Social work, contradiction and belief: The liminal space between faith and fact

This article considers a commonplace aspect of conversation as a marker of spiritual experience with significance for social work theory and practice. Working from the notion of spirituality as an active construction of meaning in which sectarian belief and practice play a non-essential role (if any), data from a series of interviews with bereaved research participants are used to explore statements denoting a problematization of linear rationality through their assertion of consciously unresolved paradoxicalities. Specifically, this involves statements regarding the meaning and significance of the dead body and its connection to the personhood of the deceased. The position thus delineated, it will be argued, is irreducible to psychological, emotional, or cognitive dysfunction requiring intervention; rather, it may fruitfully be considered as an assertion of a spiritual reality. Social work, through its occupation of an epistemologically liminal space, is ideally positioned to engage with the practical implications of what amounts to a nuanced but profound contestation of empirical dominance.