Faith-based social service practitioners negotiating the secular state service sector: a New Zealand context

ABSTRACT

This opinion piece discusses three aspects that can cause tensions for Christian social service practitioners who work in secular employment. We bring our observations as educators of social service practitioners in the vocational setting. Our specific geographic and historical context of Aotearoa New Zealand adds to the aspects presented. The training of social service workers necessitates covering values and ethical decisions that may be faced in practice. Codes of practice and societal norms may at times, be in conflict with the values held by the practitioner. There is growing awareness that the state in some Western democracies is less secular today and may be entering a post-secular age in which religious pluralism is the norm. How this impacts the Christian practitioner and their training is still under-researched. We add to the discourse by providing a unique context to issues already expressed by others.

KEYWORDS:

• Christian
• values
• indigenous
• secular
• state
• training
• social service

Acknowledgments

Authors would like to thank Dr Lee Smith, Tony Carton and Lisa Beech.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1. We use the Indigenous Māori term Aotearoa in conjunction with the English name to recognize the first settlers.