ABSTRACT
There are many contemporary cultural, religious and political challenges to understanding spirituality: knowing when it appears, what it looks like, how it feels and in what ways it makes a difference to the quality of life for those engaged individually and/or collectively, and in what ways it transforms communities and society. I begin this chapter with a discussion about some significant changes in Western culture that have a bearing on how spirituality is considered in relationship to psychotherapy and its theoretical development. I then explore current definitions of spirituality and how practical theology in conjunction with qualitative research (Swinton and Mowat, 2006), with reference to the ethnographic imagination (Willis, 2000), can provide a framework and methodology to understand spirituality.
