Religion and Healing in America

Religion and Healing in America PDF Author: Linda L. Barnes
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195167961
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 552

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Book Description
Americans have long been aware of the phenomenon loosely known as faith healing. During the 1990s the American cultural landscape changed and religious healing became a commonplace feature in our society. This is a look at this new reality.

Religion and Healing in America

Religion and Healing in America PDF Author: Linda L. Barnes
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195167961
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 552

Get Book

Book Description
Americans have long been aware of the phenomenon loosely known as faith healing. During the 1990s the American cultural landscape changed and religious healing became a commonplace feature in our society. This is a look at this new reality.

Faith in the Great Physician

Faith in the Great Physician PDF Author: Heather D. Curtis
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421402017
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 456

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Book Description
This history of evangelical faith healing in nineteenth-century America examines the nation’s shifting attitudes about sickness, suffering, and health. Faith in the Great Physician tells the story of how participants in the divine healing movement transformed the ways Americans coped with physical affliction and pursued bodily wellbeing. Heather D. Curtis offers critical reflection on the theological, cultural, and social forces that come into play when one questions the purpose of suffering and the possibility of healing. Belief in divine healing ran counter to a deep-seated Christian ethic that linked physical suffering with spiritual holiness. By engaging in devotional disciplines and participating in social reform efforts, proponents of faith cure embraced a model of spiritual experience that endorsed active service, rather than passive endurance, as the proper Christian response to illness and pain. Emphasizing the centrality of religious practices to the enterprise of divine healing, Curtis sheds light on the relationship among Christian faith, medical science, and the changing meanings of suffering and healing in American culture. Recipient of the Frank S. and Elizabeth D. Brewer Prize of the American Society of Church History for 2007

Religion and Healing in Native America

Religion and Healing in Native America PDF Author: Suzanne J. Crawford O'Brien
Publisher: Praeger
ISBN:
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
What it means to be healthy or to heal is not universal from culture to culture, from religion to religion. Indeed, in many cultures religion and healing are intimately tied to each other. In Native American communities healing is conceived as the place where ideas about the body and selfhood are brought to light and expressed within healing traditions. Healing is defined as self-making, and illness as whatever compromises one's ability to be oneself. This book explores religion and healing in Native America, emphasizing the lived experience of indigenous religious practices and their role in health and healing. Indigenous traditions of healing in North America emphasize that the healthy self is defined by its relationship with its human, spiritual, and ecological communities. Here, Crawford brings together first-hand accounts, personal experience, and narrative observations of Native American religion and healing to present a richly textured portrait of the intersection of tradition, cultural revival, spirituality, ceremony, and healing. These are not descriptions of traditions isolated from their historical, cultural, and social context, but intimately located within the communities from which they come. These portraits range from discussions of pre-colonial healing traditions to examples where traditional approaches exist along with other cultural traditions-both Native and non-native. At the heart of all the essays is a concern for the ways in which diverse Native communities have understood what it means to be healthy, and the role of spirituality in achieving wellness. Readers will come away with a better understanding not just of religion and healing in Native American communities, but of Native American communities in general, and how they live their lives on an everyday basis.

Christian Science on Trial

Christian Science on Trial PDF Author: Rennie B. Schoepflin
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 0801877679
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
In Christian Science on Trial, historian Rennie B. Schoepflin shows how Christian Science healing became a viable alternative to medicine at the end of the nineteenth century. Christian Scientists did not simply evangelize for their religious beliefs; they engaged in a healing business that offered a therapeutic alternative to many patients for whom medicine had proven unsatisfactory. Tracing the evolution of Christian Science during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Christian Science on Trial illuminates the movement's struggle for existence against the efforts of organized American medicine to curtail its activities. Physicians exhibited an anxiety and tenacity to trivialize and control Christian Scientists which indicates a lack of confidence among the turn-of-the-century medical profession about who controlled American health care. The limited authority of the medical community becomes even clearer through Schoepflin's examination of the pitched battles fought by physicians and Christian Scientists in America's courtrooms and legislative halls over the legality of Christian Science healing. While the issues of medical licensing, the meaning of medical practice, and the supposed right of Americans to therapeutic choice dominated early debates, later confrontations saw the legal issues shift to matters of contagious disease, public safety, and children's rights. Throughout, Christian Scientists revealed their ambiguous status as medical practitioners and religious healers. The 1920s witnessed an unsteady truce between American medicine and Christian Science. The ambivalence of many Americans about the practice of religious healing persisted, however. In Christian Science on Trial we gain a helpful historical context for understanding late–twentieth-century public debates over children's rights, parental responsibility, and the authority of modern medicine.

The Religion of Chiropractic

The Religion of Chiropractic PDF Author: Holly Folk
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469632802
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
Chiropractic is by far the most common form of alternative medicine in the United States today, but its fascinating origins stretch back to the battles between science and religion in the nineteenth century. At the center of the story are chiropractic's colorful founders, D. D. Palmer and his son, B. J. Palmer, of Davenport, Iowa, where in 1897 they established the Palmer College of Chiropractic. Holly Folk shows how the Palmers' system depicted chiropractic as a conduit for both material and spiritualized versions of a "vital principle," reflecting popular contemporary therapies and nineteenth-century metaphysical beliefs, including the idea that the spine was home to occult forces. The creation of chiropractic, and other Progressive-era versions of alternative medicine, happened at a time when the relationship between science and religion took on an urgent, increasingly competitive tinge. Many remarkable people, including the Palmers, undertook highly personal reinterpretations of their physical and spiritual worlds. In this context, Folk reframes alternative medicine and spirituality as a type of populist intellectual culture in which ideologies about the body comprise a highly appealing form of cultural resistance.

Faith, Health, and Healing in African American Life

Faith, Health, and Healing in African American Life PDF Author: Stephanie Y. Mitchem
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1573567620
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
Black Americans are more likely than Whites to die of cancer and heart disease, more likely to get diabetes and asthma, and less likely to get preventive care and screening. Some of this greater morbidity results from education, income level, and environment as well as access to health care. But the traditional medical model does not always allow for a more holistic approach that takes into account the body, the mind, the spirit, the family, and the community. This book offers a better understanding of the varieties of religiously-based approaches to healing and alternative models of healing and health found in Black communities in the United States. Contributors address the communal aspects of faith and health and explore the contexts in which individuals make choices about their health, the roles that institutions play in shaping these decisions, and the practices individuals engage in seeking better health or coping with the health they have. By paying attention to the role of faith, spirit, and health, this book offers a fuller sense of the varieties of ways Black health and health care are perceived and addressed from an inter-religious perspective. Community and religion-based initiatives have emerged as one key way to address the health challenges found in the African American community. In cities such as Atlanta, Baltimore, Dallas, and Oakland, residents organize exercise groups, teach one another how to cook with healthy ingredients, and encourage neighbors to get regular checkups. Churches have become key sites for health education, screening, and testing. Another set of responses to the challenge of Black health and healthcare in the United States comes from those who emphasize the body as a whole—body, mind, soul, and spirit, often drawing on religious traditions such as Islam and African-based religions such as Spiritism, Santeria, Vodun (aka Voodoo), Candomblé, and others. Understanding the issues and the various approaches is essential to combating the problems, and this unique volume sheds light on areas often overlooked when considering the issues.

Ritual Healing in Suburban America

Ritual Healing in Suburban America PDF Author: Meredith B. McGuire
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 9780813513133
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
Many Americans believe that people who practice folk healing are uneducated and too poor to afford conventional medical care. Contrary to this popular belief, Meredith McGuire finds that a large number of college-educated, middle-class suburbanites participate in a variety of nonmedical healing groups. In suburban New Jersey, people practice such diverse alternatives as psychic healing, New Age therapies, naturopathy, Christian Science, Transcendental Meditation, reflexology, acupuncture, yoga, Jain meditation, Therapeutic Touch, reflexology, shiatsu, rebirthing, and occult therapies. McGuire places these various healing groups into broader categories according to their traditional sources of inspiration and their beliefs about healing power. She then looks at the participants' diverse ideas about health and illness. By locating alternative healing in the context of these beliefs, she shows the many ways the adherents experience ritual healing. -- From publisher's description.

Ritual Healing in Suburban America

Ritual Healing in Suburban America PDF Author: Meredith B. McGuire
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 9780813513133
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
Many Americans believe that people who practice folk healing are uneducated and too poor to afford conventional medical care. Contrary to this popular belief, Meredith McGuire finds that a large number of college-educated, middle-class suburbanites participate in a variety of nonmedical healing groups. In suburban New Jersey, people practice such diverse alternatives as psychic healing, New Age therapies, naturopathy, Christian Science, Transcendental Meditation, reflexology, acupuncture, yoga, Jain meditation, Therapeutic Touch, reflexology, shiatsu, rebirthing, and occult therapies. McGuire places these various healing groups into broader categories according to their traditional sources of inspiration and their beliefs about healing power. She then looks at the participants' diverse ideas about health and illness. By locating alternative healing in the context of these beliefs, she shows the many ways the adherents experience ritual healing. -- From publisher's description.

The Healing of America

The Healing of America PDF Author: T. R. Reid
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143118218
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
A New York Times Bestseller, with an updated explanation of the 2010 Health Reform Bill "Important and powerful . . . a rich tour of health care around the world." —Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times Bringing to bear his talent for explaining complex issues in a clear, engaging way, New York Times bestselling author T. R. Reid visits industrialized democracies around the world--France, Britain, Germany, Japan, and beyond--to provide a revelatory tour of successful, affordable universal health care systems. Now updated with new statistics and a plain-English explanation of the 2010 health care reform bill, The Healing of America is required reading for all those hoping to understand the state of health care in our country, and around the world. T. R. Reid's latest book, A Fine Mess: A Global Quest for a Simpler, Fairer, and More Efficient Tax System, is also available from Penguin Press.

Religion and Healing in America

Religion and Healing in America PDF Author: Linda L. Barnes
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195167953
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 553

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Book Description
Americans have long been aware of the phenomenon loosely known as faith healing. Such practices most often received attention when they came into conflict with biomedical practice. During the 1990s, however, the American cultural landscape changed dramatically and religious healing became acommonplace feature of our society. The essays in this book chart this new reality. Insofar as healing traditions constitute the meeting ground or point of conflict between different groups, argue the authors, they provide a powerful lens through which to examine cultural changes at work. Each ofthe papers offers a particular case study. Many emphasize gender, race, ethnicity, and class as key components of healing experiences.