Spiritual Care: The Power of an Adjective

Abstract

T he replacement of pastoral care with spiritual care in the Mission Statement of the Association for Clinical Pastoral Education and the exclusive use of spiritual care in the White Paper on Professional Chaplaincy published in the Spring, 2001 issue of The Journal of Pastoral Care are part a monumental spiritual revolution in this society. It is an axial time. This spiritual revolution is motivated in part by a widespread search for new perspectives on life beyond the limits of a mechanistic or deterministic world view. The renewed interest in spirituality has revitalized the role of mystery and legitimated the longing for deeper meaning It has reawakened the ancient linkage between spiritual and physical health in the practice of medicine and healthcare. Spirit is regarded as an essential need or energy of human nature and therefore cannot be confined to a particular religious dogma or practice. This has made it easier to be spiritual without being religious. Changing the adjective modifying care from pastoral to spiritual signals a fundamental shift in the pastoral care movement as it has been developing over the last decades. The aim of this editorial is to reflect on that change and examine some of its consequences. There are several ways of understanding this shift from pastoral to spiritual care in the healthcare context. 1) In one sense, the change in nomenclature from pastoral to spiritual is the logical extension of trends in pastoral supervision over the last several decades. In his seminal essay in the 20th Anniversary issue of the Journal ofSupervision and Training in Ministry, Robert Fuller suggested that clinical pastoral supervision had contributed to the emergence of the present pattern of personal spirituality in the United States by training ministers who take experience seriously in fashioning their own patterns of faith. According to Fuller, spirituality "from the bottom up" is the special contribution of the clinical approach to ministry. "It has provided a new vocabulary for spiritual interests and concerns that speaks to a great many persons who have permanently lost interest in more authoritarian models of religion." While it may be slightly grandiose to presume that Clinical Pastoral Education had a hand in