a wide spectrum of public and private institutions associated with culture, education, emergency services, justice, transport, and so on (Ryan 2014), it is important to consider some of the implications of their structural and organisational situation.Take, for example, the question of ‘health and safety’. Unlike chaplains who work within organisations, chaplains who find themselves occupying ‘multiply marginal’ (Pattison 2015) positions working with organisations appear to lack the kind of access to employee well- being and occupational health support typically associated with a large hierarchical orga-nisation (such as counselling). Associated with this structural liminality is the question of ‘voice’ and representation in relation to issues of well-being and safety. Although chaplaincy bodies will have a ‘duty of care’ towards their employees or volunteers, in many cases this is unlikely to be available ‘on site’. The spatial and temporal distance between chaplains working with an organisation from those who bear ultimate responsibility for their welfare and security can become mutually disadvantageous when it comes to health and safety (Nayani et al. 2018). For those responsible for the management of chaplains, the lack of opportunity to observe the extent to which health and safety protocols are being observed on a day-to-day basis limits the occasion for them to share information, to re-evaluate what counts as risk, or to model good health and safety behaviours. Meanwhile, chaplains may lack occasions for informal sharing of health and safety information, or the opportunity to observe good working practices from their managers. In a context where ‘management practices assume face-to-face interaction’ (Nayani et al. 2018, 124), ‘lone worker’ chaplains present a challenge to prevalent assumptions and norms. Given the global shift towards greater lone working (from home) as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is clearly a case to be made for reconsideration of management principles and practices which pay more considered attention to the management of ‘lone workers’.Chaplaincy work is assumed to be an intrinsically rewarding sphere of professional religious work that gives individuals an opportunity to fulfil a ‘calling’ to offer spiritual and religious service to others (Todd, Cobb, and Swift 2015; Gilliat-Ray, Mansur Ali, and Pattison 2013). However, our data seems to show the need to discriminate and differentiate more precisely the assumed origins and nature of these intrinsic rewards within specific chaplaincy sectors, and perhaps especially for ‘lone worker’ chaplains who may be less likely to receive feedback from colleagues or managers. Unlike many other spheres of chaplaincy work, the bureaucratic and structural arrangements that shape the work of port chaplains – especially those governing health and safety – have a significant and determining impact on their modus operandi and consequent opportunity to derive intrinsic rewards from their interactions with others – either colleagues or clients. They require permission to board the ship, they are usually escorted while on board, and their work is usually highly monotonous; this paper has mapped some of the very clear risks that port chaplains take in order to undertake their ministry. The particular structures and constraints that shape their work have subsequent consequences for their scope to derive satisfaction and intrinsic rewards from their ministry, as compared to many other forms of chaplaincy work. But in our data, it becomes clear that it is precisely the lack of intrinsic rewards – as convention-ally understood in chaplaincy literature and discourse – that seems to provide many port chaplains with their distinctive feeling of fulfilment in much of their work. It is the acts of sacrifice – personal, emotional, physical, financial – that seem to generate their sense of reward rather than other, more typical ways in which chaplains gain a sense of having ‘done a good job’ (Gilliat-Ray, Mansur Ali, and Pattison 2013).JOURNAL OF BELIEFS & VALUES183
ConclusionAs religious professionals serving in secular worlds, chaplains, like seafarers, operate ‘between two worlds’ (Holst 1982; Sullivan 2014; Cadge 2012). Their work involves the management of relationships and structural arrangements that can pull them in opposing and conflicting directions, between their ‘sending’ religious institution, and the sector in which they are employed. Port chaplains are perhaps uniquely able to appreciate the ‘betweenness’ of the world occupied by seafarers as they manage the constant disruption of living and moving between short periods of time at home, and long periods of time at sea. As transnational workers, seafarers live in ‘more than one social space’ (Sampson 2013, 13), and have ‘a foot in two cultures, two societies, two countries, at the same time’ (ibid.). It is a form of transnationalism that isn’t just about ‘spanning territorial boundaries’ (ibid.) but managing to live physically, emotionally and mentally in more than one place at a time. The vocabulary of transnationalism doesn’t yet seem able to encompass the work of (port) chaplains and those whose work may not involve the crossing of borders nor the traversing of physical space, but remains in all other respect ‘transnational’.It has not been difficult to prove the value of port chaplaincy via qualitative research methods; our project enabled chaplains to articulate their largely unseen contribution to the shipping industry. But neither they, nor we, could disregard some of the develop-ments in shipping technology and communications that are likely to make their role vulnerable in the future. Port operations are becoming increasingly automated in the form of ‘robot’/autonomous surface ships (Kim et al. 2020), which are likely to enable cargo to be loaded and unloaded more quickly than ever. Some chaplains could see that a time may come when there simply won’t be an opportunity to ‘hang out’ in the crew mess. Vessels are increasingly able to provide internet/Wi-Fi access, removing one of the key services that chaplains and chaplaincy centres have been able to offer. This has pushed one chaplain towards thoughts of a ‘virtual seafarer centre’, but whether such an entity could replace the embodied presence of a chaplain is debatable.While feeling personally supported by port chaplaincy organisations, some chaplains were simultaneously critical of them for having insufficient regard for the future chal-lenges of the profession and their failure to keep pace with the rapidity of change in the maritime industry. None expressed optimism for the future. Just as the turnover of ships in many ports mean that crew are ‘here today, and gone tomorrow’, there is a chance that the same catchphrase might become equally applicable to port chaplaincy itself, especially without the investment necessary to support this form of work in the future. The diminishing of this sphere of religious work would be detrimental to the overall health and welfare of seafarers, thereby risking the wellbeing of the very people whose labours sustain the global economy upon which we all depend.Notes1. Chaplaincy organisations such as the Mission to Seafarers will have connections to shipping companies and port authorities, usually to try to secure donations from them. Indeed, some companies make donations, but as the paper suggests, this is not on any large scale.2. ESRC reference number: ES/N0194233. Consequently, some wore clerical collars and others did not, though most chaplains wore high viz clothing and ID lanyards.184S. GILLIAT-RAY ET AL.
4. If a death occurs at sea, the normal practice is for the body to be kept in cold storage until reaching port.AcknowledgmentsWe would like to thank the companies which allowed us to sail on board their vessels for their kind assistance. We are very grateful to the seafarers who took part in this study and thank them for their time and generosity.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).FundingThis work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council [ES/N019423].Notes on contributorsSophie Gilliat-Ray is Professor of Religious & Theological Studies at Cardiff University, and the Founding Director of the Islam-UK Centre, also at Cardiff University. She has authored numerous books and papers on the subject of chaplaincy and publicly funded religion. She has served as the Chair of the British Sociological Association’s Study Group for Religion, and Chair of the Muslims in Britain Research Network.Graeme Smith is Professor of Public Theology at the University of Chichester. He investigates questions and issues relating to the public role of religion in society. He has published two books: A Short History of Secularism and Oxford 1937: The Universal Christian Council of Life and Work. He has written extensively on public and political issues including journal articles on Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair, Red Toryism and Reinhold Niebuhr. He is the co-ordinator of the BIAPT (British and Irish Association for Practical Theology) Public Theology strand and was one of the founding editors of the journal Political Theology, of which he remains an editor emeritus.Wendy Cadge is a Professor in the Department of Sociology and the Social Science Division Head at Brandeis University. She is an expert in contemporary American religion, especially related to chaplaincy, religion in public institutions, religious diversity, religion and immigration, and religious and moral aspects in healthcare. She is the author of two books, Paging God: Religion in the Halls of Medicine and Heartwood: The First Generation of Theravada Buddhism in America, and a co-editor of Religion on the Edge: De-Centering and Re-Centering the Sociology of Religion. An award-winning teacher, she has published more than seventy-five articles and raised more than $6.5 million in support of her own and colleagues’ research. She recently helped to launch the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab (http://chaplaincyinnovation.org/).Helen Sampson is Professor of Social Sciences at Cardiff University and Director of the Seafarers International Research Centre. She has studied the shipping industry and seafarers since 1999. Her research and publications have focussed on: work; skills and training; regulation; corporate social responsibility; gender; transnationalism; structured social space; health and wellbeing; ship-shore interaction and the use of mandatory equipment. She has an interest in photography and film and has produced several short films relating to the work and lives of seafarers. In 2014, she was very happy to win the BBC/British Sociological Association ethnography award for International Seafarers and Transnationalism in the Twenty-First Century.JOURNAL OF BELIEFS & VALUES185