ABOUT THIS BOOK

Healing to All Their Flesh asks us to step back and carefully rethink the relationship between religion and health. It does so by examining overlooked issues of theology and meaning that lie at the foundation of religion’s supposed beneficial function. Is a religion-health relationship consistent with understandings of faith within respective traditions? What does this actually imply? What does it not imply? How have these ideas been distorted? Why does this matter—for medicine and healthcare and also for the practice of faith? Is the ultimate relation between spirit and flesh, as mediated by the context of human belief and experience, a topic that can even be approached through empirical observation, scientific reasoning, and the logic of intellectual discourse?8 pag e photo insert

The editors of this collection, Drs. Jeff Levin and Keith G. Meador, have gathered together the writings of leading Jewish and Christian theological, pastoral, ethical, and religious scholars to answer these important questions. Contributors include Richard Address, William Cutter, Elliot N. Dorff, Dayle A. Friedman, Stanley Hauerwas, Warren Kinghorn, M. Therese Lysaught, Stephen G. Post, John Swinton, and Simkha Y. Weintraub, with a foreword by Samuel E. Karff.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Jeff Levin, PhD, MPH, is University Professor of Epidemiology and Population Health and director of the Program on Religion and Population Health in the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor University. He also serves as professor of medical humanities at Baylor and as adjunct professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University School of Medicine.

Keith G. Meador, MD, ThM, is professor and vice chair for faculty affairs in psychiatry and professor of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University. He is also director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics and Society, and on the faculty of the Graduate Department of Religion at Vanderbilt. Dr. Meador also serves as the director of mental health and chaplaincy through the VISN 6 MIRECC within the Department of Veterans Affairs.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword / ix
Rabbi Samuel E. Karff, DHL

Acknowledgments / xiii

Prologue. The Intersection of Spirituality, Theology, and Health / 3
Jeff Levin

Part 1: Jewish Perspectives

1. Cure and Healing, Where God Met Science: Four Decades of Spiritual Progress / 17
William Cutter

2. Contemplating a Theology of Healthy Aging
Richard Address / 26

3. Dwindling or Grateful: Toward a Resilient Old Age / 52
Dayle A. Friedman

4. Using Jewish Law to Respond to Contemporary Issues in Bioethics / 65
Elliott N. Dorff

5. Give Me Your Hand: Exploring Judaism’s Approach to the Relationship of Spirit and Health / 97
Simkha Y. Weintraub

Part 2: Christian Perspectives

6. St. Thomas Aquinas and the End(s) of Religion, Spirituality, and Health / 123
Warren Kinghorn

7. Beguiling Religion: The Bifurcations and Biopolitics of Spirituality and Medicine / 150
M. Therese Lysaught

8. The Ontological Generality in Spirituality and Health / 186
Stephen G. Post

9. From Health to Shalom: Why the Religion and Health Debate Needs Jesus John / 219
Swinton

10. Suffering Presence: Twenty-Five Years Later / 242
Stanley Hauerwas

Epilogue. Theology and Health: Challenges and Possibilities / 259
Keith G. Meador

About the Contributors / 271

Index / 272

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