Spirituality and the Black Helping Tradition in Social Work

In the black helping tradition, spirituality is the sense of the sacred and divine. It is a critical value deeply rooted in the African worldview and used by African Americans as a tool for survival. Provocative and well-written, Spirituality and the Black Helping Tradition in Social Work is the first book to draw a relationship between social work, spirituality, and the helping tradition among African Americans. Offering a wealth of historical detail and narrative, Elmer and Joanne Martin explore spirituality as a foundation for understanding people of African descent and as a skill to evoke self-help. This groundbreaking book raises compelling questions about the limitations and strengths of mainstream social work in issues of black spirituality and its role in strengthening the black community today.

Special Features

Examines the interaction between African and African American spirituality, African American social workers, and race work.

Chronicles the stories of early black caregivers and social workers who recognized the significance of spirituality and incorporated it into their work.

Investigates the extent to which social workers today are equipped to use spirituality to empower black individuals, families, and communities.

Also available:

Social Work and the Black Experience - ISBN 087101257X
Color in a White Society - ISBN 087101128X

NASW Press

NASW Press, a division of National Association of Social Workers (NASW), is a leading scholarly press in the social sciences. We serve faculty, practitioners, agencies, libraries, clinicians, and researchers throughout the United States and abroad.

Known for attracting expert authors, the NASW Press delivers professional information to hundreds of thousands of readers through its scholarly journals, books, and reference works.

Some of the areas we publish in include:

-Social work in the field of aging
-Models of social work
-Social work with children and adolescents
-Ethics in social work
-Community organization
-Professional development