Madness is a sin. Those with emotional disabilities are shunned. Mental illness is not the church’s problem.All three claims are wrong.In Madness, Heather H. Vacek traces the history of Protestant reactions to mental illness in America. She reveals how two distinct forces combined to thwart Christian care for the whole person. The professionalization of medicine worked to restrict the sphere of Christian authority to the private and spiritual realms, consigning healing and care—both physical and mental—to secular, medical specialists. Equally influential, a theological legacy that linked illness with sin deepened the social stigma surrounding people with a mental illness. The Protestant church, reluctant to engage sufferers lest it, too, be tainted by association, willingly abdicated care for people with a mental illness to secular professionals.While inattention formed the general rule, five historical exceptions to the pattern of benign neglect exemplify Protestant efforts to claim a distinctly Christian response. A close examination of the lives and work of colonial clergyman Cotton Mather, Revolutionary era physician Benjamin Rush, nineteenth-century activist Dorothea Dix, pastor and patient Anton Boisen, and psychiatrist Karl Menninger maps both the range and the progression of attentive Protestant care. Vacek chronicles Protestant attempts to make theological sense of sickness (Mather), to craft care as Christian vocation (Rush), to advocate for the helpless (Dix), to reclaim religious authority (Boisen), and to plead for people with a mental illness (Menninger).Vacek’s historical narrative forms the basis for her theological reflection about contemporary Christian care of people with a mental illness and Christian understanding of mental illness. By demonstrating the gravity of what appeared—and failed to appear—on clerical and congregational agendas, Vacek explores how Christians should navigate the ever-shifting lines of cultural authority as they care for those who suffer.
...MoreReview Joseph Williams (2017) Review of "Madness: American Protestant Responses to Mental Illness". Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences (pp. 354-356).
Review Lawrence B. Goodheart (2016) Review of "Madness: American Protestant Responses to Mental Illness". Bulletin of the History of Medicine (pp. 334-335).
Book
Klassen, Pamela E.;
(2011)
Spirits of Protestantism: Medicine, Healing, and Liberal Christianity
(/isis/citation/CBB001213120/)
Thesis
Opp, James William;
(2000)
Religion, Medicine, and the Body: Protestant Faith Healing in Canada, 1880--1930
(/isis/citation/CBB001562497/)
Thesis
Mena, Danilo J.;
(2002)
Freud and American Liberal Protestantism: A Study of the Religion and Health Movement in the United States the Twentieth Century
(/isis/citation/CBB001562486/)
Article
Lüdecke, Cornelia;
(2005)
East Meets West: Meteorological Interests of the Moravians in Greenland and Labrador since the 18th Century
(/isis/citation/CBB000931777/)
Book
James C. Ungureanu;
(2019)
Science, Religion, and the Protestant Tradition: Retracing the Origins of Conflict
(/isis/citation/CBB443109463/)
Article
Low, Morris;
(2008)
Science, Protestant Christianity and Darwinism in Meiji Japan
(/isis/citation/CBB000953458/)
Article
Ciaran Toal;
(2016)
Protestants, Catholics, and Masonic Conspiracies: The British Association in Montreal (1884)
(/isis/citation/CBB843661048/)
Book
Meer, Jitse M. van der;
Mandelbrote, Scott;
(2008)
Nature and Scripture in the Abrahamic Religions: 1700--Present
(/isis/citation/CBB001031753/)
Article
Gutmann, Philipp;
(2008)
Julius Ludwig August Koch (1841--1908): Christian, Philosopher and Psychiatrist
(/isis/citation/CBB000950366/)
Article
Knewstubb, Elspeth;
(2012)
“Believes the Devil has Changed Him”: Religion and Patient Identity in Ashburn Hall, Dunedin, 1882--1910
(/isis/citation/CBB001200712/)
Book
Astore, William J.;
(2001)
Observing God: Thomas Dick, Evangelicalism and Popular Science in Victorian Britain and America
(/isis/citation/CBB000101152/)
Book
Stephen Coss;
(2016)
The Fever of 1721: The Epidemic that Revolutionized Medicine and American Politics
(/isis/citation/CBB269392682/)
Thesis
Schmidt, Jeremy;
(2005)
Melancholy and the Care of the Soul: Religion, Moral Philosophy and Madness in England, 1580--1750
(/isis/citation/CBB001561829/)
Article
Pereira Neto, André de Faria;
Amaro, Jacqueline de Souza;
(2012)
O Centro Espírita Redemptor e o tratamento de doença mental, 1910--1921
(/isis/citation/CBB001420587/)
Article
Houston, R. A.;
(2014)
A Latent Historiography? The Case of Psychiatry in Britain, 1500--1820
(/isis/citation/CBB001201200/)
Thesis
Durst, Dennis Lee;
(2002)
“No Legacy Annuls Heredity from God”: Evangelical Social Reformers and the North American Eugenics Movement
(/isis/citation/CBB001562450/)
Chapter
Blair, Ann;
(2007)
Science and Religion
(/isis/citation/CBB001022574/)
Book
Amster, Ellen;
(2013)
Medicine and the Saints: Science, Islam, and the Colonial Encounter in Morocco, 1877--1956
(/isis/citation/CBB001451453/)
Book
Roberts, Michael;
(2008)
Evangelicals and Science
(/isis/citation/CBB000700835/)
Book
Owen Whooley;
(2019)
On the Heels of Ignorance: Psychiatry and the Politics of Not Knowing
(/isis/citation/CBB842410847/)
Be the first to comment!