Religion and Healing in America

by Barnes, Linda L.; Sered, Susan S.

• ISBN13: 9780195167962
• ISBN10: 0195167961
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-12-30
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Throughout much of the modern era, faith healing received attention only when it came into conflict with biomedical practice. During the 1990s, however, American culture changed dramatically and religious healing became a commonplace feature of our society. Increasing numbers of mainstreamchurches and synagogues began to hold held "healing services" and "healing circles." The use of complementary and alternative therapies-some connected with spiritual or religious traditions-became widespread, and the growing hospice movement drew attention to the spiritual aspects of medical care.At the same time, changes in immigration laws brought to the United States new cultural communities, each with their own approaches to healing. Cuban santeros, Haitian mambos and oungans, Cambodian Buddhist priests, Chinese herbalist-acupuncturists, and Hmong shamans are only a few of the newertypes of American religious healers, often found practicing within blocks of prestigious biomedical institutions. This book offers a richly comprehensive collection of essays examining this new reality. It brings together, for the first time, scholars from a wide variety of disciplinary perspectives to explore the relatively uncharted field of religious healing as understood and practiced in diverse culturalcommunities in the United States. The book will be an invaluable resource for students of anthropology, religious studies, American studies, and ethnic studies, health care professionals, clergy, and anyone interested in the changing American cultural landscape.

Author Biography

Linda L. Barnes directs the Boston Healing Landscape Project, an institute for the study of religions, medicines, and healing, at Boston University School of Medicine, where she is on the faculty of the Department of Pediatrics. She is a historian, medical anthropologist, and religion scholar whose work bridges these disciplines.
Susan S. Sered is the research director of the Religion, Health and Healing Initiative at Harvard University's Center for the Study of World Religions, and Associate Professor of Anthropology at Bar Ilan University in Israel. Her work spans the fields of medical anthropology, religious studies, and gender studies. Sered's award-winning books include Priestess, Mother, Sacred Sister: Religions Dominated by Women (OUP, 1994).

Table of Contents

Contributors	xi
Introduction	3	(26)
Susan S. Sered
Linda L. Barnes
I Sites of Healing: Domestic Spaces, Public Spaces
The Cult of the Saints and the Reimagination of the Space and Time of Sickness in Twentieth-Century American Catholicism	29	(20)
Robert A. Orsi
The ``Spiritual Healing Project'': A Study of the Meaning of Spiritual Healing in the United Church of Christ	49	(10)
Bobbie McKay
Lewis A. Musil
Ritual and Magic: Two Diverse Approaches to Inner Healing in the Cambodian American Community	59	(12)
Thomas J. Douglas
Sophon Mam
Procreating Women and Religion: The Politics of Spirituality, Healing, and Childbirth in America	71	(18)
Pamela Klassen
Healing into Wholeness in the Episcopal Church	89	(14)
Jennifer L. Hollis
Miraculous Migrants to the City of Angels: Perceptions of El Santo Nino de Atocha and San Simon as Sources of Health and Healing	103	(20)
Patrick A. Polk
Michael Owen Jones
Claudia J. Hernandez
Reyna C. Ronelli
II Healing from Structural Violence: La Cultura Cura
``God Made a Miracle in My Life'': Latino Pentecostal Healing in the Borderlands	123	(16)
Gaston Espinosa
The Gathering of Traditions: The Reciprocal Alliance of History, Ecology, Health, and Community among the Contemporary Chumash	139	(20)
Julianne Cordero
Religious Healing among War-Traumatized African Immigrants	159	(14)
John M. Janzen
Adrien Ngudiankama
Melissa Filippi-Franz
Making Wanga: Reality Constructions and the Magical Manipulation of Power	173	(22)
Karen McCarthy Brown
``Our Work Is Change for the Sake of Justice'': Hope Community, Minneapolis, Minnesota	195	(10)
Mary Farrell Bednarowski
Communing with the Dead: Spiritual and Cultural Healing in Chicano/a Communities	205	(12)
Lara Medina
Spirituality and Aging in the San Francisco Japanese Community	217	(14)
Ronald Y. Nakasone
III Gendering of Suffering and Healing
Healing as Resistance: Reflections upon New Forms of American Jewish Healing	231	(22)
Susan S. Sered
Healing in Feminist Wicca	253	(12)
Grove Harris
Sexual Healing: Self-Help and Therapeutic Christianity in the Ex-Gay Movement	265	(16)
Tanya Erzen
``Jesus Is My Doctor'': Healing and Religion in African American Women's Lives	281	(10)
Stephanie Y. Mitchem
Gender and Healing in Navajo Society	291	(16)
Thomas J. Csordas
IV Synergy, Syncretism, and Appropriation
Multiple Meanings of Chinese Healing in the United States	307	(26)
Linda L. Barnes
Rituals of Healing in African American Spiritual Churches	333	(10)
Claude F. Jacobs
Complementary and Alternative Medicine in America's ``Two Buddhisms''	343	(16)
Paul David Numrich
La Mesa del Santo Nino de Atocha and the Conchero Dance Tradition of Mexico-Tenochtilan: Religious Healing in Urban Mexico and the United States	359	(16)
Ines Hernandez-Avila
Subtle Energies and the American Metaphysical Tradition	375	(12)
Robert Fuller
Taking Seriously the Nature of Religious Healing in America	387	(20)
Edith Turner
V Intersections with Medical and Psychotherapeutic Discourses
Dimensions of Islamic Religious Healing in America	407	(16)
Marcia Hermansen
Health, Faith Traditions, and South Asian Indians in North America	423	(16)
Prakash N. Desai
Hmong Shamanism: Animist Spiritual Healing in America's Urban Heartland	439	(16)
Phua Xiong
Charles Numrich
Chu Yongyuan Wu
Deu Yang
Gregory A. Plotnikoff
Spirituality and the Healing of Addictions: A Shamanic Drumming Approach	455	(16)
Michael Winkelman
The Healing Genes	471	(16)
Kaja Finkler
VI Conclusion
Religion and Healing: The Four Expectations	487	(18)
Martin E. Marty
Afterword: A Physician's Reflections	505	(4)
Harold G. Koenig
Index	509