"I jump into a sand pit for a living"
Collegiate Sports Chaplaincy: Problems and Promise
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Steven Walker, Lars Dzikus, Robin Hardin, Journal of issues in Intercollegiate Athletics, 2008, 1, 107-123
The article looks at sports chaplain in American colleges. A main focus of the study is the lack of any recognized training or certification for sports chaplains. “There is no organization that establishes criteria and competencies for certification as a collegiate sport chaplain in the United States”. The significance of this they suggest is that: “the lack of professional organization limits the authority and accountability of collegiate sport chaplains, which also relates to legal, ethical, and social concerns”.
The authors continue on the implications of a lack of training: “A team chaplain may not be trained or prepared to deal with ail the situations that may arise” and “There is a difference in being trained to facilitate scripture reading and to provide spiritual encouragement and being trained to recognize potentially serious problems, which require direct referral to a mental health professional”.
Four institutions which offer one day to 9 month training courses are described:
Neumann College
Baylor Univerity
Fellowship of Christian Athletes
Auburn University
There is a suggestion that the practices of bodies like the American Association of Pastoral Counselors or the Association of Professional Chaplains, might represent a useful model for sports chaplaincy to follow. The value of “a fully developed Code of Professional Ethics as those developed by such organizations as the association for Clinical Pastoral Education” was also noted.
The paper refers to a case Iowu State University where 96 academic staff signed a petition against the appointment of a “religious” sports chaplin. The outcome was the appointment of a Volunteer Life Skills Assistant who would be “explicitly prohibited from acting as an agent to promote a particular religion or religious viewpoint”.
One of their conclusions is that “a host of ethical issues regarding the role chaplains in athletic departments need to be discussed at a practical level as well as theorized within the discipline of ethics”.