Teaching Genealogies of Spiritual Care

Teaching the history of spiritual care in the United States is a genealogical journey into white American Protestantism. This assumption of a shared lineage contributes to increasing calls for standardization in teaching methods and curricula for chaplaincy and clinical spiritual care. This assumption also hinders a liberative healing call for those outside of white America to embrace their collective memory and return to ancestral healing methodologies (Page and Woodland, 2023; Riley, 2023; Riley, 2024). This paper constructs a genealogical pedagogical methodology for spiritual care students to trace their lineages of spiritual care to and beyond white American Protestantism. This methodology, inspired by African American spiritual care practitioners inside African Diasporic Traditions, engages storytelling of rootedness inside traditions of practice; explores religious-ancestrally derived artifacts and technologies used in contemporary care practices; and investigates archives retaining relgious-ancestral insight.