Linda L. Barnes and Susan S. Sered (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195167962
- eISBN:
- 9780199850150
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195167962.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
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 ...
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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 the country's society. Increasing numbers of mainstream churches 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 newer types of American religious healers, often found practicing within blocks of prestigious biomedical institutions. This book offers a collection of chapters examining this new reality. It brings together scholars from a wide variety of disciplinary perspectives to explore the field of religious healing as understood and practiced in diverse cultural communities in the United States.Less
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 the country's society. Increasing numbers of mainstream churches 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 newer types of American religious healers, often found practicing within blocks of prestigious biomedical institutions. This book offers a collection of chapters examining this new reality. It brings together scholars from a wide variety of disciplinary perspectives to explore the field of religious healing as understood and practiced in diverse cultural communities in the United States.
Sherine F. Hamdy
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780823249800
- eISBN:
- 9780823252480
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823249800.003.0007
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This chapter offers a critique of the (Orientalist-derived) notion of Islamic fatalism through an ethnographic study of devout Muslims in contemporary Egypt and their flexible attitudes concerning ...
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This chapter offers a critique of the (Orientalist-derived) notion of Islamic fatalism through an ethnographic study of devout Muslims in contemporary Egypt and their flexible attitudes concerning the will of God and the legitimacy of technological intervention in matters of medical therapy and health care. Focussing on several patients receiving regular kidney dialysis treatment in a hospital in Tanta, Egypt, the author documents the ambivalent ways devout Muslims respond to opportunities for organ transplantation, negotiating between their endorsement of official pronouncements made by leading Islamic scholars, their own interpretations of religious source texts, and the shifting material circumstances that make organ transplantation more or less available to them. The chapter concludes by arguing that the term “fatalism” obscures the subtlety and complexity of these negotiations, in so far as it (quite wrongly) presumes that divine will entails passivity or inaction on the part of religious devotees, rendering them incapable of redressing their medical ailments through biotechnological intervention, or of assessing such interventions through a calculated cost-benefit analysis.Less
This chapter offers a critique of the (Orientalist-derived) notion of Islamic fatalism through an ethnographic study of devout Muslims in contemporary Egypt and their flexible attitudes concerning the will of God and the legitimacy of technological intervention in matters of medical therapy and health care. Focussing on several patients receiving regular kidney dialysis treatment in a hospital in Tanta, Egypt, the author documents the ambivalent ways devout Muslims respond to opportunities for organ transplantation, negotiating between their endorsement of official pronouncements made by leading Islamic scholars, their own interpretations of religious source texts, and the shifting material circumstances that make organ transplantation more or less available to them. The chapter concludes by arguing that the term “fatalism” obscures the subtlety and complexity of these negotiations, in so far as it (quite wrongly) presumes that divine will entails passivity or inaction on the part of religious devotees, rendering them incapable of redressing their medical ailments through biotechnological intervention, or of assessing such interventions through a calculated cost-benefit analysis.
