Introduction

Contrary to predictions that biomedical advances soon would eliminate vestigial needs for religious healers, by the turn of the 21st century, spiritual and religious healing actually garnered new popularity, visibility, and legitimacy. One might view the perceived conventional separation of religion and medicine in 20th-century America as something of a cultural or historical aberration, and the reemergence of religious healing in the 21st century as a rather unsurprising re-recognition of the connection between body and spirit, and between individual, community, and cosmos. This book brings together, for the first time, a thoroughly multidisciplinary and multicultural discussion of religious healing in contemporary United States. Chapters in this volume look at religious healing among Native Americans, European Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans, and Latinos.