"At the Limits of Medicine: Caring for Body and Soul"
What are the limits of medicine?
What role, if any, does medicine play in caring for the soul?
March 12-14, 2023
Columbus, Ohio
What are the limits of medicine?
What role, if any, does medicine play in caring for the soul?
March 12-14, 2023
Columbus, Ohio
Medicine offers care for people across the stages of life, from birth to death, seeking to alleviate suffering and further health and healing wherever able. Within this unity of focus, however, arise many questions on the nature and boundaries of healing, health, therapy, and more.
How do we frame or define the boundaries for what we expect of medicine? In other words, what do we imagine of medicine not merely for the body but also for the good of ensouled persons? As Charles Taylor challenges us to consider “the secular” as something imagined, something framed by our individual and/or societal expectations, medicine, too, can be seen as a distinct “imaginary.” For instance, what do we envision as the role of medicine in caring for the soul? Within the secular
imagination, is there any room within medicine for the care of souls? How can or should care of souls
guide medical practices?
Within traditional religious considerations, the care of souls is paramount, and yet the imaginary of most contemporary medicine is animated by pragmatic questions and framed by technological solutions: what are our technological, clinical, medical abilities? The assumed next question is “how” can we best achieve these goals regardless, but the question of whether or not we “should” rarely, if ever arises.
In a real sense, amidst the fellowship of the Conference on Medicine and Religion, this “secular vs sacred” dichotomy can be assumed, and yet beyond that assumption many important questions remain to be explored. For instance, how do differing religions traditions—from the Abrahamic traditions and beyond—envision medicine within the greater care for souls? What are some limits to the care of bodies that are primarily determined via religious thinking? Is there a way in which limits placed on the care of the body opens opportunities for the care of souls? Beyond the pragmatic questions of modern and postmodern medicine, what therapies, medications, and/or clinical practices carry greater (or lesser) spiritual risks for sincere religious individuals and communities? If there is a line between what medicine “may” offer and what it “ought” to offer, how do we trace that line according to transcendent, mystical, and theologically grounded understandings of medicine? If medical care for the body is subservient to care for the soul, are there concerns of proselytism to be considered? How does religious thinking accord (or not) with the common distinction in medicine between therapy and enhancement? Is the move towards transhumanism compatible with your religious tradition? How do various religious considerations relate to practical matters of care at the beginning of life? At the end of life?
In sum, the theme of this year’s conference is an invitation to consider the boundaries of medicine—beyond what can be done to what ought to be done—by following the central theme of how medicine seeks to care for souls. As always, we welcome a range of interests from practical, clinical presentations to theological and philosophical reflections and more.
The 2023 Conference on Medicine and Religion invites clinicians, scholars, clergy, students and others to take up these and other questions related to the intersection of medicine and religion. We encourage participants to address these questions and issues in light of religious traditions and practices, particularly, though not exclusively, those of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The conference is a forum for exchanging ideas from an array of disciplinary perspectives, from accounts of clinical practices to empirical research to scholarship in the humanities.
How do we frame or define the boundaries for what we expect of medicine? In other words, what do we imagine of medicine not merely for the body but also for the good of ensouled persons? As Charles Taylor challenges us to consider “the secular” as something imagined, something framed by our individual and/or societal expectations, medicine, too, can be seen as a distinct “imaginary.” For instance, what do we envision as the role of medicine in caring for the soul? Within the secular
imagination, is there any room within medicine for the care of souls? How can or should care of souls
guide medical practices?
Within traditional religious considerations, the care of souls is paramount, and yet the imaginary of most contemporary medicine is animated by pragmatic questions and framed by technological solutions: what are our technological, clinical, medical abilities? The assumed next question is “how” can we best achieve these goals regardless, but the question of whether or not we “should” rarely, if ever arises.
In a real sense, amidst the fellowship of the Conference on Medicine and Religion, this “secular vs sacred” dichotomy can be assumed, and yet beyond that assumption many important questions remain to be explored. For instance, how do differing religions traditions—from the Abrahamic traditions and beyond—envision medicine within the greater care for souls? What are some limits to the care of bodies that are primarily determined via religious thinking? Is there a way in which limits placed on the care of the body opens opportunities for the care of souls? Beyond the pragmatic questions of modern and postmodern medicine, what therapies, medications, and/or clinical practices carry greater (or lesser) spiritual risks for sincere religious individuals and communities? If there is a line between what medicine “may” offer and what it “ought” to offer, how do we trace that line according to transcendent, mystical, and theologically grounded understandings of medicine? If medical care for the body is subservient to care for the soul, are there concerns of proselytism to be considered? How does religious thinking accord (or not) with the common distinction in medicine between therapy and enhancement? Is the move towards transhumanism compatible with your religious tradition? How do various religious considerations relate to practical matters of care at the beginning of life? At the end of life?
In sum, the theme of this year’s conference is an invitation to consider the boundaries of medicine—beyond what can be done to what ought to be done—by following the central theme of how medicine seeks to care for souls. As always, we welcome a range of interests from practical, clinical presentations to theological and philosophical reflections and more.
The 2023 Conference on Medicine and Religion invites clinicians, scholars, clergy, students and others to take up these and other questions related to the intersection of medicine and religion. We encourage participants to address these questions and issues in light of religious traditions and practices, particularly, though not exclusively, those of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The conference is a forum for exchanging ideas from an array of disciplinary perspectives, from accounts of clinical practices to empirical research to scholarship in the humanities.