ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with competences such as the ability to discern, analyse, and handle the intersections of “religion” and social/political/cultural life in healthcare. It addresses the following question: How can healthcare staff discern and handle new expressions of religion – distant religion, spiritualities, and non-religion – in their everyday encounters with patients? After a demographic and statistically based examination of the current religious situation in Sweden, I present a recent empirically grounded way of modelling religion on an aggregated population level to shed light on how different expressions of religion and spirituality may be perceived in healthcare. Thereafter, three examples are given to illustrate lived religion in distant religion, alternative spiritualities, and non-religion. I argue that a lived religion perspective enables us to move away from a static, essentialistic, textual, and dogmatic understanding of religion and spirituality and towards a more empirically grounded understanding of religion and spirituality as something that is acted out and performed in different ways in different situations by different people. Even though this chapter is based on fieldwork and empirical studies conducted over the last decade, its aim is explorative and the examples given serve primarily to illustrate certain points. Finally, I suggest ways for healthcare staff to discern and handle new expressions of religion – distant religion, spiritualities, and non-religion – in their everyday encounters with patients. These skills are transferable and may also may be useful when encountering “religious” patients.
