Spirituality, Health, and the Social Determinants of Healing: A Decolonial Approach

This course explores the relationship between theology, health, healing, and community flourishing through a decolonial lens, with particular attention to the practice of ministry in diverse and complex contexts.
Students will examine how Indigenous, African, and Abrahamic traditions understand health not merely as a biological condition, but as an expression of relational life shaped by community, land, spirit, and cosmological order. In dialogue with Christian theological traditions, the course considers how practices of healing, care, and restoration participate in the ministry of Christ.
Drawing on public health frameworks, decolonial theory, and theological reflection, the course investigates how colonial histories have reshaped both religious and medical understandings of healing—often marginalizing communal, spiritual, and land-based practices. Students will engage the concept of the cosmological determinants of health, alongside the more familiar social determinants of health, to examine how meaning, belief, and spiritual practice shape experiences of illness and recovery.
Through the methodological thread of storying, students will analyze ministry contexts, community narratives, and lived experiences of suffering and restoration. The course equips students to engage in theological reflection that is attentive to culture, power, and cosmology, and to develop practices of ministry that foster holistic healing and community flourishing beyond the limits of empire-shaped frameworks.