Religion, spirituality and social assistance

Abstract

The objective of this article is to present the international literature on the relations between the “religion” and “spirituality” themes and the assistive activity performed by social service professionals. Since the 1950’s articles have been published in specialized international mains­tream magazines on the field dealing with the relevance of such studies for social assistants. This article shows, initially, how the literature conceives “religion” and ‘spirituality,” and then moves on to analyze the main points regarded by the authors as fundamental to exert activi­ties of social service. In Brazil there is little debate and thought on the importance of religion and spirituality for the practice of social assistants, even though the profession, started in the 1930’s as a Roman Catholic Church initiative, has always had strong branding.