ABSTRACT
In this article, Victoria Slater pushes at the boundaries of what it means to be a ‘chaplain.’ She quotes a research participant as saying that grasping the role of the chaplain is a bit like ‘getting hold of jelly’. Slater allows us to sit with the uncomfortable ambiguity of the concept of the chaplain, which enables her to gently deepen and complexify the term. Rather than speaking from ‘on high’ about what a chaplain should be, she is drawing out who the chaplain is within a contemporary context, thus creating space for other emerging, non-institutionally defined roles to inhabit the chaplaincy term. Here we see an approach similar to Steve Nolan’s use of Grounded Theory, which allowed the data to grow the theory. Slater avoids starting with a pre-established definition, and instead uncovers knowledge about the chaplaincy role as it ‘actually works.’
