Religion, Spirituality and Medicine: Insights into Contemporary Perspectives

Dear Colleagues,

The study of the relationships between religion, spirituality, and medicine is an important and expanding field of study, especially in the light of the recent COVID-19 pandemic, which stressed the need to support healthcare professionals, patients, and their families in a time of exceptional social, healthcare, and psychological disruption. The pandemic was accompanied by a deep, widespread sense of fear, isolation, and existential uncertainty that gave rise to—especially on the part of patients admitted to intensive care units and their families—an unprecedented demand for holistic care focused not only on the body but also on psychosocial and spiritual aspects.

The joint care of body and soul, so dramatically underlined by the COVID-19 pandemic, is essential in all religions and spiritual disciplines, and, more implicitly, all healing practices, such as acupuncture, Ayurveda, and traditional medicines from many regions and cultures around the globe. Western medicine is the great exception in that its history is characterized, in its orthodox versions, by the radical opposition between scientific and spiritual/religious discourse, and consequently between standardized clinical intervention and the care of the soul. As Foucault shows, in his 'Naissance de la Clinique’, in the new epistemological articulation of modernity, health and salvation are disjointed, thus leading to two main consequences: on the one hand, the growing legitimacy of the figure of the physician leads him to outflank and replace that of the priest, thus colonizing the field of the sacred with his expert knowledge; on the other hand, "disease becomes detached from the metaphysics of evil to which, for centuries, it had belonged" (Foucault 1969, 222), to become an object of relevance and discursive value in and of itself within a new configuration of knowledge about the body (Dei 2004, 10).

However, despite the dominance of this model of care based on the physician's expert scientific knowledge, and divorced from the therapeutic role of the sacred, since the 1960s, we have witnessed a process of re-enchantment of the world, that is, a "rebirth" of fascination with the sacred in a relationship with the divine that can be perceived as both immanent and transcendent. This sacralizing vision of life, and thus of nature, the human body, and the "invisible", has also meant a progressive rapprochement of the practical‒discursive universes of health and salvation, of which the recent COVID-19 pandemic is only one current form. Examples are the importance of the holistic framework typical of "New Age" and "contemporary spiritualities" (Palmisano and Pannofino 2020), and the centrality of the collective and miraculous healing practices of the Pentecostal and charismatic revival. Further examples are the success of so-called "alternative and complementary therapies" (CAM) and nonconventional medicines (MNCs) defined as such in reference to their development outside—or on the periphery of—Western biomedicine. In other words, as Schirripa (2012, 14) states, "the nexus between health and salvation, between the sphere of therapy and that of religion, seems to reassert itself in contemporary contexts with full force". More precisely, in today’s societies, specific conceptions of health, the sacred, and the political‒economic continuum compete to inform the legitimate culture of disparate fields, from medicine to religion and economics, where they intersect, overlap, and reciprocally challenge or inform each other (Di Placido, Strhan and Palmisano 2022).

The intersections between religion, spirituality, and medicine have so far been mainly discussed by nursing and medical scholars, although there is also a growing interest on the part of disciplines as diverse as medical humanities, anthropology, and sociology. Despite its pioneering role and its merits, this (mainly nursing and biomedical) literature relies on an a-historical and essentializing understanding of spirituality, without recognizing that “social discourses around spirituality and religion have commonalities” but also “differences across international contexts” (Pesut et al. 2008, 2804). We contend that the current conceptualizations of religion and spirituality in the healthcare literature and practice promote a simplified understanding of spirituality as substantial, individualized, and antithetical to traditional religions. This is largely due to the disciplinary lenses (of medicine and nursing and also partly psychology and theology) from which these conceptualizations arise and a lack of socio-historical understanding of the complexity and multilayered nature of categories such as religion and spirituality (Palmisano and Pannofino 2020). As a consequence, the paucity of sociological research on the relationships between religion, spirituality, and care of the body leaves the field open to the proliferation of partial readings devoid of historical, discursive, and practical accounts of the complex interactions among these fields in different places and historical periods (Di Placido and Palmisano 2023).

In this Special Issue, we are pleased to invite social science scholars to explore, discuss, and unveil the intersections of religion, spirituality, and medicine across geographical contexts, fields of practice, and through a plurality of methodological and theoretical perspectives. More specifically, we are interested in understanding whether and how the practical‒discursive universes of religion, spirituality, and medicine overlap, blur, and/or clash in specific case studies (e.g., public institutions, the holistic milieux, and religious groups and movements) and how social actors (e.g., hospital managements, healthcare professionals, patients, religious leaders, and spiritual seekers) navigate the porous boundaries between these disparate yet overlapping dimensions of life.

In this Special Issue, original research articles, theoretical contributions, and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following: 

• Definitional issues of religion and spirituality in the practice of medicine.
• The inclusion of spirituality in healthcare contexts.
• The progressive role of therapeutic discourses in spiritual and religious practices and groups.
• Religious and spiritual healing groups and modalities.
• The governance of religious diversity in public institutions.
• Exploration of the “health/salvation” nexus.
• Perspectives and approaches to the study of religion, spirituality, and medicine.

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 200‒300 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to the Guest Editors, Professor Dr Stefania Palmisano ([email protected]) and Dr Matteo Di Placido ([email protected]), or to the Assistant Editor of Religions, Ms Margaret Liu ([email protected]). Abstracts will be reviewed by the Guest Editors for the purpose of ensuring that articles fit properly within the scope of the Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer review.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Deadline for abstract submissions: 30 September 2023
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 November 2023

Prof. Dr. Stefania Palmisano
Dr. Matteo Di Placido
Guest Editors

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• religion
• spirituality
• medicine
• health and salvation
• sociology
• sociology of religion
• boundaries