Spirituality and wellbeing. Interdisciplinary approaches to the study of religion and health

This book review of Spirituality and Wellbeing: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Religious Experience and Health (edited by Bettina E. Schmidt and Jeff Leonardi, 2020 Equinox) addresses three analytical focal themes analyzed in the ten chapters of the volume: the relationship of health professionals with spiritual experiences; the expectations around this relationship and their implications for wellbeing; the interpretations of spiritual experiences. These aspects appear to be entangled in the complex and fluid web of relations that concur to define wellbeing. The article emphasizes how this volume proposes a theoretical and methodological diversity in the conceptualisation of wellbeing, which—rather than pursuing its definition in universal terms—presents wellbeing as a multi-faceted concept. I argue that the book provides a timely contribution to the field of the study of spirituality and health, as what is at stake is that the need to multiply the approaches to and understandings of wellbeing becomes an urgent matter when wellbeing is increasingly a key concern of human experience, affected in many ways by the pandemic and social and climate changes at a global level.