The Many Sectors of American Chaplains

Meg, a chaplain at an urban academic medical center, spoke often about hope in the time I spent shadowing and interviewing her for my book Paging God: Religion in the Halls of Medicine. “I often say I have a theology of hope,” she told me. “I’ll often say to families of patients that when you’re five years old you want a red bicycle and when you’re twenty-five you want a red convertible … Our hopes do change … as we mature and grow and, and through life’s transitions, the same hopes have to change.” In these large hospitals people can often lose hope but “to lose a hope doesn’t mean that you lose all hope. Part of a chaplain’s task is to help people find something to be hopeful about.” I thought a lot about Meg and her theology of hope as I watched Martin Doblmeier’s important new documentary Chaplains: On the Front Lines of Faith. Airing last fall on PBS stations, Doblmeier asks who chaplains are and how they work in the military, healthcare, and prisons. He takes viewers into chaplain’s daily work across settings as they counsel soldiers, support patients, and minister to the incarcerated. He also introduces viewers to chaplains in some surprising places, including workplaces (Tyson Foods), police forces, Hollywood (through the Motion Picture Television Fund), NASCAR, and on Capitol Hill. What might the chaplains he profiled think about Meg’s theology of hope, I wondered as I watched? Do they share this or any theology? Do chaplains share much beyond the title of chaplain?