Theology’s Concern for Wellbeing and Human Flourishing: A Research Program

Abstract

This article proposes a new perspective for theology calling for fresh studies on religion and coping, resilience, wellbeing and flourishing. These studies have grown far from theological areas and could be seen as quite strange to that tradition, its methods, and views. However, theology can learn a lot from these new studies when trying to update its message of salvation, endowing it with a more explicit content and can offer interesting points to other treaties, like Christian Anthropology and Practical Theology. To that end the article reports and briefly reviews those relevant developments, tries to address several doubts and to connect better theology with that research, after assuming a more pragmatic and empirical stance.