Though the current political climate might lead one to suspect that religion and medicine make for uncomfortable bedfellows, the two institutions have a long history of alliance. From religious healers and religious hospitals to religiously informed bioethics and research studies on the impact of religious and spiritual beliefs on physical and mental well-being, religion and medicine have encountered one another from antiquity through the present day. In Religion and Medicine: A History of the Encounter Between Humanity’s Two Greatest Institutions (Oxford University Press, 2020), Dr. Jeff Levin outlines this longstanding history and the multifaceted interconnections between these two institutions. The first book to cover the full breadth of this subject, it documents religion-medicine alliances across religious traditions, throughout the world, and over the course of history. Levin summarizes a wide range of material in the most comprehensive introduction to this emerging field of scholarship to date.

Jeff Levin holds a distinguished chair at Baylor University, where he is university professor of epidemiology and population health, professor of medical humanities, and director of the program on religion and population health at the Institute for the Studies of Religion.

Lindsey Jackson is a PhD student at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada.

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