Conference Theme
Spiritual Dimensions of Illness and Healing
It is a grievous mistake to keep a wall of separation between medicine and religion. There is a division of labor but a unity of spirit. The act of healing is the highest form of imitatio Dei.
~Rabbi Abraham Heschel (1964)
Rabbi Heschel’s words seem as relevant today as they did in 1964, when he spoke them to physicians at the American Medical Association. Contemporary western culture continues to divide carefully care of the soul from care of the body, apportioning the former to religious communities and the latter to medicine. The division of spiritual and material care of the human person has allowed us to meet many clinical needs efficiently, but it has also wrought unwanted outcomes, including increased mechanization of care and isolation in the experiences of illness and dying.
Remedying this situation will require reengaging some critical questions: In what sense is illness a spiritual and/or religious experience? How should particular spiritual and religious needs of patients be addressed and by whom? What is at stake and what is experienced, spiritually, among those who care for patients? How may the powerful social and intellectual forces that continue to dehumanize the patient experience and the practices of health care be overcome? What do religious traditions teach us about these questions?
The 4th Annual Conference on Medicine and Religion invites health care practitioners, scholars, religious community leaders, and students to take up these questions and consider their implications for contemporary medicine. The conference is a forum for exchanging ideas and accounts from an array of disciplinary perspectives, from empirical research to scholarship in the humanities to stories of clinical practice. The conference encourages participants to address questions associated with this theme by relating the questions to religious traditions and practices, and particularly Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
It is a grievous mistake to keep a wall of separation between medicine and religion. There is a division of labor but a unity of spirit. The act of healing is the highest form of imitatio Dei.
~Rabbi Abraham Heschel (1964)
Rabbi Heschel’s words seem as relevant today as they did in 1964, when he spoke them to physicians at the American Medical Association. Contemporary western culture continues to divide carefully care of the soul from care of the body, apportioning the former to religious communities and the latter to medicine. The division of spiritual and material care of the human person has allowed us to meet many clinical needs efficiently, but it has also wrought unwanted outcomes, including increased mechanization of care and isolation in the experiences of illness and dying.
Remedying this situation will require reengaging some critical questions: In what sense is illness a spiritual and/or religious experience? How should particular spiritual and religious needs of patients be addressed and by whom? What is at stake and what is experienced, spiritually, among those who care for patients? How may the powerful social and intellectual forces that continue to dehumanize the patient experience and the practices of health care be overcome? What do religious traditions teach us about these questions?
The 4th Annual Conference on Medicine and Religion invites health care practitioners, scholars, religious community leaders, and students to take up these questions and consider their implications for contemporary medicine. The conference is a forum for exchanging ideas and accounts from an array of disciplinary perspectives, from empirical research to scholarship in the humanities to stories of clinical practice. The conference encourages participants to address questions associated with this theme by relating the questions to religious traditions and practices, and particularly Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.