Karen Ann Quinlan fell into a coma in 1975. The high-profile legal case over her parents’ wish to remove her ventilator shapes American patients’ rights today.
Articles on Religion and health
Displaying 1 - 20 of 27 articles
Mainstream medical organizations have criticized ‘restorative reproductive medicine,’ but some Catholics who follow church teachings consider it a welcome alternative.
In medieval Japan, healing might mean taking medicine, undergoing an exorcism or sidestepping harm in the first place by avoiding inauspicious days.
Your doctor’s MD emerged from the Dark Ages, where practicing rational “human medicine” was seen as an expression of faith and maintaining one’s health a religious duty.
Chaplaincy emerged as a professional field in the mid-20th century. In the years since, their roles have evolved and they have also come to include many diverse religious traditions.
Father Damien’s legacy has inspired health providers and humanitarians for over a century.
Churches’ struggles to respond to the plague and constant warfare in the 14th and 15th centuries helped shape the kinds of Christianity in the world today.
Responses to COVID-19 health guidelines have been polarized, including in churches. But religious communities have a long history of involvement in public health.
Fear of prosecution and a history of distrust toward the government have contributed to some fundamentalist groups’ views of medicine.
Ethiopia’s main religions need to take an emotional distance from politics and find a neutral space so they can get moral clarity.
A historian of the Bible in American life explains how Bible verses are being picked out of context to make a case for the anti-vaxxer movement.
A history of how African American congregations in Philadelphia weathered crises over 200 years.
Are masks a religious matter, or is religion being used to suit people’s political agendas? A scholar of Christian conservatism and culture argues both can be true.
A choral conductor and scholar of sacred music explains what’s missing from church worship with singing banned due to the pandemic – and why live choir rehearsals are still a ways off
If worshippers congregate outside amid coronavirus fears, it wouldn’t be unprecedented. Early settlers used outside worship to sanctify colonized land, and slaves relied on it to meet in secret.
From magic bowls to holy shirts, Muslim cultures used various devices to protect the user from harm starting in the 11th century. Many of these objects were beautifully designed, too.
Given that some people look to religious authorities not health officials in times of crisis, faith leaders can promote hand-washing and social distancing to slow the spread of coronavirus.
A scholar went on a Voodoo pilgrimage in Haiti and learned how an oppressive slave past has shaped its religious present.
For centuries, Westerners viewed Islam as an inherently violent religion. But the struggle today, for all religions, including Christianity, is between liberals and conservatives, fundamentalists and moderates, reason and revelation.
For a biologist like me, the interesting questions about religion have always been where did it come from and why did it evolve? I taught evolutionary biology in a Catholic University in the most Catholic…
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