Ein Artikel von Katharina Opalka
When I applied in February to present a paper on the Annual Meeting 2020 of the American Academy of Religion I expected to have to deal with the excitement of what would have been my first trans-atlantic flight. However, as the whole meeting was moved to virtual platform due to the COVID 19 pandemic the most exciting task was to figure how to convert the given starting time of our panel on “Tillich and Health” on the 30th of November to the actual time in my timezone. That seemed to be a continuous topping, with some religious scholars from overseas muttering on twitter that they aren’t mathematicians for a reason.
Nevertheless, the atmosphere among the panellist of the session on “Tillich and Health”, chaired by Devan Stahl (Baylor University, MI) and Bryan Wagoner (Davis & Elkins College) of the “Tillich: Issues in Theology, Religion and Culture Unit” was very concentrated, focusing on how to make Tillich’s theology relevant for people dealing with different kind of health-related crises. All three papers presented at the session offered insights into very concrete psychological phenomena, following a path that Tillich lays in his own work by examining theology from a psychological perspective and vice versa: Kirk MacGregor showed in the first paper how the Acceptance-Commitment-Therapy (ACT) as a treatment of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) can benefit from Tillich’s understanding of coping with anxiety, especially in regard to Tillich’s ontological understanding of acceptance. The second paper, by Thomas Taylor, added an understanding of addiction that
Stemming from the research in the DFG-FOR 2686 I presented ideas on how Tillich’s understanding of “Healing” in his sermons may add to the discourse on “resilience”, focussing on three aspects of Tillich’s treatise on “healing”: 1) Tillich’s main perspective is on the “healers” (or, in the phrasing of the Resilience-project, the Care-Takers) who have to cope with the fact that healing may resume to be a healing in spite of and furthermore who heal despite their own need to be healed. This particular idea stems from Tillich’s ontological structure: Healing is overcoming the general estrangement of mankind and as such salvation. 2) That shows the distinction between therapeutic intervention and religious language: Tillich’s idea of healing does not intend to aim for strategies in examining a set of dysfunctionalities and restoring functionality but rather deals with expressions and semantic representations of the very fact, that we are alive in the world such as it is. 3) Religious language and as such Tillich’s idea of “healing” stem from narrations, namely, the biblical stories, that are told and re-told. Following Tillich’s approach this leads to re-examining the idea of “healing” (and resilience) as narratively mediated, so that “healing” requires the ability to work with religious semantic and symbolic representations, narrations and narratives: How do we tell stories of healing (and of sickness, respectively) and set forth a chain of story-telling that in itself may be part of the process of healing?
The following discussion added important critical perspectives from a distinct American context in regard to Tillich and healing: First, stemming from the discourse in Disability Studies a (necessary) critique of Tillich’s rather dated understanding of the connection of mental and physical health was brought into focus, that leads him to assume that “health” and “sickness”, and especially mental health and disorders, are choices and one choses to be ill as an escape to not have to deal with the world. Second, a shared concern among the panellist was that religious language and practices might be in danger of becoming instrumentalised by the medical profession. In an American context a distinctly cautious approach is needed here, because practices such as mass “faith healings” are common and on people’s mind when hearing about “Religion and Health”. What emerged in the discussion was an implicit and shared interest in accessing Tillich’s work to better understand his theology, but moreover to apply his theological approach to (mental) health phenomena, to – hopefully – contribute finding helpful ways of dealing with these.