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SPIRITUAL GROUPS AND COMMUNITY SOCIAL WORK
Abstract
The article focuses on spiritual communities, and on possible implications for community social work. Czech society is characterized by low level of social capital, and high level of secularization. Community social work on the other hand works with tightly knit groups. For this reason we focused on spiritual groups as a means to create some level of community. Our inquiry focuses on meditation groups based on the principles of so called Christian meditation, in particular the form developed by John Main and further promoted by The World Community for Christian Meditation (WCCM). These groups are one of many similar spiritual movements. They belong to the more active ones, with affiliated groups in several states of Europe and North America. There were in the time of our research six groups practicing this meditation form under the auspices of the national branch of WCCM. They are relatively closely connected, which allowed us to compare them, on the other hand we did not study other spiritual forms. We found out that there are significant effects on one's psyche and subjective sense of being. Direct effects on community were not very strong, but we found indications that such groups could bring people together, especially in areas with low levels of community and in particular religious life.
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