Chaplain Diversity

This office sign at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis reflects some tensions that hospital chaplaincy struggled with in the late twentieth century. The term 'spiritual care' reflects the wide array of patients that chaplains must work with, while the term 'pastoral education' reflects the field's Christian origins and pedagogy.

By 1955, some form of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) was offered in 117 hospitals and was supported by over 40 theological schools nationwide.¹ While the growth of CPE programs was substantial, the program remained quite exclusive. In 1946, the vast majority of chaplains who were CPE-trained were white, male Protestants, hardly reflecting the racial, gender, and religious diversity in the national population.² In 1954, a survey of hospital chaplains reported that 74% of chaplains working in hospitals were Protestant, 20% were Catholic, 5% were Jewish, and less than 1% came from any other tradition.³ The American Medical Association only recognized chaplains who were certified by their respective institutions and by the 1970s, Protestant and Catholic chaplaincy organizations were still only certifying their own chaplains, with the Protestant College of Chaplains rejecting the possibility of certifying Jewish chaplains. However, while certified chaplains remained almost exclusively Christian, it was becoming clear that changes in the nation's ethnic and religious diversity demanded certified chaplains beyond Christian, or even Jewish, traditions.⁴

By the 1990s, the national hospital chaplaincy took significant steps to address the diversity of beliefs and cultural traditions in the United States. Chaplains during this time began to move toward interfaith models and frame their work in terms of spirituality rather than religion.⁵ In 1988, when the Association of Mental Health Chaplains merged with the Protestant College of Chaplains, the decision was made to form a new organization called the Association of Professional Chaplains (APC). The APC lacked the religious affiliation that once served as a deterrent to non-Christian chaplains and helped diversify the traditions in which chaplains could be certified. The mission of the new APC was to serve as a "multi-faith association . . . to certify and serve its membership and to promote the professional chaplaincy."⁶

Hospitals have started to move away from terms such as 'pastoral care' or 'chaplaincy,' which point to the decidedly Christian origins of the profession, and have begun using 'spirituality and spiritual care services' instead.

Today, more and more chaplains are working in religiously diverse areas. Interfaith chaplaincy initiatives continue to develop around the country to accommodate a wide range of spiritual and religious backgrounds. Arguably one of the greatest indicators of the recent push for interfaith spiritual care is the renaming of the chaplaincy or pastoral care departments in hospitals. Hospitals have started to move away from terms such as 'pastoral care' or 'chaplaincy,' which point to the decidedly Christian origins of the profession, and have begun using 'spirituality and spiritual care services' instead.⁷