Conflict and Cooperation

Chapter 1 traces the history of the encounter between religion and medicine from the therapeutic cults of the ancients, East and West, to the healing ministry of Christ and to the work and writings of myriad later figures. These include medieval physician-philosophers such as Moses Maimonides, John Wesley and the fathers of the natural hygiene movement, and pioneers of contemporary discourse on religion’s influences on health and healing. This history also involves important figures from Christianity, Judaism, and Islam and from Asian religions and new religious movements. Unpacking this history entails weighing competing narratives about the relations between the institutions of religion and medicine, which at times have been characterized by conflict and at other times by cooperation.