Suchergebnisse

Global health-related efforts today are usually shaped by two very different ideological approaches. They either reflect a human rights-based approach to health and equity, or they express religious or humanitarian 'aid'. Susan Holman challenges this stereotypical polarisation through stories designed to help shape a new lens on global health, one that envisions a multi-disciplinary integration of respect for religion and culture with an equal respect for and engagement with human rights and social justice

In this volume, Susan Holman looks at how the Christian tradition, ancient and modern, has contemplated the subject of poverty and encourages the reader to reflect on the social issues of injustice and need. She alternates images from late antiquity and the patristic period with stories from contemporary American life

"Using contemporary theories drawn from health humanities, this volume analyses the nature and effects of disability, medicine, and health discourse in a variety of early Christian literature. In recent years, the "medical turn" in early Christian studies has developed a robust literature around health, disability, and medicine, and the health humanities have made critical interventions in modern conversations around the aims of health and the nature of healthcare. Considering these developments, it has become clear that early Christian texts and ideas have much to offer modern conversations, and that these texts are illuminated using theoretical lenses drawn from modern medicine and public health. The chapters in this book explore different facets of early Christian engagement with medicine, either in itself or as metaphor and material for theological reflections on human impairment, restoration, and flourishing. Through its focus on late antique religious texts, the book raises questions around the social, rather than biological, aspects of illness and diminishment as a human experience, as well as the strategies by which that experience is navigated. The result is an innovative and timely intervention in the study of health and healthcare, that bridges current divides between historical studies and contemporary issues. Taken together, the book offers a prismatic conversation of perspectives on aspects of care at the heart of societal and individual "wellness" today, inviting readers to meet or revisit patristic texts as tracings across a map of embodied identity, dissonance, and corporal care. It is a fascinating resource for anyone working on ancient medicine and health, or the social worlds of early Christianity"--