Dates/Times: March 5; March 12; March 26; and April 2, 2024, 7:00-9:15 PM EST
Location: Online
Instructor: Wendy Cadge (Brandeis University / Chaplaincy Innovation Lab)
Registration Deadline: February 20, 2024
NOTE: This course is taught as a blended course which includes a few hours of engagement activities that take place before/between/after live class sessions.

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How individuals and communities engage with spirituality certainly is changing. “Delivery Systems,” like primarily physical congregations and parishes, are in sharp decline. But new delivery systems exist and are on the rise — not necessarily under the name of “religion,” but fulfilling many of the same social, emotional, and spiritual purposes as configurations of the past. Chaplains are key leaders of these delivery systems of the future. This course will consider the “Spiritual Infrastructure of the Future,” where chaplains fit into it, and how those interested in the work of spiritual care can begin pursuing leadership in this area.

Wendy Cadge

Wendy Cadge is the Barbara Mandel Professor of Humanistic Social Sciences and Professor of Sociology at Brandeis University. She is an expert in contemporary American religion, especially related to religion in public institutions, religious diversity,  religious and moral aspects of healthcare, and religion and immigration.

She is the author of three books, Spiritual Care: The Everyday Work of Chaplains, Paging God: Religion in the Halls of Medicine and Heartwood: The First Generation of Theravada Buddhism in America, and a co-editor of Chaplaincy and Spiritual Care in the Twenty-First Century and Religion on the Edge: De-Centering and Re-Centering the Sociology of Religion. Information about her articles is available on her Scholar Works and Google Scholar profiles.

She launched the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab in 2018 after founding and co-directing the Transforming Chaplaincy Project  from 2015-2019. A public intellectual, she recently wrote or has been quoted in the Atlantic, the Economist, the BBC, and on WBUR. She has published more than eighty articles and raised more than $8 million in support of her own research and teaching and that of students and colleagues.

At Brandeis University she serves as the Dean of the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. She previously served as the Senior Associate Dean for Strategic Initiatives (2019-2021), the Social Science Division Head (2018-2021), and Chair of the Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Program (2013-2018) in the School of Arts & Sciences at Brandeis University. She was also a Faculty Representative to the Board of Trustees (2014-2019) and co-chair of the Faculty Governance Task Force (2017-2019) representing faculty across the university.