Caring for the Soul, Muslim Chaplains in the Clinical Borderlands: Authority, Function, and Identity
Chaplain Samsiah Abdul-Majid, MBA, MA, BCC, Westchester (NY) Medical Center, and Association of Muslim Chaplains (AMC); and Lance D. Laird, Th.D., Department of Family Medicine, Boston University School of Medicine
(Note: the following submission is extracted from and based on the article co-authored by Laird, L.D., Abdul-Majid, S. "Muslim Chaplains in the Clinical Borderlands: Authority, Function, and Identity." J Relig Health (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-022-01644-z
Objective: Based on a published article co-authored by this submitting author, the paper seeks to demonstrate how Muslim healthcare chaplains care for the soul of the Others, and how they interpret their authority, function, and identity within a professional space defined by dominant American religious norms.
Methods: For this study, we conducted during 2019-2020 approximately 60-minute interviews with twenty current or former Muslim healthcare chaplains. The semi-structured interview guide addressed domains of daily work, educational experience, professional identity development, language use regarding chaplaincy, integration with care teams, and vision for the future of Muslim chaplaincy. After initial coding, research team members wrote analytical memos on each of the high-density codes to develop themes.
Findings: Patients, families, and Muslim chaplains traverse clinical borderlands, improvising new ways of relating in the midst of uncertainty. They use their cultural fluency, interfaith literacy, and the ability to navigate public and secular institutions to form bridges between Muslim communities and healthcare institutions; and to stake a claim to a new form of identity as interfaith spiritual care providers in the borderland. Chaplains mindfully explore their own boundaries to preserve their sense of authenticity in order to flourish in this space. They wrestle with interpreting religious norms and seek affirmation from their own religious leaders. They take on competing pressures to adopt dominant forms of spiritual care ministry and to resist assimilation by developing Islamically integrated theological and practical approaches to care for the sick and dying.They maneuver through educational and professional credentialing processes determined by culturally hegemonic Protestant Christian assumptions about religion, spirituality, and psychology. Muslim chaplains are actively translating, adapting, resisting, and selectively appropriating models of pastoral care. We have seen that such hegemonic discourse encourages not only critique and recovery of Islamic tradition, but also new forms in the professional development of American Muslim religious leaders.
Conclusion: These Muslim chaplains represent a public face of a minority religious community; provide a ministry of presence or accompaniment for those in the healthcare institution; and exercise a new form of professionalized religious leadership in the Islamic tradition. Through their interfaith spiritual care patients or staff find a new appreciation of Islam and Muslims as a healing force and promote flourishing. Muslim chaplains are articulating emergent pastoral theologies; renewing or reviving the unity of spirituality and healing indigenous to their traditions; and developing gifts for the service of the larger society. Further empirical research should examine how chaplains gain knowledge of other spiritual and religious traditions and practices and how they engage religious and non-religious Others using Islamic frameworks for interfaith understanding.
Objective: Based on a published article co-authored by this submitting author, the paper seeks to demonstrate how Muslim healthcare chaplains care for the soul of the Others, and how they interpret their authority, function, and identity within a professional space defined by dominant American religious norms.
Methods: For this study, we conducted during 2019-2020 approximately 60-minute interviews with twenty current or former Muslim healthcare chaplains. The semi-structured interview guide addressed domains of daily work, educational experience, professional identity development, language use regarding chaplaincy, integration with care teams, and vision for the future of Muslim chaplaincy. After initial coding, research team members wrote analytical memos on each of the high-density codes to develop themes.
Findings: Patients, families, and Muslim chaplains traverse clinical borderlands, improvising new ways of relating in the midst of uncertainty. They use their cultural fluency, interfaith literacy, and the ability to navigate public and secular institutions to form bridges between Muslim communities and healthcare institutions; and to stake a claim to a new form of identity as interfaith spiritual care providers in the borderland. Chaplains mindfully explore their own boundaries to preserve their sense of authenticity in order to flourish in this space. They wrestle with interpreting religious norms and seek affirmation from their own religious leaders. They take on competing pressures to adopt dominant forms of spiritual care ministry and to resist assimilation by developing Islamically integrated theological and practical approaches to care for the sick and dying.They maneuver through educational and professional credentialing processes determined by culturally hegemonic Protestant Christian assumptions about religion, spirituality, and psychology. Muslim chaplains are actively translating, adapting, resisting, and selectively appropriating models of pastoral care. We have seen that such hegemonic discourse encourages not only critique and recovery of Islamic tradition, but also new forms in the professional development of American Muslim religious leaders.
Conclusion: These Muslim chaplains represent a public face of a minority religious community; provide a ministry of presence or accompaniment for those in the healthcare institution; and exercise a new form of professionalized religious leadership in the Islamic tradition. Through their interfaith spiritual care patients or staff find a new appreciation of Islam and Muslims as a healing force and promote flourishing. Muslim chaplains are articulating emergent pastoral theologies; renewing or reviving the unity of spirituality and healing indigenous to their traditions; and developing gifts for the service of the larger society. Further empirical research should examine how chaplains gain knowledge of other spiritual and religious traditions and practices and how they engage religious and non-religious Others using Islamic frameworks for interfaith understanding.