Can the Spiritual Speak? Towards a Reconfigured Relationship between Spirituality and Medicine
Jeffrey P. Bishop, MD, PhD, Saint Louis University
Warren Kinghorn, MD, ThD, Duke Divinity School
Brett McCarty, ThD(c), Duke Divinity School
Moderator: Boaz Goss, PhD(s), Saint Louis University
The Call for Abstracts for this conference begins with this quotation from Rabbi Abraham Heschel: "It is a grievous mistake to keep a wall of separation between medicine and religion." Yet despite the admonitions of Heschel and many others, medicine has, for the last 40 years or so, attempted to remove religion from its understandings of the world of bodies or at least to relegate it to a position where religion can be controlled. The recent history of this conversation is one in which religionists avidly seek to establish an important and necessary relationship between religion and medicine in order to prevent the removal of religion from medicine. But how ought religion and medicine be united? This panel offers two novel analyses of the ways in which religion-and-medicine scholarship has attempted to hold these two fields together. Rather than accepting the terms of engagement given by medicine, the panel proposes to reconfigure the relationship between medicine and religion on terms more hospitable to religious traditions, and concludes with a presentation displaying this possibility from within the Christian tradition.
The first speaker will examine the varieties of justification for why medicine should accept religion back into the medical apparatus. First, some have claimed that in order for medicine to accept religion, one must show that religion does something for health, that there is some sort of empirically verifiable effect of religion. Within this camp there are two groups: a) those who do randomized controlled trials on such "religious interventions" as prayer; and b) those who attempt to show correlations between those religious or spiritual practices (church attendance, prayer) and health outcomes. Second, some apologists for religion's necessary role in medicine claim that religion must promote something like meaning and purpose in the patient's life. This version appeals to spirituality, the drive to find meaning and purpose, and thus establish the importance of religion to medicine. Third, there are those apologists for religion in medicine that argue that patient's use religion to help them make medical decisions, and thus that bringing religion back into medicine's fold is justified since patients use religion to help make moral judgments. The first speaker will claim that in each moment of justification for a relationship between medicine and religion, a utilitarian calculus is utilized in order to justify a place for religion within medicine. This presentation will conclude by pointing out that these commentators live primarily in the lifeworld—the metaphysical moral world-view—of medicine. It is because they live within the lifeworld created by medicine in the West that they appeal to utilitarian values in order to permit religion back into medicine. Yet, the first speaker will also claim that the hegemony of the lifeworld of medicine in the West might be fundamentally at odds with the metaphysical moral worldview of some religious traditions.
The second speaker will draw on the work of postliberal Christian theologian George Lindbeck to argue that contemporary religion-and-medicine scholarship should increasingly resist generic, evocative consideration of “spirituality” and abstract, quantitative analysis of religious belief and practice, and should embrace thick descriptive engagement with particular religious communities and traditions as they engage health, healing, suffering, and illness. In The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (WJK, 1984), Lindbeck identifies two approaches to religious doctrine that are prevalent in modern Christian theology: the experiential-expressive approach, which holds that doctrines emerge from human attempts to name the ineffable experience of encounter with the divine, and the cognitive-propositional approach, in which religious doctrines are understood as referentially true abstract propositions about God and creation, from which any religious experience must emerge. Lindbeck argues that both are inadequate, and argues instead for an alternative cultural-linguistic approach which understands religious traditions as historically-shaped cultures that create (and are created by) particular forms of language. Religious doctrines are the grammar of the culture’s language: “to become religious involves becoming skilled in the language, the symbol system of a given religion” (34). Using Lindbeck’s classification as a guide, the second speaker will propose an analogous classification of contemporary religion-and-medicine scholarship. First, many writers on spirituality in health care engage a “spiritual-transcendent” approach that seeks to describe and to support the human encounter with the transcendent. This approach, often framed within the discourse of “spirituality,” resembles Lindbeck’s experiential-expressivism. Second, much empirical “religion and health” scholarship employs a “behavioral-cognitive” approach that focuses on religious belief and behavior, but does so in a way that operationalizes “religion” into discrete quanta for empirical analysis. Because these abstractions are then understood as true referents to their traditions, this approach resembles Lindbeck’s cognitive-propositionalism. Both, however, are deeply inadequate. Contemporary religion-and-medicine scholarship is instead best done within a cultural-linguistic approach in which scholars would seek to understand, through attentive and patient engagement, the grammar of the orienting internal language of particular religious communities. Cultural-linguistic approaches to medicine and religion unearth deep wisdom and, importantly, prevent “religion” from being domesticated by the individualistic and abstract-quantitative thought forms of modern medicine.
The third speaker will draw from the resources of the Christian tradition to offer one particular example of the kind of religious lifeworld and thick description called for at the end of each of the two previous presentations. The beautiful quotation from Rabbi Heschel, referenced above, ends by saying, “The act of healing is the highest form of imitatio Dei.” This presentation argues that Christian theology can offer a Trinitarian grammar for understanding the act of healing as a form of imitating God, but only as the work of medicine can be shown to participate in God’s work in the world. By drawing on Eugene Rogers’s work on pneumatology in After the Spirit (Eerdmans, 2005), this presentation argues that medicine can participate in the Holy Spirit’s work of befriending flesh. Rogers’s book is a narrative account of the person and work of the Holy Spirit, and in it he claims, “To think about the Spirit, you have to think materially, because, in Christian terms, the Spirit has befriended matter. She has befriended matter for Christ’s sake on account of the incarnation” (58). Beginning from this Christologically grounded account of the Spirit, Rogers argues that the Spirit continues to befriend material bodies, incorporating them into Jesus Christ and so into the triune life. From this understanding of the work of the Spirit, a theological description of the work of medicine can be offered. Insofar as medicine works to befriend bodies and so assist patients in the hard but graced work of befriending their own flesh, it participates in the work of the Spirit. But when medicine “others” flesh and makes it an enemy, it sets its face against the Spirit’s work in the world. Therefore, this theological account offers a Trinitarian description of the good of medicine while also providing a normative way of differentiating between better and worse forms of medicine through this friend/enemy distinction. By putting the Spirit back into the spiritual dimensions of medicine, this presentation describes how the practice of medicine befriending flesh can be incorporated into the divine life.
Warren Kinghorn, MD, ThD, Duke Divinity School
Brett McCarty, ThD(c), Duke Divinity School
Moderator: Boaz Goss, PhD(s), Saint Louis University
The Call for Abstracts for this conference begins with this quotation from Rabbi Abraham Heschel: "It is a grievous mistake to keep a wall of separation between medicine and religion." Yet despite the admonitions of Heschel and many others, medicine has, for the last 40 years or so, attempted to remove religion from its understandings of the world of bodies or at least to relegate it to a position where religion can be controlled. The recent history of this conversation is one in which religionists avidly seek to establish an important and necessary relationship between religion and medicine in order to prevent the removal of religion from medicine. But how ought religion and medicine be united? This panel offers two novel analyses of the ways in which religion-and-medicine scholarship has attempted to hold these two fields together. Rather than accepting the terms of engagement given by medicine, the panel proposes to reconfigure the relationship between medicine and religion on terms more hospitable to religious traditions, and concludes with a presentation displaying this possibility from within the Christian tradition.
The first speaker will examine the varieties of justification for why medicine should accept religion back into the medical apparatus. First, some have claimed that in order for medicine to accept religion, one must show that religion does something for health, that there is some sort of empirically verifiable effect of religion. Within this camp there are two groups: a) those who do randomized controlled trials on such "religious interventions" as prayer; and b) those who attempt to show correlations between those religious or spiritual practices (church attendance, prayer) and health outcomes. Second, some apologists for religion's necessary role in medicine claim that religion must promote something like meaning and purpose in the patient's life. This version appeals to spirituality, the drive to find meaning and purpose, and thus establish the importance of religion to medicine. Third, there are those apologists for religion in medicine that argue that patient's use religion to help them make medical decisions, and thus that bringing religion back into medicine's fold is justified since patients use religion to help make moral judgments. The first speaker will claim that in each moment of justification for a relationship between medicine and religion, a utilitarian calculus is utilized in order to justify a place for religion within medicine. This presentation will conclude by pointing out that these commentators live primarily in the lifeworld—the metaphysical moral world-view—of medicine. It is because they live within the lifeworld created by medicine in the West that they appeal to utilitarian values in order to permit religion back into medicine. Yet, the first speaker will also claim that the hegemony of the lifeworld of medicine in the West might be fundamentally at odds with the metaphysical moral worldview of some religious traditions.
The second speaker will draw on the work of postliberal Christian theologian George Lindbeck to argue that contemporary religion-and-medicine scholarship should increasingly resist generic, evocative consideration of “spirituality” and abstract, quantitative analysis of religious belief and practice, and should embrace thick descriptive engagement with particular religious communities and traditions as they engage health, healing, suffering, and illness. In The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (WJK, 1984), Lindbeck identifies two approaches to religious doctrine that are prevalent in modern Christian theology: the experiential-expressive approach, which holds that doctrines emerge from human attempts to name the ineffable experience of encounter with the divine, and the cognitive-propositional approach, in which religious doctrines are understood as referentially true abstract propositions about God and creation, from which any religious experience must emerge. Lindbeck argues that both are inadequate, and argues instead for an alternative cultural-linguistic approach which understands religious traditions as historically-shaped cultures that create (and are created by) particular forms of language. Religious doctrines are the grammar of the culture’s language: “to become religious involves becoming skilled in the language, the symbol system of a given religion” (34). Using Lindbeck’s classification as a guide, the second speaker will propose an analogous classification of contemporary religion-and-medicine scholarship. First, many writers on spirituality in health care engage a “spiritual-transcendent” approach that seeks to describe and to support the human encounter with the transcendent. This approach, often framed within the discourse of “spirituality,” resembles Lindbeck’s experiential-expressivism. Second, much empirical “religion and health” scholarship employs a “behavioral-cognitive” approach that focuses on religious belief and behavior, but does so in a way that operationalizes “religion” into discrete quanta for empirical analysis. Because these abstractions are then understood as true referents to their traditions, this approach resembles Lindbeck’s cognitive-propositionalism. Both, however, are deeply inadequate. Contemporary religion-and-medicine scholarship is instead best done within a cultural-linguistic approach in which scholars would seek to understand, through attentive and patient engagement, the grammar of the orienting internal language of particular religious communities. Cultural-linguistic approaches to medicine and religion unearth deep wisdom and, importantly, prevent “religion” from being domesticated by the individualistic and abstract-quantitative thought forms of modern medicine.
The third speaker will draw from the resources of the Christian tradition to offer one particular example of the kind of religious lifeworld and thick description called for at the end of each of the two previous presentations. The beautiful quotation from Rabbi Heschel, referenced above, ends by saying, “The act of healing is the highest form of imitatio Dei.” This presentation argues that Christian theology can offer a Trinitarian grammar for understanding the act of healing as a form of imitating God, but only as the work of medicine can be shown to participate in God’s work in the world. By drawing on Eugene Rogers’s work on pneumatology in After the Spirit (Eerdmans, 2005), this presentation argues that medicine can participate in the Holy Spirit’s work of befriending flesh. Rogers’s book is a narrative account of the person and work of the Holy Spirit, and in it he claims, “To think about the Spirit, you have to think materially, because, in Christian terms, the Spirit has befriended matter. She has befriended matter for Christ’s sake on account of the incarnation” (58). Beginning from this Christologically grounded account of the Spirit, Rogers argues that the Spirit continues to befriend material bodies, incorporating them into Jesus Christ and so into the triune life. From this understanding of the work of the Spirit, a theological description of the work of medicine can be offered. Insofar as medicine works to befriend bodies and so assist patients in the hard but graced work of befriending their own flesh, it participates in the work of the Spirit. But when medicine “others” flesh and makes it an enemy, it sets its face against the Spirit’s work in the world. Therefore, this theological account offers a Trinitarian description of the good of medicine while also providing a normative way of differentiating between better and worse forms of medicine through this friend/enemy distinction. By putting the Spirit back into the spiritual dimensions of medicine, this presentation describes how the practice of medicine befriending flesh can be incorporated into the divine life.