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11. Saints and Health: A Micro-Macro Interaction Perspective
- The University of Alabama Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
The primary purpose of a concluding chapter is to reduce the information provided in the preceding chapters to a coherent framework. From this vantage, it is important to state two perspectives I bring to the assignment. The ¤rst is derived from micro-macro interaction theory. While this approach is most often associated with the relationship of some locality to a larger system, I believe it equally useful with respect to an individual (as locality) and an institution. A bene¤t of this approach is the encompassing of interaction between the smaller and larger entities as dialectic—dynamic and interactive (cf. Dewalt and Pelto 1985:4–5). The micro-macro analysis approach also allows for the observation that no two cults or sects, although responding to similar pressures, respond in identical ways (Smith 1977). Differential responses may be due, in part, to differences in the extent to which they, as “movements of religious protest” (B. Wilson 1970:7), seek to participate fully in the larger system.1 Micro-macro interaction perspective allows for the consideration that some individuals may participate more fully and energetically than others. It can be used to explain why some cults and sects continue to grow and develop into more complex organizations, such as denominations and churches (Stark and Bainbridge 1985:22), while others do not. A corollary is best demonstrated in the introductory chapter of my earlier work (Adams 2000:3) on the nexus of anthropology and theology, which states that it is critical that religions be meaningful to believers. This notion is important here because membership in a cult or sect provides believers an ef¤cient means by which religion becomes meaningful . How believers do so, however, can take many different forms because the locus of religion is an “individual experience,” as William James reminds us (in Macklin’s chapter). The second perspective comes from medical anthropology and the treatment 11 Saints and Health A Micro-Macro Interaction Perspective Walter Randolph Adams of dis-ease. Such an approach is appropriate because nearly all of the chapters mention that the hero, icon, or saint is associated with healing in some way. Whether an individual was actually healed by participating in events or activities associated with a particular hero, icon, or saint is not important; the important issue is that the follower believes the dis-ease ebbed or disappeared by virtue of the hero, icon, or saint’s intercession. This idea is analogous to that epitomized by the work of medical folklorists and anthropologists (Baer et al. 1998; Hufford 1988; O’Connor 1998) who stress that patients are more likely to continue the treatment recommended by the caregiver if it is consistent with their worldview. THE BELIEVER Passariello provides us a common vantage point with her de¤nitions of hero, icon, and saint from her chapter on Che: Whereas a hero, and sometimes an antihero, is remembered as someone endowed with special traits of courage and strength and is respected for his or her noble pursuits, an icon is a person whose being becomes an enduring symbol of cultural specialness, often with a tinge of religion-like awe. To complete the related trio, a saint is an of¤cially recognized, often institutionalized person who is entitled to public veneration beyond simple respect and admiration and who also may be someone who is capable of interceding with the cosmos—someone with not only special status but perhaps even special power. Obviously a gradation exists between these classes of individuals.2 However, what seems to make a difference is not necessarily what the individual did in his or her lifetime, but what their followers have done to elevate him or her to particular statuses. Adding to the complexity, as Macklin tells us, in the early history of the Church there were at least two types of saints—“red” and “white.” However, they all have in common at least one element, as Macklin observes: all serve as role models. The primary difference among these categories is how much sanctity is ascribed to them by believers and, for of¤cial saints, who does the sanctifying. Still, as Hopgood states, “The sacred exists typically within religions , but the sacred does not require the frame of religion. The sacred . . . is a central concept in understanding what two such seemingly disparate phenomena as these [Fidencio and James Dean] have in common.” All of the personages described in these pages have been sancti¤ed by their followers and at one level they may be regarded...