Beth Crisp,Spirituality and social work.

Reviewed by: David R Hodge, Arizona State University and Program for Research on Religion and Urban Civil Society, University of Pennsylvania, USA

This book represents an important contribution to the social work literature on spirituality. Crisp is an accomplished scholar who brings extensive experience to bear on the topic of spirituality. In addition to being a highly published social work academic, she also has a degree in theology.

The text consists of three relatively distinct sections or parts. Part one comprises two chapters. Chapter one reviews various definitions of spirituality and provides a broad conceptualization of spirituality that informs the remainder of the text. Chapter two reviews the somewhat nuanced and at time troubled relationship between spirituality and the profession of social work. As the author notes, at one time the discussion of spirituality was essentially proscribed in professional discourse, in spite of its relevance to clients.

As the author also notes, some readers may decide to move directly to part two, which discusses spirituality over the course of the lifespan. It is important to emphasize that the author does not employ a developmental approach. Indeed, she nicely summarizes both the strengths and criticisms of spiritual developmental frameworks, such as the stage theory of spiritual development proposed by Fowler. Rather, this set of chapters discusses key life stages or issues and explores the spiritual concerns that are commonly associated with each stage or issue. Toward this end, individual chapters focus on how spirituality intersects childhood, youth, relationships, work, and aging.

Part three focuses on spirituality and lived experience. The lived experiences discussed are rituals, creativity, place (e.g. sacred spaces), and belonging. These chapters help readers understand how the spiritual impulse can be manifested in people’s lives. The content may be used by practitioners to initiate discussions with clients about their own lived experiences in these areas as it is clinically relevant.

Fundamental to understanding the text is Crisp’s definition of spirituality. The author defines spirituality as ‘our needs and desires for meaning, identity, connectedness, transformation and transcendence, which may or may not be associated with a specific religious framework’ (p. 141). Thus, everyone is spiritual since, at some level, everyone has the impulse to create meaning, connectedness with significant others.

For people who have only conceptualized spirituality within the context of more traditional religious frameworks, the author’s focus can be quite helpful in expanding one’s understanding of spirituality. Experiences as diverse as clubbing, cooking, and interacting on social networking sites or sporting events can all be understood as profoundly spiritual. As the author notes, such ‘secular’ forms of spirituality can be just as relevant to clients as more traditional forms of spirituality expressed in religious settings.

Another strength of the author’s approach is that it can open up fresh insights into the process of integrating spirituality into social work practice. Incorporating spirituality into practice is not so much a case of developing new skills, although these can certainly help. Rather, by listening to clients’ stories through a different prism, we can hear the spiritual impulse manifested in diverse and perhaps unexpected ways. This text helps sensitize readers to the myriad ways in which the spiritual can be expressed.

Other strengths of the book include its emphasis on the strengths perspective, its professional handling of the underlying spirituality literature, and the presentation of the material. The author writes in an open, respectful tone that is congruent with social work values and ethics. The text is written in a clear and concise manner that allows easy access to the author’s thoughts and insights. Indeed, this text is a pleasure to read.

In terms of possible improvements that might be made to the text, additional content fleshing out more concrete methods of operationalizing the author’s ideas in practice settings might be beneficial. Given the author’s background and experience, it would be interesting to hear more of her thoughts on how the ideas and concepts presented might be implemented to help clients cope with the challenges they encounter. Hopefully, subsequent editions of the text will include a chapter or two, or at least additional content, on working with clients’ spirituality.

This does not detract, however, from the book’s contribution to the literature. This text moves the literature forward by assisting us provide better, more client-centered services. As such, this text will be of interest to anyone who takes social work practice seriously.