4th Annual Conference on Medicine and Religion
Spiritual Dimensions of Illness and Healing
March 6-8, 2015
Hyatt Regency Cambridge, MA
Call for Abstracts
We invite abstracts for 60-minute panel and workshop sessions, 20-minute paper presentations, and posters that address issues at the intersection of medicine and religion, including but not limited to the conference theme. We also invite student participation in an essay contest.
All proposals must be submitted online by 4pm CST, Thursday, October 23, 2014. For detailed instructions, please visit: www.MedicineandReligion.com.
Conference Theme
Contemporary western culture divides care of the soul from care of the body, apportioning the former to religious communities and the latter to medicine. The division of spiritual and material care of the human person has allowed us to meet many clinical needs efficiently, but it has also wrought unwanted outcomes, including increased mechanization of care and isolation in the experiences of illness and dying. Remedying this situation will require reengaging some critical questions: In what sense is illness a spiritual and/or religious experience? How should particular spiritual and religious needs of patients be addressed and by whom? What is at stake and what is experienced, spiritually, among those who care for patients? How may the powerful social and intellectual forces that continue to dehumanize the patient experience and the practices of health care be overcome? What do religious traditions teach us about these questions?
The 4th Annual Conference on Medicine and Religion invites students, health care practitioners, scholars, and religious leaders to take up these questions and their implications for contemporary medicine, and to do so with reference to religious traditions and practices, particularly those of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
Keynote Speaker
Arthur Kleinman, Harvard University
Plenary Speakers
Margaret Mohrmann, University of Viriginia
Rabbia Saul Berman, Yeshiva University
Ahsan M. Arozullah, Astellas Pharma and Darul Qasim
Conference Sponsors:
Initiative on Health, Religion and Spirituality, Harvard University
Program on Medicine and Religion, University of Chicago
Institute for Spirituality and Health, Texas Medical Center
Albert Gnaegi Center for Health Care Ethics, Saint Louis University
Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities, and History of Medicine, and Initiative on Theology, Medicine, and Culture, Duke University
This conference is supported in part by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation.
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