ABSTRACT
Why a book on spirituality and work? Or why a book on spirituality and work now? And why critical spirituality? My experience of the health and welfare field confirms that there is a steadily increasing interest in matters of the spirit. My interest in writing this book began with my own struggle to see how my spirituality fitted with my working life. When I trained as a social worker in the 1970s it was not acceptable to talk about religious or spiritual experience, in spite of training with people from clearly different religious backgrounds. I suspect that this was for a mixture of reasons: we were living in an increasingly secular society and the social work department reflected a desire to be part of that. Secondly, people were fearful of what it would mean to talk about religious difference, assuming that this would lead to conflict as it frequently has in the wider world. In spite of the move to more openness about issues such as sexuality, there was still a negative attitude to being too different – or perhaps you needed to be different in acceptable ways.
