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Spiritual Maturity: An Exploratory Study and Model for Social Work Practice
Abstract
Spiritual maturity is a fundamental dimension of human development that can help inform macro and micro level social work practice. On the macro level we need spiritually mature leaders who can help form coalitions of spiritually maturing people across the boundaries of nation, religion, class, gender, culture, and race. At the micro scale, there is a need for spiritually mature parents, leaders, and professional healers who have the courage, wisdom, and skills required to help navigate families and local communities through the stormy seas of accelerating ecobiopsychosocial-spiritual change. It is our premise that this task of describing spiritual maturity can and must be accomplished. In this paper, we report the findings of a study we have conducted, which explored how 200 adults view spiritual maturity. Implications of these findings for local and global social work practice are then advanced.
In this article, the author responds to the Brooking Report by addressing how beliefs can become ideologies that harm. Beliefs are conceptualized as processes that probably evolved to support the survival and well-being of our ancestors, but that today can either help or harm us. The author introduces the concept of “ideological identification disorder” (IDD), which involves a belief I value above all other beliefs. In IDD, I not only value my ideology identification over my other beliefs, but I may well value it over other people, living things, and the world I live in. Our conservative and progressive beliefs, for example, can serve individuals, families, and communities. However, when they become “ideology identifications,” they can harm individuals, groups, and local and global communities. The local and global challenges humanity faces today require collaboration between people. Ideology identification tends to destroy the kinds of relationships that foster collaboration. A practice model framework is provided that addresses the transformation of ideology identification, at the micro-, mezzo-, and macro-levels of change. In this transformation process, people can develop “healthy beliefs” that are tempered with responsibility toward both ourselves and one another. Such beliefs may foster more effective collaboration between people.
The Protestant conception of religion as a private matter of conscience organized into voluntary associations informed early liberalism’s conception of religion and of religious toleration, assumptions that are still present in contemporary liberalism. In many other religions, however, including Hinduism (the main though not only focus of this article), practice has a much larger role than conscience. Hinduism is not a voluntary association, and the structure of its practices, some of which are inegalitarian, makes exit very difficult. This makes liberal religious toleration an awkward fit for Hinduism; granting religious toleration in India undermines equality and autonomy in severe ways. Yet Hinduism is not without its virtues, and has historically been what I call externally tolerant—it has been relatively tolerant of other religions. Liberal toleration, by contrast, is internally tolerant—it is tolerant of religions that fit the Protestant model, while its tolerance of others is considerably more qualified. I briefly speculate at the end of the article about how to combine these two models of toleration.
ABSTRACT. Although research has grown considerably on spirituality and social work practice in recent years, there has been little investigation of what practitioners actually do with their clients and what influences their practice behaviors. Current findings from a random sample of 204 licensed clinical social workers indicate considerable focus on religion and spirituality in both assessment and intervention, with over two-thirds of the sample reporting that they had utilized 14 different spiritually-derived techniques with clients. In addition, analyses reveal four factors most predictive of the use of such techniques including:
practitioner attitudes, the percentage of clients presenting religious/spiritual issues, the percentage of clients for whom religion plays a detrimental role, and the level of practitioner participation in religious or spiritual services.
Examines the therapeutic potential of using the traditional group psychotherapy format for the specific purpose of helping religious and faith development in spiritually troubled clients. The concept's historical, philosophical, and theoretical foundations are reviewed, and the dynamics of the group process are explored. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Nordic countries are generally regarded as global welfare role models in terms of their image of being gender equal, child-friendly and culturally tolerant. Consequently, the influence of Nordic welfare systems in transnational academic and policy debates has been immense. By focusing on the vital welfare issue of violence by men to female partners and/or their children, this book seeks to reconsider this over-simplistic image.Drawing on new research from Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, the book critically examines how men's violence in families is perceived and responded to in the Nordic context. It pays particular attention to the links between violence to women and violence to children, children's perspectives, professional discourses and responses, and legal and policy approaches.With clear links between research, policy and practice, the book is highly relevant to a wide audience, including academics, researchers and students in the fields of social work, health, criminology, sociology, social policy, gender studies, European studies and law. It is also recommended reading for welfare managers, practitioners, and policy makers. © 2005 Maria Eriksson, Marianne Hester, Suvi Keskinen and Keith Pringle.
The growing visibility of the grassroots movement of men's support groups throughout this country and a resurgence of spiritual interest and faith within the American population come together in the emerging phenomena of men gathering together to worship. To better understand the motivations behind men's participation in such events, the Xavier Religious Index (XRI) was designed to identify factors forming underlying motivational constructs and was administered to two separate groups of men who had attended one or more such religious events. Sample 1 was comprised of 1190 men who attended a large, religious, men's conference. In order to cross validate the XRI, it was administered to Sample 2, comprised of 301 men who had attended one or more men's retreat weekends at a spiritual renewal center. Results from both samples were factor analyzed. In both samples, the factor identified as comprising the largest portion of the variance was that of Male Bonding. Other factors identified included: Self-awareness, Relationship with God, Isolation or Emptiness, Faith/Prayer Community, Father-Son Relationships, Coping Strategies, and Fear or Grief. The data were also examined for differences across the lifespan. When the first and fourth quadrants of Sample 1 were grouped for age and compared, corresponding values existed. Although an examination of Factor 2, Self-awareness and Existential Concern, suggested that the directions in which these men focused were diametrically opposed, with older men endorsing a higher satisfaction with quality of life, a Mest failed to confirm that these differences were significant. The implications of this are discussed in light of developmental theory.
Consideration is given to the ramifications of Lawrence Kohlberg's theory of moral reasoning for understanding Christian spiritual development. Utilizing Kohlberg's insights, four levels toward Christian spiritual maturity are identified: (a) accommodation to God's law, (b) respect for and obedience to God's law, (c) principle-centered commitment to a Christian worldview, and (d) Kingdom-centered commitment to God's glory. The discussion intends to challenge churches to foster an environment whereby people are more likely to reach a Postcon-ventional level of spiritual maturity.
Global survival is arguably the most significant ecobiopsychosocial‐spiritual issue of our era. It will require historically new levels of cooperation between the world's religions, corporations, and nations to bring about a quality postsurvival era. The current religious resurgence has given religion the potential to be a key partner in the cooperative effort to ensure global survival and a postsurvival quality world. Social work, with its ecological perspective, is specially qualified to work with religions toward these goals. Several principles are available to do this, and in particular the use of spirituality can be a conceptual bridge to bring about cooperation between the several entities involved in this process.
Social workers in the 1990s are facing a postmodern world, with unique practice challenges in both the micro and macro levels of practice. Because psychological services are reactive, serving the clients that come out of a particular social context, different theories have emerged over time to address the ills of the day. Many of the practice challenges for social work practitioners today are related to diseases of the spiritual dimension or what has been labeled "spiritual malaise," including values deficits, moral apathy, existential despair, spiritual emergencies, and the like. Transpersonal psychology is the only one of the four force theories that includes the spiritual dimension. To remain relevant in a postmodern world, social work education must fill the current void in curricula by incorporating the comprehensive perspective of transpersonal theory into education and practice.
Two persistent myths about aging are that sex is for the young and religion is for the old. Contrary to these popular beliefs, adults do not necessarily turn to religion as they age nor do they lose sexual interest or cease to be sexually active. This paper examines sex. gender and sexuality of the elderly in relation to religious beliefs and church/synagogue participation. Five megatrends related to sex and aging and their implications for the churchlsynagogue are discussed: (1) from youth to adult congregations- the demographic imperatives; (2) from male to female congregations; (3) from married to single; (4) from eitherlor to multiple choice; and (5) from exclusive to inclusive.
Proposes that transpersonal psychology is especially relevant for social work practitioners who combat the social ills of the 1990s that manifest as violence, addiction, and spiritual malaise. Transpersonal theory is the only theory that focuses on the spiritual dimension and legitimates the development of higher states of consciousness as being exceptionally healthy or as representing the epitome of human potential. The practice challenges facing social workers in the postmodern age call not only for the development of a more complex and inclusive understanding of what it means to be fully human, but also for a theory big enough to facilitate quantum leaps in human consciousness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
[This book] traces the course of evolution from matter to life to mind, and describes the common patterns that evolution takes in all 3 of these domains. In each case, evolution has a "direction," a tendency to produce more highly organized patterns. The "spirit of evolution" lies in its directionality: order out of chaos.
After arriving at the emergence of mind, Wilber traces the evolution of human consciousness through its major stages of growth and development, pointing out that at each stage there is the "dialectic of progress"—every increase in consciousness is bought at a price. He particularly focuses on the rise of modernity and postmodernity [and] how the modern and postmodern world can even conceive of Spirit. How can spiritual concerns be integrated with the massive developments of the modern world. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Writing as a psychologist, the author traces the course of religious development in the normally mature and productive personality. Religious sentiments arise from needs, interests, temperament, rationality, and cultural response. The mature religious person can act whole-heartedly without absolute certainty, for religious aspiration is an intention to strive toward long-range goals whatever the present risks and difficulties. The crux of mental health rests upon one's beliefs, and the ability to integrate his conflicts around a master sentiment, that points beyond immediate and self-centered gratifications to larger relationships, more decisive action and deeper assurance in the realization of permanent values. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Over the past generation, a global wave of countries have undertaken what has come to be known as transitional justice-efforts to address the injustices of a past period of civil war, genocide, or dictatorship, whether through trials, truth commissions, reparations, apologies, forgiveness, or the building of memorials and monuments. The religious have played a pivotal role in developing and spreading a paradigm for transitional justice-reconciliation-that they espouse disproportionately though not exclusively. But what kind of influence have the religious and the paradigm of reconciliation actually had in the politics of transitional justice? And what factors make certain religious actors influential? This chapter looks closely at religious actors' efforts to shape official policies, especially governments' choices for truth commissions or trials.
Gender differences in spirituality and related traits are an assumed reality despite the lack of empirical information that
directly compares women and men. I used a national and longitudinal sample of 3,680 college students surveyed with the Cooperative
Institutional Research Program (CIRP) Freshman Survey (2000) and later with the College Students’ Beliefs and Values (CSBV)
Survey (2003) to examine gender differences on 13 spiritual characteristics and explore the personal and educational factors
associated with changes in spirituality during college. The results showed marked gender differences in spiritual qualities,
and gendered patterns of spiritual development were identified that are associated with religious identity, peer relationships,
and science exposure.
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Many traditional Western psychologists fail to recognize spirituality and transcendental needs as intrinsic aspects of human nature and therefore may not be meeting the needs of terminally ill people or those in the process of confronting their own mortality. This article presents a model of transpersonal intervention appropriate for use by social work clinicians with anyone who is in the process of confronting his or her own mortality. It is based on the underlying assumptions that an individual has a level of transpersonal development with its related dimensions of spiritual awareness and personal death perspective and that the degree of interrelatedness of these two dimensions has a direct impact on the psychosocial distress he or she experiences when confronted with death.
Even though a majority of Americans report having spiritual/religious beliefs, the role of different dimensions of spirituality/religiosity in health is not well understood. Moreover, given that the experience of spirituality/religiosity differs for men and women, it is possible that the strength of the association between spirituality/religiosity and health may also differ by gender. The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between spirituality/religiosity and three markers of health and well-being, and any gender differences in these relationships. First, we test the hypothesis that engagement with formal religious institutions (i.e. public religious activity) will be more beneficial for men than for women and we examine the role of denominational affiliation in any observed differences. Second, we directly compare effects of three different kinds of religious activities (public and private religious activity and spiritual experience) on health and well-being. Data are from the 1998 US General Social Survey, a nationally representative sample of non-institutionalized adults. Participants were asked about the frequency of engaging in public and private religious activities and having spiritual experiences. Psychological distress, happiness and self-rated health were used as indicators of health and well-being. Results suggest that weekly public religious activity was significantly associated with better health and well-being. Furthermore, this relationship was stronger for men than women and was influenced by denominational affiliation. When public religious activity, private religious activity and spiritual experiences were considered simultaneously, public religious activity emerged as the most consistent predictor of health and well-being among men. Among women, both public religious activity and spiritual experiences maintained an independent association with the health and well-being. These results suggest that it may not be appropriate to generalize findings about the relationship between spirituality/religiosity and health from one form of spirituality/religiosity to another, across denominations, or to assume effects are uniform for men and women.
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