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Religion, Spirituality, and Addiction Recovery

What is the relationship between 'religion', 'spirituality', 'addiction' and 'addiction recovery'? What are we meaning by 'addiction'? Is it socially constructed? Why are we even talking about a relationship between these concepts?

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Featuring

Wendy Dossett

Christopher R. Cotter

About this episode

What is the relationship between ‘religion’, ‘spirituality’, ‘addiction’ and ‘addiction recovery’? What are we meaning by ‘addiction’? Is it socially constructed? Why are we even talking about a relationship between these concepts? Can religion be conceptualized as an addiction? how might a specifically Religious Studies approach help us to productively engage with this particularly sensitive area? And, as ever, how might we go about conducting such research? These are just a few of the questions discussed in today’s podcast, where Chris speaks with Dr Wendy Dossett of the University of Chester, UK.

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Be sure to take a peek at some of Wendy’s other scholarship, like the book Narrative and Reflexivity in the Study of Religion.

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January 26, 2017

Healing and higher power: a response to Dr Wendy Dossett

While those that reject the concept of God can never associate the “higher power” with the divine, it is obviously still appropriate to explore whether a metaphysical force might lay behind it power and, if so, what it might be. After all the origins of Alcoholics Anonymous, founded in the late 1930s, are undeniably Christian.

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