Description
- Abstract:
- This thesis explores chaplains’ unique impact as providers of spiritual and religious care during the AIDS pandemic in the late twentieth century. This project argues that chaplains’ position, as religious professionals working in secular institutions, existing outside of any denominational or religious institutional boundaries, granted them a freedom to engage religion and spirituality in creative, open-ended, and inclusive ways. Consequently, this positionality enabled them to provide affirming care for hospital patients with AIDS when many religious institutions failed to do so. Chapter One illuminates the twentieth century development of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE), which became the standard for chaplaincy education. Chapter Two traces a reform movement in CPE to generate a more affirming approach to chaplaincy training that recognized and empowered chaplains to engage with and explore their own sexual identity, as a means to help patients do the same. Chapter Three illustrates how this reformed education manifested in chaplains’ ability to provide effective care to AIDS patients, struggling with physical and emotional pain. I center this thesis on oral histories I conducted of chaplains trained and involved in Clinical Pastoral Education and AIDS chaplaincy. This thesis also draws on the archives of the Association for Clinical Pastoral Education, the organization responsible for overseeing CPE, located at Harvard Divinity School and Pitts Theological Seminary at Emory University. This project adds the history of chaplaincy to the larger and more capacious history of religion in the United States, and explores the inextricable links between religion, secularism, and sexuality. Challenging the common narrative of religion as wholly oppressive and oppositional to progress and modernity, I illustrate the ways in which chaplains have been at the forefront of progressive change and inclusive care.
- Notes:
- Senior thesis (AB)--Brown University, 2025
- Concentration: History
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Citation
Hirschwerk, Sally B.,
"(Re)claiming Religion: An Exploration of the Development of Clinical Pastoral Education and its Impact on Religious Chaplaincy during the AIDS Pandemic"
(2025).
History Theses and Dissertations.
Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.
https://doi.org/10.26300/6wsr-p606
