The practice of clinical pastoral care, otherwise termed spiritual care or chaplaincy, in North American and European hospitals provides a case study to explore the historic and ongoing tension between religious worldviews and its others. The tension between religion and modernity, scientific rationalism, secularity, and humanism, among others, have all been presented in dichotomous and hierarchical either/or terms to justify a social imaginary that sees religion in decline. I will argue, firstly, that the very construction of ‘religion and …’ signifies a particular understanding of religion’s nature and role in the episteme of contemporary western societies; and secondly, that in this context, what we mean by religion is currently in flux, that is, ‘religion’ is currently undergoing a significant transformation. Ultimately, I will argue that the transformational potential of religion is not merely its ability to evolve along epistemic shifts but its ability to redescribe the relations between disparate domains. It is within this discursive space that a focus on clinical pastoral care/chaplaincy in modern healthcare contexts provides a particularly appropriate lens through which to reveal the fissures, transformations, and potential for redescription of religion in the 21st century and to begin to imagine its role in mapping the ecological networks between disparate domains. In modern healthcare settings, the role of clinical pastoral care is positioned at a nexus between the patient body, religious or spiritual needs, and a set of totalising secular, materialist, and scientistic discourses. A superficial consideration which assumes these narratives to be incompatible will be challenged by a more nuanced analysis showing the mutual imbrication and necessary tension between such worldviews. In this sense my proposed thesis is part of a broader phenomenological analysis of the current constructions of the nature and role of religion in secular society.