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The Chaplain Trap: How ‘Spiritual Care’ Could Smuggle Woke Ideology Back Into Schools

Posted by The Drilldown Staff   |   December 12, 2025
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As states rush to authorize school chaplains, many parents see a long-awaited corrective — a way to push back against the ideological excesses of Social Emotional Learning in public schools.

But Priscilla West, author of The New Face of Woke Education, warns that this confidence may be misplaced. Drawing on funding records, institutional ties, and the architecture of modern “spiritual care,” West argues that school chaplain laws risk importing the very social-justice ideology they are meant to counter.

West calls it “the Chaplain Trap.”

Florida, Oklahoma, and Texas have already passed school chaplain laws. Utah, Kansas, Indiana, and other states are now considering them. On paper, the goal sounds straightforward: address counselor shortages and give students access to moral or spiritual support outside the increasingly ideological school-counseling model.

However, West argues that the modern definition of chaplaincy has quietly changed.

Historically, chaplaincy has referred to spiritual guidance within secular institutions. Today, she argues, activist organizations have broadened the term to encompass social and emotional care delivered by people of any faith — or no faith at all — often trained in identity-based or social justice frameworks.

That matters because, according to West, school chaplain laws do not operate in isolation.

She says they plug directly into a progressive chaplaincy infrastructure built by the same networks that advanced SEL, “whole child” policy, and therapeutic well-being governance across K–12 education.

West points to the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab, founded in 2018 at Brandeis University, the alma mater of longtime CASEL president Roger Weissberg. The lab’s original funder was the Fetzer Institute — the same foundation that bankrolled CASEL and helped launch the SEL movement.

Today, West notes, the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab trains and platforms chaplains for equity-centered, movement-oriented, and transgender-advocacy work.

Fetzer, she argues, already reframed social-justice values as academic “competencies” through SEL, embedding New Age and collectivist ideas into classrooms. In West’s view, chaplaincy now risks becoming the next delivery system.

The funding ecosystem overlaps almost perfectly.

According to West, foundations such as Fetzer, Luce, Lilly, RWJF, and Templeton bankroll both SEL-style “well-being” initiatives and equity-focused “spiritual care” programs.

Since 2023, she adds, the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab has been housed at the Soros-backed Tides Center, inside its Sacred Design Lab, where social justice is framed as spiritual transformation.

Elite divinity schools play a role as well.

West notes that institutions like Harvard, Yale, Chicago, and Union train interfaith “spiritual care providers” steeped in ideas such as global citizenship spirituality, climate-justice theology, and spirituality for social transformation.

This, she argues, is not theology designed to form disciples — but spirituality designed to mobilize activism.

The model mirrors SEL.

Social-justice ideology is woven into education, now wrapped in religious language.

West then turns to what most school chaplain laws actually allow.

They typically permit “emotional support” and “spiritual care” aligned with state frameworks. They allow volunteer chaplains — ordained or not — of any faith or none. And they often integrate with restorative-justice and “culturally responsive” practices.

Without vigilance, West warns, these laws will not restore moral order.

Instead, they risk inviting collectivist ideology deeper into public schools — this time under trusted religious labels.

She also situates the trend within a global context.

West points to United Nations initiatives that promote “spiritual care” as a mechanism for advancing the Sustainable Development Goals. UN task forces partner with faith-based organizations worldwide, while UN-aligned foundations and NGOs help build chaplaincy labs, interfaith training programs, and spiritual-care frameworks.

As definitions broaden and boundaries blur, West argues, states normalize therapeutic spirituality in public education.

Parents believe school chaplain laws will protect children from values capture.

In some cases, West acknowledges, they might.

But she warns that the same networks that used SEL to embed social-justice activism into K–12 can use chaplaincy to finish the job.

Yes, she says, trusted pastors, priests, and rabbis can serve students faithfully in school settings.

But these laws also open the door to “chaplains” trained to replace truth with ideology hostile to Western liberty.

For West, the solution is vigilance.

She calls for parental opt-in, not opt-out, full transparency around training, funding, and affiliations, intentional recruitment of trusted clergy, and — above all — recognition of the pattern before it repeats.

The label may be new. The playbook is not.

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