- CC 300 GX - Faith and Healing
- 3 Credits
TR 1:20-2:35 pm- Professor Grundmann
Cross-listed with THEO 346AX/THEO 546AX
While faith-healing has been a common practice for ages within the various religions and cultures throughout the world it has recently become the topic not just of scholarly study but also of scientific research as well. To the rational secular mind faith-healing and faith-healing phenomena exert a certain fascination, which make people wonder what’s going on. Can it really be the way in which people speak and write or report about it? Is it not fake? Is it genuine and authentic?
Beyond its mere curiosity for the common public, faith-healing poses a host of interesting and serious issues of general scientific and theological character like trust in God, miracle working, existence of supernatural powers and spirits and the like. Can that, what appears to be ‘faith’ in the eyes of pious religious people, not just be the outcome of a self-betrayal distorting ‘reality’? Can ‘faith’ not be explained as a strong ‘psychic’ potential for healing and as such as a means of an autotherapeutic device of humans for the sake of staying alive and helping to overcome serious health crises? If it is something like this, can such ‘faith’ not also become a powerful resource to be availed of by medical profes¬sion¬als/psychotherapists and the health-care providers to achieve their desired goal of restoring people to health? This would explain the increased interest these people have in the subject in order to tap this source as an assumed ‘cheap’ means of achieving their goals. But what, then, is ‘faith’ this paramount element of any religious life?
This course will explore the multifaceted, highly complex relationships between faith and its impact on healing or becoming well again. This also will shed light on the interface of medicine, theology, the contemporary mind set and epistemology and, of course on the perception of faith and personal trust. It also will give insights into the history of faith-healing and faith-healing movements with special reference to the 20th century develop¬ments in the US besides identifying various elements which make faith-healing ‘work’.
Literature:
1) Harold G. Koenig, Medicine, Religion, and Health, Templeton, 2008
2) Matthews, D., The Faith Factor: Proof of the Healing Power of Prayer, Penguin, 1999
3) Randi, J., The Faith Healers, Prometheus, 1989
4)Sulmasy, D., The Healer’s Calling, Paulist, 1997
Optional:
1) Harold G. Koenig, Michael E. McCullough, David B. Larson, Handbook of Religion and Health, Oxford University Press 2001
2) Randi Henderson / Richard Marek, Here is my Hope – A book of healing and prayer, Doubleday, New York 2001
3) Jeff Levin, God, Faith, and Health, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York 2001
Dates of classes: JAN.: 12, 17, 19, 24, 26, 31 - FEB.: 2, 7, 9, 14, 16, 21, 23, 28 – MAR.: 1; 20 (term paper given), 22, 27, 29 – APR.: 3, 5, 10, 12, 17, 19, 24, 26,; MAY 1, 3 (term paper due) , 8.
