Topics in Christianity (349-0-26)

Topic

Christian Healing and Dying

Instructors

Phil Davis

Meeting Info

Online: Mon, Wed, Fri 2:00PM - 4:00PM

Overview of class

This Mortal Life: An Introduction to Healing and Dying in the History of Christianity:
Does immorality make you sick? Can bad behavior cause physical ailments? Is it possible to learn how to perform healing miracles—to mend broken limbs, cure diseases, and even raise the dead? Does the Devil possess healing powers or do those belong only to Jesus, the Great Physician? And when healing does not come and life nears its end, how should one prepare for death's arrival?

This course explores the history of three interlocking experiential themes in the history of Christianity: sickness, healing, and death. We will ask how the meanings of these themes have been defined in particular historical contexts in tandem with other concepts that carry significant power to shape the lived experience of Christianity—concepts like holiness and sin, spirit and body, damnation and salvation.

We will begin by studying prophecies and promises of healing in Biblical texts and end with present-day Pentecostal attempts to bring those promises to fruition. As we move through the intervening centuries, we will consider both early Christian practices of imitating Christ through suffering and much later attempts to deny suffering a meaningful place in Christian devotional ethics. We will study the establishment of early Christian hospitals as well as Christians' relationship to medieval healthcare and modern medicine. In our present context of sprawling, professionalized hospitals, we will ask: where does the religious inheritance of modern healthcare stop and the domain of secular medicine begin? Also in view are questions of Christianity and mental health, the theological problem of pain, the effects of notions of Heaven and Hell on how Christians experience loss, and what it means to think of death as an enemy of God. We will take stock of the social meanings of Christian healing, too, especially the evangelistic value of miracles and the role healing plays in liberation theologies that center the experiences of marginalized and oppressed people. By the end of the term, we will be able to navigate the rich variety of Christian ways of relating to sickness, healing, and death. We will become conversant in how each scene of pain, comfort, healing, or loss discloses particular ways of relating to the body, to other people, to suprahuman beings (for example, God, Satan, Saints, angels, demons, or Nature), and to the very substance of what it means to be Christian. The course counts toward Religion, Health and Medicine (RHM) religious studies major concentrations.

Learning Objectives

Students should come away from this class with a strong ability to analyze primary sources in their contexts. A significant portion of class time will be devoted to discussion of assigned readings and lecture themes. Paper assignments will prompt students to synthesize and analyze key themes and historical developments from across the scope of the class, and they will involve original analysis of the course's assigned primary source readings. Students will be evaluated on their ability to think with the course materials more than their repetition and memorization of key points. Students will become familiar with both broad trajectories and specific episodes in the long history of the intersection of Christianity, healing, and medicine. Students will also come away from the course understanding how Christians' relationships to suffering and death have changed over time in concert with other developments in Christian approaches to health and medicine. Students will be equipped to reflect on the ongoing, contested interaction between Christian medicine and secularized, professionalized medicine. In all this, students will become better aware of the history of how we care for our bodies and how we approach the end of life.

Teaching Method

Lecture on Zoom

Class Materials (Required)

Course pack on Canvas

Class Attributes

Ethical and Evaluative Thinking Foundational Disci
Synchronous:Class meets remotely at scheduled time