Making Medicine Care

Abstract

In their book, Hostility to Hospitality, Michael and Tracy Balboni describe the social and historical forces that have conspired to separate religion from the practice of medicine. Seeing the harm in that separation, and offering evidence that both patients and clinicians are open to more of a religious and spiritual presence in caregiving, the authors propose a strategy for reintroducing religion to the clinic. Progress toward their commendable goal of “restoring hospitality to medicine” would be facilitated by a more complete understanding of how secular and sacred spiritualties inform the practice of medicine, analysis of the parallels between the introduction of ethics and the demise of religion in medicine, and consideration of the predictable problems with “structural pluralism,” the authors’ proposal for reuniting religion and medicine.