Leaving Military Service with a Military Body: Insights for Pastoral Care and Counseling

An interview study of experiences from pastors providing military spiritual care within the Swedish Armed Forces

This article presents a recently completed research project on pastors providing spiritual care within the Swedish Armed Forces. This descriptive study provides unique contextual insights of experiences from military chaplains. The purpose of the study was to describe experiences and lessons learned (wisdom) from pastors providing military spiritual care within the Swedish Armed Forces. Twelve military chaplains, ordained and employed by the Church of Sweden, were individually interviewed on different locations during the early winter of 2020. The interview data were analyzed with an inductive approach. The content was initially coded by many codes, which were subsequently organized in meaningful ways to develop overarching clusters which could serve to host the codes. The hermeneutical principle for the development of these clusters was that the codes could be understood in reference to the clusters and vice versa. The cultivation of the clusters was followed by the development of a pastoral theological model for military spiritual care within a Swedish context.

Military chaplaincy in Sweden: A contemporary perspective

Pastors serving as military chaplains have been an integral part of the Swedish Armed Forces for hundreds of years. This close relationship has continued even after the Church of Sweden was formally separated from the state in 2000. Yet contemporary research drawing from experiences of Swedish military chaplains during their pastoral and spiritual assignments within a military context is virtually non-existent. This research explores the contemporary situation for military chaplaincy in Sweden through the lenses of proportional accessibility for military personnel, availability to civilian congregations, increasing cultural and ethnic diversity, religious embeddedness in military culture, theological tension, and personal identity development among chaplains. It furthermore suggests that military chaplains navigate a complex situation: they are expected to serve professional service members, many of whom have war zone experiences, in addition to shepherding increasing volumes of conscripts now that conscription has been reinstated, all within a new interreligious paradigm.