With support from Fetzer Institute, the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab is conducting a landscape study of opportunities for non-religious chaplains in classroom education, field training,  and professional advancement.

While the field of non-religious chaplaincy is growing — both in who needs this spiritual care and who provides it — formal opportunities for non-religious chaplains remain limited. These chaplains often, by necessity, utilize alternative paths to the profession, or complete classroom and field education programs in an accommodating religious context. This project aims to identify specific opportunities for non-religious chaplains to gain education, field training, and professional advancement as non-religious chaplains, rather than in an adjacent context.

This project’s aims are intentionally limited: to describe systematically which opportunities are currently available to non-religious chaplains. Doing so will lay the groundwork for proposed next steps in expanding these opportunities. The project will produce a working paper to this end, launched by a free and public webinar.

Project Staff

For more information, contact info@chaplaincyinnovation.org.

You may also be interested in related Lab resources, listed below. Most are open to the public, but some are reserved for subscribers.

• “Spiritual Care Networks“
• “Unaffiliated Chaplaincy,” with accompanying explanatory text
• Webinar: “Chaplaincy to the Non-Religious“
• Working paper: “More than none“
• Webinar: “New research“