Religion in Medicine and Health

Jeff Levin’s Religion and Medicine (2020) offers a substantial review of the multicultural intersections of these significant threads of the human story. While Levin’s framing of the conceptual significance and intellectual implications of these intersections in the last few decades falls short, the arc of his historical overview and his inclusive commitments give readers a broad sense of this story through the lens of religion and public health. This essay considers the conceptual, sociopolitical, and intellectual dynamics and implications within his historical recounting, with particular attention to the distortions of both religion and medicine that arise from commodified presumptions of the merit-based cultural notion that “we get what we deserve.” In order to best interpret how the significant human dimension of religion and spirituality should be understood in considering the health and care of pluralistic diverse communities, it is crucial to examine the implications of the intersections of religion and medicine in clinical practice and in the health of communities.