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WHEELS WITHIN WHEELS:
A HISTORY OF CHAPLAINCY IN ONTARIO, 1949-1989
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€ Lesley Barclay-Johnston
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€ Trinity College
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€ April 24, l989
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Master of Divinity Thesis
Professor Phyllis D. Airhart
Emmanuel College
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WHEELS WITHIN WHEELS:
A HISTORY OF CHAPLAINCY IN ONTARIO, 1949-1989
Sigmund Freud's insights into human personality greatly influenced western culture. Freudian theory and therapy, known popularly as psychoanalysis, addressed the question of human motivation and behavior, and the insights gained by Freud in this area spread beyond the medical establishment to revolutionize the cultural understanding of what it means to be a human being and the variety of ways human beings respond to the life crises they face.
Freudian theory made its mark on the churches almost immediately. Protestant Liberalism in particular sought to accommodate and integrate, especially in the field of pastoral care, the scientific, dynamic psychological concepts introduced by Freud. Individuals within this tradition became interested in meeting the apparent increasing need for healing and wholeness that they were encountering in those they ministered to and they looked for assistance to the newly emerging scientific psychology.1 Eventually, the work of a number of these individuals converged and it became apparent that a movement was emerging. Allison Stokes has named this movement "The Religion and Health" movement.2 This movement took off in the year 1945, and not long after that its impact was felt in Canada. Within the decade 1945 to 1955, individuals who were, for the most part, part of the Protestant Liberal tradition initiated and organized associations that became influential in convincing the Ontario Government of the need for full-time paid chaplains in government institutions and of the need for proper training for those individuals appointed to minister in these institutions. In order to put into perspective the contributions made by these individuals, we need to familiarize ourselves with developments in the Religion and Health movement prior to 1945.
THE RELIGION AND HEALTH MOVEMENT
Allison Stokes, in her book, Ministry After Freud‚ suggests that theological liberals, were especially willing to see God's purpose in Freud's work.3 Principles gleaned from Freud gradually influenced the way pastoral care was done in the churches.
The Emmanuel Movement was the first serious effort to apply psychological principles in the area of pastoral care. This movement began in l905 among some Episcopalians at the Emmanuel Church in Boston, but it soon gained support in other Protestant traditions and in various areas of the country and the world. By l908, this movement had its own journal. Elwood Worcester, the rector of Emmanuel Church, and Samuel McComb, a church historian, were the founders of the movement. Both men had studied psychology and had credentials that physicians found acceptable. They began a program of group therapy modeled on the example of medical practice.4
Elwood Worcester was concerned with the popularity of healing cults such as Christian Science. He believed that‚"the church had retained Christ's ministry to the soul but had rejected his ministry to the body;"5 thus, the established churches were in danger of losing many of their members to these healing cults. He sensed that Christians were crying out for the church to address this issue. Worcester was aware that a mutual distrust existed between physicians and the leaders of the popular healing cults. His approach was to merge science and religion, that is, "unite doctors and ministers in an alliance to win the people back."6 Worcester felt he was following the best thinkers of the age who "had come to recognize the unity of body and soul as essential to the integrity of human nature."7 When he first announced in his church that he, Dr. Samuel McComb, and two psychiatrists would be available for consultation, one hundred and ninety eight people responded. This was just the beginning of a work that flourished over the next few years.8 Judging from the response, it seems clear that Worcester did sense what the needs of the people were.
The Emmanuel Movement brought the gospel of faith as therapy. Its main inspiration was not from Freud and even though its popularity was mainly in the years 1908 to 1911‚ it still continued as a movement in some form until the 1920's. There were disputes between the doctors and the clergy early in the movement as to the role of the latter in treatment and, as a result, the two doctors originally involved with Worcester, Richard Cabot and James Jackson Putnam, withdrew their support. The churches and the seminaries were in the main hostile to this movement but it influenced the future of pastoral care in spite of this because it did spark interest in psychology among the clergy9 and thus "no pastoral theologian who wished to influence the cure of souls could entirely neglect it."10
Similar developments were taking place in Great Britain. A group of young clergy of The Church of England also alarmed by the impact that Christian Science, New Thought and Mind Cure movements were having on religious life, formed a group called the Guild of Health in 1904.11 One of the members of this group was Percy Dearmer who wrote a book called Body and Soul, published in 1910, which detailed the history of the healing ministry within Christianity and advocated, based on the new insights into human personality that Freud had introduced, the resumption of the use of the rite of Ministry to the Sick found in the Book of Common Prayer with the inclusion of Unction for the sick. The practice at this time was to reserve this rite for the dying.12 The impact on the Anglican Communion was such that the subject of Ministry to the Sick was addressed at the 1908, 1920 and 1930 Lambeth Conferences. Representatives from the worldwide Anglican Communion met at these conferences held approximately every ten years to discuss matters that were of concern to them. It was the American Bishops that raised the subject of healing initially at the 1908 conference because of their concern as to the impact of Christian Science on American religious life.13 It is clear that western churches were feeling that they must address the need for healing and wholeness that Christian people were seeking.
Stokes identifies the Rev. Anton Boisen as the inaugurator of the next development in the Religion and Health movement. Boisen's contribution to the movement came through his own personal struggle with mental illness. At age forty-three, he was admitted to Boston Psychopathic Hospital suffering from an acute psychotic disturbance. This psychotic episode lasted two weeks with a relapse six months later. Later Boisen observed "that being plunged as a patient into a hospital for the insane may be a tragedy or it may be an opportunity."14 In his case, it became an opportunity because it prompted him to delve into the whole area of psychological illness in an attempt to discover how one ministers to those who suffer from this condition.15
Boisen, through his own observation and through consultation with friends and with Elwood Worcester, began to study and formulate his ideas on the interrelationship of religious experience and mental illness and these studies formed the basis for the pursuit of what became his lifelong vocation, ministry to the mentally ill.
In l924, Boisen began work as the Chaplain at Worcester State Hospital. Boisen believed that a major factor in mental disorders was the sense of guilt experienced by the sufferer, a social judgment that the individual pronounced on himself or herself. Many of those he consulted, for instance the psychologist George Albert Coe and the psychiatrist Richard Cabot, did not hold this view but rather accepted an organic view of mental illness. These men, however, were very supportive of him during his own bouts with psychotic episodes. Coe supported him and wrote to him during his first hospitalization in l921 and Cabot made sure Boisen was hospitalized during his second psychotic episode in 1930. Boisen, based on his own experience, espoused a dynamic psychological view that he found confirmed by his reading of Freud.16
Boisen began his clinical training program in 1925. He felt that the mentally ill constantly grappled with the issues of spiritual life and death, and that it was imperative that clergy come to understand suffering through exposure to the mentally ill if they ever hoped to be able to speak with authority regarding the way to salvation--individual or social. He hoped that his students through empirical observation of the patients and through theological reflection on what they had observed would become competent pastors because of the insight they had gained through their training.17
One of Boisen's first students was Helen Flanders Dunbar and she learned her lessons well. She became an associate of Boisen and made her own contribution to the field of clinical pastoral training through her work on symbolism. Her dissertation investigated Dante's contention that through symbolism, religion and science are complementary not antagonistic.18 In 193l, she became the director of the Council for Clinical Training for Theological Students which Boisen had founded and was chosen to direct a study of religious healing sponsored by the Joint Committee on Religion and Medicine (formerly the Joint Committee on Religion and Health formed in 1926). This study, which was financed by a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, proved inconclusive; however, in her subsequent research Dunbar continued to work to bridge the specialties of religion and medicine. Through her involvement in these committees she met and influenced others in the field of clinical pastoral training. Seward Hiltner worked under her supervision for three years at the Council for Clinical Training. Hiltner was one of the members of the New York Psychology Group, a group Stokes credits with providing the intellectual and theological foundation for the Religion and Health movement. Other notable members of this group were Paul and Hannah Tillich, Erich Fromm, Rollo May, and Carl Rogers to name just a few.19
Another major figure in the Religion and Health movement, influenced to some extent by Dunbar, was Norman Vincent Peale. Peale popularized the message of "positive thinking". Although this later became somewhat of an embarrassment to those employed by the Religio-Psychiatric Clinic founded by Peale and Dr. Smiley Blanton, Peale's consistent preaching on the close relationship of mental states to bodily health earns for him a significant place in the Religion and Health movement.20
Allison Stokes claims "that the Religion and Health Movement represents Freud's impact on American Protestant ministry."21 She summarizes this movement as follows:
Elwood Worcester, Anton Boisen, Flanders Dunbar, the Blanton-Peale team, Seward Hiltner, and Paul Tillich were among the many who shaped the Religion and Health Movement in its early days...... The Emmanuel Movement, the Council for Clinical Training, the Joint Committee on Religion and Health, and the Religio-Psychiatric Clinic represented practical efforts to bring together `sound religion and sound medicine,' dynamic psychology and faith, in the cure of souls. The New York Psychology Group worked to give a theoretical underpinning to the enterprise. 22
She further claims that the Religion and Health movement began in tension with and parallel to the Social Gospel movement. The aims and objectives of the former were quite different from the latter. The leaders of the Religion and Health movement were not conscious that they belonged to "a movement"; they were seeking to apply insights they acquired through their personal experience or study to the spiritual needs of the age.23 Since they did not work through denominational channels, the denominations became aware of the movement slowly and only recently have they joined in promoting it.
The Religion and Health movement made its impact in Canada through associations formed by individuals aware of developments that were occurring in the field of pastoral care in the United States of America. This essay will proceed by discussing the developments that took place in Ontario regarding chaplaincy and attempt to show how these developments are connected to the Religion and Health movement.
THE MENTAL PATIENTS WELFARE ASSOCIATION, 1948-1952
At the inaugural meeting in 1948 of the organization known as the Mental Patients Welfare Association (MPWA), the seventeen members present identified seventeen concerns regarding their relatives who were patients at the Ontario Mental Hospital at Whitby that they wished addressed. Item twelve on this list concerned the provision of chaplains of all denominations for the hospital. The seventeen concerns fell into three categories. The first category concerned the physical needs of the patients, that is, the need for proper health care, nutrition, exercise, clothing, and recreation. The second category concerned the need for adequate staff and resource persons to put procedures in place to assist in the integration of patients back into society. The request for chaplains belongs in this category. The third category concerned providing the means whereby family members could regularly visit the hospital to see their relatives. 24
At the second meeting of the MPWA, held in the parish hall of St. Paul's Anglican Church on December 6, 1948, it was moved that a letter be sent to the Minister of Health listing some of these concerns. The first letter to the Minister dealt mainly with the amount the government granted to mental institutions which was $1.00 per patient per day as compared to $8.00 per patient per day at Sunnybrook, and $7.00 per patient per day at Christie, both veterans' hospitals. Other issues addressed in this letter were the lack of a dietitian at Whitby and the allocating of only one cup of milk per day to each patient while the hospital was supplying a great deal of milk to the Oshawa Dairy from their fine dairy herd, the lack of fresh air for some of the patients who were being kept locked up, and the problem of understaffing at the hospital due mainly to the poor salaries paid to the employees.25