Spiritual Assessment and Religious Coping: Lessons from ‘Evagrius, Julian, and Luther’
Devan Stahl, PhD Candiate, Saint Louis University
As the concept of ‘holistic’ care gains traction in our health care industry, spiritual care is now seen as another domain to be assessed by the medical system. Chaplains—who are now seen as members of the healthcare team—are increasingly expected to evaluate their interventions empirically by using “spiritual assessment tools”. When integrated into spiritual care, the presumption is that spiritual assessment tools can help researchers and chaplains more accurately assess how their patients are spiritually and psychologically coping. Chaplains have traditionally relied on lengthy interviews and subjective inter-relational criteria to assess the spirituality of their patients, but these measures have been deemed inefficient by clinical researchers. Instead, tools like the FACIT-Sp, the Brief RCOPE, and the INSPIRIT have been designed to help researchers quickly, easily, and more objectively assess the spirituality of hospital patients using Likert scales and check boxes.
The danger of spiritual assessment tools is that they operationalize a definition of “spirituality” that is not universal throughout religious traditions or individuals’ particular faith beliefs. Indeed, it is unlikely that science could ever formulate a definition of spirituality that could accomplish this task. Insofar as individual patients express their spirituality in manifold ways, spiritual assessment tools may fail to capture the true strength and value of many patients’ expressions of faith. Individuals who manifest their spirituality in unconventional or extreme ways are particularly likely to confuse or be inappropriately scored by spiritual assessments.
While I see the value in preserving the role of the hospital chaplain, as well as the necessity of doing so through empirical research, I worry that many of my religious heroes might fail the spiritual assessments contemporary researchers deploy. If they lived today, many of Christianity’s most dynamic and inspirational representatives might be dismissed as confused, mad, or pathological. In this paper I spiritually assess three religious figures: Evagrius Ponticus, Julian of Norwich, and Martin Luther using the FACIT-Sp, the Brief RCOPE, and the INSPIRIT respectively. Evagrius, Julian, and Luther would never have viewed their faith commitments as helpful coping techniques or mechanisms for “spiritual well-being” and “psychological strength.” Far from desiring healthy, comfortable lives, all three of these believers went to extremes—physically, mentally, and spiritually—to live out their faith commitments. If they were alive today, many of Christianity’s most dynamic and inspirational representatives might simply be dismissed as spiritually and psychological unwell. In light of the harrowing experiences of these great spiritual figures from the Christian tradition, I argue that clinicians and researchers ought to be wary of attaching negative psychological categories to spiritual strife. To respect the multiplicity of spiritual expressions, chaplains should resist implementing the “quick, easy, and objective” tools created as a short cut to assessing the spiritual realm.
As the concept of ‘holistic’ care gains traction in our health care industry, spiritual care is now seen as another domain to be assessed by the medical system. Chaplains—who are now seen as members of the healthcare team—are increasingly expected to evaluate their interventions empirically by using “spiritual assessment tools”. When integrated into spiritual care, the presumption is that spiritual assessment tools can help researchers and chaplains more accurately assess how their patients are spiritually and psychologically coping. Chaplains have traditionally relied on lengthy interviews and subjective inter-relational criteria to assess the spirituality of their patients, but these measures have been deemed inefficient by clinical researchers. Instead, tools like the FACIT-Sp, the Brief RCOPE, and the INSPIRIT have been designed to help researchers quickly, easily, and more objectively assess the spirituality of hospital patients using Likert scales and check boxes.
The danger of spiritual assessment tools is that they operationalize a definition of “spirituality” that is not universal throughout religious traditions or individuals’ particular faith beliefs. Indeed, it is unlikely that science could ever formulate a definition of spirituality that could accomplish this task. Insofar as individual patients express their spirituality in manifold ways, spiritual assessment tools may fail to capture the true strength and value of many patients’ expressions of faith. Individuals who manifest their spirituality in unconventional or extreme ways are particularly likely to confuse or be inappropriately scored by spiritual assessments.
While I see the value in preserving the role of the hospital chaplain, as well as the necessity of doing so through empirical research, I worry that many of my religious heroes might fail the spiritual assessments contemporary researchers deploy. If they lived today, many of Christianity’s most dynamic and inspirational representatives might be dismissed as confused, mad, or pathological. In this paper I spiritually assess three religious figures: Evagrius Ponticus, Julian of Norwich, and Martin Luther using the FACIT-Sp, the Brief RCOPE, and the INSPIRIT respectively. Evagrius, Julian, and Luther would never have viewed their faith commitments as helpful coping techniques or mechanisms for “spiritual well-being” and “psychological strength.” Far from desiring healthy, comfortable lives, all three of these believers went to extremes—physically, mentally, and spiritually—to live out their faith commitments. If they were alive today, many of Christianity’s most dynamic and inspirational representatives might simply be dismissed as spiritually and psychological unwell. In light of the harrowing experiences of these great spiritual figures from the Christian tradition, I argue that clinicians and researchers ought to be wary of attaching negative psychological categories to spiritual strife. To respect the multiplicity of spiritual expressions, chaplains should resist implementing the “quick, easy, and objective” tools created as a short cut to assessing the spiritual realm.