Facing suffering and death: alternative therapy as post-secular religious practice

Authors

• Anne Kalvig University of Stavanger

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30674/scripta.67414

Keywords:

Religious change, Postsecularism, Therapeutics, Holistic medicine, Alternative medicine, Health, Healing, Suffering, Death, Norway, Body, Human, Christianity, New Age movement

Abstract

The idea of religious practice being ‘post-secular’ raises questions concerning secularisation, sacralisation and the various meanings of the prefix ‘post’. This paper investigates a kind of practice that is ever increasing in late modern, Western societies and elsewhere; namely, the practice of alternative therapy and the conceptualisations and world-views pertaining to it. The focus is on the themes of suffering and death in relation to alternative spirituality and therapy. Some answers are given to the following questions: is alternative therapy a kind of post-secular religious practice? If so, what kinds of answers or consolations does alternative therapy offer in the face of suffering and death? How do possible ‘alternative theodicies’ relate to holism as a paradigmatic principle? To what extent does, for example, ‘reincarnationism’ seem to function as explanatory model regarding suffering, evil and death?