Is Christianity Bad for Your Health?
نویسنده
چکیده
Without Christianity, the world would be a better place. So says a growing body of scholarship on the effects of religion on physical and mental health. The central claim is that Christian belief and practices are neutral or positively bad for your health, and that studies to the contrary are badly flawed, “weak,” or inconsistent with other studies and, hence, can be ignored. In one recent article, “The Crazy-Making in Christianity,” Marlene Winell and Valerie Tarico find psychological harm in multiple aspects of Christian teaching and practice. I analyze Winell and Tarico’s claims in light of a historically important pair of articles on religion and health that elegantly highlights the perils to which authors in this genre are vulnerable. The key lessons to be learned from this literature critical of Christianity’s effects on health are, first, that these articles are often selective in their focus; second, that the notions of “religion” or “Christianity” operative in these articles are selectively narrow or not welldefined at all; third, that the standards used to critique Christianity’s role in health are selectively applied; fourth, that the ethical frameworks of these critiques are themselves problematic; and, fifth, that multiple misleading or false statements are invoked in order to buttress their theses.
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