A Reflective Paper for CPE Student Chaplains
As chaplaincy students and practitioners, one of the most important inner reckonings we must do is understanding the subtle—but deeply significant—differences between religious care/pastoral care, and spiritual care. While these terms are often used interchangeably in public discourse, their actual expressions in chaplaincy settings carry distinct postures, purposes, and impacts.
Religious Care/Pastoral Care: Leading from Doctrine/Dogmas
Religious care is primarily rooted in institutional religious systems. It operates from confessional theology and a posture of teaching, instructing, and even correcting—seeking to LEAD others into a particular belief system or way of living. At its core, it holds a strong conviction that there is a truth that must be shared, a message that must be declared, and a path that must be followed.
This kind of care often involves telling people how they should live, should feel, or should believe. It comes from a place that might be well-intentioned, but it risks imposing a theological framework onto others—especially in moments of vulnerability. It can easily become about the caregiver’s need to express, rather than the other’s need to be heard.
More reflectively, there is often an unconscious dynamic within religious care/pastoral care practitioners—an internal struggle where parts of themselves that remain unaccepted get projected onto others. In trying to “correct” or “save” the other, they are in some ways attempting to resolve an unresolved part of themselves. This becomes a religious imposition rather than an act of care. While religious care has its place—particularly when requested or within the framework of shared belief—it must be practiced with awareness and humility.
Spiritual Care: Bridging the Sacred and the Human
Following, Listening, Being
Spiritual care, and by extension the heart of chaplaincy, is something radically different. It is not about leading others—it is about following them. It’s about entering the world of the other person, honoring their reality, and walking with them in it—not in spite of it, and certainly not to change it.
Where religious care tends to talk, spiritual care listens. Where religious care seeks to instruct, spiritual care seeks to understand. Where religious care leans on doctrine, spiritual care leans on presence.
The chaplain’s role is not to bring answers but to sit with the questions. Not to argue, correct, or convince, but to witness, explore, and accompany. To learn the patient’s worldview, to hear how they make meaning, to respect their pain and joy and doubt. Even more—to believe in their experience, to trust it, and to accept it as truth for them.
This kind of care transforms not just the person we’re with—it transforms us. It humbles us. It reminds us that every person we meet is a sacred story, a “living human document,” and our job is not to edit them—but to read them slowly, with reverence.
The Heart of Chaplaincy
In the end, the difference between religious care and spiritual care is the difference between imposing and receiving, between telling and listening, between leading and following. It’s the shift from being the voice in the room to becoming the ear, the heart, the silent witness.
This is the art and beauty of chaplaincy: being fully present with someone else without an agenda. Trusting that transformation comes not through our words, but through our presence.
And in doing so, we not only help heal others—we become more whole ourselves.
