Innovations in Spiritual Care with Dr. Wendy Cadge & Dr. Michael Skaggs - S4E9 (Part 1 of 2)

What does innovation look like in the field of spiritual care, when fewer people belong to congregations, yet more people still need meaning, accompaniment, and spiritual support? My two guests today have been researching this question extensively.

Wendy Cadge is President of Bryn Mawr College and a nationally renowned sociologist of religion and spirituality. She is the founder of the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab, which brings together chaplains, educators, and social scientists to study and support spiritual care across public institutions and community settings. Her work focuses on religious diversity, spirituality, and the role of chaplaincy in contemporary society.

Michael Skaggs is Director of Programs and Co-Founder of the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab. A historian of American religion based at the University of Notre Dame, his research explores interfaith dialogue, maritime and port chaplaincy, American Catholicism, and emerging models of spiritual care. He oversees education, professional development, and public-facing initiatives for the Lab.

In this first part of our conversation, we discuss:

1. The origins and mission of the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab
2. Traditional and emerging models of chaplaincy and spiritual care
3. The blurry boundaries of chaplaincy
4. Real applied value of good social, scientific, and historical research
5. Public perceptions of chaplains versus how chaplains describe their work
6. Chaplaincy as religious leadership in the future
7. The role of chaplains in addressing loneliness and isolation
8. Spiritual care beyond formal religion
9. Community-based and workplace chaplaincy models

To learn more about Wendy and Michael’s work, you can find them at:

• Wendy Cadge: https://www.brynmawr.edu/inside/people/wendy-cadge 
• Michael Skaggs: https://chaplaincyinnovation.org/team/michael-skaggs-phd 

Links Mentioned:

• Chaplaincy Innovation Lab – https://chaplaincyinnovation.org/ 
• Templeton Religion Trust – https://templetonreligiontrust.org/ 

This season of the podcast is sponsored by Templeton Religion Trust.

Transcript

(preview)

Michael: But in many cases, chaplains are the only ones that are going to talk to these people and say, "How are things going? What can I do for you?" Very basic things, basic interactions, that most of us get to enjoy on a regular basis, on a daily basis. Chaplains go out to the margins, and they find the people that don't have those moments, and in that way, really recognize the humanity of those than most of us ignore.

Wendy: In launching the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab in 2018, what we aimed to do was gather chaplains, as well as social scientists and theological educators, to think about all of the ways—the more traditional or legacy ways and the newer, more creative or innovative ways—that this work is happening.

(intro)

Brandon: I'm Brandon Vaidyanathan, and this is Beauty at Work—the podcast that seeks to expand our understanding of beauty: what it is, how it works, and why it matters for the work we do. This season of the podcast is sponsored by Templeton Religion Trust and is focused on the beauty and burdens of innovation.

What role do chaplains or spiritual care providers play in our lives and institutions today? How do they help us navigate questions of meaning, purpose and belonging in a changing society, and how can innovation in chaplaincy and spiritual care respond to the loneliness epidemic and the evolving spiritual needs of our time? Answering these questions are my guests today, Wendy Cadge and Michael Skaggs.

Wendy Cadge is President of Bryn Mawr College. She's a nationally renowned sociologist of religion and spirituality and founder of the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab, which brings together chaplains, educators and social scientists into conversation around the work of spiritual care. She has published widely on religion and public institutions, religious diversity and spiritual care.

Michael Skaggs is Director of Programs and the Co-Founder of the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab, where he oversees education, professional development and networking initiatives and hosts the lab's public-facing work. Trained as a historian of American religion at the University of Notre Dame, Michael has written on interfaith dialog, maritime ministry and American Catholicism.

In our conversation, we talk about the origins of the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab, the surprising findings that their research has uncovered, and the innovative models of chaplaincy and spiritual care that are emerging in community settings today. We also explore how chaplains are addressing the loneliness epidemic and why public perceptions of chaplains often miss the mark.

Let's get started.

(interview)

Brandon: All right. Wendy and Michael, thanks for joining us on the podcast. Great to have you here.

Wendy: Good to be here.

Michael: Thank you for having us, Brandon.

Brandon: Sure. Well, I'm excited to learn more about your work and share it with our listeners and viewers. But before that, could you share a story of beauty, of an encounter with beauty, that you've had, maybe from your childhoods or your teenage years—something that comes to mind, something that lingers for you? Maybe, Wendy, we'll start with you.

Wendy: When I think about beauty, I think about being outside. I think about looking at the sky as a child, following stars and being curious about thunderstorms and clouds coming in down the street. I feel like that has continued now, where if you asked me about a moment of beauty yesterday, I would go to the same kind of motifs that's been really important to me.

Brandon: Wow, fantastic. Michael, do you have something that strikes you?

Michael: Well, it's hard to compete with nature.

Brandon: Yeah.

Michael: But, you know, I find myself really touched by those small moments of human interaction that don't take very much time, maybe even didn't take very much thought, but they get at the heart of what it means to connect with someone. I was reaching over just now because I have this little stone that says "peace." I had a colleague who was going through kind of a hard time, and I had sent a message of support. He mailed me this stone that says 'peace' in the mail and said, "That was the right thing at the right time, and I really appreciated that." And so just to have this, you know, it's a rock, but it means a lot. I have it in view all day. I think those kinds of moments of interaction are quite beautiful.

Brandon: Wow. Thank you. I wonder if in some way, that encounter with the stars, and even the recognition of the beauty of our human relationships, has shaped your social scientific vocations. Would you see a connection there between this sort of what has moved you, what you found beautiful, and then the research you do?

Wendy: I don't want to speak for Michael, but I think for me, an awareness of that which is ineffable and that which is most meaningful to me, to us, to people in general, has certainly shaped the kinds of questions I've asked as a scholar and the ways that I have worked, thankfully, with Michael, to try to apply that in the world, both in the classroom—but I think we're going to talk today mostly about the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab—so in the work that others do to support those very questions in a day to day.

Michael: You know, I'm a historian by training. I'm used to digging around in dusty archives, and I always love those little moments of awe when you come across something very vulnerable in correspondence, or a difficult decision that had to be taken, or some tragedy that somebody made note of, or whatever. These are things that most people will never see. And I feel sort of honored that I am able to come across these things in a lot of ways that has shaped my outlook and work as a historian, in that it's those kinds of very human things that interest me. I'm not quite so concerned with large movements, impersonal institutions. But the day-to-day lives of real people, I like to think of it, is what has really shaped my academic outlook.

Brandon: Wonderful. Thank you. Well, let's talk about the research you all have been doing with the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab. That's really such a remarkable entity. I'd love to hear a little bit about the origins, what generated this project. Perhaps, Wendy, could you say a little bit about why chaplains? Who are chaplains? For our listeners and viewers who are not familiar, who are chaplains? What does innovation mean in this domain?

Wendy: So we think about chaplains and spiritual care providers as religious professionals that work outside of institutions to support people in questions around meaning and purpose. I came to learn about chaplaincy through a research project about spirituality and religion in hospitals, and I learned about the work of hospital chaplains. And I knew, while I was doing that, that there were chaplains in many other settings—in universities, in airports, in ports and businesses. It was those questions, that actually is how I met Michael. I think a lot of the birth of the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab emerges very much from the questions that you were asking—about seeing the unseen and seeing in that ways to support. Because Michael and I actually met through unrelated work about port chaplaincy, that most people have never heard of. The work that poor chaplains do—Michael can say better than I—is with those that many of us never see.

Michael: There's such an element here of chaplains being some of the only, and in some cases, the only people that are able to witness and see the basic human dignity of many people who are experiencing really difficult circumstances. That can be someone who is alone in a healthcare institution. It can be people that are working in shipping, like Wendy mentioned, which almost none of us ever think about. It can be people, like, you will see those who are unhoused on your drive to work. You might physically see them and think, "Well, that's a shame." But in many cases, chaplains are the only ones that are going to talk to these people and say, "How are things going? What can I do for you?" Very basic things, basic interactions, that most of us get to enjoy on a regular basis, on a daily basis. Chaplains go out to the margins, and they find the people that don't have those moments, and in that way, really recognize the humanity of those that most of us ignore.

Wendy: The innovation piece, I think, came because the research that I had done, the work that Michael was doing, with port chaplaincy, there's a traditional, perhaps, legacy model of chaplains in the military, in healthcare. There are also a lot of people doing this work today in creative and unusual places.

In launching the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab in 2018, what we aimed to do was gather chaplains, as well as social scientists and theological educators, to think about all of the ways—the more traditional or legacy ways, and the newer, more creative or innovative ways—that this work is happening. We picked the Chaplains Innovation Lab title with our colleague Trace Haythorne because we wanted to signal the breadth of our scope and the creativity or a part of what we wanted to ask which was about: where is spiritual care today? Where could it be? Where is it emerging? What's happening that's creative, new, different? What are the models, including the business models, that could or will support this work, which is really about religious leadership going forward?

Brandon: Great. Thank you. Well, tell us, what have you learned in your work and maybe what surprised you about either the nature of the work that chaplains are doing or about the kinds of innovations that are happening? What's new and emerging that you found?

Wendy: I think when we started, we didn't know all the places that chaplains were or are. Some weeks, every week, you learn about something new. So the breadth of the work, I think, continues to surprise—both the similarities and the differences across all of those who do the work. This is not a clean, cut and dry field. It has very blurry boundaries. That's a strength and a weakness, and some days, a surprise. Michael, what would you say?

Michael: It is a strength and a weakness. In some sense, I think when we launched the lab, I had this thought process of, how are we going to make sense of all of this? Because it is so messy and tangled, how are we going to make sense of this? A few months in, I thought, well, that's the wrong question, because we can't make sense. There are people who are calling themselves chaplains, doing this kind of work in many, many, many different ways. Some of them are highly credentialed in classroom education and clinical education. Other people, this is their second or third career. Other people, they are doing this in their free time. There are many paths to this kind of work. There are many people who are able to do this kind of work, and a lot of folks who need this kind of work.

And so what I really love about the lab is our ability to welcome all of those people and say, "We don't have a lot of expectation of what you must be to be a chaplain. You need to be basically a decent human being and treat others with the same dignity. And if that's what spiritual care means to you, then that's great." So not so much trying to define the field as I think we have sort of a spotlight and a megaphone to say, look where interesting work is being done. And in many cases, when other people see that, they'll say, "That's interesting to me, too," and then you start to build a critical mass and all these really interesting.

Wendy: And when we were setting this up, Michael and I were really thoughtful about what our kind of statement of principles would be, what the boxes are that we're asking people to check, to be engaged. They were very much about what Michael just said, kind of a commitment to others and some basic human dignity.

Then we were launching a big tent, and we were trying to bring into conversation a lot of people who were not in conversation. We've done—gosh, I don't know, Michael—20, 30 research projects on a whole range of different topics. Our whole reason for being is to understand, do communicate, some of the best research about what's happening in spiritual and religious life, moral life, around questions of meaning and purpose broadly—but then to translate it as best we can into practical applications. And it's not because we have the answer to the question about life's meaning. It's because I think we both believe in the real applied value of good social scientific and historical research, and that we do that research to learn, but we do it always with an eye towards the application.

One of the things that I think is unique about the lab is that I was working on a book about these topics when I met Michael, but the book didn't come out for several years later, because I tend not to be very patient. And so while some people like to write the book and then do the application, I think we both saw the need right away that there were a lot of people doing this work. They weren't talking to each other. They, in fact, didn't even know each other. And so we launched the lab as an experiment to see if people wanted to come together and be in conversation and learn from one another.

Then we have done any number of research projects where we're looking at various groups of chaplains, training. We're just finishing up a big project that looks at what we call the demand or a need for chaplaincy. A lot of this conversation focuses on the chaplains. We have tried to churn the lens to ask about those that chaplains serve, because that's actually the goal. And so we learned in that the fraction of Americans that have contact with chaplains, et cetera, et cetera. So I feel like, in every research project, we learn something new. And we try to translate. So on our website, now we have case studies that could be used for teaching about how people think about chaplains. We have all different kinds of tools, most of which are freely available to anyone who wants them, that we hope will help to inform the work and inform all of our ways that we wrestle through this life.

Brandon: Okay. Well, thank you. Just turning to the sort of beauty angle, what is drawing somebody to be a chaplain? What do they find attractive about it? What moves them to commit their time, their energy and their lives in this direction? Do you find any patterns or any types? What stands out to you there?

Wendy: Do you want to try, Michael?

Michael: There are as many answers to that question as there are chaplains, you know. I think one of the most laudable goals of many chaplains is having grown up in some sort of environment where they either did not receive the care that they are now giving, or it wasn't being given to other people—whether it's from a religious tradition or an institution or whatever—a real recognition that, hey, people have needs here and they're going unmet. Or they're being sidelined, they're being marginalized, and being a chaplain is a way of addressing a lot of those needs.

I think chaplaincy is sort of — it's the perfect occupation or vocation, however you want to think of it, for empaths. And so when you talk with chaplains, for very many of them, it doesn't take very long until you realize they're sort of chaplaining you in your conversation, even though you're talking about a conference or something like that. That's just the natural mode that they slip into and have a real talent for.

Brandon: In terms of the need or demand for chaplaincy, how do you see that shifting? I mean, there are a lot of people who have talked about just outgrowing loneliness crisis and so on. Do you see an increased demand? Do you see challenges coming from the realm of AI in terms of replacing this form of 'connective labor,' as Alison Pugh puts it? What are you seeing there?

Wendy: Those are great questions. Part of the way we have thought about chaplaincy is about religious leadership in the future. And so as the religious landscape is shifting, and in some regions, congregations are closing, we have asked questions about: if an individual is going to meet a religious professional, who is that person going to be? And in many cases, it's more likely to be a chaplain than a local clergy person, because they don't have a local clergy person. But they might meet a chaplain in the hospital, in the military, when they drop children off in college, et cetera, et cetera. And so part of the question about demand is a question about where one might encounter these people.

Our more recent research suggests some pretty big gaps in how chaplains think about their work and how members of the public think about their work, where members of the public tend to think about chaplains as being Religious with a capital R, whereas chaplains tend to describe their work in a much broader kind of conversation about meaning—no matter where that meaning comes from, whether it's in nature or from a religious tradition. So we're seeing some gaps in perception and thinking about the work of spiritual care. We're doing some work now thinking about business models and where and how to encounter. So we've shifted the question from demand, because it's not clear to me that there's a lot of demand for chaplains per se. I think there's a lot of opportunity for the work they do.

We have thought a lot also about the loneliness epidemic, about the fact that there are chaplains spread across this country in urban and rural areas who have the exact skills to help address that epidemic. But those connections have not necessarily been made. And so we're trying to think about the kinds of frameworks, business models, et cetera, that might facilitate and support making those connections in the future. That’s the innovation part. Not that we have the answer, but we see, in community chaplaincy, we see in some first responder chaplaincy, some in some workplaces, possibilities.

We wrote a kind of vision statement for the future of chaplaincy and spiritual care, in which we think about the audiences or the clients—pick your words—in two ways. It seems like, in the United States right now, there are a set of people for whom the word 'chaplain' is familiar. They tend to be people who have experience in more traditional or legacy religious organizations. There's interest and demand or need or opportunity there. But there's another growing set of people for whom the word chaplain sounds Christian or unfamiliar because they didn't grow up in religious contexts, and for whom that frame is never going to be attractive. And so we’ve been thinking—Trace Haythorne and others who are working on a project—about what it looks like to think about this work perhaps in a couple of different languages. Because the people perhaps who could benefit from it will only hear it if it’s in a language that’s familiar to them. Michael, do I have it right? You've been closer to this of life than me.

Michael: Well, I think that is absolutely correct. There's also a line of reasoning that one can follow. It's very superficial. But the line of reasoning goes like, well, if rates of formal religious affiliation are cratering, what need is there for chaplaincy? Because people have determined they don't need religion, therefore, why would they need a religious person anywhere in their lives? This comes back to what Wendy was saying about pigeonholing chaplains in this 'capital R' Religious leadership framework.

One of the few things that the lab says without hesitation and very strongly is that religion is not spirituality automatically. One does not stop having spiritual needs because they aren't religious, whatever that might mean or claim some sort of formal religious affiliation. And so, in that sense, as rates of formal affiliation decline, this is exactly where the chaplains are positioned to step in. Because people are not stopping having all the situations Wendy mentioned—changes in family, there's death and there's dying, major life changes they didn't expect, all that kind of thing. These are things that speak to much deeper needs than something like just—I shouldn't say just—a therapist would speak to or something like that. There are real issues of the human spirit that everyone has, and this is where chaplains are positioned to do the hard work.

Wendy: Interestingly, the data show that. Our colleague Amy Lawton, Michael, and I worked with Gallup to do a national survey of the American public to see who had had contact with a chaplain. And when we put our social science hats on and run the regression models, the findings are actually surprising. Because while we would expect perhaps women, perhaps people of color, who tend to be perhaps more religious, to have more contact with chaplains, the analyses actually show that there are very few predictors of who has contact with chaplains. So the traditional demographic variables you would expect don't hold up, which supports very much empirically that chaplains do serve everyone. That was an interesting, perhaps not surprising because we had heard the story, but empirically, for those of us who study American religion, a surprising finding about what's happening on the ground.

Brandon: Are there any sort of innovative models of chaplaincy, whether it's delivery models that you're finding or models that maybe you think ought to be diffusing more widely and are facing some challenges?

Wendy: There's a lot out there. It's a pretty unsettled field. So a number of groups have attempted a version of 1-800 dial a chaplain. That's an interesting model. I'm not aware of a lot of successes in part because you have to figure out who's willing to pay for 1-800 dial a chaplain. There have been some successes in community chaplaincy for particular groups in particular regions. We ran a grant innovation program, actually—Michael, do you want to talk about that—where the whole point was to introduce chaplains in new possible settings.

Michael: Yeah, we had support from (the Henry Luce Foundation. No, it was the Revson Family Foundation. Sorry I misspoke) the Revson Family Foundation to invite organizations to apply for funding, to support a chaplain that they didn't already have in the organization. And so this included things like Jewish community foundations, Jewish community organizations. We had one for an addiction services organization in Wisconsin. We had one that was dedicated to visiting older adults who are living alone, that kind of thing.

On the surface, that seems very old school, right? You have these institutions that have existed for a long time that are already connecting with people. But to simply embed a chaplain in that work and have chaplains available to come alongside the people that those organizations were already serving, it really brought to light the fact that there is a spiritual component to all of these things that people are experiencing. And so having someone there who is able to address some of those issues, it's good on its own on the surface. It cuts out a couple of steps that people are going to have to make to go find that kind of assistance somewhere else. And so doing something as simple as making sure an institution can put a chaplain where the people already are is enormously effective.

Brandon: Where are you seeing areas of resistance, perhaps? For instance, are hospitals generally cognizant of the value of chaplains for the therapeutic mission of the health institution, or even with companies? Are there other domains where you're seeing maybe that there is a need, but there are some sort of obstacle where it's not seen as legitimate, perhaps?

Michael: You know, I think the answer to that turns a lot on how much people identify chaplains with historically Christian religious leaders. Here's why I say that. That can go either way. So there are plenty of companies in the country that either contract out for chaplains or hire chaplains specifically to come in and be Christian religious leaders—to do Bible study, to primarily offer prayer for employees who are struggling, or whatever the case may be. They have chosen to do that.

On the flip side, there are many companies—and this gets back to where is this happening. So we're talking about the corporate sphere—many companies who believe that chaplains are primarily Christian religious leaders and say, "There's no way you're ever going to cross our threshold, because that's not appropriate. That's not what our employees need." And of course, the counter to that is, well, that's not what every chaplain does. And your employees don't leave their spiritual needs at the door when they clock in, right? They're going to keep thinking about the parent who's dying, or the child who's in trouble, or whatever. So really, the matter of perception of the chaplain is kind of the overriding part, and then how that plays out in institutions varies from place to place.

(outro)

Brandon: All right, everyone, that is a great place to stop the first half of our conversation. Join us next time as Wendy and Michael help us think about the future—what they call the spiritual infrastructure that we will need for the next generation—as well as the burdens that chaplains face as they try to innovate and what role technology, including AI, may play in supporting or hindering spiritual care.