Post-Secular Negotiations in Pastoral Care: Models in a Danish Podcast Series

Abstract

This article explores the theoretical and practical importance of post-secular negotiations in intercultural pastoral care. Post-secular negotiations are negotiations between secular and religious discourses within specific activities such as pastoral care. While intercultural pastoral care has established a focus on the encounter between religious others in pastoral care, this article focuses on the encounter between Christian and secular discourses. Analyzing 10 Danish pastoral care conversations, the authors find that such post-secular negotiations occur in a variety of ways (explicit and implicit, initiated by pastor and care seeker), in a variety of settings (not only secular settings such as hospitals but also in ecclesial settings) and with various results (reception, rejection, misunderstanding, and circumvention). Drawing upon psychotherapeutic literature, the authors argue that explicit and respectful post-secular negotiations initiated by the pastor at the beginning of the conversation, either formalized or contextualized, might create better conditions for pastoral care conversations in the post-secular world.

Introduction

The upsurge in intercultural pastoral care has made it possible to reflect further on the encounter between two religious others in pastoral care (Austad & Johannessen-Henry, 2020; Doehring, 2015; Merle, 2017). Examples of religious others are often people who belong, believe, and practice within distinct and different faith traditions, such as when a Christian pastor encounters a war veteran practicing Buddhist meditation (Doehring, 2015, pp. 25–36).

A variation on this question is the encounter between conversation partners who live within Christian and secular discourses, which is the more common pattern in the Nordic countries, where Protestant Christianity and secularity have been more influential than other religions. Sociologically, inhabitants of the Nordic countries live in secular discourses as well as spiritual and religious discourses and move between them depending on purpose and context. This situation can be characterized as “post-secular” (Berger, 2015). The term post-secular nuances the theory of secularization that predicted the complete privatization or even distinction of spirituality and religion (Beaumont et al., 2020, pp. 295). As described by Ziebertz and Riegel (2010), “[P]ost-secularity overcomes the antagonism between secular and religious concerns and assumes their compatibility” (p. 300). Certainly, a functional differentiation of societal systems in the Nordic countries means that systems are largely independent and intertwined (including religion, politics, economy, and the media) rather than having one unifying center (Luhmann, 2008). As Jürgen Habermas has argued, this situation has led the church to emphasize the importance of pastoral care (Habermas, 2008, p. 19), probably because a one-to-one conversation is better at enabling negotiations of meeting points between secular and Christian discourses.

At the microlevel of pastoral care conversations, we suggest that a post-secular negotiation takes place whenever “Christian” and “secular” discourses meet. The term was coined by Nissen and Andersen (2022) for their study of how secular doctors at secular hospitals met with patients who introduced religious and spiritual discourse into their conversations. We understand secular discourses as worldly minded approaches entailing no references to transcendent stories, beliefs, or practices (Andersen et al., 2021; DeMarinis et al., 2011), and we understand Christian discourses as entailing references to Christian stories, beliefs, and practices.¹ We acknowledge that Christian and secular discourses in practice can be hybrid and overlapping. Some topics, such as illness, are in themselves ambiguous terms that require further clarification to be understood as secular or Christian and also depend on the context within which they are observed (hospital or church). However, in an otherwise secular conversation about illness, the proposal to pray for the sick implies a negotiation of whether a more explicit religious discourse is also welcome in the conversation.

Since pastors and care seekers in Denmark are citizens of a post-secular country, they may bring both Christian and secular discourses into their conversations, just as they may be grounded in Christian or secular discourses to various degrees. While 72% of Danes are members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Denmark (Church Statistics, 2023), they do not use the church actively in everyday life and describe themselves as nonreligious (Rosen, 2009; Stripp et al., 2023). The post-secular negotiation covers how the relevance of these discourses are negotiated between conversation partners.

On this basis, this article explores the post-secular negotiation that can take place within one instance of intercultural pastoral care, that is, when pastors affiliated with Christian denominations talk to care seekers primarily grounded in secular discourses. How do pastors and care seekers negotiate secular and Christian discourses during a conversation of pastoral care in what we term a post-secular negotiation? How may a post-secular negotiation contribute to a conversation respectful of both the secular and the Christian discourses?

Theory

Within research on pastoral care, our focus on post-secular negotiations fills three theoretical gaps. First, the article contributes to the use of post-secularity as a tool to analyze pastoral care. While Schmid has used the concept of post-secularity to analyze the self-understanding of Muslim and Christian asylum chaplains within secular institutions (2020), this article focuses on post-secular negotiations that take place in concrete conversations between Christian pastors and care seekers.

Second, we contribute to the discussion of pastoral expectation regarding care seekers in the Nordic countries. German pastoral theologian Klessmann (2015) gives the following advice concerning the secular situation: “Pastors must reckon with the secularity of their counterparts. Familiarity and knowledge of Christian traditions can now only be assumed to a limited degree” (p. 18, our translation). This article explores the difference it makes for pastoral expectation that the situation is considered post-secular rather than merely secular.

Third, we contribute to the reflection on the contract of care in pastoral care. Leading intercultural pastoral theologian Doehring (2015) considers it crucial for pastors to reflect on a contract of care that includes the boundaries of confidentiality, the boundaries of the role as care giver, and the boundaries of the care giver’s expertise or availability (pp. 73–83). In this context, Doehring does not describe how to negotiate boundaries of secular and Christian content. This deficiency may be for two reasons. First, Doehring’s entire book concerns the negotiation of otherness in pastoral care. Doehring calls for the pastor to show “radical respect” for the care seeker. With this ethical demand in mind, we find it crucial to discuss how to negotiate the boundaries between secular and Christian content in the concrete practice of pastoral care.

Second, Doehring argues that negotiating a clear therapeutic contract from the beginning of a conversation is unusual in pastoral care (p. 74). This discrepancy between pastoral care and psychotherapy may be grounded in the more fluid nature of pastoral care, where pastors often worship, act, and live within the same ecclesial community as the care seeker (Berry, 2014, pp. 205–207). While we acknowledge that the contract of care has different circumstances in pastoral care, we find it important to learn from the psychological advice on the topic.

Different psychotherapeutic approaches agree on fundamental characteristics of the therapeutic conversation that are also essential for pastoral care, such as the need for creating a safe relationship where the help seeker feels free to share personal themes and challenges. In psychological practice, it is viewed as an ethical obligation to be transparent and support the client’s autonomy and wishes for help (Etiske principper for Nordiske psykologer, 2021–2024). The help seeker has the right to understand the characteristics of the relationship and the conversation, such as the fees and techniques used, to make informed decisions about participation (Hill, 2020). In studies of the efficiency of psychotherapy, the alliance between the helper and the help seeker is stressed (Wampold, 2015). This alliance is composed of the bond between the helper and the help seeker and of the agreement about the goals and the tasks of the conversation (Wampold, 2015). Taken together, the responsibility of the helper is to make a “contract” with the help seeker in which the helper is transparent about their own possibilities for giving help, including their shortcomings and techniques used, and agrees with the help seeker about the goals and agenda for the conversation (Rosenberg & Arendt, 2012).

Methods

Our method for analyzing post-secular negotiations is empirical. We analyzed and discussed a podcast series in Danish (Sjælesorg, which means “spiritual care” in English), which was published in January 2021 on the official homepage of the mainline Evangelical Lutheran Church of Denmark to advertise what pastoral care can be. The series consists of 10 episodes, each of which is a conversation between a pastor and a care seeker (one pastor has two conversations).² Thus, our material consists of oral communication. An overview of the 10 conversations can be seen in Table 1.

Table 1 Podcast Episodes (First Names of Participating Care Seekers)

Design and participant information

The producer of the podcast recruited the 10 podcast participants (four females, six males) through the network via Facebook, requesting people with a personal problem and without prior experience with pastoral care. None of the responders were her personal friends. The producer matched the chosen participants with pastors (five females, five males), who were chosen based on their experience with and education in pastoral care. Since only five participants and one pastor revealed their age during the conversations, we assume that the care seekers were between the ages of 30 and 50 and that the pastors were between the ages of 42 and 72.

The conversations were held on the home ground of the pastor: in the church, the parsonage, or the pastor’s office. During the conversation, the producer was present in the room to set the stage and ensure technical functionality. Sometimes, the producer would uphold the journalistic angle in the conversation by asking pastors to inquire further into a specific topic. After the conversation, the producer edited the conversation lightly, cutting out insignificant detours. The final episodes were published online in January 2021. The podcast episodes last between 31 and 54 min, with a mean time of 41 min.

To verify the podcast for research purposes, the first author contacted all pastors. They confirmed that the conversations reflected the actual conversation as well as their own pastoral practice.

Analytical strategy

The analytical strategy reflects the iterative nature of qualitative studies as an interaction between theoretical understandings and the empirical material by adjusting methods and theories to the subject matter (Huniche & Sørensen, 2019). For an overview, see Table 2.

Table 2 The Post-Secular Negotiation as an Analytical Strategy

In August 2022, the first author transcribed the podcast episodes after listening to all the conversations twice. The second author listened to all the conversations and read the transcripts.

After initial and inductive discussions, we employed post-secular negotiation as an analytical concept (Nissen & Andersen, 2022) and surveyed the episodes for post-secular negotiations. Concretely, we extracted all introductory parts in which the pastors set the stage for the conversations and the parts during the conversation where a breach occurred in the conversation between secular discourse and Christian discourse. We analyzed these parts for post-secular negotiations, both explicit and implicit. We define an “explicit” post-secular negotiation as an explicit mention of a possible transition from the secular to the Christian. By contrast, we understand an “implicit” post-secular negotiation as one that remains indicative, invitational, or unmediated. The breaches in the conversations interpreted as a post-secular negotiation were continually discussed between the two authors and compared with the original transcripts and sound files to assess the empirical foundation.

To illustrate our analyses, we drew small figures that indicate when the transitions between secular and Christian languages occurred during the conversations. We used curved lines with arrows to indicate explicit negotiations and curved lines without arrows to indicate implicit negotiations.

Finally, to ensure participant involvement, the first author contacted all participating pastors to offer them the opportunity to read and comment on the draft of this article. All pastors accepted and gave their comments to the first author via telephone, which the first author then summarized as field notes. We draw upon these comments and field notes in our discussion.

Researcher reflexivity

The first author was a pastor for two years in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Denmark between training and research in systematic theology and pastoral care at the University of Copenhagen, where he currently holds the position of assistant professor of practical theology. The second author is an experienced clinical psychologist and researcher in existential communication who currently is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology, University of Southern Denmark. We continually discussed our diverse backgrounds and related experiences critically as a part of our pre-understanding and approaches (Malterud, 2001).

Ethics

The pastors and care seekers consented to participate in the podcast series. Using the podcast series for research purposes was a topic of ethical consideration between the authors. Even though the names of the pastors were public, we avoid mentioning them here, not least to prevent inferring from the singularity of a particular conversation a general characterization of the pastor as a practitioner of pastoral care.

Results

Analyzing the conversations through the concept of the post-secular negotiation between secular and Christian discourses led us to select five conversations to illustrate the post-secular negotiation for further exploration.³ In what follows, we analyze each of these five conversations, beginning with three conversations in which the post-secular negotiation is initiated by the pastor.

The conversation with Lin

Fig. 1

Post-secular negotiations in the conversation with Lin

In the conversation with Lin (see Fig. 1), the pastor begins with an explanation of the time frame and ethical aspects such as the pledge of confidentiality.⁴ As part of this opening, the pastor frames herself as a pastor and the conversation as open to any subject the care seeker finds important: “You know, of course, I’m a pastor[...] It is super nice to talk about faith and Christianity too, but I always say it’s a human conversation, so it’s like you and the thoughts you have on your mind or are struggling with [...] which is the important thing, right, and what we talk about.” The pastor further explains that being a pastor means for her that she might share a biblical text if she deems it relevant to the conversation, but she does not always consult the Bible. The opening ends with the following differentiation: “I am not a trained psychologist, so you can say of course there are some therapeutic things that come up in a conversation... but you need to tell me what’s on your mind right now.” Here, the pastor positions herself in relation to psychologists as a person in a related profession employing some of the same therapeutic elements.

Towards the end of the conversation, the pastor gives examples of calming activities from her own life, such as an evening prayer, as an invitation to Lin to explore whether she recognizes such activities in her own life. This invitation might even be considered an opening to explore Christian practices and beliefs further. Lin does not accept the invitation at this point.

The pastor also practices a similar open approach in the way she says goodbye:

Pastor: When I was young, I thought it was such a boring expression, “Go in peace.”[...]

Lin: There’s something comforting about it, too, really, isn’t there?

Pastor: Yeah, it’s good. So I can say that?

Lin: Yes, you can...

Pastor: Well, then I wish you peace and good luck with your pregnancy.

At first, the pastor explores what Lin thinks of the expression “Go in peace.” Realizing Lin’s positive interpretation, the pastor then asks for permission to say the words and closes with a blessing-like farewell.

We interpret this dialogue as a post-secular negotiation since the theme of the conversation is secular, but several times during the conversation the pastor uses her profession to negotiate the Christian sphere of life both as a possible activity and as a possible place of resonance for the care seeker.

The conversation with Kasper

Fig. 2

Post-secular negotiations in the conversation with Kasper

In the conversation with Kasper (see Fig. 2), the pastor negotiates the Christian sphere of life with the following statement:

I usually explore [whether people are disturbed by a belief in a higher order of things] and find out if people think about God in their lives, either in a positive or a negative way; and if you don’t, then the conversation can be held without talking about God... we talk about the life we live, and of course I do that as a pastor from a Christian point of view. But I also go into your thinking when we talk together and use as much as possible the language you use.

The pastor is transparent about her own professional grounding in Christian discourse while remaining client-focused, meaning that the care seeker’s agenda is directive for the conversation, whether the care seeker believes in God or not.

Towards the end of the conversation, Kasper says that a friend of his acknowledges Kasper’s way of living with a severe illness, and the pastor asks for permission to include a story from the New Testament:

Pastor: I often think of . . . the story of the talents, when we’re dealing with the fact that [hardship] targets some and not others. It’s one of Jesus’ parables. I’m wondering, would it be okay with you if we brought that into our conversation here?

Kasper: Absolutely.

Pastor: [The pastor tells the story, and concludes] And I think that it’s a very nice and actually realistic story about how unequally the playing field and the forces are distributed. [...] You do the opposite of the man in the story: you actually go out and use your talent.

The pastor interprets the story in a secular, existential way as a story about how human beings have different opportunities, thereby acknowledging Kasper’s employing his talent and opportunities. However, when Kasper comments on the meaning of the king’s confrontation of the man who avoids using his talent, the pastor offers an interpretation more open to theological considerations:

So that’s probably why the king gave him... the kick. But also to relay that it’s hard when you’ve only received one [talent]. I think he [the king] also accepts that by seeing him.

Since the story is from the Bible, the pastor’s comments on the king open a horizon of interpretations for the care seeker, including seeing the king directly as God. The king—and thereby possibly God—gives human beings different numbers of talents to manage while at the same time taking on greater responsibility by seeing and confronting those who succumb to the temptation to avoid using their few talents. Thus, when Kasper comments on the meaning of the story, the pastor shares an interpretation of a broader Christian meaning from which Kasper can understand his own meaning and life story. Such a stepwise, client-centered way of offering the Christian sphere of life can be understood as a negotiation of the Christian interpretation in an otherwise secular, existential conversation.

The conversation with Christine

Fig. 3

Post-secular negotiations in the conversation with Christine

In this conversation (see Fig. 3), the pastor opens by asking what made Christine come for pastoral care, and the main part of the conversation centers around secular topics regarding Christine’s relationships in her family of origin. At the very end, the pastor presents a Christian interpretation of Christine’s situation as an open offer:

Christine: [I would like to] not constantly have that feeling of whether I’m good enough.

Pastor: Would it be helpful for you to think that there is at least one place where we know—where you know that you are loved as you are? That’s what happens when we are baptized. We are told that you are loved, you are God’s beloved child, nothing can separate you from him, no matter who you are, what you do, what you think, what you feel, you are his beloved child. If there can be a power in that that you can tap into like that when things are at their most difficult. Do you think so?

Christine: I can feel it when you say it now, it gives a nice calm feeling, I think. But I also find it hard to hold on to [...] It would be nice, well, it’s that again, it must again be a feeling inside myself.

Pastor: Yes, but it’s not just a feeling inside you, it’s also a commitment, so... But you’re right, it would be nice if you could feel it. Yes, it’s... I think we’re about to finish our conversation.

The pastor’s open way of offering Christian comfort seems to resonate with Christine’s needs and feelings. When Christine focuses on her feelings, the pastor offers a new Christian perspective, namely, that she can rely on the comfort as a commitment from outside herself and independent of her feelings. However, the pastor returns from the Christian perspective to the secular by acknowledging Christine’s wish for the feelings. This ends the conversation.

From the above post-secular negotiations initiated by the pastor, we now move to two conversations in which the post-secular negotiation is initiated by the care seeker.

The conversation with Adriana

Fig. 4

Post-secular negotiations in the conversation with Adriana

The pastor welcomes Adriana and asks her to confirm what the pastor has been told by the podcast producer, namely, that Adriana desires to have a conversation because of her sense of meaninglessness (see Fig. 4). Adriana responds by presenting her wish to talk to a pastor as a quest for a healing experience due to a prior challenge related to a pastor who preached love of neighbor but did not seek out Adriana at a time when she and her family were struggling.

I wondered a bit about those words you hear in church about love of neighbor and so on, and for me it remains very much words[...] But that’s also why I thought it was interesting to have this conversation, because maybe one can experience some of that in a conversation with someone like you.

Adriana further explains that she would like to have the possibility for a more personal and close experience with a pastor than she had had before. The pastor does not mirror the wish for a healing experience with a pastor and a new experience with the Christian sphere of life. Instead, she responds by focusing on Adriana’s relationship with her parents without connecting it to any transcendence.

Halfway through the conversation, Adriana asks the pastor about how people use pastors when struggling with issues like her own. The pastor gives a secular answer about the normality of struggling with one’s life history and the potential in telling one’s story to another human being.

Later in the conversation, the pastor briefly connects Adriana’s life story and themes with a point from the Bible, and the pastor frames the end of their conversation as an opportunity to ask further questions, emphasizing that she is a pastor. Adriana repeats her question about how she can use a pastor, and the pastor answers with a longer segment that begins secularly (the value of having a fellow traveler) and ends with a reference to God as holding the larger meaning of the universe.

In this conversation, the care seeker initiates the post-secular conversation by addressing the Christian sphere, specifically faith and pastoral care, as important subjects. Although the pastor refrains at first from including Christian discourse, she relates Christian perspectives to the secular topic of the conversation in the second half of the conversation. While Adriana expresses her curiosity about the possibilities of pastoral care, the pastor replies either at first or solely with secular answers, only including faith and a Christian perspective in specific moments.

The conversation with Mette

Fig. 5

Post-secular negotiations in the conversation with Mette

From the onset, the pastor begins the conversation based on what the care seeker wants to talk about (see Fig. 5). The pastor asks open questions, and Mette explains her struggles in her relationship with her mother and with the challenge or obligation to forgive her mother. They talk about it in secular language, that is, in language without any reference to transcendence but with a focus on the relationship and the psychological implications for Mette. At one point, Mette then brings in a Christian aspect:

[Shouldn’t I be able to] forgive her for what she’s done because she really didn’t know any better? Wasn’t that something, wouldn’t there be something like that...? So now we’re [laughs] sitting in a church, and wouldn’t that be something God would say?

The pastor responds not by answering her question directly but by turning the attention to forgiveness as an individual, psychological process.

Later, Mette returns to the question by asking, How does God feel about people who can’t forgive?

Again, the pastor does not answer directly but suggests instead that Christine pray for God to forgive her mother if she cannot do her herself. They speak of vicarious forgiveness, but that does not work for Christine either. One last time, the care seeker presents the conviction that in Christianity it is an awful thing not to forgive. While the pastor now seems to acknowledge the theological character of the question, it takes the pastor a couple of minutes to adapt. The pastor at first replies in a secular tone and then finally presents the view that God looks at Mette, even when she cannot forgive, with a loving gaze, just like Mette looks at her children.

In this conversation, Mette as care seeker begins a post-secular negotiation by inquiring about God’s forgiveness. However, the pastor does not proceed with a theological framework at first; only when Mette insists and brings the topic into the conversation a third time does the pastor enter into Christian discourse and offer a Christian perspective on God’s forgiveness.

Results in sum

In sum, our analysis of the 10 pastoral care conversations shows the importance of the concept of post-secular negotiation as an analytical tool. Post-secular negotiations took place in numerous ways:

• Pastors initiate that negotiation in the beginning (Lin), during the conversation (Kasper), and towards the end (Christine). Care seekers also do it in the beginning (Adriana) and continuously throughout the conversation (Mette).

• Explicit negotiations occur when participants use a meta-voice (Lin, Kasper, and Adriana), and implicit negotiations arise when Christian content is requested by the care seeker (Mette) or simply provided by the pastor (Christine).

• Finally, initiations by the pastor were rejected (Lin) and received (Kasper), and initiations by the care seeker were missed (Mette) and understood but not mirrored (Adriana).

Discussion

Before discussing theoretical and practical conclusions, we discuss our research design.

Research considerations

Employing post-secular negotiation as an analytical concept helped us understand the conversations from a cultural perspective and analyze in detail how the negotiations were present in the interaction and how they formed the conversations. Employing other analytical concepts would have revealed other perspectives of intercultural pastoral care in the conversations.

Our use of a podcast can be criticized because we analyze edited versions of real conversations. Certainly, drawing on material consisting of our own taped versions of pastoral care conversations would have removed this layer of producer editing. However, all the pastors agreed that the final episodes were fair representations of the actual conversation and of pastoral care in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Denmark. With one exception, none of the pastors viewed the interventions of the producer as disturbing to their conversation. Finally, the podcast episodes provided material with three significant advantages: because they consist of conversations with nine experienced pastors, it is highly varied; it entails a coherent group of care seekers; and it is accessible to the (Danish-speaking) public.

Involving the pastors in reading and commenting on a draft of our article had three consequences. First, it partly confirmed and partly changed our understanding of the motives of the pastors. Second, it emphasized the limits of our purely oral investigation. Third, it sparked further conceptual development, with consequences for both the pastoral care theory and the practical implications outlined below.

Pastoral care theory

Our results contribute to the theoretical discussion on intercultural pastoral care in four ways. First, we found that both pastors and care seekers initiated post-secular negotiation. These initiatives by both conversation partners confirm one aspect of the current sense of the power balance between pastor and care seeker: “from the idea that pastoral care moves from pastor to care seeker, there is now a much more reciprocal relationship between the two” (Johannessen & Iversen, 2019, p. 32, our translation). All initiative does not need to come from the pastor; both parties can legitimately invite the other into a post-secular negotiation.

Second, the podcast episodes show that post-secular negotiations may take place not only within secular institutions such as the hospital but also within the church itself. Specifically, this podcast reveals very concrete ways in which post-secular negotiations take place in pastoral care. Regarding religious and secular contexts, American pastoral theologian Carrie Doehring (2015) suggests that while pastors practice their religious beliefs as uncontested “within their own communities of faith,” pastors contextualize their beliefs when working in “secular contexts” such as “health care” (p. xxiv). However, in a post-secular context such as is found in Denmark (Højsgaard & Iversen, 2017; Nissen & Andersen, 2022), pastors may also negotiate the relevance of religious beliefs when practicing pastoral care within their ecclesial home ground simply because members of Church of Denmark live most of their lives and relate mainly to each other through secular discourses.

Third, the analysis enables a discussion of a key virtue in intercultural pastoral care, namely, respect. Concretely, respect comes across when pastors refrain from offering their theological perspectives prematurely but wait until “theological” meanings have already been uncovered through the narratives of the care seeker. Doehring’s understanding of theological meanings gives rise to a conceptual discussion of post-secularity that distinguishes between secular and Christian discourses. For Doehring (2015), a person’s “lived theology” is their “core values, foundational beliefs, and practices” (p. 4) without explicit references to religious belief systems. On that reading, the pastor who spoke with Christine gained a reasonable understanding of Christine’s lived theology as one based on social anxiety before offering a comparison to an “intentional theology” in which God offers a relationship of safety. On that reading, the pastor was entirely respectful in Doehring’s sense of the word.

On another reading, however, an even more respectful stance to Christine could have been negotiating the post-secularity of the conversation earlier. Although religiosity may be ontologically inherent in secularity, as Doehring suggests, the introduction of Christian material into a conversation held in a secular discourse, as with Christine, may still be experienced as an uncomfortable and surprising breach in the conversation. This interpretation maintains the importance of the distinction between secular and Christian discourse and the idea of the post-secular negotiation.

Finally, the analysis emphasizes that a post-secular negotiation takes place not between unambiguous Christian and secular discourses but between discourses that are sometimes hybrid. The pastor in the conversation with Lin emphasized that their conversation would be “human” and not necessarily Christian. The term human is a hybrid term that is neither strictly secular nor religious, thereby allowing the care seeker to introduce more secular or more Christian discourse without being forced into either of those discourses. Another example is the conversation with Kasper in which the pastor tells a biblical story about a king that acknowledges the condition of the servant who only received one talent. The king in this story works in a hybrid manner that allows for the care seeker to receive this story in a more secular or a more Christian way. We argue that such a hybrid discourse opens an especially respectful space for the care seeker to draw their own conclusions.

We acknowledge that our evaluation is based on an analysis of only the oral communication in the conversation. As several of the participating pastors emphasized in their response to the draft of this article, a silent post-secular negotiation takes place through the very presence of the pastor as pastor, which may convey the presence of God, or through the surroundings of the conversation in the church, parsonage, or a room with Christian symbols (Raakjær, 2018). The pastor talking to Adriana tells us that she experiences the ecclesial surroundings as disrupting the very distinction between secular and religious and thus experiences her entire conversation as religious even when the words are secular. As pastoral care theory has pointed out, an ecclesial setting may relieve pastors from the possible pressure to mention Christianity in every conversation (Harbsmeier, 1995, p. 408). In some situations, this silent introduction of the Christian discourse might even suffice to make the introduction of an oral Christian discourse seem natural.

However, we still argue that an oral post-secular negotiation might prepare not only care seekers but also pastors for opportunities to talk about Christian topics when relevant for the care seekers. When pastors underemphasize the Christian discourse, they risk failing the care seeker who wishes such a conversation. Therefore, the analysis in the current study emphasizes the strength of seeing a conversation as a horizon of opportunity for Christian discourse in which a pastor can understand the world of the care seeker from a theological point of view and be ready to offer Christian discourse whenever it might be appropriate, with respect for the care seeker.

Practical implications

When considering the practical implications of the notion of post-secular negotiation, it is important to note that in pastoral care exist not only in clinical practice but also as a more general mode of ecclesial availability. This note marks a difference to psychotherapy. Mindful of this difference, our suggestions for practical implications are inspired by psychotherapeutic insights into contracts and alliances (Wampold, 2015) and psychological ethics recommending transparency to support the clients’ autonomy and wishes for help (Etiske principper for Nordiske psykologer, 2021–2024) due to the common factors between psychotherapy and pastoral care.

A discussion of practical implications aligns with further conceptual development outlined in the following three steps: identifying oneself as a pastor, clarifying what being a pastor means for the conversation, and clarifying what talking to a pastor means for the care seeker.

First, pastors have the responsibility from the beginning to identify themself as a pastor. Often the context will suffice, but sometimes this responsibility requires a statement such as, “Hi, I’m Jenny, I’m a pastor at this hospital.” Since the word “pastor” bears religious connotations (positive, negative, or neutral) for the care seeker (Raakjær, 2018), naming oneself as a pastor constitutes a minimal post-secular negotiation.

A second step in the post-secular negotiation is the pastor’s clarifying how their being a pastor will influence the conversation. The conversations with Lin and Kasper offer two examples of this step. The pastor in conversation with Lin introduces herself as a pastor with a Christian horizon of understanding, simultaneously negotiating room for the care seeker’s agenda and worldview through a sandwich of concerns: the pastor emphasizes first that the conversation is a “human” conversation, then notes that conversations about faith and Christianity are welcome and ends by signaling that the conversation will revolve around the care seeker’s life. Since this strategy entails a pastoral, oral monologue, we call it a “formalized, introductory negotiation.” A different strategy is apparent in the conversation with Kasper. Here, the pastor waits until Kasper has begun his story to explore whether Kasper is open for a discussion in Christian terms. This pastor asks whether Kasper sees a “higher meaning” in his suffering, to which Kasper responds in the negative, and an explicit post-secular negotiation ensues in which the pastor emphasizes that Kasper’s life will take center stage. Because this strategy responds to the story of the care seeker in the beginning of the conversation, we call it a “contextualized, introductory negotiation.” Both the formalized and the contextualized introductory negotiations clarify how the pastors interpret their own role and mandate in relation to the care seeker.

The final step of the post-secular negotiation concerns building a bridge to the other, clarifying what talking to a pastor means for the care seeker. While this step belongs inherently to the contextualized negotiation, in the formalized negotiation the pastor needs to ask further questions, either in the beginning or contextualized, to know what the care seeker expects from the pastoral conversation—a “human” conversation that involves only secular discourse or one that also involves religious concerns. Hospital chaplains report that care seekers often expect them to be messengers of death or active missionaries (Raakjær, 2018). Instead of reacting to these presumptions in every new conversation, an open post-secular negotiation could clarify the care seeker’s stance.

We argue that these three steps will make the post-secular situation of pastoral care explicit and that subsequent attempts to introduce Christian discourse will appear more natural, even as they remain tentative and receive mixed reactions. We argue this based on three examples.

Awareness of post-secularity might enable pastors to grasp post-secular negotiations initiated by the care seeker. In the conversation with Mette, the pastor overlooks Mette’s theological question about God’s forgiveness of her inability to forgive her mother, possibly because the pastor is more concerned with the positive secular effects of forgiving her mother. Presented with this analysis, the pastor explains that Mette introduced herself as a more spiritual person rather than an explicitly Christian person. This self-introduction combined with her crossed-arms body language made it implausible in the pastor’s eyes that Mette’s question would have a Christian perspective. Seeking an explicit post-secular negotiation could have clarified this question.

The pastor in conversation with Adriana understands but does not mirror Adriana’s longing for a more positive experience with a pastor. The pastor explained to us how mirroring this longing would have created an imbalance in their relationship because the pastor would then have had to perform as the good pastor rather than being present in the conversation. Still, we argue that a post-secular negotiation contextualized to this longing could have explored what Adriana’s negative experience with a pastor meant for her faith and her sense of belonging to Christianity.

In these two examples, the pastors end up responding to Christian questions in a Christian discourse, but more explicit post-secular negotiations could have eased the way and benefited the care seeker; this would also be the case when care seekers are less strong in their desire for a Christian discourse and therefore give fewer and weaker signs of those wishes than did Mette and Adriana.

A third example is the conversation with Christine, in which a contextualized post-secular negotiation could have given the pastor valuable insights about Christine’s relationship to the transcendent. A helpful question might have been to ask whether she saw herself as in a relationship with God and whether she also suffered in this relationship. Even if the answers to these questions are negative, the pastor might still, later in the conversation, introduce a Christian perspective. Presented with this analysis, this pastor agreed that these insights could have enabled the pastor to remain curious about Christine’s response to the baptismal gospel rather than closing the conversation there.

Conclusion

Having analyzed 10 Danish pastoral care conversations, we conclude that post-secular negotiation takes place in a variety of different forms depending on who initiates the negotiation, how this initiation is received by the conversation partner, when the negotiation occurs in the conversation, and whether it is implicit or explicit. In this material, we found examples of early explicit post-secular negotiation, both formalized and contextualized, that paved the way for more natural, tentative, and open introductions of Christian discourse later in the conversation. We also found examples of care seekers having to struggle for the introduction of a Christian perspective.

On this basis, we argue that pastors could be more attuned to the existential, Christian questions of their care seekers. We suggest that intercultural pastoral care could be improved if pastors initiated a post-secular negotiation of their roles as a pastor, either at the very beginning or contextualized to the conversation at the first opportunity or both. These post-secular negotiations could make it easier to contribute in an open and sensitive way with relevant Christian language and to offer interpretations throughout the conversation adjusted respectfully to the care seeker’s agenda.

Finally, we found that the use of post-secular negotiation as part of intercultural pastoral care helps to understand the boundaries and possibilities of the alliance between care givers and care seekers living in a post-secular country such as Denmark. Next steps in the research would be explorations of post-secular negotiations in chaplaincy, in existential communication, in spiritual care, and in different countries and cultures with the purpose of supporting people living in post-secular countries in a respectful way.