Health and spirituality in postsecular societies of immanent transcendence

Abstract

The first theses on secularization understood it as a process analogous and parallel to modernization, which implied the disappearance of religiosity and transcendence. However, these theses have been refuted by a postsecular perspective that warns precisely of the multiplication of religious and transcendent forms and options, as well as of their reorientation towards the immanent plane, given the growing awareness of intramundane finitude.

This article exposes this scenario in order to understand the emergence and integration of new spiritualities as highly novel, plural and dynamic forms of reconnection between health and spirituality.

These new spiritualities represent a successful expansion of the already inaugurated market of immanent and à la carte meaning options, deepening into this logic of religious, health and spiritual commodification. Its success seems to be based on its ability to offer the individual (1) the extension of earthly life promised by medicine, (2) the meaning offered by presecular religion, and (3) the autonomy and individual decision often denied by both.

It is, therefore, not only a new and relevant option of meaning in postsecular societies of immanent transcendence; but also of a paradigmatic sample of the modification of the very structures of religiosity, increasingly affected by the predominant economic liberalism.