Spirituality/Medicine Interface Project

Setting Common Standards for Professional Chaplains in an Age of Diversity

Authors: Teresa E. Snorton, MDiv, ThM, DMin., BCC

Abstract

The training of chaplains and ministers in the United States has a long history. The story has its beginnings in the mid 1920s, when the new form of theological education known as Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) was developed by Dr. William A. Bryan, Superintendent of the Worcester State Hospital, MA, who employed Rev. Anton T. Boisen, a former mental patient, to become the hospital chaplain. Boisen felt a calling to "break down the dividing wall between religion and medicine." During that first summer program at Worcester State Hospital in 1925, the students served as ward attendants during the day, attended staff meetings, and in the evening participated in seminars with Chaplain Boisen and various members of the professional staff.1

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References

1. Association for Clinical Pastoral Education, Inc. Available at: http://www.acpe.edu. Accessed May 7, 2006.
 
2. Thornton EE. Professional Education for Ministry, Nashville, Abingdon Press, 1970.
 
3. Association for Clinical Pastoral Education, Inc. Standards of the Association for Clinical Pastoral Education, Inc. 2005. Available at: http://www.acpe.edu. Accessed May 7, 2006.
 
4. Association for Clinical Pastoral Education, Inc. Chaplains' groups agree on common standards. Available at: http://www.acpe.edu/council.htm. Accessed May 7, 2006.