Throughout much of the modern era, faith healing received attention only when it came into conflict with biomedical practice. During the 1990s, however, American culture changed dramatically and religious healing became a commonplace feature of our society. Increasing numbers of mainstream churches and synagogues began to hold held "healing services" and "healing circles." The use of complementary and alternative therapies-some connected with spiritual or religious traditions-became widespread, and the growing hospice movement drew attention to the spiritual aspects of medical care. At the same time, changes in immigration laws brought to the United States new cultural communities, each with their own approaches to healing. Cuban santeros, Haitian mambos and oungans, Cambodian Buddhist priests, Chinese herbalist-acupuncturists, and Hmong shamans are only a few of the newer types of American religious healers, often found practicing within blocks of prestigious biomedical institutions.

This book offers a richly comprehensive collection of essays examining this new reality. It brings together, for the first time, scholars from a wide variety of disciplinary perspectives to explore the relatively uncharted field of religious healing as understood and practiced in diverse cultural communities in the United States. The book will be an invaluable resource for students of anthropology, religious studies, American studies, and ethnic studies, health care professionals, clergy, and anyone interested in the changing American cultural landscape.

1. The cult of the saints and the reimagination of the space and time of sickness in twentieth-century American Catholicism
2. The "spiritual healing project" : a study of the meaning of spiritual healing in the United Church of Christ
3. Ritual and magic : two diverse approaches to inner healing in the Cambodian American community
4. Procreating women and religion : the politics of spirituality, healing, and childbirth in America
5. Healing into wholeness in the Episcopal church
6. Miraculous migrants to the City of Angels : perceptions of El Santo Nino de Atocha and San Simon as sources of health and healing
7. "God made a miracle in my life" : Latino Pentecostal healing in the borderlands
8. The gathering of traditions : the reciprocal alliance of history, ecology, health, and community among the contemporary Chumash
9. Religious healing among war-traumatized African immigrants
10. Making Wanga : reality constructions and the magical manipulation of power
11. "Our work is change for the sake of justice" : Hope Community, Minneapolis, Minnesota
12. Communing with the dead : spiritual and cultural healing in Chicano/a communities
13. Spirituality and aging in the San Francisco Japanese community
14. Healing as resistance : reflections upon new forms of American Jewish healing
15. Healing in feminist Wicca
16. Sexual healing : self-help and therapeutic Christianity in the ex-gay movement
17. "Jesus is my doctor" : healing and religion in African American women's lives
18. Gender and healing in Navajo society
19. Multiple meanings of Chinese healing in the United States
20. Rituals of healing in African American spiritual churches
21. Complementary and alternative medicine in America's "two Buddhisms"
22. La Mesa del Santo Nino de Atocha and the Conchero dance tradition of Mexico-Tenochtilan : religious healing in urban Mexico and the United States
23. Subtle energies and the American metaphysical tradition
24. Taking seriously the nature of religious healing in America
25. Dimensions of Islamic religious healing in America
26. Health, faith traditions, and South Asian Indians in North America
27. Hmong Shamanism : Animist spiritual healing in America's urban heartland
28. Spirituality and the healing of addictions : a Shamanic drumming approach
29. The healing genes
30. Religion and healing : the four expectations
31. Afterword : a physician's reflections