a student is successful?
4) What is your greatest frustration and deepest joy as a university chaplain when it comes to the students you have interacted with on campus and how have you responded to these interactions?
5) Describe a specific interaction with a student, what choices did you make in this interactions and why?
Interview: Day 2, Session 1, I hour
Goal: The goal of this session is to better understand the how the chaplain experiences faith and spirituality?
1) Do you have day to day tasks that you consider spiritual, what are they and why would you consider them spiritual? 289 2) How do you experience faith?
3) Describe a time you provided or offered religious and spiritual advice to a student?
4) How do students on the campus experience faith and spirituality?
5) What conflicts and tensions emerge when students experience faith and spirituality?
Interview: Day 2, Session 2, 1 hour
Goal of the Interview: the goal of the final session is to gain a better understanding of how the higher education chaplain makes sense of their work in a postsecular context.
1) How do you feel or what is your emotional reaction to the question: are you a spiritual person or a religious person? What is the first thing that comes to mind? Do you find value in this question, why or why not?
2) What day to day tasks that you preform contribute to institution’s educational mission?
3) What is the single most important challenge facing your college students who are enrolling as first year students in the fall, how are you addressing this challenge?
4) How do you experience communal rituals of deep meaning and purpose? When students approach you with a yearning for communal rituals of deep meaning and purpose how would you serve them as a chaplain?
5) What question did the researcher not ask that is essential to understanding your role as a university or college chaplain?
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