Pluralism

Hospital chaplains routinely encounter patients, families and staff of many different faiths. Each has their own spiritual and religious beliefs, needs and resources.

Yet how can chaplains respond effectively to such pluralism?

While remaining necessarily grounded in their own particular religious traditions, how can chaplains be of service and spiritually available to all?

Phenomenology

Anton Boisen (1876-1965), founder of the Clinical Pastoral Education movement, began with phenomenology.

As he put it,

I have sought to begin not with the ready-made formulations contained in books but with the living human documents and with actual social conditions in all their complexity (Boisen 1936, p.185)

Both patients and chaplains alike are “living human documents.” And engagement within and between the two requires reflexive processes of personal, spiritual and theological discovery.

Hospital chaplains must be able to:

1. embody dialogism
2. resonate in inter- and intra-personal relationships
3. practice clinical hermeneutics
4. bridge language worlds

Let’s take each point briefly in turn with references to Raimon Panikkar, Arthur Frank, Jodi Halpern, H-G. Gadamer, and Charles Gerkin.

Embodying dialogism

Raimon Panikkar’s dialogical approach to religious pluralism was existential, intimate and concrete. His thesis was that the particular experiences of religious truth—e.g., of Christ for the Christian, or the Veda for the Hindu—may be enriched through dialogue from which new experiences of religious truth may emerge. Not threatened. Not defended. But enriched.

His explanation of the metaphor of the window is helpful – Watch it on YouTube.

Panikkar (1978) rejected the notion that religions can or should meet on some neutral ground. Neither is inter-religious dialogue simply a one-way street. Rather, like ministry itself, inter-religious dialogue represents true encounter and the quintessential religious act.

Panikkar (1993) translated the Greek preposition “entos” in the Gospel of Luke (17:21) to read that the Kingdom of God is not “within” or “among” you, as it is usually understood, but “between” you.

He expressed his thesis in terms of the “constitutive polarity” of musical harmony (Panikkar 1995) . He re-appropriated the ancient paradox of “concordant discord,” or conversely “discordant concord,” to articulate a kind of “human harmony.” Like a symphony, this harmony characterized an “inexplicable concord out of so many dissenting voices.”

Yet whether “concordant discord” is actually perceived to be harmony or merely cacophony requires careful listening and tolerance, which Panikkar says depends very much on the education and generosity of one’s ears.

Resonating relationships

When listening to others, it’s easy to be seduced into attempting to merge with the other’s suffering or lived experiences, or to place oneself in his or her shoes to try to imagine being the other person to empathize.

Instead, Arthur Frank (2004) suggested that when listening to others we should encounter the other as other rather than on our own terms, thereby respecting and preserving alterity, or otherness.

This sounds like Panikkar’s “concordant discord.”

When listening, the goal is not to internalize the feelings of the other but is about what Jodi Halpern (1993) called “resonance” with the other. The other’s story does not become my own, but I as a listener develop sufficient resonance with that story so that I can feel its nuances and appreciate the story being told as embodied. I have boundaries.

Frank (1995) suggested that when listening, resonating and thinking with stories, it’s important not to move on “once the story has been heard, but to continue to live in the story, becoming in it, reflecting on who one is becoming, and gradually modifying the story.”

The problem, he said, is to “truly to listen to one’s own story, just as the problem is truly to listen to others’ stories.” Indeed.

Practicing hermeneutics

Surely, patients require care not dialogue, critics may object. Gadamer (2004) suggested that the power differential between healthcare providers and vulnerable patients is too asymmetrical for a therapeutic conversation to be truly dialogical and hermeneutical.

As he put it,

This is not really a situation in which two people are trying to come to an understanding.

Yet according to theologian Charles Gerkin (1984), pastoral care may indeed be understood as a hermeneutical process that involves dialogue partners engaged in communication across the boundaries of language worlds.

As chaplains listen to stories in an effort to understand their patients, they listen first as strangers who do not yet fully know the language, the nuanced meanings of the other as his or her story is being told.

Reminiscent of Boisen’s intentional turn to encountering the human living document, Gerkin says that it’s important to avoid the temptation to stereotype others or take them for granted.

Moreover, he said,

Dialogical hermeneutics takes place at many levels, some between the counselor and counselee, still more within the counselor as he or she sorts through the images, themes, and symbols of the various disciplines that have been appropriated in a search for those that seem apropos or make sense out of what is being heard.

Finally, Gerkin recognized that a chaplain as interpreter, like the reader of the New Testament, does not come empty-handed.

Rather, he or she comes bearing a history and a language world.

More accurately, he or she comes embedded in a personal and social history and immersed in one or more language worlds from which the images, symbols, and meanings are drawn with which to make an interpretation.

Bridging language worlds

Raised in Spain by a Catholic Catalan mother and Hindu Indian father, Raimundo Panikkar embodied religious pluralism. His life story illustrates how complex one’s multiple language worlds can be.

Panikkar (2000) located his identity at the confluence of the four rivers of Christian, Hindu, Buddhist and Secular traditions.

Reflecting on his spiritual and religious development he once described himself as simultaneously Christian, Hindu and Buddhist, while questioning whether such a position is tenable or even intelligible (Panikkar 1978).

Yet Panikkar’s embodied pluralism is not all that unusual.

Faith communities are hardly homogeneous, even when they profess to be.

And church communities in large multicultural cities can reveal internal multi-religious communities in which, for example, Hindus, Muslims, and Buddhists might attend the same Catholic church and participate in Catholic worship (Duggan 2000).

Questions arise.

• What language worlds do I embody?
• Is it possible to pray in a meaningful way with someone of a different faith?
• Do sacraments transcend language worlds?

Steeped in these kinds of reflective questions in their daily clinical practice hospital chaplains can offer unique perspectives and new insights into inter-religious dialogue.

Conclusion

From their direct practical experiences of encountering and engaging in reflective dialogue about spirituality and religion with a great variety of “others,” including even themselves, hospital chaplains resonate with stories that enrich and broaden experiences of ministry beyond isolated traditions.

By engaging religious pluralism hospital chaplains are doing what theologians propose.

They know from their own direct clinical experience what the creative tension of inter-religious dialogue feels like.

Thus hospital chaplains are uniquely qualified to contribute ambitiously to the expanding terrain of pastoral theology that can be illuminated further by their front-line experiences of religious pluralism and the rich insights it affords.

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Boisen, A. (1936). The exploration of the inner world. New York: Harper & Brothers.

Duggan, J. F. (2000). Multireligious experience and pluralist attitude. PhD dissertation. Toronto: Regis College, University of Toronto. http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/ftp03/NQ54046.pdf

Frank, A. W. (1995). The wounded storyteller: Body, illness and ethics. Chicago: U. Chicago.

Frank, A. W. (2004). The renewal of generosity: Illness, medicine and how to live. Chicago: U. Chicago.

Gadamer, H-G. (2004). Truth and method. Second revised edition. London: Continuum. (Originally published 1960).

Gerkin, C. V. (1984). The living human document: Re-visioning pastoral counseling in a hermeneutical mode. Nashville: Abingdon.

Halpern, J. (1993). Empathy: Using resonance emotions in the service of curiosity. In H. M. Spiro, M. G. McCrea Curnen, E. Peschel, & D. St. James (Eds.), Empathy and the practice of medicine: Beyond pills and the scalpel. New Haven: Yale.

Panikkar, R. (1964). The unknown Christ of Hinduism. London: Dartman, Longman and Todd.

Panikkar, R. (1978). The intrareligious dialogue. New York: Paulist.

Panikkar, R. (1993). A dwelling place for wisdom. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox.

Panikkar, R. (1995). Invisible harmony: Essays on contemplation and responsibility. Minneapolis: Fortress.

Panikkar, R. “Eruption of truth: An interview with Raimon Panikkar.” The Christian Century, August  16-23, 2000, pp. 834-836.