Religion, Spirituality and Health: A Social Scientific Approach – serie

Integrating academic disciplines from medical history to philology and Jewish studies, this book aims at answering this question historically by presenting comprehensive coverage of Jewish medical traditions in Central Eastern Europe, mostly on what is today Poland and Germany (and the former Russian, Prussian and Austro-Hungarian Empires).

Addressing key gaps in previous literature, it reviews evidence from a population health viewpoint, surveying pertinent findings and theories from the perspective of Public Health subfields that range from Environmental Health Sciences to Public Health Nutrition to Health Policy & Management and Public Health Education.

This book provides an overview of the research on spirituality, religiousness and health, including the most important studies, conceptualization, instruments for measurement, types of studies, challenges, and criticisms.

This book provides an overview of the research on spirituality, religiousness and health, including the most important studies, conceptualization, instruments for measurement, types of studies, challenges, and criticisms.

It then discusses rituals and practices within a number of religions, including Christian, Islamic, Jewish, Buddhist, Taoist, Sikh, Hindu, Confucian, and other traditions.There is a need for a more inclusive collection of religious rituals and practices, as some practices are making headlines in contemporary society.

It then discusses rituals and practices within a number of religions, including Christian, Islamic, Jewish, Buddhist, Taoist, Sikh, Hindu, Confucian, and other traditions.There is a need for a more inclusive collection of religious rituals and practices, as some practices are making headlines in contemporary society.

Inspired by the neoliberal paradigm that transposes religious behaviors into a religious marketplace framed by consumerist and capitalist models, this volume draws on ethnographic fieldwork to discuss the assemblage between the well-being trope and the rise of new spiritualities, as well as their deep permeation within mainstream culture.

Inspired by the neoliberal paradigm that transposes religious behaviors into a religious marketplace framed by consumerist and capitalist models, this volume draws on ethnographic fieldwork to discuss the assemblage between the well-being trope and the rise of new spiritualities, as well as their deep permeation within mainstream culture. Building on previous literature that addresses the relationship between spirituality, healing and well-being, this text discusses the religious roots of mind-body practices. The contributions offer a critical perspective on the scope, limits and impacts of the current celebration of spiritualities.Part I provides theoretical insights for thinking about ways in which the prevalent ethics of well-being reframes subjectivities within the margins of neoliberal order. Part II demonstrates how spiritual economies are promoted, shaped and regulated by institutional forces such as States, law and the labor market. In part III, contributors describein detail how spiritual economies unfold in specific cultural and social settings. The text appeals to students and researchers working on the spirituality and sociology of religion.

It is an essential read for those interested in enriching their knowledge of the linkages between place, spirituality, and well-being, while also providing a foundation for future research on place and its intersections with both spirituality and well-being.

It is an essential read for those interested in enriching their knowledge of the linkages between place, spirituality, and well-being, while also providing a foundation for future research on place and its intersections with both spirituality and well-being.

Have you ever wondered how people with a history of enslavement or colonialism heal from past trauma or navigate their life pursuits in a world with many borders?Healing Beyond Borders explores healing among people of Afro-Surinamese (with a history of enslavement) and Ghanaian (with a history of colonisation) backgrounds in the Netherlands. Healing is a dynamic, multifaceted process shaped by physical, social, institutional, and spiritual borders. The book shows how people use healing as a means of crossing and transforming various borders innovatively and courageously. Drawing on thirteen months of ethnographic fieldwork, Healing Beyond Borders demonstrates that although many of the study participants identified as religious (mainly Pentecostal), religion constituted only one aspect of broader healing practices and approaches. Healing emerges not solely within religious borders but within contested spaces where identity, belonging, and survival are continually renegotiated. Often, people blend, cross, and draw strength from diverse practices, relationships, and lived experiences.The book investigates the enduring legacies of enslavement, colonialism, and displacement, emphasising how these histories are carried, reimagined, or strategically silenced across communities, generations, and contexts. Healing Beyond Borders conceptualises healing within spaces and moments where people’s pain, collective memory, systemic inequality, and colonial afterlives intersect, generating both opportunities for innovation and inclusion and points of questioning and exclusion. State, racial, religious, and communal borders function as obstacles but also as sites of creativity, struggle, and transformation. Healing Beyond Borders demonstrates that negotiating these borders can simultaneously dismantle and reproduce them, thereby revealing the complex, nonlinear realities of healing and diasporic identity. Through life stories and collective practices, the book challenges reductive conceptions of African and Black diasporic life in the Netherlands and Europe.Healing Beyond Borders demonstrates that healing can be a profoundly political, relational, and transformative process shaped by communal support, religious belonging, marginality, internal critique, and the continuous navigation of the legacies of enslavement and colonialism. It provides an analytical framework for understanding how individuals and communities create meaning, care, and resistance in spaces characterised by inequality. This book is intended for scholars and students in religious studies, anthropology, sociology, migration studies, and postcolonial studies, offering conceptually rigorous and politically urgent insights into the entanglements of healing, identity, and the enduring legacies of enslavement and colonialism.

This book provides a new perspective on the association between religious beliefs and mental health. The book is divided into five parts, the first of which traces the development of theories of organic evolution in the cultural and religious context before Charles Darwin. Part II describes the major evolutionary theories that Darwin proposed in his three books on evolution, and the religious, sociological, and scientific reactions to his theories. Part III introduces the reader to the concept of evolutionary psychiatry. It discusses how different regions of the brain evolved over time, and explains that certain brain regions evolved to protect us from danger by assessing threats of harm in the environment, including other humans. Specifically, this part describes: how psychiatric symptoms that are commonly experienced by normal individuals during their everyday lives are the product of brain mechanisms that evolved to protect us from harm; the prevalence rate of psychiatric symptoms in the U.S. general population; how religious and other beliefs influence the brain mechanisms that underlie psychiatric symptoms; and the brain regions that are involved in different psychiatric disorders. Part IV presents the findings of U.S. studies demonstrating that positive beliefs about God and life-after-death, and belief in meaning-in-life and divine forgiveness have salutary associations with mental health, whereas negative beliefs about God and life-after-death, belief in the Devil and human evil, and doubts about one’s religious beliefs have pernicious associations with mental health. The last part of the book summarizes each section and recommends research on the brain mechanism underlying psychiatric symptoms, and the relationships among these brain mechanisms, religious beliefs, and mental health in the context of ETAS Theory.

Addressing key gaps in previous literature, it reviews evidence from a population health viewpoint, surveying pertinent findings and theories from the perspective of Public Health subfields that range from Environmental Health Sciences to Public Health Nutrition to Health Policy & Management and Public Health Education.

This book provides a new perspective on the association between religious beliefs and mental health. The book is divided into five parts, the first of which traces the development of theories of organic evolution in the cultural and religious context before Charles Darwin. Part II describes the major evolutionary theories that Darwin proposed in his three books on evolution, and the religious, sociological, and scientific reactions to his theories. Part III introduces the reader to the concept of evolutionary psychiatry. It discusses how different regions of the brain evolved over time, and explains that certain brain regions evolved to protect us from danger by assessing threats of harm in the environment, including other humans. Specifically, this part describes: how psychiatric symptoms that are commonly experienced by normal individuals during their everyday lives are the product of brain mechanisms that evolved to protect us from harm; the prevalence rate of psychiatric symptoms in the U.S. general population; how religious and other beliefs influence the brain mechanisms that underlie psychiatric symptoms; and the brain regions that are involved in different psychiatric disorders. Part IV presents the findings of U.S. studies demonstrating that positive beliefs about God and life-after-death, and belief in meaning-in-life and divine forgiveness have salutary associations with mental health, whereas negative beliefs about God and life-after-death, belief in the Devil and human evil, and doubts about one’s religious beliefs have pernicious associations with mental health. The last part of the book summarizes each section and recommends research on the brain mechanism underlying psychiatric symptoms, and the relationships among these brain mechanisms, religious beliefs, and mental health in the context of ETAS Theory.