"Reformations of Medicine” in Interdisciplinary Perspectives
Ekaterina Lomperis, PhD, Devan Stahl, PhD, Emilie Cunningham, and Chad Thompson, MD, Baylor University
Ekaterina Lomperis’s newly published Reformations of Medicine: Early Modern Beginnings and Contemporary Possibilities (Fortress Press, 2025) has been attracting growing attention from scholars working at the intersection of Christianity and medicine. The book offers a pioneering analysis of the theological history of medicine in the sixteenth century—a period marked by unprecedented reformations of both religious belief and medical knowledge, including the emergence of Protestantism, the Catholic reform movement, and the new approaches to human anatomy. Building on this historical investigation, Reformations of Medicine ponders strategies for utilizing these theological histories as a resource for addressing contemporary issues at the intersections of Christianity and healthcare.
This interdisciplinary panel will engage and advance the themes of spiritually-informed reformations of medicine developed in the book in conversation with their own fields and the Conference’s theme of speaking and acting prophetically within medicine. The panel will bring together an academic clinical and disability ethicist, a public health scholar, and a physician and medical educator serving in underserved urban health contexts—all of whose work, in both academy and community, intersects with Christianity.
The first panelist will relate the history of spiritual and moral imaginations of medicine to their work in disability ethics and medicine’s engagement with the visual arts. The second panelist will engage the book’s themes through the lens of public health, reflecting on efforts to disrupt entrenched health inequities. The third panelist will consider spiritually informed reformations of medicine as they emerge in the teaching and formation of healthcare professionals and in clinical practice within marginalized communities. The author of Reformations of Medicine, a historian and theologian, will respond by drawing connections between the study of religious history of healing and contemporary creative religious imaginations of the reformations of medicine.
Overall, the panel will test and reflect on the limits and possibilities of using the theological history of medicine as a resource across clinical and disability ethics, public health, and the formation of healthcare professionals. Together, the participants will consider how such engagements might offer a prophetic voice of compassion and justice within contemporary medicine.
This interdisciplinary panel will engage and advance the themes of spiritually-informed reformations of medicine developed in the book in conversation with their own fields and the Conference’s theme of speaking and acting prophetically within medicine. The panel will bring together an academic clinical and disability ethicist, a public health scholar, and a physician and medical educator serving in underserved urban health contexts—all of whose work, in both academy and community, intersects with Christianity.
The first panelist will relate the history of spiritual and moral imaginations of medicine to their work in disability ethics and medicine’s engagement with the visual arts. The second panelist will engage the book’s themes through the lens of public health, reflecting on efforts to disrupt entrenched health inequities. The third panelist will consider spiritually informed reformations of medicine as they emerge in the teaching and formation of healthcare professionals and in clinical practice within marginalized communities. The author of Reformations of Medicine, a historian and theologian, will respond by drawing connections between the study of religious history of healing and contemporary creative religious imaginations of the reformations of medicine.
Overall, the panel will test and reflect on the limits and possibilities of using the theological history of medicine as a resource across clinical and disability ethics, public health, and the formation of healthcare professionals. Together, the participants will consider how such engagements might offer a prophetic voice of compassion and justice within contemporary medicine.