Christianity and Social Work

Abstract

This bibliographic treatment of Christianity and social work is necessarily incomplete, reflecting the fragmented and somewhat contested nature of the topic itself. On one level, there have always been Christians practicing social work, and identifying themselves as Christian social workers, back to the earliest 19th-century roots of the profession. While it would follow from such a historical fact that there would be a well-developed and widely accepted set of ideas, frameworks, and interventions that Christian social workers could be implementing in the early 21st century, this is far from the case. In actuality, the idea that there is even a “Christian” way to do social work is extremely unsettling for some in our field, who see the negative impact of organized Christianity on many of the vulnerable populations that social work seeks to empower. Additionally, the field itself has a somewhat ahistorical reaction to the whole topic, treating it as somehow taboo to discuss the faith life of our clients, and certainly to somehow integrate our own faith experience (or lack thereof) into effective social work practice. This article seeks to correct this parochial view of Christianity and social work practice and to replace it with a more ecumenical and expansive one, albeit one that is still at an early stage in terms of its scholarly formation. The references noted here are almost all ones that were produced since the late 1990s, and that is no accident: despite being as old as social work itself, the study of Christianity and social work in academic circles is only starting to come into its own. Christianity and social work has a long and complicated history. From the early development of social work in the West, it was clear that many (though not all) social work practitioners were called to become social workers because of their faith, and many of those early social workers were Christians from a variety of Christian denominations. The Charity Organization Societies (COS) that formed first in Europe and then in the United States in the late 19th century were led and staffed by Christians who saw their mission as employing a scientific approach to solve the problems of urban poverty. The Settlement House movement, though at times explicitly secular (e.g., Jane Addams and Hull House), and focused on different approaches to help the poor than the COS, was nonetheless also heavily informed by Christian ideas of ministry and social justice. These two strands of social work practice—the COS and Settlement House movements—helped to set the framework for social work practice well into the 20th century, even as tensions persist today about what the appropriate role for religious institutions and faith-based practitioners should be in social work. It is important for social work to consider in the early 21st century how much of its early history of Christians in social work practice is still informing what social workers do today to assist their clients, and how much of it has been simply minimized or erased from social work education, practice, and policy.