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Thoughts upon Chaplain Anton Boisen's "Empirical Theology":
Honoring the 60th anniversary of Boisen's Problems of Religion and Life
Dear Editor:
Recent efforts to measure, weigh, and cut chaplaincy down to size have been predominantly by and for the benefit of external agencies. These efforts, mostly by managerial technicians, have become so insistent across the last twenty years that one can easily forget how similar yet psychologically and morally very different actions used to be carried out, primarily by humanistic artists, almost entirely with and on behalf of the actual persons in need.
The founder of a clinically trained, educated, and transformed chaplaincy, Anton Theophilus Boisen, argued that in pastoral caring one needed to gather and interpret the facts to take a systematic look at ones community , at families, and at certain individuals in need . He argued that one needed to do this
(1) to ascertain if the pastor has overlooked significant areas of need, and
(2) to certify that the pastors knowledge is being constantly tested and increased.
Both the ascertaining and the certifying the measuring, weighing, and cutting down to size were not to occur externally but rather internally to become clearer in the midst of actual service to human beings in need. [italics mine] The key words here are significant and increased.
Both the ascertaining and the certifying the measuring, weighing, and cutting down to size were not to occur externally but rather internally to become clearer in the midst of actual service to human beings in need. [italics mine] The key words here are significant and increased.
For a good century or so before Boisen, clergy had been admonished, via dry-as-dust lectures and books on pastoral care, to do this or that for an abstract group of persons in need. Few teachers before Boisen appear to have gone out among individual persons in
need to ask what assistance might actually be most relevant for their lives. Significant was to be induced by listening to the people involved rather than deduced from academic lectures.
For a good century or so before Boisen, clergy had been admonished to apply their received erudition to those needing care. Few teachers before Boisen appear to have gone out among numerous, varied persons in need to have ideas challenged or their knowledge of human beings increased. Increased, tested knowledge was cycled back. Without true understanding it is impossible to render effective service. [Boisen: PRL, p.5.]
That is, within what Boisen called empirical theology, the measuring, weighing, and cutting down to size were (1) toward shaping the discrete varieties of pastoral care to the community needs and (2) toward shaping the pastor involved into the actual community chaplain needed.
Robert Charles Powell, MD, PhD
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Boisen, Anton Theophilus: Problems in Religion and Life: A Manual for Pastors, with Outlines for the Co-operative Study of Personal Experience in Social Situations. New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1946; pp.7, 7-8, 6.
Robert Charles Powell: "Empirical Theology, 1916-1946: A Note on the Contribution of Anton T. Boisen." invited address, presented before the Autumn Convocation, Chicago Theological Seminary, September 1976. Chicago Theological Seminary Register 67: 1-11, 1977.
Robert Charles Powell: A Call for Chaplaincy that is NOT Measured, Weighed, or Cut Down to Size: Thoughts upon Chaplain Robert Mitchells Article. CPSP Pastoral Report, July 27, 2006. http://www.pastoralreport.com/the_archives/2006/07/index.html
Posted by Perry Miller, Editor at September 27, 2006 6:51 AM
