Spiritual Care

Chapter: Introduction

For thousands of years, spirituality and health have been closely allied with each other, in concept and in practice. Historically, treatment was administered by religious and spiritual healers. However, with the Age of Enlightenment and the advent of modern medicine, diagnosis and treatment were separated from their spiritual context. Despite this initial separation between health and spirituality, in recent years, a rapprochement has been taking place. Empirical studies are revealing significant links between spirituality and health. And religious/spiritual and health care communities have begun to join forces in the prevention and treatment of illness and the promotion of health and well-being (Adams, Sanders & Auth, 2004).

The term spirituality comes from the word spirit (to breathe). Although there is a lack of consensus about its precise meaning, there is general agreement that spirituality is a living, dynamic process that is oriented around whatever the individual may hold sacred (Buckley & Herth, 2004). The sacred refers to concepts of God, the divine, and transcendence as well as other aspects of life that take on spiritual character and significance by virtue of their association with the divine. Thus, the sacred can also include material objects (e.g., crucifix), special times (e.g., the Sabbath), special places (e.g., cathedral), relationships (e.g., marriage), and psychological attributes (e.g., soul). Spirituality refers to the attempt to discover the sacred, hold on to the sacred, and, when necessary, transform the sacred (Buckley & Herth, 2004).

In their search for the sacred, people may take a variety of spiritual pathways. These paths include traditional or nontraditional organized religious beliefs (e.g., God, afterlife, karma), practices (e.g., prayer, meditation, rituals), experiences (e.g., mysticism, conversion), and institutions (e.g., church attendance, Bible study). Pathways to the sacred may also take nonreligious forms (Adams, Sanders & Auth, 2004), such as walking in the outdoors, listening to music, intimate relations with others, or participating in social action. The richness and complexity of spirituality is a reflection of the many different ways people can define the sacred in their lives and the many different pathways they can follow to discover and rediscover the sacred.

Defining Spirituality

We use the term spirit in many ways, to refer to the vitality of a high school team, to the content of beverages, as well as to the position that there are conscious beings that are immaterial. In this last sense, the term fundamentally means independence from matter: either that the creature is an immaterial being or that there is something about the being that acts in an immaterial way, that is, in a way that cannot be fully explained by bodied functions. Other meanings of spirit are extensions of this idea of immateriality, which we inherited from classical thought (Buckley & Herth, 2004). Because the language of Greek philosophy was a convenient tool for presenting their message, early Christians adopted the idea of an immaterial, spiritual soul, a notion not found in quite the same way either in Judaism or in non-Western philosophies. We who live in a Western culture shaped ...