Culture, Spirituality and Religious Literacy in Healthcare

Elaborating with the concepts of culture and religious literacy, this volume examines theoretical, methodological and empirical aspects of the practice and study of religion and non-religion, culture, spirituality and worldviews within healthcare.
In modern multi-cultural and multi-religious societies, a host of new issues have arisen concerning culture, religion and spirituality within healthcare, especially when people face serious and life-limiting illness. Healthcare professionals are faced with challenges addressing and handling patients' cultural expressions of religiosity, spirituality and existential concerns. The variety needs to be met without essentializing the concepts of culture and religion, and with an ability to include the non-religious as well as new types of spiritualities. This collection reflects on the tension between cultural, religious and spiritual dimensions of care in a secularized healthcare institution and describes implications of this tension for healthcare professionals and patients. The book engages with an ongoing scholarly discussion about religious literacy in healthcare, and contributes perspectives, experiences and empirical examples from the Nordic countries, especially Sweden. It gives suggestions for practical application of research to healthcare practice, highlighting challenges and ideas for how to integrate religious, non-religious, and spiritual dimensions in care.
This is an important contribution to the literature on religious literacy and provides a vital reference for students, scholars and healthcare professionals with an interest in the complex relationship between culture, spirituality, and religion in healthcare.

Daniel Enstedt is Associate Professor and Senior Lecturer in religious studies at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Lisen Dellenborg has a PhD in Social Anthropology and is Senior Lecturer in the Institute of Health and Care Sciences, University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

1.Introducing Perspectives on Cultural and Religious Literacy in Healthcare. PART I. Experiences and tensions in healthcare encounters. 2.Learning together: Developing cultural and religious literacy at the workplace. 3.Cultural encounters and religion in palliative care: Religious literacy and secular healthcare in multi-religious Sweden. 4.When religiosity and healthcare merge: Case studies on sanctification of healthcare interventions with implications for religious literacy. 5.Culture of childbirth, midwifery and spirituality in an Icelandic context. 6.Perceived Religious Discrimination in Healthcare: A Qualitative Study of Formal Complaints. 7.Muslim women caregivers in elderly care in Finland. PART II. Existential care and person-centred care. 8.Making Sense of Existential Care: A sociological reconsideration of the existential for the study of chaplaincy. 9.Religious literacy and person-centred care. PART III. Overcoming Religious and cultural illiteracy in healthcare. 10.The DöBra cards:A tool to support death literacy? 11.Magic, religion, and spirituality in a secularised institution: An anthropological gaze at Swedish healthcare. 12.Understanding religion, non-religion, and spirituality in healthcare. 13.The Sense of Wonder as a necessary 'philosophical literacy' in healthcare. 14.Afterword.