The Call for Abstracts is now open.
The deadline for submissions is 11:59 p.m. (EST), Wednesday, November 1.
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"In Pursuit of the Great Coherence: Healing in the Spaces Between"
April 14-16, 2024
Marriott Downtown
Indianapolis, Indiana
The deadline for submissions is 11:59 p.m. (EST), Wednesday, November 1.
_______________________
"In Pursuit of the Great Coherence: Healing in the Spaces Between"
April 14-16, 2024
Marriott Downtown
Indianapolis, Indiana
In the modern world, division has multiplied in global culture, and neither medicine nor religion has been immune to its effects. This is a great irony, since both medicine and religion seek to foster a regaining of wholeness. In fact, the word “religion” stems from “religio,” meaning a “re-binding.” In response, we are challenged anew to envision what coherence looks like, what are the terms of its pursuit, and what are the spaces where coherence is currently missing.
Coherence comes from a Latin word meaning “to stick together." In the 2016 documentary “Look and See,” Wendell Berry says “We all come from [brokenness]. Things that have come together are taken apart. You can’t put it all back together again. What you do is the only thing you can do. You take two things that belong together and you put them back together. Two things, not all things. That’s the way the work has to go. So that the made thing becomes a kind of earnest — of your faith in, and your affection for, the great coherence that we miss and would like to have again.”
Flowing from the conference theme, “In Pursuit of the Great Coherence: Healing in the Spaces Between,” plenary sessions will be offered to explore coherence at the intersections of miracles/science, congregations/healthcare systems, and religion/spirituality. We encourage attendees to consider these and other spaces in which medicine and religion pursue coherence and can themselves cohere together. We offer a non-exhaustive list of questions to which your abstract may pertain:
What are the broken spaces in which we are seeking restoration and wholeness through medicine and religion? Just a few examples include: political divisions, interfaith / multi-faith spaces, inter-generational relationships, and socio-economic divides.
In spaces where religious harm has occurred, how can faith communities be restored and seek to restore those who have been wounded? What role does medicine play in this restoration?
What are the religious values and medical practices which promote and sustain coherence in healing from racism, misogyny, antisemitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, etc.?
From the perspectives of the Abrahamic traditions, what do imaginations of The Great Coherence look like? From non-Abrahamic traditions?
What could be the fruit of these visions and what are the spiritual practices which support an ongoing pursuit of coherence and even moments of effectual change now?
Finally, as we prepare to meet together at the Conference on Medicine and Religion 2024, let us again contemplate the words of the poet Wendell Berry.
Coherence comes from a Latin word meaning “to stick together." In the 2016 documentary “Look and See,” Wendell Berry says “We all come from [brokenness]. Things that have come together are taken apart. You can’t put it all back together again. What you do is the only thing you can do. You take two things that belong together and you put them back together. Two things, not all things. That’s the way the work has to go. So that the made thing becomes a kind of earnest — of your faith in, and your affection for, the great coherence that we miss and would like to have again.”
Flowing from the conference theme, “In Pursuit of the Great Coherence: Healing in the Spaces Between,” plenary sessions will be offered to explore coherence at the intersections of miracles/science, congregations/healthcare systems, and religion/spirituality. We encourage attendees to consider these and other spaces in which medicine and religion pursue coherence and can themselves cohere together. We offer a non-exhaustive list of questions to which your abstract may pertain:
What are the broken spaces in which we are seeking restoration and wholeness through medicine and religion? Just a few examples include: political divisions, interfaith / multi-faith spaces, inter-generational relationships, and socio-economic divides.
In spaces where religious harm has occurred, how can faith communities be restored and seek to restore those who have been wounded? What role does medicine play in this restoration?
What are the religious values and medical practices which promote and sustain coherence in healing from racism, misogyny, antisemitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, etc.?
From the perspectives of the Abrahamic traditions, what do imaginations of The Great Coherence look like? From non-Abrahamic traditions?
What could be the fruit of these visions and what are the spiritual practices which support an ongoing pursuit of coherence and even moments of effectual change now?
Finally, as we prepare to meet together at the Conference on Medicine and Religion 2024, let us again contemplate the words of the poet Wendell Berry.
“The question stands
and waits, to be asked and asked,
never finally to be answered,
which he believes affirms
a kind of faith. The world
is fitted together, is held
in its place in the great sky,
has held together so far,
through the worst of human damage
so far, and by no human's
power to save or make or know.
That he can sometimes fit
a mere poem's parts together
is his fallback position, a sign
of his limits, his formal ignorance, his
faith in the great coherence.”
Wendell Berry, Sabbaths 2013
and waits, to be asked and asked,
never finally to be answered,
which he believes affirms
a kind of faith. The world
is fitted together, is held
in its place in the great sky,
has held together so far,
through the worst of human damage
so far, and by no human's
power to save or make or know.
That he can sometimes fit
a mere poem's parts together
is his fallback position, a sign
of his limits, his formal ignorance, his
faith in the great coherence.”
Wendell Berry, Sabbaths 2013
The 2024 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.