Midwifing Social Movements: How Movement Chaplains Practice Pastoral Theology Through Accessible, Critical, and Collective Spiritual Care

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn recent years, individuals of myriad religious and spiritual persuasions have volunteered to serve as chaplains to social justice movements. Drawing on a thematic qualitative text analysis of online materials, I argue that movement chaplains enact the work of pastoral theology when they render spiritual care more accessible, critical, and collective. I delineate two resources that an analysis of movement chaplaincy contributes to pastoral theology. First, movement chaplains model the integration of the ethics of care and spiritual care practices. Second, they offer a generative metaphor for the work of pastoral theology: that of accompanying midwife. As the field grapples with the implications of a changing religious landscape, movement chaplaincy challenges us to develop a pastoral theology that cares for souls across a plurality of religious (dis)affiliations and that accompanies those souls as they endeavor to birth spiritual lives that nourish and sustain.KEYWORDS: Movement chaplaincyspiritual careethics of carepastoral theologysocial movementspractice AcknowledgmentsThis article is written with deep gratitude for the Atlanta Protest Chaplains. Their mobilization of faith leaders and spiritually informed activists in the summer of 2020 inspired this work, and I am particularly grateful to all who reflected with me about their involvement in movement, protest, and poll chaplaincy. I also want to express my gratitude and admiration for Faith Matters Network; put simply, their work is changing the world. Many thanks also to Ellen Ott Marshall for reading earlier versions of this article and to Liz Bounds for being in conversation with me about this research since 2020. Finally, I write with gratitude for my grandmother, Annette Brister, who modeled accompanying care and cultivated a justice-seeking, life-giving spirituality throughout her ninety years.Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.Notes1 Lewis, “Micky ScottBey Jones.”2 Jackson et al., “Movement Chaplaincy: Meeting Spiritual Needs in Our Struggles for Justice.”3 See, for example, Ernst and Krinks, “A Guide for Movement Chaplains.”4 Tronto, Caring Democracy, 17, 123; Chatzidakis et al., The Care Manifesto, 9–10.5 Indeed, Chatzidakis et al. argue that social life has been dramatically shaped by an ‘accelerating social system of organised loneliness.’ Chatzidakis et al., The Care Manifesto, 45. See also Weissbourd, Lovison, and Torres, “Loneliness in America.”6 Ayres, Inhabitance, 4, 47.7 Day, Religious Resistance to Neoliberalism, 12. See also Rogers-Vaughn, “Caring for Souls within the Dark Web” and Caring for Souls in a Neoliberal Age.8 Smith, “About Three-in-Ten U.S. Adults Are Now Religiously Unaffiliated.”9 Downie, “Christian Shame and Religious Trauma”; Hollier, Clifton, and Smith-Merry, “Mechanisms of Religious Trauma amongst Queer People in Australia’s Evangelical Churches”; Riley, “Losing My Religion: America’s ‘Post-Traumatic Church Syndrome.’”10 Smith, “The Future of American Churches.”11 Martinez and Lawton, “Survey of Demand for Chaplaincy Among U.S. Adults,” 3.12 For sources on the interreligious nature of chaplaincy, see Lartey, Postcolonializing God: New Perspectives on Pastoral and Practical Theology, 12–13; Cadge and Sigalow, “Negotiating Religious Differences”; Bernau, “From Christ to Compassion.” On the holistic nature of chaplains’ work, see Idler et al., “Practical Matters and Ultimate Concerns, ‘Doing,’ and ‘Being’”; Adams, “Defining and Operationalizing Chaplain Presence”; Sullivan, A Ministry of Presence.13 Cadge and Skaggs, “How the Role and Visibility of Chaplains Changed over the Past Century.”14 Skaggs and Cadge, “From Bicycle to Social Movements, the Changing Role of Chaplains in the US”; Cooper, “Animal Chaplaincy Has Become a Growing Profession.”15 Cadge and Rambo, Chaplaincy and Spiritual Care in the Twenty-First Century, 2.16 Cadge and Rambo.17 Moschella and Gibson, “Voices at the Forefront of Care and Justice”; Rambo and Giles, “The Changing Landscape of Spiritual Care.” See also Cadge, Spiritual Care.18 Initially drawn into the topic of movement chaplaincy through the process of facilitating a series of informal interviews with the newly formed collective of the Atlanta Protest Chaplains in the fall of 2020, I subsequently conducted an analysis of publicly available webinars and podcasts that movement chaplains had either participated in or hosted—online materials primarily produced by or associated with the organization Faith Matters Network (FMN). For this study, I sought a broader picture of the emerging vocation of movement chaplaincy.19 The organization itself was founded in 2014. FMN’s Movement Chaplaincy Project (formerly called the Daring Compassion Movement Chaplaincy Project) was co-founded by Micky ScottBey Jones and Hilary Allen. The Rev. Dr. Danie J. Buhuro joined the FMN staff as Director of Movement Chaplaincy in the summer of 2022.20 The collaboration between FMN and T’ruah is an example of a particularly robust partnership found in the data. In 2022, the organizations partnered to design a distinctively Jewish version of FMN’s movement chaplaincy training. Ziri, “A New Kind of Chaplain?”21 Kuckartz, Qualitative Text Analysis, 25.22 The fact that materials connected to the organization Trauma Response and Crisis Care (TRACC) were not caught in my search illuminates the limitations of this method. TRACC’s work facilitating a network of ‘healing care providers’ that support social movements could clearly be considered a form of movement chaplaincy. However, while the search engine results pages captured references ranging from movement chaplains to street, trauma, and community chaplains, the data set failed to include TRACC’s language of ‘healer network.’23 Hondagneu-Sotelo, God’s Heart Has No Borders, 33.24 MacMillan and Berndt, “Changing Movements from Within.”25 Lewis, “Micky ScottBey Jones.”26 ScottBey Jones, “Movement Chaplaincy and Sustainable Activism.”27 Jackson et al., “Movement Chaplaincy.”28 Jackson and Maynard, “Protest Chaplaincy: Faithful Civil Action Training.”29 Mathews, “Episode 45: Rev. Margaret Ernst.”30 ScottBey Jones in Jackson et al., “Movement Chaplaincy”; “Call for Student Applications.”31 Duerr, “A New Paradigm in Chaplaincy during a Time of Social Transformation,” 16.32 Jackson et al., “Movement Chaplaincy.”33 Allen, Benítez, and Meyers, “Field Guide for Aspiring Chaplains: Community and Movement Chaplaincy.”34 Scott, Monroe, and Krinks, “Radical Chaplaincy.”35 Ernst and Krinks, “A Guide for Movement Chaplains.”36 Akmal et al., “The Future of Chaplaincy and How to Heal.”37 Jackson et al., “Movement Chaplaincy.”38 Akmal et al., “The Future of Chaplaincy and How to Heal.”39 Lewis, “Micky ScottBey Jones.”40 Sheppard, “Reclaiming Incarnation in Black Life,” 15.41 Rambo and Giles, “The Changing Landscape of Spiritual Care,” 5.42 Graham, “On Becoming a Practical Theologian,” 4.43 Rogers-Vaughn, Caring for Souls in a Neoliberal Age, 77.44 Moschella, “Review of Caring for Souls in a Neoliberal Age,” 856.45 Rogers-Vaughn writes, ‘I intend to be quite clear on this point: in the context of global neoliberalism, spirituality is not part of the solution. It is part of the problem.’ “Best Practices in Pastoral Counseling,” 2–5.46 Rogers-Vaughn, “Best Practices in Pastoral Counseling,” 2–6.47 Doehring, The Practice of Pastoral Care, 93.48 Rogers-Vaughn, “Best Practices in Pastoral Counseling,” 2–6.49 Held, The Ethics of Care, 3.50 Marshall, Introduction to Christian Ethics, 121.51 Gilligan, In a Different Voice Psychological Theory and Women’s Development, 73, 165. See also Held, Justice and Care.52 Tronto, Moral Boundaries, 126; Held, “Feminist Moral Inquiry and the Feminist Future,” 171.53 Or, in the words of Melinda McGarrah Sharp, those ‘made-most-vulnerable.’ “Phoenix Poetry in a Flammable World,” 106.54 Sheppard, “Reclaiming Incarnation in Black Life,” 16.55 LaMothe advances such a move in his proposal of a ‘pastoral theology of dwelling.’ He argues such a theology must begin with awareness of ‘the theologies of subjugation embedded in scripture and that become entwined with liturgies, hymns, preaching, etc., that shape our perceptions, behaviors, and practices.’ “A Pastoral Theology of Dwelling,” 98.56 Sharpe, In the Wake, 105, 108–9, 51.57 Sharpe, 13.58 Sheppard, “Reclaiming Incarnation in Black Life,” 5.59 Collura, for example, models this within pastoral psychology, offering psychological resources to assist chaplains with political conversations. “When Patients Talk Politics.”60 Piepzna-Samarasinha, Care Work, 33.61 Watkins Ali, Survival and Liberation, 6.62 Lartey, “Postcolonializing Pastoral Theology: Enhancing the Intercultural Paradigm,” 93.63 McGarrah Sharp, “Mapping with Care,” 2.64 ScottBey Jones and Allen, “Daring Compassion & Movement Chaplaincy.”65 Mathews, “Episode 45: Rev. Margaret Ernst.” While most prominent in FMN materials, birthing language is also found in materials associated with other groups. For example, Imama Trina Jackson of the Atlanta Protest Chaplains points to the birth of ducklings on her farm as a sign of the liberation that movements are in the process of ushering forth. Likewise, Religions for Peace Australia’s Multifaith Chaplaincy website features a guide co-written by Margaret Ernst (of FMN) and the Rev. Lindsey Krinks (of Open Table Nashville) that describes movements as spaces where ‘we must learn to better support each other, birth community narratives rooted in radical hope and love, and cultivate pastoral presence in situations of uncertainty, tension, conflict, violence, and trauma.’ Jackson et al., “Movement Chaplaincy”; Ernst and Krinks, “A Guide for Movement Chaplains.”66 Beaudoin, “Why Does Practice Matter Theologically?”67 DeShazier and Williams, “When the Movement Gives Back,” 60.68 Moschella and Gibson, “Voices at the Forefront of Care and Justice,” 1.69 Beaudoin, “Why Does Practice Matter Theologically?” 24, 29.70 De Schauwer et al., “Desiring and Critiquing Humanity/Ability/Personhood,” 288.71 Mennenga, “Micky ScottBey Jones: Womanism, Activism, and Chaplaincy.”Additional informationNotes on contributorsJanelle L. MooreJanelle L. Moore is a PhD candidate in Religion (Ethics and Society) at Emory University. Her dissertation research explores the ethics and practices of belonging in the context of refugee resettlement.