Student Chaplain H

Pastoral care at university has to work with a multiplicity of stress states in students. Students suffer from different kinds of stress, such as anxiety, depression, bereavement, discrimination, suicidal ideation, failed studies, loneliness, abuse, breakups, troubled relationships, family, and interpersonal functioning (Smith and Khawaja 2011; Field et al. 2011; Haldorsen et al. 2014; Appiah-Brempong et al. 2014; Sharp and Theiler 2018; Ribeiro et al. 2018; January et al. 2018; Thai and Moore 2018; Russell et al. 2019; Klein and Martin 2021). Psychological stress is classically defined as "a particular relationship between the person and the environment that is appraised by the person as taxing or exceeding his or her resources and endangering his or her well-being" (Lazarus and Folkman 1984, p. 19). Studies have shown that high levels of stress reduce students' well-being, and this negatively impacts their performance outcomes (Keech et al. 2018). Even though stress is

**Citation:** Johannessen, Christine Tind. 2022. Belonging to the World through Body, Trust, and Trinity: Climate Change and Pastoral Care with University Students. *Religions* 13: 527. https://doi.org/10.3390/ rel13060527

Academic Editors: Pamela R. McCarroll and HyeRan Kim-Cragg

Received: 9 March 2022 Accepted: 16 May 2022 Published: 8 June 2022

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**Copyright:** © 2022 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

experienced and often treated individually, it can also be viewed as a collective form of societal reaction (Kirkegaard and Brinkmann 2015).

Studies on students' mental health have shown positive effects of psychological treatment and prevention and social support (Regehr et al. 2013; Rith-Najarian et al. 2019; Maymon and Hall 2021). Further, there is a growing awareness that spiritual well-being and religiousness have a beneficial impact on students suffering from stress (Krägeloh et al. 2015; Fabbris et al. 2016; Hai et al. 2018; Leung and Pong 2021). Hence, the literature indicates that pastoral care may also help youth and students in crisis (Cardoso et al. 2012; Murphy and Holste 2016). Addressing different types of stress and distress in the context of pastoral care, the American pastoral theologian Robert C. Dykstra (1997), in his book *Counseling Troubled Youth*, addressed how young people are overwhelmed by forsaken hopes for a meaningful future. Dykstra drew attention to the importance of pastoral caregivers having "theoretical knowledge and practical wisdom" to offer youth and students on their way to finding their "self".

Following this, recent literature also shows that climate change concerns can lead to different kinds of psychological distress and stress—a phenomenon often called "climate anxiety" (McBride et al. 2021; Pihkala 2020). Young people experience a wide range of emotions related to climate change, including anxiety, anger, grief, fear, powerlessness, and hopelessness, even though they may not directly be affected by the climate changes (Wachholz et al. 2014; van Nieuwenhuizen et al. 2021; Burke et al. 2018; Lancet 2021). Studies indicate that higher pro-environmental behavior among students may be associated with greater well-being, possibly because it satisfies basic psychological needs like autonomy, competence, and relatedness (Senbel et al. 2014; van Nieuwenhuizen et al. 2021). However, while activism may prevent feelings of helplessness and increase young people's sense of empowerment, meaning, and purpose, it may also lead to decreased health due to increasing the stress states (van Nieuwenhuizen et al. 2021).

Studies also sugges<sup>t</sup> that different kinds of psychotherapy may have a positive impact on stress from climate change (Budziszewska and Jonsson 2021). However, climate stress relief may be viewed from other perspectives and disciplines beyond psychotherapy. Climate change stresses are not just feelings to be go<sup>t</sup> rid of but indicate lessons to be learned; climate change stress should not be seen just as a problem to be solved or a condition to be medicated but rather an important encounter with our awareness of our impact on the world (Pihkala 2020). We are dealing with a widespread—and often unconscious—environmental anxiety which posits a pastoral challenge (see, for example, Campbell-Reed and Lartey 2015; Pihkala 2016; Calder and Morgan 2016; LaMothe 2016; Miller-McLemore 2020).

Given the far-reaching ways in which climate change affects psychological well-being among students and the youth, pastoral theology and care may have an important role to play. In developing alternative dialogues, supportive social networks, and a living relationship with the Earth, pastoral theology and care may "think and be otherwise" (LaMothe 2021). Here, some basic questions arise: How might pastoral care conversations with students respond to states of stress under the further pressure of climate change? How might these conversations create a basis for the release of stress whilst simultaneously nourishing opportunities for positive changes in the action and thinking of the students in their relationship with the Earth?

## **2. Aim, Empirical Research, and Methodology**

## *2.1. Aim, Argument, and Outline*

This article explores the basic contact in pastoral care between chaplains and university students, addressing the context of climate change. By scrutinizing empirical practices in pastoral care grounded in theological and psychological theory, the aim is to unfold "a sustainable pastoral care practice" in the midst of escalating climate events.

The argumen<sup>t</sup> is that pastoral care, as it is often intuitively done through social and material enactments, may hold an emerging climate pastoral care. Such pastoral care would contain practices concerned with alleviating stress but would also be given through communication and a spacious image of God that is related to the single individual through social-material manifoldness and communality. I aim to show how pastoral care contains a trust-building and embodied practice as a basis for change as it unfolds a doctrine of the Trinity which breaks open traditional images of God. Attaching theory to practice may open new insights and possibilities for pastoral care addressing climate change. Thus, this article establishes a constructive pastoral theological perspective, not with the purpose of being in agreemen<sup>t</sup> with one particular theology, but for the purpose of outlining a grasp in pastoral care practice which is consistent with students' contemporary understanding of reality.

As a part of my ethnographical-theological research project "Sustainable pastoral care and stress release", this article builds on my in-depth interviews with Danish university chaplains about their student pastoral care. Seeking some kind of order in the chaplains' many narratives, descriptions of their practices, observations, and interpretations, my analysis takes a point of departure in the chaplains' reflections on how stressors from climate change come to the fore as viewed through the prism of a philosophical-anthropologicalinspired repertoire on climate change (Bruno Latour). Using a theological repertoire, making reference to a feminist interpretation of Trinity as "Mother, Lover and Friend" (Sallie McFague), and a psychological repertoire, making use of concepts of "epistemic trust" and "mentalizing" (Peter Fonagy and colleagues), I develop a pastoral care model extrapolated through a triad of organizing themes, as they come to the fore in the interviews: "Mothering the content", "Loving vital force", and "Befriending the environment". The leading idea is that pastoral care conversations transcend differences between everyday language and Christian theological language. In fact, the three themes cannot be separated in pastoral care conversations, rather they unfold together as a network of connections, which transcends the understanding of them individually. These connections create a network of entanglements that tie together the psychological, the pastoral, the theological, and climate-related issues.

## *2.2. Empirical Material and Method*

The empirical data derive from recordings and notes from semi-structured, in-depth interviews with participant observation carried out among eight Danish university chaplains from the Danish Lutheran Church. The inclusion of chaplains intended a wide sociodemographic distribution. The ethnographical method used is in line with ethnographical principles in anthropology and pastoral theology (Spradley 1979; Moschella 2008). The duration of the interviews varied between 75 and 150 min. Audio records were transcribed. The chaplains were asked to describe their practice of pastoral care in detail in relation to different kinds of students' stress.

Ethical guidelines were followed accurately in relation to The European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity (ALLEA 2017) and The Danish Data Protection Agency (Datatilsynet.dk n.d.). The chaplains were provided with information about the research before the interview and informed that they had the right to withdraw from the study. Chaplains gave their written consent. All the names mentioned were converted into random letters to secure anonymity for the persons who participated in the research project.
