engleski

The Role of Spirituality and Active Participation in the Charismatic Community in Strengthening Family Resilience.

Religious community represents an environment that can be a powerful source of social support and resources to overcome the crisis for those individuals and families who intensively practice their religious beliefs and spiritual practice. The experience of strong support and intense life of communion within the religious community can make changes in people's perception of stressful circumstances and strengthen the ability to deal with problems. Also, it could strengthen people’s potentials on reducing adverse impacts of stress on their health and improve the functioning of the family and the wider community in stressful circumstances. This paper focused is on the role of spirituality and support of religious communities in coping with life crises among the experiences of the members of charismatic communities. The aim of the research was to gain a more detailed insight into how active participation in the charismatic community and the fostering of personal and family spirituality shapes the capacity of families to cope with life's difficulties and crises. It is a qualitative research which was conducted by in-depth interviews with 12 members of two charismatic communities. Deliberately sampling was used. The sample size is defined by the principle of achieving the theoretical saturation. Contents of interviews were transcribed and processed by method of qualitative analysis. The research results show that intense life of spirituality, fostering common religious beliefs and spiritual experience as well as practical and emotional support of religious communities represent an important resource for development of successful coping strategies in crises. Sharing of religious beliefs and values, maintaining a common family religious practice and active participation in the life of the charismatic community help to members of charismatic communities to find the meaning of life, to foster an optimistic future, and to strengthen the family cohesion and family resilience. Participants in the study emphasized the need for greater integration of spirituality into the helping professions and the need for additional training and greater sensitivity of the practitioners/therapists for spiritual matters, especially when interventions are aimed at overcoming the crisis. In conclusion, it was pointed out that the training of professionals in the practice of social work and other helping professions in Croatia (and beyond in other post-communist countries) still do not pay sufficient attention on diverse spiritual beliefs and experiences of users. It is often overlooked that religious community can be a rich social resource with a strong sense of ethics (Idler, 2008) that can serve as potential therapeutic agent (Levin, 2010) and a powerful form of social integration (Boehnlein, 2006). These conclusions are especially important to accept in planning interventions aimed at empowering individuals, families and communities to overcome the crisis, whether on a personal, family or wider social level. In this context, certainly there is a room for qualitative strides and improvement of the profession of social work in Croatia, especially when it comes to the work with clients with a strong religious beliefs and spiritual experiences, such as the example of members of the charismatic community.

charismatic communities; spirituality; potential for coping with crises; family resilience

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