Article Of Faith

 

https://apple.news/AN7nlmhN5Rku8XphHr10nEw

Very interesting article which I might have ignored had it not been in Scientific American.  It does make some excellent points. I remember reading an article in the LA Times perhaps 30 years ago which pointed out that while Europe was very secular and non-religious, that was in terms of organized religion. Most Europeans were, in fact, quite spiritual. They believed in something, whether it was an amorphous spirit of humanity or the Gaia hypothesis.

I used to complain (when the Next Generation was still an ongoing series), that, while every starship had a counselor, it seemed wrong that there weren’t any chaplains.  Chaplains are an essential component of military service and I couldn’t see the “non-military” but somehow incredibly militaristic Starfleet not having a chaplain’s corps.

I expected America to follow Europe’s lead and then, eventually, the rest of the world to get there too. However, organized religion in Europe has not ceased to exist, so I expected it would still remain an important, if minority, part of human existence.

In the decades since, the decline in organized religion in America has been following the European model. (Europe starting it all back in the days of the French revolution and we just taking own sweet time to get around to it.)

 Furthermore, the decline in organized religion in Europe has also increased (with the exception of new immigrants, especially Muslims).

In other words, it more and more looks as if Star Trek had it right and I had it wrong. Organized religion may in fact continue to fade away in the world as it has in Europe, while a generalized, individualized spirituality will likely remain.

Which means I’m also in agreement with this article. Counselors (along with their psychiatrist/psychologist colleagues) should be aware of spirituality, if not religion. It can be a very useful tool in treating emotional disorders.

>The study also revealed key opportunities in patient care, particularly for younger and seemingly secular patients. Psychiatric folklore has long suggested that psychotic, manic and obsessive patients gravitate more toward spirituality, as do older adults. Our findings, however, suggest that patients benefited from SPIRIT irrespective of their diagnosis or age. Apparently, depressed millennials are just as likely to want and benefit from spiritual psychotherapy as geriatric patients.

Our results also suggest that spiritual care is not only for religious individuals. The largest group of patients to voluntarily attend SPIRIT (39 percent of our sample) were individuals with no religious affiliation at all. Apparently many nonreligious people still seek spirituality, especially in times of distress. In fact, such individuals may be most likely to attend spiritual psychotherapy because their spiritual needs are otherwise ignored.<