Religion and belief in health and social care: the case for religious literacy

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to report on an action research programme in the UK to address this through the notion of religious literacy. Design/methodology/approach Drawing on original research and analysis in UK higher education settings, the article will argue that health and social care educators, policy makers and practitioners need to develop their religious literacy in order to engage fully and competently with the religion and belief identities of their service users in a religiously diverse and complex world. Findings The relationship between religion and belief on the one hand and health and social care practice has been scarcely addressed, despite the important work of Furness and Gilligan in the UK and Canada in the USA. Their work appears as exceptional within a wider context of professions which have been forged in a predominantly secular milieu, despite having their roots in Christian social services in the USA, Canada and the UK. New research in the sociology of religion shows that religion and belief themselves vary in form, number and mix around the world, and that the religious landscape itself has changed enormously in the period during which secular social work has been changing significantly in recent years. It has been observed that in the UK secular assumptions reached a peak of confidence in the 1960s, when social work was most rapidly consolidating as a public profession (Dinham 2015). The inheritance has been generations of health and social care practitioners and educators who are ill-equipped to address the religion and belief identities which they encounter. In recent years this has become a pressing issue as societies across the West come to terms with the persistent – and in some ways growing – presence of religion or belief, against the expectations of secularism. In total, 84 per cent of the global population declares a religious affiliation (Pew, 2012); globalisation and migration put us all in to daily encounter with religious plurality as citizens, neighbours, service users and professionals; and internationally, mixed economies of welfare increasingly involve faith groups in service provision, including in social work and welfare settings across Europe and North America. Yet the twentieth century – the secular century – leaves behind a lamentable quality of conversation about religion and belief. Public professionals find themselves precarious on the subject, and largely unable to engage systematically and informedly with religion and belief as they encounter them. Originality/value Religion and belief have been bracketed off in education in departments of Theology and Religious Studies. Social work education has largely neglected them, and professional standards, benchmarks, values and toolkits, have tended to use proxies for religion and belief, such as “spirituality”, which are often ill-defined and vague. In a context of the reemergence of public faith, and a widespread acknowledgement that religion and belief did not go away after all, health and social care face the pressing challenge of engaging skilfully. This article draws on an action research programme in the UK to address this through the notion of religious literacy. Reflecting on original research and analysis in UK higher education settings, the article will argue that health and social care educators, policy makers and practitioners need to develop their religious literacy in order to engage fully and competently with the religion and belief identities of their service users in a religiously diverse and complex world.

Are the Profession’s Education Standards Promoting the Religious Literacy Required for Twenty-First Century Social Work Practice?

“…Having largely divested itself of its religious roots, the social work profession has tended to be ambivalent, if not disdainful, of the need to understand religion and belief in their practice (Whiting, 2008). In recent years, equality law and increasing religion and belief plurality have led to a growing awareness that social workers must be able to engage with the religions and beliefs of the individuals and communities with whom they work (Crisp, 2011;Dinham 2018). Nevertheless the response of programmes of social work education has been haphazard and new graduates report feeling inadequately prepared to explore the significance of religion and belief with service users (Horwath and Lees, 2010) or even knowing how to refer to the religious celebrations of the major traditions in ways which will avoid offending people of other religions (Bradstock, 2015).…”

“…This emerging dialogue around religious literacy also challenges prevailing ideas that religion is a problem to be managed and reimagines it as one of many pervasive human identities to be engaged with, along with gender, ethnicity and sexual orientation in which the implications of diversity are more widely recognised. Hence it is unsurprising that several of those who have been recognised the need for religious literacy are social work scholars (eg Crisp, 2015;Dinham, 2018;Pentaris, 2019).…”

Are Codes of Ethics Promoting Religious Literacy for Social Work Practice?

“…Although there have long been those who have lamented that "the literature of the profession genially and serenely ignores religion" (Marty, 1980, p. 465), over the past two decades there has been a growing acknowledgement that there will be professional encounters in which social workers need to engage with religion and belief (Crisp, 2017;Dinham, 2018;Holloway & Moss, 2010). Instead of being confined to situations in which they are perceived as problematic or deviant (Furness and Gilligan, 2010), social workers are increasingly regarding religion and belief as integral to the human condition (Hodge, 2018), albeit with a tendency to prefer the language of "spirituality" to that of "religion" (Crisp, 2010).…”

“…Religious literacy is a term which has gained currency over the past decade or so in discussions about the place of religions and beliefs across the public sphere (Commission on Religion and Belief in British Public Life, 2015;Dinham, 2018). In addition to the growing number of "nones" (people who identify as having no religion), many of whom have little knowledge or experience of any religion (Singleton, 2018), there have been substantial changes in religious makeup in many countries as a result of migration (Dinham, 2018), the revival of ancient traditions (including wicca and druidism) (Ezzy, 2013), increasing recognition of the importance of the spiritual traditions of Indigenous Peoples (Coates, Gray & Hetherington, 2006), increasing influence of non-religious beliefs (including humanism, secularism as well as environmental concerns) and non-religions (such as the Atheist Church). This poses the need for policy and practice approaches which are able to both engage with religious diversity and manage tensions between individuals and groups who have differing or no beliefs (Ezzy, 2013).…”

“…The emerging dialogue around religious literacy adopts a flexible understanding of religion and beliefs and challenges the framing of religion as a problem to be managed, and includes what some may regard as being "spirituality" rather than "religion". As this dialogue reimagines religion as one of many pervasive human identities to be engaged with (Crisp and Dinham, 2019), it is unsurprising that social workers are amongst those at the forefront of those arguing a need for religious literacy (eg Crisp, 2015;Dinham, 2018;Pentaris, 2019).…”