.
Awareness of religious trauma and abuse (RTA) associated with Christian communities continues to rise in the United States. Proposed recovery options for survivors of RTA include specific therapies, deconversion, or disidentification. Though chaplaincy studies often utilizes trauma theory in its research and praxis, the field has yet to address the needs of RTA survivors. Using theological and psychological scholarship, this paper proposes that institutional chaplains trained to integrate psychology and spirituality represent an important and underutilized resource for RTA survivors. Chaplains may accompany RTA survivors who wish to reconstruct their spiritual identity, image of God, and understanding of self. I provide a working definition of RTA and explore means of chaplaincy assessment and interventions. In conclusion, I suggest the field’s awareness of RTA will expose the need for spiritual care in new settings such as family and children’s services.
Preparing for and performing a Passover seder among Rikers’ Island’s Jewish community cracks open critical questions for pastoral care practitioners and academics. Guided by the Passover Haggadah, ‘Is This Night Different’ questions the pastoral theologies of Exodus and the lack of articulated pastoral theologies of carceral chaplaincy. Over a year of work with this community, and drawing on diverse genres of scholarship - from Africana Liberation Theologies to Theater of the Oppressed - the author develops a critical reflection on the liberative possibilities of embodied community ritual to center marginal voices, and provides compelling examples of this work. Simultaneously, the author uplifts deep ethical and theological concerns about the meaning and impact of working in the joint religious leadership-spiritual care role of carceral chaplaincy. ‘Is This Night Different?’ ends as it begins, with questions both practical and existential about a spiritual care provider’s role in a system built more for harm than for healing.
What is it to believe, and to do so sincerely?
This age-old question arose anew during the COVID 19 pandemic as religious accommodation requests (RAR) flooded American institutions. Such requests centered upon whether or not an individual had “sincerely held religious beliefs” (SHRB) that should provide exemption from a vaccine mandate or other like policy. In the United States Air Force (USAF), it is chaplains who are charged with evaluating RAR and making a determination as to the sincerity of the religious beliefs upon which they are founded, and similar procedures exist in other branches of the American military. Accordingly, this paper situates the military chaplain as a liminal agent between public interest and private conscience who is beholden to a rich and complicated history of American jurisprudence regarding SHRB. It proceeds by reviewing relevant case-law, exploring Kierkegaard's pseudonymous treatment of the concepts subjectivity, objectivity, religiosity, belief, and sincerity that undergird the chaplain's evaluatory task, and offers certain considerations for the history and future of religious freedom and spiritual care in the American military.