BJSW Advance Access published online on March 28, 2008
British Journal of Social Work, doi:10.1093/bjsw/bcn032
Speaking from the Margins: A Critical Reflection on the ‘Spiritual-but-not-Religious’ Discourse in Social Work
Yuk-Lin Renita Wong is Associate Professor of Social Work at York University in Canada. Her research interest includes spirituality and social justice, cross-cultural social work, gender and migration, and critical international social work. She has published on integrating mindfulness and spirituality into critical social work pedagogy, critiquing cultural competence as a colonialist discourse in social work, mental health of East and Southeast Asian communities in Canada, and on indigenizing social work with women in China through postoalonial ethnography
Jana Vinsky is a part-time instructor of Social Work at Ryerson University. She is also the Curriculum Coordinator for Liberation Practice International (LPI), providing training and consultation throughout the human services, on issues of inclusion, equity and social justice. She has also produced numerous social work training videos including, "On the Road to Becoming Anti-Oppressive: Peers Teaching Peers", and works as a therapist in private practice in Toronto, Canada
Correspondence to Yuk-Lin Renita Wong, Ph.D., Associate Professor, School of Social Work, Kinsmen Building, York University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3J 1P3. Email: rylwong{at}yorku.ca
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Abstract |
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This paper attempts to make visible the invisible Euro-Christian ethnocentrism and individualism in the ‘spiritual-but-not-religious’ discourse in social work. A critical analysis of the current literature on spirituality and social work, intertwined with the authors' personal narratives of spirituality and religion, calls into question the subject positions of social work authors who argue for differentiating spirituality from religion. We ask: From whose vantage point is the ‘spiritual-but-not-religious’ discourse produced? What gets legitimized and who gets excluded from this particular construction of spirituality? This paper deconstructs the power relations of race, ethnicity, and sexuality in the discourse of spirituality in social work. It destabilizes the assumption of spirituality as non-sectarian and inclusive. Contrary to many social work authors and educators' best intention of inclusivity, we contend that the ‘spiritual-but-not-religious’ discourse in social work may have inadvertently reproduced the process of colonial othering and further marginalization of racialized ethnic groups who are more often represented as ‘religious’.
Keywords: Spirituality, religion, subjectivity, narrative, colonialism, race, ethnicity, sexual diversity, reflexive practice, critical social work