Download E-books Miracle Cures: Saints, Pilgrimage, and the Healing Powers of Belief PDF

By Robert A. Scott

Iconic photos of medieval pilgrims, resembling Chaucer’s making their exhausting approach to Canterbury, conjure time whilst religion was once the one shelter of the ailing and infirm, and hundreds of thousands traveled nice distances to wish for therapeutic. Why, then, in an age of complex biotechnology and drugs, do hundreds of thousands nonetheless move on pilgrimages? Why do trips to special spiritual shrines—such as Lourdes, Compostela, Fátima, and Medjugorje—constitute a big undefined? In Miracle Cures, Robert A. Scott explores those provocative questions and reveals that pilgrimage maintains to supply solutions for plenty of. Its advantages can variety from a demonstrable development in healthiness to accomplish restoration. utilizing examine in biomedical and behavioral technology, Scott examines money owed of miracle treatments at medieval, early smooth, and modern shrines. He inquires into the facility of relics, apparitions, and the transformative nature of sacred travelling and shines new gentle at the roles trust, wish, and emotion can play in healing.

Show description

Read Online or Download Miracle Cures: Saints, Pilgrimage, and the Healing Powers of Belief PDF

Best Comparative Religion books

A New Religious America: How a "Christian Country" Has Become the World's Most Religiously Diverse Nation

Why realizing America's spiritual panorama Is an important problem dealing with Us TodayThe Nineties observed the U. S. army fee its first Muslim chaplain and open its first mosque. There are shortly greater than 300 temples in l. a., domestic to the best number of Buddhists on the earth.

The Sacred and The Profane: The Nature of Religion

A hugely unique and scholarly paintings on spirituality by means of famous historian Mircea Eliade In The Sacred and the Profane, Mircea Eliade observes that whereas modern humans think their global is completely profane, or secular, they nonetheless from time to time locate themselves attached unconsciously to the reminiscence of anything sacred.

Three Eyes for the Journey: African Dimensions of the Jamaican Religious Experience

Reports of African-derived spiritual traditions have typically interested by their retention of African parts. This emphasis, says Dianne Stewart, slights the ways that groups within the African diaspora have created and shaped spiritual that means. during this fieldwork-based learn Stewart exhibits that African humans were brokers in their personal spiritual, ritual, and theological formation.

Muslims, Christians, and the Challenge of Interfaith Dialogue

The assaults of September eleven, 2001 immediately heightened the yank public's sensitivity towards issues of spiritual distinction. Many americans learned not just that non-Muslims have to study extra approximately Islam, but in addition that Muslims needs to higher comprehend and articulate their very own religion to themselves and others.

Additional info for Miracle Cures: Saints, Pilgrimage, and the Healing Powers of Belief