In Pursuit of the Great Coherence: Healing in the Spaces Between

In the modern world, division has multiplied in global culture, and neither medicine nor religion has been immune to its effects, despite the fact that each seeks to foster a regaining of wholeness. In fact, ‘religion’ stems from ‘religio’, which means re-binding. Contemporary divisions and this conference invite envisioning what coherence would look like, what are the terms of its pursuit, and what are the spaces where coherence is currently missing.  

Flowing from the conference theme, “In Pursuit of the Great Coherence: Healing in the Spaces Between,” plenary sessions will explore coherence at the intersections of miracles/science, congregations/healthcare systems, and religion/spirituality. Attendees will be encouraged to consider these and other spaces in which medicine and religion pursue coherence and can themselves cohere together. This is a non-exhaustive list of questions which might be addressed by conference submissions and conference discussions:

• What are the broken spaces in which we are seeking restoration and wholeness through medicine and religion? Examples include: political divisions, interfaith and multi-faith spaces, inter-generational relationships, and socio-economic divides.
• In spaces where religious harm has occurred, how can faith communities be restored and seek to restore those who have been wounded? What role does medicine play in this restoration?
• What are the religious values and medical practices which promote and sustain coherence in healing, for example, from racism, misogyny, antisemitism, Islamophobia, homophobia?
• From the perspectives of the Abrahamic and non-Abrahamic traditions, what do imaginations of The Great Coherence look like?
• What could be the fruit of these visions and what are the spiritual practices which support an ongoing pursuit of coherence and even moments of effectual change now?

Conference website

The 2024 Conference on Medicine and Religion invites clinicians, scholars, clergy, students, and others to take up these and other questions related to the intersection of medicine and religion. The conference is a forum for exchanging ideas from an array of disciplinary perspectives, from accounts of clinical practices to empirical research to scholarship in the humanities.