ABSTRACT
There is a great danger that any discussion of the role of the chaplain will run all too quickly into abstract notions or diffuse aspirations. As we saw in Chapter 2, one of the criticisms which can be made of public expressions of Christianity in England after the sixteenth century is that faith (especially ‘approved’ faith) was driven into the mind – an observation supported by the decision at Bedlam to exclude chaplains from an institution for the insane. In order to engage more directly with the experience of chaplaincy, this chapter will draw on auto-ethnographic texts to reflect on the particular activity of a chaplain. As one of the aims of ethnography is to make the familiar strange, it is a technique well suited to the task of identifying the differences between the public statements about chaplaincy and what is going on in the practice of spiritual care at the start of the twenty-first century.
