Finding Jesus in the Storm. John Swinton

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СКАЧАТЬ also designed to meet the needs of everyone; this is necessary for it to function effectively and fairly according to its expressed intentions. However, this universality inevitably problematizes and narrows the possible options for the kind of spirituality that might be acceptable within the system. In terms of spirituality, this ensures that the NHS is inevitably secular, because it cannot be connected directly with any one religion. It deals with a very broad range of people, and as such it must meet the needs of people of “all faiths and none.” The particularity of religious traditions becomes problematic within a context that requires generalities in order to function. A general, generic definition of spirituality may be thin, but it is easy to implement.

      Health and social care systems such as the NHS require generalities to function effectively. At a pragmatic level, it makes sense to deprioritize the particularities of religion and to develop a general mode of spirituality to which everyone can relate. Treatments—chemotherapy, medication, physiotherapy, pain control—must be universal and applicable across the whole system. You can’t have an antibiotic that works only for one person! So, too, you can’t have a spirituality that works for only one group of people. A system would not work well if each doctor had his or her own way of doing things that might conflict with how other doctors conducted their practice. So, while there is obviously diversity within the system, the principle of generalization is necessary and established.

      Within this context, people may think they are acting counterculturally and taking spirituality into the system. However, a deeper reflection indicates that the system itself shapes and forms the spirituality that is acceptable; it silently places boundaries, parameters, and brakes on the activities of spiritual care and our articulations of spirituality and compels us to work with a thin model of spirituality that dovetails neatly with what is already there.

      This model of spirituality seems to resonate with the idea of a universal spirituality that everyone shares, something that abounds in the literature. However, when one runs a critical eye across the ways in which people formulate spirituality, it becomes clear that, far from being universal, it is a very Western cultural model, which assumes the primacy of Western values such as individualism, freedom, autonomy, choice, and the right of people to create their own destiny. This is clearly a cultural model of spirituality rather than a universal one. It may raise our consciousness to certain important but overlooked aspects of health care, but by claiming that “everyone has a spirituality” and seeking to make a culturally bound model appear to be universal, we risk “baptizing people behind their backs,” forcing them to accept thin, culturally bound models of spirituality and humanness that may satisfy certain desires and needs but in the end fail to meet those needs that can be discovered only as we engage with thicker descriptions. When this happens, we subliminally engage in precisely the kind of proselytizing behaviors that some consider a central danger of allowing religion to be a part of health care. There is clearly a need for a richer and thicker conversation around spirituality and mental health than is provided by current culturally bound models and approaches. The question is: What might that look like? And how might we go about achieving such a goal?

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