Hospital Chaplaincy and Alternative Spirituality

One of the areas in which churches resumed their activities after 1989 was healthcare. So-called spiritual care, provided by hospital chaplains from various churches, gradually began to be introduced in hospitals. Today, spiritual care is well-established in a number of hospitals in the Czech Republic and is becoming recognised as an integral part of overall patient care.
In the book Hospital Chaplaincy and Alternative Spirituality, this care is set within the context of the critical life situations that serious illness represents for many patients and their families. From a practical-theological perspective, the author seeks to answer whether a serious illness is a space for Christianity, represented in hospitals by the aforementioned spiritual care, or for the various forms of so-called alternative spirituality, which can also be encountered in this environment. This question is also a question about the role, place, justification, and form of Christian spiritual care within the system of predominantly secular Czech hospitals.