Religion and Medicine: A History of the Encounter between Humanity’s Two Greatest Institutions, By Jeff Levin

Author(s):  
Nathan Carlin
Author(s):  
Jeff Levin ◽  
Stephen G. Post

In Religion and Medicine, Dr. Jeff Levin, distinguished Baylor University epidemiologist, outlines the longstanding history of multifaceted interconnections between the institutions of religion and medicine. He traces the history of the encounter between these two institutions from antiquity through to the present day, highlighting a myriad of contemporary alliances between the faith-based and medical sectors. Religion and Medicine tells the story of: religious healers and religiously branded hospitals and healthcare institutions; pastoral professionals involved in medical missions, healthcare chaplaincy, and psychological counseling; congregational health promotion and disease prevention programs and global health initiatives; research studies on the impact of religious and spiritual beliefs and practices on physical and mental health, well-being, and healing; programs and centers for medical research and education within major universities and academic institutions; religiously informed bioethics and clinical decision-making; and faith-based health policy initiatives and advocacy for healthcare reform. Religion and Medicine is the first book to cover the full breadth of this subject. It documents religion-medicine alliances across religious traditions, throughout the world, and over the course of history. It summarizes a wide range of material of relevance to historians, medical professionals, pastors and theologians, bioethicists, scientists, public health educators, and policymakers. The product of decades of rigorous and focused research, Dr. Levin has produced the most comprehensive history of these developments and the finest introduction to this emerging field of scholarship.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Jeff Levin

Chapter 1 traces the history of the encounter between religion and medicine from the therapeutic cults of the ancients, East and West, to the healing ministry of Christ and to the work and writings of myriad later figures. These include medieval physician-philosophers such as Moses Maimonides, John Wesley and the fathers of the natural hygiene movement, and pioneers of contemporary discourse on religion’s influences on health and healing. This history also involves important figures from Christianity, Judaism, and Islam and from Asian religions and new religious movements. Unpacking this history entails weighing competing narratives about the relations between the institutions of religion and medicine, which at times have been characterized by conflict and at other times by cooperation.


2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-262
Author(s):  
Katrin Killinger ◽  
Christoph Kleine ◽  
Katja Triplett

Abstract This special section of Asian Medicine brings together three scholars of the history of healing practices and medicine in premodern Asian societies to explore whether and how emic boundaries between religion and medicine were drawn in different historical contexts. In this introduction, we use the example of ancient Japan in an attempt to show how first steps towards a separation of religion and medicine can be identified, even when they have not yet been clearly differentiated institutionally or distinguished conceptually as distinct fields of action. By doing so, we operationalize the macro-sociological question central to the ‘multiple secularities’ approach, namely how ‘secular’ fields of action—here, curing disease—emancipate themselves from ‘religion’ in premodern ‘non-Western’ societies. We propose to look for differences in the framing and interpretation of healing activities, for the ascription of either (professional) competence or (religious) charisma to the healers, to ask whether the activities are to be interpreted as a social function or service, and to identify the sources of authority and legitimacy. This is followed by a brief summary and discussion of the contributions by Selby, Czaja, and Triplett.


Idei ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 114-124
Author(s):  
Ірина Васильєва ◽  
Сергій Шевченко ◽  
Оксана Романюк

June 11-12, 2020 at the O. Bogomolets National Medical University online hosted the II International Scientific and Practical Conference "Philosophy of Religion and Medicine in the Post-Secular Age" (In memory of St. Luke (V. F. Voino-Yasenetskyi). The basic department in the organization of the event was the Department of Philosophy, Bioethics and History of Medicine. The directions of the conference participants' work remained traditional and focused on: Questions of religion and medicine in life and work of St. Luke (V. F. Voino-Yasenetskyi); Methodological and historical aspects of the relationships between religion and medicine in contemporary society; Human health in the context of philosophy, religion and medicine; Religion and clinical medicine; Actual problems of biomedical ethics in contemporary religious discourse; Religion as a social and spiritual determinant of individual and public health; Philosophy of religion and medicine: current challengesю. Along with NMU named after OO Bogomolets co-organizers of the conference were: Department of Religious Studies of the G. S. Skovoroda Institute of Philosophy of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine; Personality Development Center "HUMANUS", Plovdiv (Bulgaria); Institute of Social Medicine and Medical Ethics at Faculty of Medicine, Comenius University in Bratislava (Slovakia).


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