The Healing Gods: Complementary and Alternative Medicine in Christian America
"Dr. Brown gives religious people of all faiths a very useful and learned approach to complementary and alternative medicine and how to integrate it with their spirituality and healing practices." - Herbert Benson, MD, Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School"Candy Gunther Brown cleverly shifts attention from the providers of alternative medicine (supply side) to these movements' consumers (demand side).  Her conclusions are startling and have serious implications for the study of popular religion: bodily desires dictate what we actually value more than the creeds of our churches or the findings of scientific researchers." - Robert C. Fuller, author ofAlternative Medicine and American Religious Life"Candy Brown'sHealing Godsdiscerns relationships that no other scholar has even thought to uncover.  Drawing on impressive historical, sociological, and anthropological methods, Brown convincingly demonstrates the frequently tight, but highly conflicted, connections between alternative medicine and evangelical Christianity.  Her book will be of great interest not only to scholars who study complementary medicine, but also to citizens interested in the surprisingly difficult public policy issues that arise when religion, medicine, and the state come together." - Robert D. Johnston, editor ofThe Politics of Healing: Histories of Twentieth-Century North American Alternative Medicine