Religion and Healing in America

552 Pages·2004·31.425 MB·English

by  Linda L. Barnes

Religion and Healing
in America
This page intentionally left blank
Religion and
Healing in America
Edited by Linda L. Barnes
and Susan S. Sered
OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
2OO5
OXTORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
Oxford New York
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Copyright © 2005 by Oxford University Press
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Religion and healing in America / edited by Linda L. Barnes and
Susan S. Sered.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-19-516795-3; ISBN 0-19-516796-1 (pbk)
i. Spiritual healing—United States. I. Barnes, Linda L.
II. Sered, Susan Starr.
BL65-M4 11436 2004
203-10973-dczz 2003022679
Robert A. Orsi, "The Cult of Saints and the Reimagination of the Space
and Time of Sickness in Twentieth-Century American Catholicism."
Literature ef Medicine 8 (1980), 63-77. © The Johns Hopkins
University Press. Reprinted with permission of The Johns Hopkins
University Press.
Karen McCarthy Brown, "Making Wanga: Reality Constructions and the
Magical Manipulation of Power," in Transparency and Conspiracy:
Ethnographies of Suspicion in the New World Order, ed. West and
Sanders, 233-257. Copyright 2003, Duke University Press. All
rights reserved. Used by permission of the publisher.
Martin E. Marty, "Religion and Healing: The Four Expectations," Second
Opinion 7 (March 1988): 60-80. Used by permission of the
author.
987654321
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
Acknowledgments
This book is a product of the dreams and efforts of both editors. We
have chosen to list our names in opposite sequences on the cover
and in the introduction to reflect our equal and shared roles
throughout this project.
Many people helped bring this book to fruition, but two groups
deserve particular thanks. First, we would like to thank the contribu-
tors for their enthusiasm and commitment to the project. Second,
on behalf of the contributors, we would like to thank all the individ-
uals who kindly agreed to be interviewed and all the communities
that graciously allowed our authors to share their rituals, meetings,
and other events.
We would like to express our deepest appreciation to Meredith
McGuire, whose insight, analysis, collegiality, and vast knowledge of
healing in America accompanied this project from beginning to end.
This volume received intellectual and financial backing from Har-
vard University's Center for the Study of World Religions. We partic-
ularly would like to thank Lawrence E. Sullivan for his enthusiastic
support at every stage of the project. We also would like to thank the
Ford Foundation and Boston Medical Center for their financial, in-
stitutional, and moral support of the project.
This volume developed out of a conference held in 2001 at the
Center for the Study of World Religions and the Boston Medical
Center. We would like to thank Jualynne Dodson, Ken Fox, Karen
Holliday, Craig Joseph, Sudhir Kakar, Meredith McGuire, Ann
Minnick, Richard Shweder, Martha Ward, and Stephen Warner for
VI ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
participating in the conference that inspired this project. Their ideas and con-
tributions are reflected throughout the pages of this volume.
Our deepest thanks to Steve Glazier, David Hufford, and Rosalyn Hackett
for discussing the volume as a whole, and the introduction in particular, with
us. Barnes is grateful to John B. Carman for his steadfast support over the
years of her work in the study of religion and healing, and to Arthur Kleinman
for mentoring her work in medical anthropology. Diana Eck and the Pluralism
Project at Harvard University served as an ongoing inspiration for this project.
We would like to thank our assistants, Justine de Marrais and Susan Lloyd
McGarry, for their continued support of our work. Thank you to Cynthia Read
and Theo Calderara for their support throughout the process of publishing this
volume. And our special thanks to Yishai Sered and Devon Thibeault for shar-
ing our work and our lives.
Contents
Contributors, xi
Introduction, 3
Susan S. Sered and Linda L. Barnes
I Sites of Healing: Domestic Spaces, Public Spaces
1. The Cult of the Saints and the Reimagination of the Space
and Time of Sickness in Twentieth-Century American
Catholicism, 29
Robert A. Orsi
2. The "Spiritual Healing Project": A Study of the Meaning of
Spiritual Healing in the United Church of Christ, 49
Bobbie McKay and Lewis A. Musil
3. Ritual and Magic: Two Diverse Approaches to Inner Healing in
the Cambodian American Community, 59
Thomas J. Douglas and Sophon Mam
4. Procreating Women and Religion: The Politics of Spirituality,
Healing, and Childbirth in America, 71
Pamela Klassen
5. Healing into Wholeness in the Episcopal Church, 89
Jennifer L. Hollis
Vlll CONTENTS
6. Miraculous Migrants to the City of Angels: Perceptions of
El Santo Nino de Atocha and San Simon as Sources of Health
and Healing, 103
Patrick A. Polk, Michael Owen Jones, Claudia J. Hernandez, and
Reyna C. Ronelli.
II Healing from Structural Violence: La Cultura Cum
7. "God Made a Miracle in My Life": Latino Pentecostal Healing in the
Borderlands, 123
Gaston Espinosa
8. The Gathering of Traditions: The Reciprocal Alliance of History, Ecology,
Health, and Community among the Contemporary Chumash, 139
Julianne Cordero
9. Religious Healing among War-Traumatized African Immigrants, 159
John M. Janzen, Adrien Ngudiankama, and Melissa Filippi-Franz
10. Making Wanga: Reality Constructions and the Magical Manipulation
of Power, 173
Karen McCarthy Brown
11. "Our Work Is Change for the Sake of Justice": Hope Community,
Minneapolis, Minnesota, 195
Mary Farrell Bednarowski
12. Communing with the Dead: Spiritual and Cultural Healing in
Chicano/a Communities, 205
Lara Medina
13. Spirituality and Aging in the San Francisco Japanese Community, 217
Ronald Y. Nakasone
III Gendering of Suffering and Healing
14. Healing as Resistance: Reflections upon New Forms of American
Jewish Healing, 231
Susan S. Sered
15. Healing in Feminist Wicca, 253
Grove Harris
16. Sexual Healing: Self-Help and Therapeutic Christianity in the
Ex-Gay Movement, 265
Tanya Erzen
CONTENTS IX
17. "Jesus Is My Doctor": Healing and Religion in African American
Women's Lives, 281
Stephanie Y. Mitchem
18. Gender and Healing in Navajo Society, 291
Thomas J. Csordas
IV Synergy, Syncretism, and Appropriation
19. Multiple Meanings of Chinese Healing in the United States, 307
Linda L. Barnes
20. Rituals of Healing in African American Spiritual Churches, 333
Claude F. Jacobs
21. Complementary and Alternative Medicine in America's "Two
Buddhisms," 343
Paul David Numrich
22. 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
Ines Herndndez-Avila
23.. Subtle Energies and the American Metaphysical Tradition, 375
Robert Fuller
24. Taking Seriously the Nature of Religious Healing in America, 387
Edith Turner
V Intersections with Medical and Psychotherapeutic Discourses
25. Dimensions of Islamic Religious Healing in America, 407
Marcia Hermansen
26. Health, Faith Traditions, and South Asian Indians in
North America, 423
Prakash N. Desai
27. Hmong Shamanism: Animist Spiritual Healing in America's
Urban Heartland, 439
Phua Xiong, Charles Numrich, Chu Yongyuan Wu, Deu Yang, and
Gregory A. Plotnikoff
28. Spirituality and the Healing of Addictions: A Shamanic Drumming
Approach, 455
Michael Winkelman