Introducing Post-Secular Social Work: Towards a Post-Liberal Ethics of Care

Abstract

This paper considers the post-secular turn in critical theory as enabling vocational social work to re-engage with public religion within deliberative and participatory democratic practices in the interests of social welfare. In particular, by introducing a theoretical context for post-secular social work, spiritual-but-not-religious rhetoric which characterises modern liberal social work is challenged whilst congruency between social work practice and faith-based social action is affirmed through a mutual critique of neo-liberalism and sympathy with post-liberal ethics of care. Accordingly, post-secular social work recognises faith-based social action as representing an alternative and supplementary care paradigm to the bureaucratic cultures and consumerist models purported by both the private and public sectors. Consequently, rather than privatising faith as a personal lifestyle choice, post-secular social work is indicative of a new politics of social work which subverts former secular, liberal and neo-liberal hegemonies within the profession through a neo-communitarian cultivation of the common good.