When Anthony Cruz Pantojas earned the Innovation Award from the Association for Chaplaincy and Spiritual Life in Higher Education (ACSLHE), it was not only a personal achievement but also a way of acknowledging the significance of critical care in the presence of endemic precariousness and emergency. This award exemplifies Cruz Pantojas’ idea of building constructively critical places for relations. In particular, Cruz Pantojas seeks to define and promote chaplaincy as a practice of interdependence and planetary care.
The work of Cruz Pantojas as a Humanist Chaplain in higher education is informed by Afro-Caribbean humanisms, freethought, and interworld engagement. It is a model that goes beyond conventional chaplaincy frameworks historically rooted in religion and instead focuses on the existentialism of the students. It is about fostering environments where critical thinking is encouraged, where students are understood and affirmed, and where care is given and received equally. Cruz Pantojas works with students to help them develop their own embodied theories of change of action.
Cruz Pantojas recounted the story of a student who struggled to connect with the standard spiritual support services on campus. At the Humanist Chaplaincy, the student was able to find a place where their doubts were not only accepted but encouraged, where doubt itself was given space, and where no one was going to change their beliefs or invoke guilt or shame. This is what Humanist Chaplaincy can be: a fecund environment to enable students to inquire about the basis of their assumptions, to be themselves, and to think otherwise.
Perhaps the most significant shift that Cruz Pantojas is making in their work is the notion of epistemic justice. They question hegemonic knowledge systems and demand recognition of Indigenous, Afro-diasporic, and local knowledge. In a world where many voices are on the periphery or are being silenced, this is a crucial and revolutionary attempt. It teaches us that care has to be more responsive, and it has to extend itself to our pluriverse world.
Cruz Pantojas engages abolitionist futures of care that are based on solidarity and mutual aid. They visualize chaplaincy as an important site that is not only there to offer assistance, but to incite meaningful and sustainable change. It is about forming societies in which the common good is greater than the sum of the interests of the individual and in which care is a way of fighting against violence.
Their reading and adoption of Buen Vivir, a principle of living in harmony with nature and other communities, enhances this vision. It is a bid to move beyond the rugged individualism that is still valorized and to foster the kind of connections that center people and the planet. With students becoming more aware of social injustice and environmental issues and trying to develop strategic visions and actions, this holistic approach to care seems not only sensible but necessary.
ACSLHE’s acknowledgment of their efforts shows that there is a growing need for chaplaincy frameworks that are based on justice, inclusivity, and transformative care. As a co-founder of Kindling the Humanist Spark, a forum to connect emerging humanist leaders with resources and opportunities for dialogue, Cruz Pantojas sees the need to leverage the collective wisdom of practice towards these ends. Cruz Pantojas’ experience gestures to what is possible when care takes seriously the character of love, justice, and mutual recognition. Humanist Chaplaincy can be a movement – an effort to create social imaginaries in which ethical futures take precedence.
Cruz Pantojas is actively involved in the humanist movement, serving on the Board of The Secular Coalition of America and holding memberships in Atheist United and the American Humanist Association, all affiliates of Humanists International.