Titus George on being a curious listener

A Chaplain’s Identity and Immigrant Communities

I would like to place the chaplain’s identity, as articulated by Fr. Christopher De Bono in his article, "More on Harding: Identity and the Contemporary Chaplain" (Vol. 2, No. 16) within the context of healthcare of immigrants from India.

Father Christopher approaches the chaplain’s identity from the standpoint of a Christian chaplain from the West. Throughout the article, he refers to ministry, pastoral vocation, and Christian theology. One of the major issues untouched in the discussion is where the chaplain positions himself or herself in meeting the spiritual needs of immigrant patients.

I live in the Bay Area, California, home to large immigrant communities. In my experience as a chaplain and a Christian from the indigenous St. Thomas tradition of India, I see the Bay Area’s Indian community striving to recreate their post-colonial Indian identity in their cultural, religious, and spiritual practice.

Assuming a "pastoral" identity while relating to the post-colonial, non-Christian immigrant patients from India, is somewhat intimidating. I have noticed members of immigrant communities refusing the "pastoral care" offered in hospitals. Is the patients’ refusal influenced by their image of ‘pastor’ as a colonial hangover – an identity often associated with Westernized Christianity and proselylization?

One of my former chaplain colleagues referred me to a first-generation immigrant from India who had politely refused "pastoral" service. My colleague wondered whether it was her approach while offering "pastoral" care that led to the refusal.

With some time and effort I built a safe environment with the patient and his wife. We talked about their past and their hopes for the future. It helped them know that I was not a representative of Western Christianity. I spoke to them in their own “non-'pastoral' language” using words I borrowed from them. Our relationship blossomed, perhaps because the patient and his wife felt secure knowing I shared and respected their context and values.

The discussions of "pastoral" identity also opened up for me the issue of unequal power relation between the chaplain and the "patient." The chaplain assumes a professional identity borrowed from behavioral sciences, with the expertise to identify, analyze, and offer remedies for whatever "spiritual" ailment the immigrant "patient" has. Do immigrant patients consider this process of assessment empowering? The answer is often negative. In the current discussions of "pastoral" identity, isn’t the patient a mere recipient of expertise offered through a pastoral expert?

The process of assessment is even more disturbing when what is offered as "pastoral" care is not what a patient expects. Let me explain further the situation mentioned above:

the staff attending the "patient" thought that a "pastoral"’ intervention was necessary because they could not get an advance directive. What the chaplain failed to understand when she tried to intervene was that the meaning of life and death for the patient and his wife went beyond the conventional ‘Karma’ (the responsibilities associated with one’s life) and 'Punarjanma' (the cycle of re-births) and an overbearing feeling of guilt supposedly attached to them. Rather, it was the worry of how the living ones will survive in a ‘white man’s world’ after the death of the sole bread winner, the anguish of rejection by their family after the ‘patient’ stopped financially supporting his brothers and parents in India, and the resignation that they could not change what was caused by their previous births.

When "pastoral" care becomes a program that uses tools and skills universally, the lived context of the "patient" becomes irrelevant, as long as it leads to "pastoral diagnoses." Pastoral care becomes an imposition on the lived context.

Empowerment requires a willingness on the part of the chaplain to scrape his or her professionalism, be a curious learner, a facilitator of lived experiences, and even sometimes to take a back seat – becoming a half empty reservoir that is open to the flow of richness from the "patient."’

Where does a chaplain place himself or herself when it comes to offering spiritual care to culturally and religiously diverse patients, especially those from the Indian subcontinent?