Salus Forum December 3, 2025

Jack

You know, Jeremy, I think it’s sort of the analogy I think of in terms of family medicine and primary care is there’s the community doc, and then there’s the hospitalist. And a chaplain at the hospital is terrific, but they don’t know the person. They don’t know what the person’s faith is. They don’t know what their history is. And the community clergy, the parish clergy, know their own parishioners. And so, having some relationship really can help in terms of making sure that patients get the most appropriate care. You know, and we use the term hospitalist, and I would say chaplains are hospitalist clergy, and that we still need some ongoing relationship with parish clergy throughout the healthcare experience.

Jeff

Jack, what do you do with denominations that are sort of antithetical to modern medicine? You know, Jehovah’s Witnesses. We’ve had some other denominations in Santa Clara that were opposed to immunizations and were actively out trying to prevent people from getting immunized. And, as you well know, in most regions, churches have some kind of community participation, but some are not really interested in modern medicine. How do you deal with that?

Bill B

Let me offer two comments. I grew up in that setting. My father was a Christian scientist. So, all the bad people in the world were physicians. So, here I’m hanging around physicians. What I found was that there were some of the physicians that we worked with who were really thoughtful about this. They would essentially work within the framework of my father’s beliefs. And at times he was in the hospital, but my father, of course, thought it was just an error. But I thought some people were really good. This was someone, Jeff, who could translate a medical perspective into the belief system of Christian Science.

The other thing I just want to mention concerns a major study I conducted with the Methodist church. I worked with a man who was the closest thing the Methodists have to a Pope. My study concerned the issues of mental health and the role of clergy in mental health. This is such a huge issue in the church. Many people cannot afford to go to see a psychologist, let alone a psychiatrist. And so, they go to their local clergy. And in this case, the Methodist church. Furthermore, some people felt that psychotherapy is really a spiritual dimension. It’s not secular for them. And so, they wanted only to go to a pastor.

We found that the clergy who had the least amount of training in mental health issues were those who were involved in the longest-term psychotherapy with people. Huge problems in terms of borderlines and how borderlines got wrapped up in issues at the churches, issues of anger management, massive problems. And so, part of what was going on, Jack, concerned with how clergy begin to take on effective roles as therapists.