decolonizing spiritual care and soul-work
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Personal Statement on the Need to Decolonize Chaplaincy and Spiritual Care
Chaplaincy and spiritual care arise from the oldest human practices of tending the Soul, witnessing suffering, and honoring the sacredness of life. Yet in modern Western contexts, these ancient forms of care have been absorbed into systems shaped by patriarchy, capitalism, and colonization. These systems define worth through productivity, regulate care through institutional power, and reduce human complexity to categories useful for billing, compliance, and control. To restore spiritual care to its true purpose, we must fully decouple it from these frameworks. |
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Patriarchal structures have historically positioned spiritual authority as hierarchical, top-down, and tied to institutional credentialing. This approach silences the lived experience of the individual, privileges dogma over discernment, and fragments the relational nature of care. Decolonized spiritual care dismantles the notion of expert authority and returns to a model of companionship, mutuality, inner wisdom, and presence.
Capitalist models reduce spiritual care to measurable outputs and treat caregivers as units of labor rather than human beings engaged in sacred work. Hospice chaplains are often evaluated not by depth of presence, but by productivity metrics, visit counts, and documentation speed. Capitalism is fundamentally incompatible with the contemplative nature of Soul-tending, which requires spaciousness, listening, imagination, and a pace determined by the unfolding of the human spirit - not by market efficiency. Decolonizing spiritual care means rejecting the commodification of meaning-making and reclaiming Soul care as a relational, intrinsic, non-transactional act.
Colonialist frameworks impose external definitions of health, spirituality, and “normalcy” upon diverse peoples and cultures. They privilege Western psychological and theological paradigms while delegitimizing local traditions, indigenous knowledge, feminine wisdom, non-binary, and ancestral visions of the sacred. Authentic spiritual care must honor the multiplicity of human experience and return agency to the person’s own symbols, myths, rituals, and inner authority. Decolonized Soul-tending recognizes the psyche - the Soul - as a space of sovereignty, mystery, and imagination that cannot be contained by state licensure, insurance codes, or institutional mandates.
Capitalist models reduce spiritual care to measurable outputs and treat caregivers as units of labor rather than human beings engaged in sacred work. Hospice chaplains are often evaluated not by depth of presence, but by productivity metrics, visit counts, and documentation speed. Capitalism is fundamentally incompatible with the contemplative nature of Soul-tending, which requires spaciousness, listening, imagination, and a pace determined by the unfolding of the human spirit - not by market efficiency. Decolonizing spiritual care means rejecting the commodification of meaning-making and reclaiming Soul care as a relational, intrinsic, non-transactional act.
Colonialist frameworks impose external definitions of health, spirituality, and “normalcy” upon diverse peoples and cultures. They privilege Western psychological and theological paradigms while delegitimizing local traditions, indigenous knowledge, feminine wisdom, non-binary, and ancestral visions of the sacred. Authentic spiritual care must honor the multiplicity of human experience and return agency to the person’s own symbols, myths, rituals, and inner authority. Decolonized Soul-tending recognizes the psyche - the Soul - as a space of sovereignty, mystery, and imagination that cannot be contained by state licensure, insurance codes, or institutional mandates.
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A decolonized model of spiritual care affirms that healing arises not from diagnosis or hierarchy, but from relationship, presence, story, dream, ritual, archetype, community, and meaning. It embraces the full humanity of both giver and receiver. It seeks liberation from structures that confine, categorize, or commodify the Soul.
To separate chaplaincy from patriarchy, capitalism, and colonization is not merely an ideological preference - it is a moral and spiritual imperative. Only by reclaiming spiritual care from these systems can we restore it to its rightful home: the sacred relationship between beings, the deep listening to the Soul’s language, and the shared journey toward wholeness, dignity, and freedom. ~ Rensho |
"The Soul - and the craft of Soul-care - cannot thrive
within a profit-driven, medicalized system.
My calling is Soul-tending - slow, symbolic, relational work that resists productivity metrics and institutional control. True chaplaincy and spiritual care must be decolonized, liberated from capitalism and hierarchy,
and restored to its sacred human depth."
~ Scott Rensho Elliott
within a profit-driven, medicalized system.
My calling is Soul-tending - slow, symbolic, relational work that resists productivity metrics and institutional control. True chaplaincy and spiritual care must be decolonized, liberated from capitalism and hierarchy,
and restored to its sacred human depth."
~ Scott Rensho Elliott
why i practice outside traditional systems
Why I Practice Outside Traditional Systems
I practice Spiritual Care outside traditional systems of mental health counseling, institutional religion, and medicalized healthcare; not because I reject professionalism or accountability, but because these systems have too often become colonized structures of control rather than spaces of authentic healing.
This choice is ethical, historical, and spiritual.
Decolonization as an Ethical Commitment
Decolonization is often misunderstood as opposition to structure or authority. In truth, it is a refusal of authoritarianism masquerading as care. Colonized systems centralize power, define legitimacy from above, and universalize one worldview while marginalizing others. They translate human experience into categories that can be measured, managed, and controlled.
In the realm of Spiritual Care, colonization has taken many forms:
Historically, colonization has been inseparable from the oppression of Native peoples, Brown and Black communities, women, queer bodies, and other marginalized groups. Their spiritual practices were dismissed as primitive, dangerous, subversive, or pathological. Their ways of knowing were replaced by systems that claimed neutrality while enforcing dominance.
To practice decolonized Spiritual Care is to refuse participation in that legacy.
I practice Spiritual Care outside traditional systems of mental health counseling, institutional religion, and medicalized healthcare; not because I reject professionalism or accountability, but because these systems have too often become colonized structures of control rather than spaces of authentic healing.
This choice is ethical, historical, and spiritual.
Decolonization as an Ethical Commitment
Decolonization is often misunderstood as opposition to structure or authority. In truth, it is a refusal of authoritarianism masquerading as care. Colonized systems centralize power, define legitimacy from above, and universalize one worldview while marginalizing others. They translate human experience into categories that can be measured, managed, and controlled.
In the realm of Spiritual Care, colonization has taken many forms:
- The medicalization of suffering and death,
- The reduction of Soul to “mental health,”
- The subordination of Spiritual Care to clinical or bureaucratic authority,
- The commodification of care within capitalist systems,
- The silencing of indigenous, ancestral, feminine, non-binary, and non-normative wisdom.
Historically, colonization has been inseparable from the oppression of Native peoples, Brown and Black communities, women, queer bodies, and other marginalized groups. Their spiritual practices were dismissed as primitive, dangerous, subversive, or pathological. Their ways of knowing were replaced by systems that claimed neutrality while enforcing dominance.
To practice decolonized Spiritual Care is to refuse participation in that legacy.
Why I Do Not Practice Within Systems
Modern systems of care – mental health, institutional religion, and healthcare – are not intentionally or inherently harmful. But when they claim exclusive authority over suffering, healing, meaning, or death, they become instruments of domination rather than service.
Modern systems of care – mental health, institutional religion, and healthcare – are not intentionally or inherently harmful. But when they claim exclusive authority over suffering, healing, meaning, or death, they become instruments of domination rather than service.
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These systems tend to:
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Practicing outside these systems allows me to offer Spiritual Care that is relational rather than hierarchical, consent-based rather than coercive, and rooted in cultivation of Soul rather than elimination of “illness.”
This is not an escape from responsibility. It is a refusal of false authority.
This is not an escape from responsibility. It is a refusal of false authority.
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Spiritual Queerness and the Refusal of Normativity
Queerness, at its deepest level, is not merely about identity—it is about resisting compulsory norms. Queer wisdom exposes how systems enforce narrow definitions of what is “healthy,” “normal,” “successful,” or “whole.” Spiritual queerness refuses:
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From the perspective of depth psychology and Soul, queerness is not marginal, it is authentic and archetypal. Soul speaks in images, paradoxes, tensions, and thresholds. Soul manifests in poly-valent, poly-centric, complimentary energies. Soul is not reducible to black-and white. Soul is variegated, flowing, and diverse. Soul resists closure and confinement. Soul refuses label and simplification.
To queer Spiritual Care is to allow ambiguity, multiplicity, and becoming – to honor inner life without translating it into diagnostic or doctrinal language.
Decolonization and Queering as Shared Resistance
Decolonization and queering are not separate projects.
Decolonization and queering are structurally aligned forms of resistance against systems that:
Together, they challenge authoritarian models of care that have historically harmed marginalized communities - especially Native peoples, people of color, women, queer and trans individuals, and those whose spiritual lives do not fit institutional norms.
This work is not about replacing one authority with another. It is about restoring agency, dignity, and inner authority.
To queer Spiritual Care is to allow ambiguity, multiplicity, and becoming – to honor inner life without translating it into diagnostic or doctrinal language.
Decolonization and Queering as Shared Resistance
Decolonization and queering are not separate projects.
Decolonization and queering are structurally aligned forms of resistance against systems that:
- Centralize power,
- Enforce conformity,
- Marginalize difference,
- Pathologize deviation,
- Silence lived experience.
Together, they challenge authoritarian models of care that have historically harmed marginalized communities - especially Native peoples, people of color, women, queer and trans individuals, and those whose spiritual lives do not fit institutional norms.
This work is not about replacing one authority with another. It is about restoring agency, dignity, and inner authority.
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What I Offer Instead
Grounded in Jungian and Archetypal Psychology, contemplative practice, and ancient traditions of spiritual accompaniment, I offer non-clinical Spiritual Care that honors psyche as Soul. My work emphasizes:
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This approach can stand on its own as a practice of healing and transformation, and it can also accompany other forms of care without competing with them.
A Final Word
I practice outside traditional religious and mental health systems because I believe care of the Soul must remain free from domination.
Authentic Soul Care must remain free to be relational, contextual, imaginal, and humane.
This is not a rejection of structure. It is a refusal of colonized structure.
It is a commitment to care that does not extract, normalize, or control – but listens, accompanies, and honors the full complexity of human becoming.
I practice outside traditional religious and mental health systems because I believe care of the Soul must remain free from domination.
Authentic Soul Care must remain free to be relational, contextual, imaginal, and humane.
This is not a rejection of structure. It is a refusal of colonized structure.
It is a commitment to care that does not extract, normalize, or control – but listens, accompanies, and honors the full complexity of human becoming.