Tradition and Transformation: Spirituality in Church-Related Caring Communities in a Pluralistic Society

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The article is very clear in presenting the main ideas. The research shows clear results concerning the role and support of the communities towards all needy persons. The article is coherent and presents strong academic, as well as practical results. 

Author Response

Reviewer 1

The article is very clear in presenting the main ideas. The research shows clear results concerning the role and support of the communities towards all needy persons. The article is coherent and presents strong academic, as well as practical results. 

Thank you very much for your considerate and positive review! We appreciate your time and expertise in reading and commenting on our manuscript.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This strikes me as an important and helpful article on the relationship between secularization, spirituality, and care. I think readers can learn a lot from all the good work the authors have done. I also think that this article can become stronger, clearer, and more inclusive and engaging with a thorough revision. I will try to help that revision along with four wonderings:

I wonder what the authors mean by care + spiritual care being rooted in a Christian framework (2-3). Are they unintentionally forgetting to mention and include other spiritualities that have helped the world (and Christianity itself) understand and practice care? How might their work be more spiritually inclusive? Perhaps I am misunderstanding them, in which case this could be made more clear?

I wonder a lot about what the authors mean by the concept of "caring communities" being discussed in theory but inadequately addressed in empirical research (abstract). Is this exact concept needed to understand how care has been examined in, for example, ethnographic studies (as in the field of the anthropology of Christianity, for example, and, more specifically, the work of Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Tanya Luhrmann ). One might also consider the work that has been done among "ethnographic theologians" in the Ecclesial Practices Network - and in hospitals on spiritual care and chaplaincy. Clarifying this from the onset at least would be helpful, I think.

Third, I wonder if there is a way for the authors to render this complex article clearer and more readable? Slowing down and taking time here might help the authors and their readers connect to learn even more about how to care?

Fourth and finally, I wonder if it would be helpful for the authors to write more deeply and engagingly about the implications for their work with respect to, for example, the last sentence, about how church related caring communities might promote open dialogue around values and spirituality within their own cultural contexts? What new models might suggest possibilities? What historical examples might provide inspiration? There is so much goodness here, I think!

I hope that this has been helpful and thank the editors and authors for the opportunity to engage such thoughtful, caring work.

 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

As noted above.

Author Response

Reviewer 2

Thank you very much for your considerate and positive review! We appreciate your time and expertise in reading and commenting on our manuscript. We would like to address your four points in detail and thank you very much for sharing your expert thoughts into this review process. 

This strikes me as an important and helpful article on the relationship between secularization, spirituality, and care. I think readers can learn a lot from all the good work the authors have done. I also think that this article can become stronger, clearer, and more inclusive and engaging with a thorough revision. I will try to help that revision along with four wonderings:

I wonder what the authors mean by care + spiritual care being rooted in a Christian framework (2-3). Are they unintentionally forgetting to mention and include other spiritualities that have helped the world (and Christianity itself) understand and practice care? How might their work be more spiritually inclusive? Perhaps I am misunderstanding them, in which case this could be made more clear?

Thank you very much for this first thought. We are addressing a very special concept in our study that is – in western societies like Germany – mostly related to Christian approaches to care. If the concept is taken up by religious communities, then by Christian ones, because they are the dominant religions in these states. Therefore, we focus on Christian religions and also derive how care is rooted in the Christian tradition. The fact that other religions are not further addressed here is thus related to the concept of 'caring communities' and not to the fact that care does not play a role there. Furthermore, our study addressed caring communities in the context of the protestant church in Germany and therefore has a focus on the Christian religion, which has of course consequences for the empirical material. But of course, other religious traditions and spiritualities have contributed to understand and practice care! At no point we intended to exclude other spiritualities, on the contrary. Spiritual care should be open to multiple spiritualities, overall in pluralistic societies.

We therefore have reshaped the structure and content of the introduction, also including a part on different spiritualities and the importance to include intercultural and multifaith perspectives on spiritual care. However, referring to the very contribution of several spiritualities may stretch the content of the article a little too much, thus we have decided on widening the focus first on spirituality/religion in general and then focus on the context of the study, the German western society and the role of church congregation in a Christian realm. We hope, this makes our perspective more clear.

I wonder a lot about what the authors mean by the concept of "caring communities" being discussed in theory but inadequately addressed in empirical research (abstract). Is this exact concept needed to understand how care has been examined in, for example, ethnographic studies (as in the field of the anthropology of Christianity, for example, and, more specifically, the work of Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Tanya Luhrmann ). One might also consider the work that has been done among "ethnographic theologians" in the Ecclesial Practices Network - and in hospitals on spiritual care and chaplaincy. Clarifying this from the onset at least would be helpful, I think.

Thank you very much for this first thought. We are addressing a very special concept of “caring community” in our study that is not limited to s specific understanding of care, but, necessarily needs to be defined in each and every context being used. Also, there are some practical examples, (e.g. the network of caring communities in Switzerland, that provides a platform for caring communities, https://caringcommunities.ch/) but there is not much systematic and empirical research on caring communities (cf. the special issue Religions: Religions | Special Issue : Christian Congregations as Communities of Care (mdpi.com), which we have also cited).

Thus, we examined three caring communities that are rooted in Protestant Church congregations reaching out and cooperating with other actors in the social realm. Thus, it may be right to state that there is, of course, other empirical research on pastoral and spiritual care, but not exactly on the very concept of caring communities as we have presented in the article. However, we have included a notion on how the research on caring communities may benefit from empirical research on care and spiritual care and added some detail on the relationship between well-being, communities, spirituality, and care.

Third, I wonder if there is a way for the authors to render this complex article clearer and more readable? Slowing down and taking time here might help the authors and their readers connect to learn even more about how to care?

That is a good point, thank you. We have tried to do so in cutting down the method section as far as possible, reworking the introduction section and some parts of the discussion. More extensions seemed a little too much, considering the length of the article.

Fourth and finally, I wonder if it would be helpful for the authors to write more deeply and engagingly about the implications for their work with respect to, for example, the last sentence, about how church related caring communities might promote open dialogue around values and spirituality within their own cultural contexts? What new models might suggest possibilities? What historical examples might provide inspiration? There is so much goodness here, I think!

Thank you for this suggestion. We think that indeed it is necessary to think about models and possibilities to promote open dialogue about values and spirituality, not only in the realm of church but in society and the social space. But this would open up a totally new chapter that would need a new article, that is more generally oriented and less focused on concrete empirical research as we present it here. Therefore, we just stated the need for more research and practice in this respect.  

I hope that this has been helpful and thank the editors and authors for the opportunity to engage such thoughtful, caring work.

 

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

My comments are in the attached file. 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

 

Reviewer 3

Review of “Tradition and Transformation: Spirituality in Church-Related Caring Communi.es in a Pluralistic Society”

 

Thank you very much for your considerate and positive review! We appreciate your time and expertise in reading and commenting on our manuscript. We would like to address your points in detail and thank you very much for sharing your expert thoughts into this review process. 

 

Comments:

Lines 14-1 5 four caring communi.es and nine rela.ves is a small number, is it too small to

conclude anything from?

• This is a fair point and very important. As we have mentioned in the discussion, we claim no representativeness from this small sample. But to state that point a little earlier, we have mentioned the study to be an “explorative qualitative study” in the abstract.

 

Line 32 “Caring is thus framed as a task of many people helping each other.” By this

paper? This is not a broad defini.on of caring, so this should be clarified

Line 54 burdens plural à thank you. We changed it.

 

Line 60 I don’t know where Baden is—this needs to be clarified here. Germany isn’t

men.oned un.l line 203

• Thank you, we have added Germany in the abstract and in line 60.

 

Line 70 holis.c doesn’t fit with stable and unchangeable, reword à we have deleted “holistic”, which is in fact misunderstandable here.

 

Line 102 “packs experience here”? Unclear what this means

• Thank you, that was indeed unclear, we have rephrased the sentence

 

Lines 157-159 good explicit description of the three perspectives

 

Line 161 “Overview of the article” should omit the word article and describe the content

of the paper.

• We have tried to give an overvied of the following, concerning the flow of the article to give the reader a good orientation of what to expect in the following sections. Together with your next comment, we have tried to state that a little clearer.

 

Lines 162-167 Very confusing. As it discusses multiple chapters, I assume that this article is from a larger word such as a dissertation or book, and that this section was inadvertently not edited for the format of an article. Or are the section headings being called chapters?

• The article is not stemming from a larger work, with chapter we meant indeed the sections, but the numbers now appear in brackets thus hopefully it is no longer confusing, but may be giving a better orientation for the reader.

 

Line 226 three parishes? I thought the intro said four?

• Thank you for noticing, indeed we had four focus groups, but only three parishes. We have tried to make that clearer in the introduction and method section.

 

Line 234 Why did the focus group focus on heterogeneity? The article is framed in a

pluralistic society.

• We did look at caring communities that were connected to church congregations, but had a larger attempt of connecting different actors from the social realm. Thus, it was important to include different actors from the field (caregiving relatives, church employees, volunteers, communal actors, representatives, care facilities….). Doing s, we hoped to get a more complex view on caring communities and interactive process of discussing what a caring community could or should be among the participants. We are aware, that this does not capture the full picture of a pluralistic society. The text is now a little clearer on that.

 

Line 505 “which is in fact not a real gospel” needs editing. The parable of the Good

Samaritan is within the “real” gospel of Luke

• Thank you for this comment. We rephrased it.

 

Line 507 consistently capitalize Samaritan and Good Samaritan. Also capitalize Catholic

Church

• Thank you, we did so.

 

Line 515 The discussion of Caritas and the deaconate is confusing

• We tried to clarify. It refers to the majors statement and gives an explanation why he used the term “Caritas” which is an institutional diaconal service in Germany

 

Sec.on 3.1, Line 428 is excellent, and starts the interes.ng part of this paper. The previous

frame of the paper and the study is too long and confusing. I enjoyed reading the transcription of the dialogue and this analysis very much

• Thank you for that insight into your reading experience.

 

Line 666 very good on contrast to the “world”

• Thank you

 

793 Is interesting, but confusing. Should professional caretakers be asked about

spirituality? Why weren’t they?

• This might have been a misunderstanding, which we have made clearer now in the current text. We were mainly referring to spiritual practices, which were more relevant in the single interviews with caregiving relatives. Whereas the professionals interpreted the question about the significance of spirituality (we were asking about spirituality in general, not is different dimensions such as cognition, practice, emotion…) in reference to their professionality and used a rather cognitive approach, that was not so much concentrated on practices such as praying themselves.

 

Line 996 “Thus, it might not be far-fetched to say?” Why this very casual language a^er

the lengthy and careful analy.c set-up of the paper?

• That is true, it might point to a scientific reluctance to bold statements, but we rephrased it.

 

Line 1018-1019 In line 793 it stated that professional caretakers reported less spirituality. Needs clarification.

• See the comment above: it was not stated, that they report less spirituality in general, just less spiritual practice, since we did not explicitely ask about practices in the focus group. Also, the heterogeneity of participants is also reflected in the fact, that not all of the participants were religious, or even Christian.

 

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors have addressed the issues and the paper is now ready to publish.