spirit and healing in africa - University of the Free State

trust) that can influence health and healing directly or indirectly (see Kiser 2006). The point
made by ARHAP research is that the tangible and intangible health assets evolve from
understandings, motivations and commitments that often have deep religious impulses, and that
these assets determine what people do in order to protect, maintain, or increase their health (see
Cochrane 2006a:63). Based on the conceptual framework and the development of religious
health assets, ARHAP research points towards a new paradigm for the relationship between
religion and health based on their overlap, which has crucial consequences for thinking about
(public) health.
1.2.3 Broadening theological reflection on health
By acknowledging the diversity of health beliefs and practices over and above the excluding
biomedical perspective, Reformed theology has an opportunity to develop and articulate a
broader interpretation of human illness and suffering. Being open to multiple and dynamic health
ideas will safeguard its continued support against the danger of paralysis in a context that is in
dire need of health actions. In other words, embracing alternative understandings of health and
healing, other than the conventional (allopathic) ones, will pave the way for new or renewed
reflections on the relation between God and His creation, which will lead to additional
theological articulations on health and healing as well as to different approaches to the healing
needs of believers. Inextricably linked with the broadened interpretation of human suffering and
illness comes the contextuality of theological reflection on health and healing. The subjective
dimension of healing (i.e. patient and relatives actively trying to make sense of illness and
suffering, and creatively negotiating health responses) implies a theological discourse that
generates differentiated perspectives and contextual approaches to health and healing.
1.3 HEALTH AS A SOCIAL CONSTRUCT
The recognition of health conceptualizations as social constructs is clearly of great importance
for interdisciplinary health research, whereby all dimensions of health, illness and healing can be
addressed, as well as an array of health responses developed, on the basis of the characteristics of
social constructs. The following is a substantiation of the characteristics of health as a social
construct: contextuality, discourse, hybridity, subjectivity, globalization and interpretation.
1.3.1 Contextuality
By recognizing the overlap of health and religion, ARHAP (see 1.2) acknowledges that one’s
definition of health is determined by one’s worldview, which (at least in the African context) is
deeply rooted in religion. In many African languages, there is no fundamental difference
between ‘religion’ and ‘health’. This insight caused ARHAP to come up with a neologism, in the
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