Paging God: Religion In The Halls Of Medicine

Wendy Cadge’s excellent research illustrates the relationship between the religious ministries and the medical industry. Since 2000 the US hospitals have been dealing with patients that are older, sicker, and often depressed, creating a greater need for spiritual counseling and services.  This, in turn, creates a greater need to have hospital chaplains of all faiths, not just Catholic, Protestant, and Jew. You’re also dealing with Muslims, Mormons, Hindus, various Asian religions, and if you’re in Wyoming or Montana, probably some Native American ones.

The author frequently interviews hospital staff in this book, and it turns out that most of the older hospitals have chapels that are just bare rooms with chairs scattered about and a cross on the wall. They were meant as prayer and meditation rooms, and used mainly by visitors or hospital staff. Situated off the lobby, this reinforces the idea that the patients were unlikely to use them. In the chapter From Symbols to Silence, the Muslim staff members ask for a prayer room at Brooklyn Lutheran, because they need to pray five times a day. Again, it’s the staff, not the patients who request it. Unlike other chapels, the Muslims do fine with a bare room. They can’t pray in front of images anyway!

Back in 1999, I remember the South Nassau Community Hospital opening a Jewish chapel to replace and older prayer room. It was a small one, this new chapel, but it was nicely furnished and decorated, with a  stained-glass window (albeit an amateurish one that was made in great haste.) The earlier Jewish chapel, like in other hospitals, was bare and depressing. The administrators (most of them Jewish) wanted something a little more colorful for the patients, as many of them wouldn’t be going home. A major theme in this book is oncology; most of the patients who frequent the prayer rooms have cancer, and that often necessitates longer stays. Even the outpatients who come in for chemotherapy have to put up with daily visits, and you don’t want to depress a cancer patient.

In the last 30 years, the US medical establishment has faced new issues. People live much longer, well past the point where their mental and physical abilities are gone. Older people, accustomed to going to services frequently, can become depressed if the routine changes. The need for proper and well-maintained space for religious service becomes greater, because it can be incredibly depressing if you have to spend your last days in a linoleum tiled room with flickering fluorescent lights and a drop ceiling. The changing demographics are a factor too. In places like Queens and Brooklyn, the growing Muslim population means you have more Muslim staff and patients, and that means you’ll need a Muslim chapel and a Muslim chaplain too.