How Organizational Leaders Negotiate Religious Differences: Frameworks of Mandate and Interpersonal Care

Abstract

The religious composition of the United States is rapidly shifting. As institutions and their stakeholders negotiate the needs of an increasingly diverse public, leaders of national chaplaincy organizations offer insight into how actors can effectively understand and engage matters of religious pluralism. This article identifies two distinct institutional frameworks (“mandate” and “interpersonal care”) that provide chaplaincy leaders with different schemas, tools, and strategies to use when understanding and motivating their engagement with religiously diverse publics. Using interviews with sixteen national chaplaincy leaders working in public and private settings, we delineate how institutional leaders interpret, articulate, and fulfill their roles as negotiators of religious differences within their respective frameworks. Our findings allow scholars and leaders to better understand how institutions and their actors can successfully interact with a diversifying, religiously pluralistic public.

The Persistence of Religion as a Master Status for Chaplains

“…However, chaplains may be surprised to learn from our analysis that—at least according to care recipients—their role is not as ambiguous as it sometimes appears. While a study of national chaplaincy leaders shows that chaplains understand their role through the framework of their employing organization, our analysis shows that the public’s frame of reference for a chaplain still centers religion as the chaplain’s core function (Seigler and Cadge 2023). Insofar as the public might be aware that chaplains are “secular priests,” they appear to regard this role as virtually interchangeable with other religious leaders.…”