Nurturing Hope: Expanding Holistic Care at the Margins
At their best, medicine and religion both seek to create spaces of hope and healing. Yet, there are places where organized medicine and religion are not easily reached. On the margins of medicine and religion are people whose lived realities alienate them from healthcare contexts and religious communities. This year's conference, "Nurturing Hope: Expanding Holistic Care at the Margins," explores how medicine and religion can collaboratively address the needs of those on society's peripheries, offering a beacon of hope and a vision of inclusive and equitable healing.
Reflecting on hope with Dr. Paul Farmer, Father Gustavo Gutiérrez argues that religious communities and healthcare workers are responsible for creating "reasons for hope" through "concrete commitments." Thus, plenary sessions will explore how healthcare systems can partner with religious communities to address health disparities and create environments where hope can flourish. They will also explore the spiritual needs of individuals with complex (including marginalized, post-, and hybrid) religious identities and how healthcare institutions and educators can cultivate compassionate and committed clinicians and spiritual care providers capable of reaching the margins.
"Nurturing Hope: Expanding Holistic Care at the Margins" is not just a theme but a call to service. It invites us to rethink and re-envision how to provide holistic care for those on the margins of our communities.
The 2025 Conference on Medicine and Religion invites clinicians, scholars, clergy, students and others to take up these and other questions at 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 various disciplinary perspectives, from accounts of clinical practices to empirical research to scholarship in the humanities.
Reflecting on hope with Dr. Paul Farmer, Father Gustavo Gutiérrez argues that religious communities and healthcare workers are responsible for creating "reasons for hope" through "concrete commitments." Thus, plenary sessions will explore how healthcare systems can partner with religious communities to address health disparities and create environments where hope can flourish. They will also explore the spiritual needs of individuals with complex (including marginalized, post-, and hybrid) religious identities and how healthcare institutions and educators can cultivate compassionate and committed clinicians and spiritual care providers capable of reaching the margins.
"Nurturing Hope: Expanding Holistic Care at the Margins" is not just a theme but a call to service. It invites us to rethink and re-envision how to provide holistic care for those on the margins of our communities.
The 2025 Conference on Medicine and Religion invites clinicians, scholars, clergy, students and others to take up these and other questions at 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 various disciplinary perspectives, from accounts of clinical practices to empirical research to scholarship in the humanities.