Boston Globe Article on Chaplaincy features Prof. Shelly Rambo, STH Student, and Recent Alums
This Boston Globe article features the paths and impacts of current STH student Martin Mugerwa (STH’21), and alums Yulia Kazakova Hatton (STH’14), Ylisse Bess (STH’17), and Roger Gordon (STH’19). Please click here to access the full article.
Chaplains and the rise of on-demand spiritual support
As traditional religious practice recedes, many New Englanders are increasingly turning to a different kind of pastor when and where they’re needed.
By Jonathan D. Fitzgerald
March 9, 2021
Mourning a death. Coping with grief. Healing the heartsick and soothing the sufferers. For much of human history, people addressed loss and trauma through rituals drawn from faith traditions, performed in spaces we called sacred — churches, temples, shrines, mosques — and led by ministers and rabbis, imams and priests. But in New England, where the influence of Puritan piety has yielded to unceremonious secularism, something more malleable is emerging. To meet spiritual needs when and where they arise, we’re turning to chaplains, people trained to work outside the structure of religious institutions. As church attendance nationally also declines, “the need for chaplains will only increase,” says Shelly Rambo, an associate professor at Boston University School of Theology.