Spirituality And Well-Being

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This book makes a comprehensive study of three interrelated ill-defined ideas of spirituality, well-being and health in the context of Western societies and by Western researchers.

It distinguishes between the western religions of the book Christianity, Islam and Judaism - with their linear conceptions of divine authority and carefully prepared definitions with the Eastern religions with their diffuse origins, understandings and their disinterest in definitions.

Analysing the nature of spirituality, well- being and health, it discusses at length the quantitative approach to spirituality and well-being, qualitative approaches towards understanding human behaviour, the methods of examining religious behaviour, spirituality and positive health, spirituality and the risk to health, the importance of prayer, and the basic problems of assessing spirituality.

Ralph Tanner has a B.Sc. and Diploma in Social Anthropology from Oxford Uni- versity and a D. Phil in Law from Stokholm University. He has done fieldwork in Thailand, the Philippines, Guyana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya as well as in Britain and Eire. He was Chairman of the East African Institute of Social Research and Lecturer in Comparative Religion in the University of London. He has published books on Murder in Uganda. Witchcraft killings and religions and suc- cessful change and a cross cultural study of the Roman Catholic Mass. He has co- authored books on the social ecology of religion and the environment. He has writ- ten numerous articles on the social aspects of religious change, translation and lan- guage use in religion, as well as on behavioural theories in the Journal of Modern African Studies, Africa, Journal of the Social Sciences, Nordic Journal of African Studies, Antropos, Studia Missionalia and others. He is currently working on a study of Prob- ability and Chance.

It has been a feature of the social sciences alomost from its foundation, that it has rarely given public religion and private spirituality any comprehensive place in its studies of human behaviour. There are always been the factor that most researchers have had a secular framework of thought. This resulted in these aspects of human behaviour receiving little attention which might have related to any general sense of well-being and in a general sense paralleling other abstract matters of importance in art, music and literature.

The pervasive feeling in many social science areas of research that religion and spirituality were intellectual delusions bound to decline with education and rationality in public affairs may apply to some degree in Western developments in relation to public religion rather than to private spirituality.

Globally it would seem that not only in society but also politics and economics religion has become increasingly important by whatever approaches are used in assessments. The social sciences have either sidelined this importance particularly in psychology but have tended to concentrate on deviant and destructive forms of religious and spiritual behaviour, perhaps because these forms may be easier to research and to get academic and agency support.

It would seem that research about the persistent connection between thes: ideas and practices and well-being however defined is a social science necessity. The personal feelings of well-being correlating to the holding of abstract ideas as much as social and addictive practices in beginning to be widely recognised in the West as much as it has always recognised in the East.

This author's considerable research experience has repeatedly shown that public religious activity claims but that there is in all contemporary societies as much in Japan, China and India as in the United States and Russia a pervasive almost commonplace practice of private self-created and maintained forms of spirituality contributing to well-being.

This study aims to show that at all levels of cross-cultural thinking and practice private spirituality as distinct from public religious behaviour contributes to personal well-being either as a parallel system to orthodox faiths or as personally created systems continue to make an important contribution to well-being.

**Contents and Sample Pages**