The religious and spiritual beliefs and practices of MSW faculty: a national survey

ABSTRACT

There is growing recognition that integrating clients’ religion and spirituality (RS) in mental health practice can contribute to positive outcomes. Given that intrinsic religiosity predicts faculty attitudes/behaviors regarding training students on such integration within social work education, it is worth understanding their RS beliefs and practices. Thus, our current national study describes the RS beliefs and practices of 807 MSW faculty in accredited programs. Interestingly, faculty consider RS to be important within their lives, are frequently involved in RS activities, and tend to be more religiously diverse than the general population. Implications for training and research are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Social work education
• faculty
• religion
• spirituality

Acknowledgments

The research reported in this article was made possible in part by a grant from the Spencer Foundation (#201900208). The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Spencer Foundation. The authors would like to thank the graduate assistants who assisted in gathering information for our national sample of MSW faculty: Courtney Haworth, Catherine Cain, Estie White, Anna Beard, and Andrea Skipor. We would also like to thank Kathryn Delk and Karleigh Conway for their support with reviewing earlier drafts of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Spencer Foundation under Grant #201900208.