Wellness, Health, and Salvation : About the Religious Dimension of Contemporary Body-Mindedness

Alluding to the enormous investments in wellness, health, and anti-aging by affluent US society today the article focuses on the anthropological and religious implications of this phenomenon by stating that the pursuit of such caring for the body has superseded the quest for salvation. The first section provides a historical background analysis of how the contemporary semi-religious bodymindedness came about, while the second part analyses wellness, health, and salvation from a phenomenological point of view. It shows that any body image which does not address human frailty turns into something utterly inhumane while a religiously informed anthropology, in contrast, not only accepts frailty, dying, and death as realities of life but situates these experiences within a broader frame of reference and meaning thereby setting people free to leave behind at the proper time anxieties and worries about body-upkeep and to embrace life in the face of death