ABSTRACT
Healthcare is the sector of chaplaincy that is most well represented in the journal. Whilst this may reflect contextual issues in the history of the journal, it likely also reflects the numerical significance of this form of chaplaincy. What is perhaps more surprising is the paucity of studies with an ethical focus. Newitt, a significant contributor to healthcare chaplaincy studies, here engages with virtue ethics as a resource for thinking about the work of chaplains. What is interesting, though, is that he is not using virtue ethics to think primarily about overtly ethical questions but, again, about the identity of the chaplain or, more specifically, their character. The concern here is with the ‘everyday ethics’ of how a chaplain responds in the sort of crisis situation encountered on a day-to-day basis.
