ABSTRACT
Generally, spirituality is understood to be a universal and fundamental human quality consisting of the search for a sense of meaning, purpose, morality, well-being, and profundity in relationships with ourselves, others, and ultimate reality. Religion, however, involves an institutionalized, systematic pattern of values, beliefs, symbols, behaviors, and experiences oriented toward spiritual concerns, shared by a community, and transmitted over time in traditions, often relying on a set of scriptures, teachings, or moral code of conduct and rituals. Arguably, for social workers engaging in spiritually sensitive social work practice, it is as important to understand how a person or group understands and actualizes the concepts of spirituality and religion as it is to understand more formal, scholarly definitions of these terms, if not more so. From charity organization societies to the settlement house movement, religion and spirituality have played a central role in the history and evolution of the profession of social work.
