REL 298 - Mental, Physical, and Spiritual Well-being: A Comparative Religious Perspective

This course addresses different ways humans define mental, physical, and spiritual health, that is, “well-being,” and the strategies they offer to achieve it. The course recognizes, but does not privilege biomedical views of mental and physical health, though by no means do we discourage those seeking help from medical and psychological professionals for their clinically diagnosed physical and mental health needs. The course begins with an introduction to “the science of alternative medicine” (M. Warner) to clarify the difference between biomedical and alternative healing and to see what “science has to say” about the efficacy of alternative forms of healing, and a case study of the clash between the two in A. Fadiman’s account of a Hmong immigrant girl with epilepsy. Then conventionally “religious” understandings and practices of “well-being,” for example, rest (e.g., Sabbath), reflection (meditation), ritual (e.g., voodoo [Z. N. Hurston], Jewish mystical “tikkunim”[L. Fine], relationships with human and other than human beings (charismatic healers, Christian conversations with God [T. Luhrmann], sex [a.m. brown]), diet, sacred places (gardens, temples, etc.), music, lernen (study for its own sake, not for grades), pleasure, and “belief” itself, among others will be examined. Complementing the assigned readings will be outside of class “labs” to engage in the particular kinds of well-being practices (temporary “sabbath”-like abstention from work, electronic devices), abstentions from certain kinds foods, meditation, etc.), albeit adapted in forms appropriate for a non-denominational secular liberal arts college.

Credits 1