Dates/Times: February 9 (1-6pm) and February 10 (9am-5pm)
Location: Online
Instructor: Wendy Cadge (Brandeis University / Chaplaincy Innovation Lab) and Shelly Rambo (Boston University School of Theology)
Registration Deadline: January 26, 2024

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This course will introduce learners to the current debates and discussions around how to best train chaplains for a rapidly changing landscape of spiritual care. It will invite learners reflect, from where they are positioned, about the role chaplains play in the organization as a spiritual caregiver.

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.

Shelly Rambo

Shelly Rambo has been teaching at Boston University School of Theology since 2004. Trained as both a systematic and constructive theologian, she is particularly attentive to the transmission of Christian theologies of suffering, from history to the present. She locates her work at the intersections of Christian theology, literature, and postmodern thought. Her book, Spirit and Trauma: A Theology of Remaining, forges a theology of the Spirit through engagements with postmodern biblical hermeneutics, a theology of Holy Saturday, and contemporary trauma theory. Her second book, Resurrecting Wounds: Living in the Afterlife of Trauma, explores the significance of resurrection wounds in the Christian tradition in relationship to contemporary discourses about wounding in popular culture and the study of trauma.

Her work at the intersection of trauma and religion has led to partnerships with chaplains and international educators in post-conflict areas. Inspired by the work of military chaplains, she was instrumental in designing Boston University School of Theology’s MDiv track in Chaplaincy. She also serves as a faculty leader in Boston University’s Religion and Conflict Transformation program. Her current projects focus on theologies of spiritual care that inform the work of chaplains. Through grants from the Henry Luce Foundation and the BTS center, she is partnering with sociologists to explore the changing demographics of religious life in the US and the education and training of chaplains.

She teaches courses in contemporary theology, feminist and womanist theologies, trauma and theology, postmodern theology, and theopoetics.