BACKGROUND Patients at times disagree with medical recommendations for religious reasons. Despite a lively debate about how physicians should respond to patients' religious concerns, little is known about how physicians actually respond. We explored the ways in which physicians interpret and respond to conflict between medical recommendations and patients' religious commitments. METHODS One-t...

W e live in turbulent times. Our epoch is characterized by startling advances on the one hand and conditions of extreme socioeconomic retrogression and distress on the other. Social development is severely uneven and yet deeply intertwined. This has created unexpected convulsions which are exploding across the planet. Both a consequence and a cause of this turbulence is a resurgence of religion...

As club goods, religions face the problem of free riding. Smaller religious clubs, such as cults or sects, can often surmount this problem through communal pressures or by requiring their members to provide easily monitored signals. Generally, however, such tactics will be unavailable or too costly for large denominations, and, as such, these denominations must look for other techniques to avoi...

OBJECTIVE to explore what role religious beliefs of pregnant Muslim women play in their decision-making on antenatal screening, particularly regarding congenital abnormalities and termination, and whether their interpretations of the religious doctrines correspond to the main sources of Islam. DESIGN qualitative pilot study using in-depth interviews with pregnant Muslim women. SETTING one m...

Results: Conflict introduced by religion is common and occurs in 3 types of settings: (1) those in which religious doctrines directly conflict with medical recommendations, (2) those that involve an area in which there is extensive controversy within the broader society, and (3) settings of relative medical uncertainty in which patients “choose faith over medicine.” In response to such conflict...

This collection of sermons appears to us to be specially adapted for the purpose it is intended. It is most difficult for clergymen who officiate at Asylums to preach sermons suitable to their afflicted hearers, and great judgment is required in the selection of the subject preached. Dr. Browne has given the following judicious observations on the religious instruction of the insane: " In the e...

The relationship of religion and health is often misunderstood owing to a tendency to concentrate on the medical model and to ignore the wider context of heath care. A conceptual--as opposed to a historical--examination of this context reveals nine central religious ideas or categories which provide an ethical foundation and heritage for medical practice and health care delivery. These include ...

Contemporary philosophy of religion is often focused, at a theoretical level, on the epistemic value of religious doctrines, and at a practical level, on the possible impact of organized religion on secular society and politics. However, the cultic dimension of religion, such as prayer, religious service, ascetic practices, and other rituals, is considered as completely “irrational” and incompr...