Religion and Medicine: A History of the Encounter Between Humanity's Two Greatest Institutions

345 Pages·2020·1.875 MB·English

by  Jeff Levin

Religion and Medicine
Also by Jeff Levin
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(Edited)
Upon These Three Things: Jewish Perspectives on Loving God
Judaism and Health: A Handbook of Practical, Professional, and Scholarly Resources
(Edited with Michele F. Prince)
Healing to all Their Flesh: Jewish and Christian Perspectives on Spirituality, Theology,
and Health
(Edited with Keith G. Meador)
Divine Love: Perspectives from the World’s Religious Traditions
(Edited with Stephen G. Post)
Faith, Medicine, and Science: A Festschrift in Honor of Dr. David B. Larson
(Edited with Harold G. Koenig)
Religion in The Lives of African Americans: Social, Psychological, and Health
Perspectives
(with Robert Joseph Taylor and Linda M. Chatters)
God, Faith, and Health: Exploring the Spirituality- Healing Connection
Essentials of Complementary and Alternative Medicine
(Edited with Wayne B. Jonas)
Religion in Aging and Health: Theoretical Foundations and Methodological Frontiers
(Edited)
Religion and Medicine
A History of the Encounter Between
Humanity’s Two Greatest Institutions
JEFF LEVIN
With a Foreword by
STEPHEN G. POST
1
3
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© Oxford University Press 2020
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You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.
Library of Congress Cataloging-i n- Publication Data
Names: Levin, Jeffrey S., author.
Title: Religion and medicine : a history of the encounter between
humanity’s two greatest institutions / Jeff Levin, Ph.D., M.P.H. ;
with a foreword by Stephen G. Post.
Description: New York, NY, United States of America : Oxford University Press, 2020. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019044758 (print) | LCCN 2019044759 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780190867355 (hb) | ISBN 9780190867379 (epub) | ISBN 9780190867386 (online)
Subjects: LCSH: Medicine—Religious aspects.
Classification: LCC BL65. M4 L485 2020 (print) | LCC BL65. M4 (ebook) | DDC 201/.661—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019044758
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019044759
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
For Dr. Berton H. Kaplan, of blessed memory, a great mentor and friend,
who encouraged my earliest explorations of the interconnections between religion
and medicine

Contents
Foreword by Stephen G. Post ix
Acknowledgments xv
1. Conflict and Cooperation 1
2. Healers and Healthcare 18
3. Missions and Ministries 45
4. Congregations and Communities 63
5. Scientists and Scholars 85
6. Teaching and Training 116
7. Prescriptions and Proscriptions 141
8. Policies and Programs 162
9. Challenges and Choices 190
Notes 217
Index 311

Foreword
The perennial interface of religion and medicine has cried out for a truly great
book that is both fully comprehensive and consistently deep in its analysis.
Levin’s Religion and Medicine succeeds brilliantly in providing the big picture
of this interface. It is far and away the finest scholarly work yet published that
combines scientific as well as deeply learned humanistic insights in a text of im-
mense clarity, maturity, and sophistication. One would expect this from Jeff, for
his book is the culmination of a lifetime of diligent scholarship for which he is
rightly renowned. It is hard to imagine that any one scholar could have made such
a pioneering contribution across this interface, but indeed Levin has done so.
Religion and Medicine will appeal to a wide variety of readers: the historian,
the medical anthropologist, the epidemiologist, the devotee of randomized con-
trolled studies, the medical educator, the medical ethicist and humanist clini-
cian, the healthcare advocate and policymaker, the comparative religionist, the
thoughtful scholar of mind- body medicine, and those wanting to know how
and from where the intense altruistic passion that strives for the good of patients
arose. Levin’s book also points us in the direction of a new American medicine,
one that takes into scientifically informed consideration the subjective meanings
of the patient as a person experiencing illness and the healing importance of em-
pathic skills, and that finally takes into full account the oft-q uoted 1925 state-
ment of Harvard physician Francis Peabody: “For the secret of the care of the
patient is in caring for the patient.”
I began reading Jeff’s manuscript early one February morning in a Stony
Brook Medical Center coffee shop and did not return home until very late at
night, astonished by the clarity and depth of analysis on each page. My pen had
run out of ink for all the underlining and notes that flowed over those hours
as my sense of time and place all but disappeared. I immediately called Harold
G. Koenig of Duke University, who is one of two other individuals who might
be included with Jeff at the very pinnacle of excellence among researchers on re-
ligion and health, and who like me has known Jeff from at least the early 1990s.
Harold listened patiently as I enthusiastically explained why this book is the best
that we may ever have, or could ever imagine having.
Jeff Levin has many talents, but there has to be something more than talent
behind this book. For the past nearly forty years Jeff has been enduringly called
to this work by a special spiritual vocation that makes him one of the most reli-
ably creative scholars, speakers, and educators of our time. Religion and Medicine