Teaching Interreligious Spiritual Care

Abstract

ABSTRACT How can spiritual care faculty and clinical pastoral educators (CPE) help students integrate knowledge, capacities, and skills for practicing interreligious spiritual care? The newly adopted learning outcomes in CPE teach students specialized knowledge about spiritual care. Knowledge is then put into practice at the second level of learning in CPE. Using many of these CPE learning outcomes in graduate school spiritual care courses standardizes clinical learning across graduate degree programs and CPE units for students seeking ordination/endorsement as religious leaders and chaplains. I describe and illustrate experiential teaching strategies using the CPE learning outcomes most relevant for teaching spiritual care in graduate courses, to do with self-care, interreligious respect, interreligious listening, and self-reflexivity. I demonstrate how online discussion forums offer unique opportunities for qualitatively assessing how students are integrating knowledge and demonstrating interpersonal skills needed for interreligious spiritual care.