Spiritual Care Support Group Facilitation: Integrating the Best of What Religion Has to Offer Without the Dogma

Building on the analogy I proposed in my blog, "Metaphors of Cultural Competency in Chaplaincy," leading spiritual care support groups within a secular, religiously diverse hospital setting is akin to catering a banquet for guests with vastly different food preferences, dietary needs and allergies. You would certainly consider it a failure if you served a dairy-heavy menu to a room full of lactose-intolerant people, or presented a meat-centric feast to dedicated vegetarians. And it would be a tragic oversight if a participant suffered anaphylactic shock because you neglected to account for a severe peanut allergy in the ingredients you provided.

In a similar sense, a chaplain cannot simply offer any spiritual "meal" and presume it will nourish every individual in the circle. One effective strategy is to seek out the common denominator that is safe and beneficial for everyone. During my previous work as a graduate school dean of students, I occasionally acted as an informal caterer for small gatherings. To navigate the complexities of diverse palates and food restrictions, I often defaulted to vegan or vegetarian options as the foundational base, allowing others to add dairy, meat, or nuts as optional side items according to their own needs. I also offered meat, dairy, or food with nuts, but with clear labels so that guests could choose to decline them as they saw fit.

Using the metaphor of a caterer as a facilitator of secular spiritual care support groups, balancing diverse beliefs while honoring patient autonomy is a delicate balancing act. I must be careful not to assume that my personal spiritual preferences are what every patient requires. Nevertheless, certain spiritual practices possess "common denominator" qualities that can be offered broadly to provide genuine nourishment. By focusing on these inclusive tools, I can ensure I am upholding the vital ethic of non-maleficence—the sacred duty to "do no harm."

The Common Denominator Supported by Science
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Religious traditions can be understood not only as systems of belief but as repositories of culturally transmitted practices for addressing recurring human problems, such as loss, uncertainty, suffering, mortality, belonging, identity, transition, and the search for meaning. Contemporary psychology, neuroscience, and healthcare research provide independent explanations for why some of these practices may continue to be beneficial even when their original theological frameworks are not shared by everyone (*See suggested bibliography). Here, I propose that contemporary chaplaincy—particularly in the context of facilitating spiritual care support groups for patients in secular religiously pluralistic settings—can effectively integrate the enduring wisdom preserved by religious traditions while avoiding the imposition of sectarian religious dogma or theological beliefs, which can potentially cause an allergic reaction in some participants.

Shared Human Experience as the Center of Group Cohesion
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In my blog Experience, Not Opinions, I proposed that support groups provide the greatest benefit when conversations remain grounded in human experience rather than becoming entangled in the thorns of opinions, competing beliefs, or religious doctrine. This is especially important in secular, interfaith, and multifaith support groups, where theological claims (such as beliefs about the supernatural) can quickly become divisive. The challenge becomes even more significant when participants carry experiences of religious abuse.

This does not mean that participants in spiritual care support groups should be discouraged from discussing their religious or spiritual beliefs. On the contrary, such beliefs can be deeply meaningful and may play an important role in how individuals cope with existential distress. The issue is not whether religious beliefs belong in the conversation, but rather what occupies the center of the conversation. When doctrine becomes the focal point, group cohesion can suffer. When shared human experience becomes the focal point, people from diverse religious and nonreligious backgrounds can discover common ground.

The universal experiences of grief, loss, loneliness, fear, hope, meaning, mortality, belonging, and the search for purpose are not confined to any particular religious tradition. These experiences provide a common language through which participants can recognize themselves in one another. A person may understand the meaning of suffering through Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, another religious tradition, a secular worldview, or no formal religious framework at all. Yet the experience of suffering itself can be shared.

I also believe that, as a support group discussion agenda, asking for opinions on whether religion or spirituality is useful when one is a patient in the hospital is not the best use of a spiritual care support group's time. The support group after all is not an educational course on the validity of religion and spirituality. As chaplains, we already recognize that healthy spirituality and the positive dimensions of religion can be powerful resources in times of crisis and existential distress. Also, we chaplains assume that everyone has a spirituality - religious or not, well developed or not. That is, people have a lens through which they interpret their human experience to find meaning. The task of spiritual care support groups is not to prove this proposition intellectually, but to create experiences through which participants can encounter meaning, connection, reflection, and healing for themselves.

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The Four Healing Salves as the Common Denominator 
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Author Angeles Arrien proposes that thriving humans have a vibrant relationship with what she calls the "4 healing salves" - storytelling, singing, dancing and silence. Drawing upon her cross-cultural framework of the four healing salves and placing these practices in conversation with contemporary research on belonging, ritual, narrative identity, music, and contemplative practice can be very useful in what helps with the spiritual flourishing and thriving of humans. These four salves, I would argue, are the common denominator.  Author Britt Hartley, in No Nonsense Spirituality, makes a related argument, suggesting that these practices represent some of the life-giving wisdom that religion has preserved and transmitted throughout human history.

This distinction between practice and belief is particularly valuable for chaplains working in secular and religiously pluralistic environments. We do not need to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Religion contains both doctrine and practice, and while particular doctrines may not be appropriate as the organizing framework for a pluralistic support group, many of the practices developed within religious traditions speak to universal human needs.

In spiritual care support groups, we can therefore draw upon these enduring "salves" while translating them into language and practices accessible to people of many different worldviews. We can cultivate belonging, storytelling, group co-regulation and cohesion through singing, breath, movement, and ritual as a way of holding sacred or meaningful space during times of transition and liminality.

These practices need not require participants to share a particular theology. Instead, they can provide a common experiential framework within which each person is free to interpret the experience according to their own worldview.

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Chaplains: Strong on One Salve, but Often Less Trained in the Other Three

If we assume that these four dimensions represent important elements of the wisdom that religion and spirituality have offered humanity, it is worth considering how chaplains are traditionally trained. Conventional chaplaincy education, particularly Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE), places considerable emphasis on one of these dimensions: storytelling.

We are trained to listen deeply to people's stories. We learn to pay attention to the meaning people assign to their experiences and, when appropriate, to explore the deeper spiritual, archetypal, existential, or religious themes that emerge from those stories. This is one of the great strengths of chaplaincy.

However, not every chaplain is trained in congregational leadership, ritual theory, liturgy, music leadership, movement practices, or the creative integration of these dimensions into group experiences. These are often areas in which clergy and congregational leaders receive more specialized training.

Even when a chaplain does have a background in congregational or religious settings, the challenge emerges when working in a secular or religiously pluralistic support group: How do we adapt these practices so that they remain accessible to everyone?

A ritual, song, poem, or spiritual metaphor offered in such a setting needs to be sufficiently universal that participants can encounter it without having to adopt the facilitator's religious interpretation. Ideally, the material operates at an archetypal and human level. A participant who is religious can interpret the metaphor through their faith tradition, while a participant who is agnostic, atheist, spiritually eclectic, or recovering from religious trauma can engage with the same material through an entirely different framework.

The goal is not to strip spiritual practices of their depth. Rather, it is to uncover the universal human wisdom embedded within them.

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Integrating the Core Wisdom of Religion Through a Secular, Evidence-Based Lens

In facilitating spiritual care support groups, particularly in behavioral health settings, I have found significant value in integrating these dimensions of religious and spiritual practice without requiring participants to accept religious dogma.

These practices can be understood through a secular and evidence-informed lens:

RITUALS (BODY MOVEMENT)
Rituals are outward embodiments of human values. They entail some level of physical participation - sometimes highly choreographed (like a dance), sometimes something as simple as standing up and sitting down, sometimes moving one's arms and limbs, sometimes as simple as breathing and sitting in a circle. Rituals give form to experiences that can otherwise be difficult to articulate. Rituals can help people process grief, mark transitions, acknowledge endings and beginnings, and regulate their internal state. A ritual does not have to invoke a particular deity or theology to be meaningful. Lighting a candle, sharing a blessing, creating a symbolic object, or observing a moment of silence can all provide structure and meaning during moments of transition.

SINGING
Communal singing is a powerful vehicle for belonging and shared experience. Singing engages the body as well as the mind. When people sing together, they breathe together, vocalize together, listen to one another, and participate in a shared rhythmic experience. These elements can foster connection and co-regulation. The experience of creating vocal sounds and rhythmic patterns together can temporarily soften the boundaries between individuals and cultivate a sense of belonging that ordinary conversation sometimes cannot achieve.

STORYTELLING
Storytelling helps us understand the human condition and map our own narratives. Sacred stories, myths, parables, and wisdom stories have served this function throughout human history. Their enduring value does not necessarily depend upon whether participants regard them as literally or historically true. Stories can function as mirrors and maps. Through archetypal characters and situations, they allow people to recognize dimensions of their own experience and consider possibilities for how their stories might unfold.

SILENCE
Meditation, contemplation, and silence create space for reflection and awareness. Religious traditions have developed countless forms of contemplative practice, but these practices can also be approached without requiring a particular religious commitment. Breath awareness, guided meditation, reflective silence, and contemplative exercises can create opportunities for stress reduction, self-reflection, emotional regulation, and deeper awareness of one's inner experience.
Together, these practices allow chaplains to draw from a deep reservoir of human wisdom while respecting the diversity of the people we serve.

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From Religious Inheritance to Universal Human Practice
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Perhaps the most important shift is to understand religion not simply as a collection of beliefs, but also as a repository of practices developed across generations to help human beings navigate the fundamental challenges of existence.
Human beings have always faced suffering, mortality, uncertainty, separation, transition, and the search for meaning. Long before contemporary healthcare developed its current understanding of psychology, neuroscience, and behavioral health, religious communities were developing practices to help people encounter these realities. They told stories. They sang together. They moved their bodies. They created rituals. They sat in silence. They marked thresholds. They gathered people into communities of belonging.

Modern chaplaincy does not need to replicate these traditions exactly, nor does it need to defend the theological claims that accompanied them. Instead, chaplains can ask a different question: What human need was this practice attempting to address? Once we ask that question, the possibilities become much broader.

A sacred story may become a wisdom story through which participants explore resilience, loss, forgiveness, identity, or transformation. A hymn or a pop song may become a communal song that expresses a universal human longing. A religious ritual may become a symbolic practice for marking a transition. Contemplative prayer may become a secular mindfulness or reflection exercise. Silence may simply become the permission to stop performing, explaining, defending, and fixing—and to rest together in a shared human moment.

This approach does not diminish religion. In many ways, it honors religion by recognizing the enduring human wisdom that has been carried through its traditions.

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The Chaplain as Curator of Meaningful Experience

This approach also suggests a broader understanding of the chaplain's role in group facilitation. The chaplain is not necessarily the person who provides the religious answer. Nor is the chaplain's task to persuade participants to adopt a particular spiritual framework. Instead, the chaplain's role is mostly to help notice, to invite, to encourage, and most important, to become a curator of meaningful experiences.

The chaplain creates a container in which participants can encounter stories, music, ritual, silence, movement, reflection, and one another. Within that container, participants are invited to discover what these experiences mean to them.

This requires a delicate balance. The chaplain must be intentional enough to provide structure while remaining open enough not to control the meaning-making process. The facilitator offers the story but does not dictate its interpretation. The facilitator introduces the song but does not determine what the song must mean. The facilitator creates the ritual space but does not insist upon a particular understanding of what makes that space sacred.

In this way, spiritual care becomes less about transmitting answers and more about creating conditions in which meaning can emerge and a sense of togetherness and connection across difference can be fueled by love and empathy.

Summary

The wisdom contained within religious and spiritual traditions does not have to be abandoned simply because contemporary healthcare serves people from diverse religious, spiritual, and secular backgrounds. Nor does spiritual care need to become a debate about whose beliefs are true. We can preserve what is life-giving while setting aside what divides. By centering shared human experience and drawing upon the healing salves of storytelling, singing, movement, silence, belonging, and ritual, chaplains can create support groups that are both spiritually rich and genuinely inclusive. The goal is not to remove spirituality from spiritual care, but to make room for spirituality to be encountered in ways that do not require agreement about doctrine. In doing so, we reclaim some of the oldest resources humanity has developed for navigating suffering and transformation and bring them into conversation with contemporary understandings of human well-being. At its heart, this is the sacred work of the chaplain: creating spaces where people can be met with dignity, discover meaning within their experience, reconnect with one another, and move toward greater wholeness—without requiring them to believe the same things in order to heal together.​

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SUGGESTED BIBLIOGRAPHY