The proportion of Americans who identify as Christian has declined from around 90% in the 1970s to around 60% today, according to a study by the Pew Research Center. Aside from migration patterns bringing in adherents of other faiths, such as Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism, more people of Christian heritage are now identifying as atheist, agnostic, or “nothing in particular.”
Changing religious dynamics will undoubtedly have an effect on the services of pastoral care, known as chaplaincy, in public institutions. In the public consciousness, a chaplain is a Christian priest, pastor, or lay minister attached to an institution, a hospital, school, or prison. However, with Christianity’s hold on American society waning and other faiths increasing, there have been chaplains of other religions emerging. With the religious ratio shifting radically, the assignment of religiously specific identified chaplains will become far too complex to sustain. This calls for generic chaplains, unidentified with a specific religion.
According to Rev. Dr. Raymond J. Lawrence, an Episcopal cleric, chaplain, author, and co-founder of the College of Pastoral Supervision and Psychotherapy (CPSP), the movement for professional and secular chaplaincy was started by Anton T. Boisen in the 1920s. Contrary to that era’s commonly accepted religious thinking, Boisen theorized an interconnection between religious experiences and certain forms of mental illness. He also advocated for chaplains to adopt the Freudian approach of healing and psychotherapy instead of evangelizing for their particular religion.
Since first becoming a pastor in the 1950s, Lawrence has witnessed how the profession of chaplaincy evolved through the years alongside changes in American religiosity. He argues that Christianity will no longer have preeminence in the US’ government and culture, such as the practice of swearing on a Bible in court.
Lawrence is currently writing a book, which he considers to be his magnum opus, that chronicles the history of pastoral care in the US, outlining how it can adapt to changing times where Christianity’s numbers are dwindling. Current trends suggest that Christianity will become a minority religion in the US within several years, and Lawrence argues that the country may already be there, given how many self-identified Christians have never set foot in a church nor have had an interest in the religion and its teachings.
Lawrence says that another thinker who has been greatly influential in the development of clinical pastoral care is Harry Stack Sullivan, a Neo-Freudian psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, whose theory revolves around how an individual’s personality can never be isolated from the complex interpersonal relationships in their life. While Freud says that therapy comes from an interpretative relationship, Sullivan says healing comes from interpersonal relationships. Thus, a hypothetical feral child who grew up in the jungle without human contact cannot be a human being, because they lack the relationships needed to develop what could be considered humanity.
Lawrence muses that Sullivan’s theories have fallen out of favor in American psychiatry, with no psychiatric institution named after him in the US. However, Sullivan’s interpersonal therapeutic approach would form a fundamental basis for religious leaders to educate themselves on how they should go forward with practicing chaplaincy and meeting people’s needs in an increasingly secular society.
According to Lawrence, following Freud and Sullivan’s theories, chaplaincy is evolving to become a form of lay psychotherapy, meaning that even lay people can practice it, not just ordained ministers or clergy of organized religions.
“The first thing chaplains need to do is incorporate interpersonal practice in public institutions on a humanistic level,” Lawrence says. “In other words, hospital chaplains who are now going around saying prayers for sick people and their families will have to drop everything religious, clean the slate, and focus on providing interpersonal support. The psychotherapy process is sharing with another person what you’re experiencing and receiving confirmation of one’s humanity, and that’s what takes place between chaplain and patient in some fashion. Psychotherapy happens either professionally or through a friend, perhaps over the backyard fence. Following Sullivan, therapy is about people relating to each other. If somebody’s honest, perceptive, caring, and skilled at giving feedback, then they can be therapeutic for other people.”
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