Abstract
Abstract
While chaplains are required in the military, federal prisons, and the Veteran’s Administration, they are also present in a range of other settings across the United States. In ports, religiously motivated individuals and institutions have long histories of evangelizing and providing social services. We focus on chaplains in 15 of the largest American ports today to ask how they negotiate access to seafarers and how they work with them daily. Chaplains negotiate security protocols, the hierarchy of ships, and their own self-presentations to get on board vessels. In their daily work, they shift among economic, moral, religious, and advocacy roles. Chaplains access seafarers by providing economic support and then use that access to develop the relationships they see as central to their work. By being present in these relationships, connecting seafarers to broader communities, and serving as an invisible global safety net, port chaplains see themselves acting as humanizing agents of modern capitalism. The case of port chaplaincy suggests additional strategies chaplains use to gain access not yet present in the sociological literature, further illustrates how the work of chaplains is shaped by the institutions within which it takes place, and expands sociological approaches to religion “on the edge” by showing multiple ways religion appears at the water’s edge not yet theorized in that literature.