The Body as Evidence of Truth

Biomedicine and Enduring Narratives of Religious and Spiritual Healing

Authors

  • Alexandra Roginski Deakin University
  • Cristina Rocha Western Sydney University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/jasr.22167

Keywords:

body, truth, biomedicine, spiritual healing, evidence

Abstract

Practitioners of alternative medicine and spirituality often highlight narratives of healing as evidence for the superiority of their modalities over Western biomedicine. We argue that this form of establishing and defending truth has a long history, and base this analysis on the historical and anthropological study of two periods: the late nineteenth century, when alternative theories about relations of mind, body and spirit flourished against a backdrop of political and religious transformation; and late modernity, when increased self-reflexivity and mistrust of secular institutions such as biomedicine prompted growth in alternative medical systems. Foregrounding the voices of practitioners and ‘clients’, this article outlines how recurring narratives of the healed body position the individual as a person in control of their physical and spiritual journey. In our present time, scrutinizing the healed body as an archive of truth deepens understanding of why denialist beliefs about vaccination and COVID-19 can prove so intractable. 

Author Biographies

  • Alexandra Roginski, Deakin University

    Dr Alexandra Roginski is a historian and visiting fellow of Deakin University and the State Library of New South Wales whose work addresses ideas and practices of the body. Among her publications, she is the author of The Hanged Man and the Body Thief: Finding Lives in a Museum Mystery (Monash University Publishing, 2015) and Science and Power in the Nineteenth-Century Tasman World: Popular Phrenology in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).

  • Cristina Rocha, Western Sydney University

    Professor Cristina Rocha is Professor of Anthropology and the Director of the Religion and Society Research Cluster, Western Sydney University, Australia. She was a fellow at the Paris Institute for Advanced Study (2021–2022) and the President of the Australian Association for the Study of Religion (2018–2019). She co-edits the Journal of Global Buddhism and the Religion in the Americas Brill series.

References

ABS (Australian Bureau of Statistics) 2017 Media Release: 2016 Census Data Reveals ‘No Religion’ is Rising Fast. 27 June. Online: https://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/[email protected]/mediareleasesbyReleaseDate/7E65A144540551D7CA258148000E2B85 (accessed 14 May 2021).

Aechtner, Thomas 2021 Distrust, Danger, and Confidence: A Content Analysis of the Australian Vaccination-Risks Network Blog. Public Understanding of Science 30(1): 16–35. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963662520963258

The Age 1880 Medical Society of Victoria. 8 January: 3.

Aupers, Stef, and Dick Houtman 2006 Beyond the Spiritual Supermarket: The Social and Public Significance of New Age Spirituality. Journal of Contemporary Religion 21(2): 201–222. https://doi.org/10.1080/13537900600655894

Australian Dictionary of Biography 1967 Stephen, George Milner (1812–1894). In Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol. 2. Melbourne University Press, Carlton. Online: https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/stephen-george-milner-1294 (accessed 30 July 2021).

Australian Medical Journal 1895 Prosecution under ‘Medical Act’. 20 October: 479–80.

Baer, Hans 2008 The Australian Dominative Medical System: A Reflection of Social Relations in a Larger Society. Australian Journal of Anthropology 19(3): 252–71. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1835-9310.2008.tb00353.x

Baer, Jonathan 2001 Redeemed Bodies: The Functions of Divine Healing in Incipient Pentecostalism. Church History 70(4): 735–71. https://doi.org/10.2307/3654547

Ballarat Star 1883 Mr George Milner Stephen. 30 July: 3.

Barrow, Logie 1986 Independent Spirits: Spiritualism and English Plebeians, 1850–1910. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London.

Bellanta, Melissa 2008 The Davenport Brothers Down Under: Theatre, Belief and Modernity in 1870s Australia. In Impact of the Modern: Vernacular Modernities in Australia 1870s–1960s, edited by Robert Dixon and Veronica Kelly, 171–84. Sydney University Press, Sydney.

Bongiorno, Frank 2001 Love and Friendship: Ethical Socialism in Britain and Australia. Australian Historical Studies 32(116): 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/10314610108596144

Bongiorno, Frank 2006 In This World and the Next: Political Modernity and Unorthodox in Religion in Australia, 1890–1930. Australian Cultural History 25: 179–207.

Bowman, Marion 1999 Healing in the Spiritual Marketplace: Consumers, Courses and Credentialism. Social Compass 46(2): 181–89.

Bramadat, Paul 2017 Introduction: Seeking a Better Conversation. In Public Health in the Age of Anxiety: Religious and Cultural Roots of Vaccine Hesitancy in Canada, edited by Paul Bramadat, Maryse Guay, Julie Bettinger and Réal Roy, 5–15. University of Toronto Press, Toronto.

Clarke, Philip 2008 Aboriginal Health Practices and Australian Bush Medicine. Journal of the Anthropological Society of South Australia 33: 3–38.

Coulter, Ian, and Evan Willis 2004 The Rise and Rise of Complementary and Alternative Medicine: A Sociological Perspective. Medical Journal of Australia 180(11): 587–89. https://doi.org/10.5694/j.1326-5377.2004.tb06099.x

Csordas, Thomas 1988 Elements of Charismatic Persuasion and Healing. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 2(2): 121–42.

Davie, Grace 1994 Religion in Britain since 1945: Believing without Belonging. Oxford: Blackwell.

Docker, John 1991 The Nervous Nineties: Australian Cultural Life in the 1890s. Oxford University Press, Melbourne.

Dubisch, Jill 2005 Body, Self and Cosmos in ‘New Age’ Energy Healing. In Corporeal Inscriptions: Representations of the Body in Cultural and Literary Texts and Practices, edited by Edyta Lorek-Jezinska and Katarzyna Wieckowska, 221–35. Nicholas Copernicus University Press, Torun.

Frank, Arthur 1995 The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Fuller, Robert 2001 Spiritual, but Not Religious: Understanding Unchurched America. New York: Oxford University Press.

Furnham, Adrian, and Julie Forey 1994 The Attitudes, Behaviors and Beliefs of Patients of Conventional vs. Complementary (Alternative) Medicine. Journal of Clinical Psychology 50(3): 458–69.

Gabarda, Amanda, and Susan Butterworth 2021 Using Best Practices to Address COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy: The Case for the Motivational Interviewing Approach. Health Promotion Practice 22(5): 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1177/15248399211016463

Gabay, Al 2001 Messages from Beyond: Spiritualism and Spiritualists in Melbourne’s Golden Age. Melbourne University Press, Carlton.

Gauthier, François 2019 Religion, Modernity, Globalisation: Nation-State to Market. Routledge, London.

Giddens, Anthony 1991 Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Polity Press, Cambridge.

Global Wellness Institute 2018 The Global Wellness Economy Monitor. Online: https://globalwellnessinstitute.org/industry-research/2018-global-wellness-economy-monitor/ (accessed 21 July 2021).

Goulburn Herald 1881 Mr George Milner Stephen. 30 July: 6.

Halafoff, Anna, Heather Shipley, Pamela D. Young, Andrew Singleton, Mary Lou Rasmussen and Gary Bouma 2020 Complex, Critical and Caring: Young People’s Diverse Religious, Spiritual and Non-Religious Worldviews in Australia and Canada. Religions 11(4): 166. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel11040166

Hanegraaff, Wouter 1998 New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought. State University of New York Press, New York.

Hardinge Britten, Emma 1884 Nineteenth Century Miracles. Lovell & Co, New York.

Heelas, Paul 1996 The New Age Movement: The Celebration of the Self and the Sacralization of Modernity. Blackwell, Oxford.

Heelas, Paul, and Linda Woodhead 2005 The Spiritual Revolution: Why Religion is Giving Way to Spirituality. Blackwell, Oxford.

Hill, Michael 2004 The New Age: A Sociological Assessment. In The Encyclopaedic Sourcebook of New Age Religions, edited by James Lewis, 383–90. Prometheus Books, New York.

Hirst, John 2000 The Sentimental Nation: The Making of the Australian Commonwealth. Oxford University Press, South Melbourne.

Howe, Renate 1980 Protestantism, Social Christianity and the Ecology of Melbourne, 1890–1900. Historical Studies 19(74): 65–66.

Howitt, Anna Maria 1883 The Pioneers of the Spiritual Reformation. The Psychological Press, London.

Howitt, William 1867 Healing Mediums—Experiences of an American Merchant. The Spiritual Magazine (December): 529–35.

Hutchinson, Mark, Cristina Rocha and Kathleen Openshaw 2020 Introduction: Australian Charismatic Movements as a Space of Flows. In Australian Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, edited by M. Hutchinson, C. Rocha and K. Openshaw, 1–21. Brill, Leiden.

Kleinman, Arthur 1988 The Illness Narratives: Suffering, Healing and the Human Condition. Basic Books, New York.

Laqueur, Thomas 2006 Why the Margins Matter: Occultism and the Making of Modernity. Modern Intellectual History 3(1): 111–35. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1479244305000648

Lipka, Michael 2015 A Closer Look at America’s Rapidly Growing Religious ‘Nones’. 13 May. Online: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/05/13/a-closer-look-at-americas-rapidly-growing-religious-nones/ (accessed 30 July 2021).

Martyr, Philippa 2002 Paradise of Quacks: An Alternative History of Medicine in Australia. Macleay Press, Sydney.

McKenna, Mark 1996 The Captive Republic: A History of Republicanism in Australia, 1788–1996. Cambridge University Press, Oakleigh.

Owen, Alex 1990 The Darkened Room: Women, Power and Spiritualism in Late Victorian England. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia.

Owen, Alex 2004 The Place of Enchantment: British Occultism and the Culture of the Modern. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Rhook, Nadia 2020 ‘The Chinese Doctor James Lamsey’: Performing Medical Sovereignty and Property in Settler Colonial Bendigo. Postcolonial Studies 23(1): 58–78. https://doi.org/10.1080/13688790.2020.1727823

Rice, Jenny 2020 Awful Archives: Conspiracy Theory, Rhetoric and Acts of Evidence. Ohio State University Press, Columbus.

Rocha, Cristina 2017 John of God: The Globalization of Brazilian Faith Healing. Oxford University Press, New York.

Rocha, Cristina, and Kathleen McPhillips 2019 #MeToo Catches up with Spiritual Healers: The Case of Brazil’s John of God. The Conversation, 22 February. Online: https://theconversation.com/metoo-catches-up-with-spiritual-healers-the-case-of-brazils-john-of-god-112215

Roe, Jill 1986 Beyond Belief: Theosophy in Australia, 1879–1939. New South Wales University Press, Kensington.

Roe, Jill 1998a Dayspring: Australia and New Zealand as a Setting for the ‘New Age’, from the 1890s to Nimbin. In Intellect and Emotion: Perspectives on Australian History: Essays in Honour of Michael Roe, edited by David Walker and Michael Bennett, 170–87. Centre for Tasmanian Historical Studies, Hobart.

Roe, Jill 1998b ‘Testimonies from the Field’: The Coming of Christian Science to Australia, c. 1890–1910. Journal of Religious History 22(3): 304–319. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9809.00066

Siahpush, Mohammad 1998 Postmodern Values, Dissatisfaction with Conventional Medicine and Popularity of Alternative Therapies. Journal of Sociology 34(1): 58–70. https://doi.org/10.1177/144078339803400106

Singler, Beth 2015 Big Bad Pharma: The Indigo Child Concept and Biomedical Conspiracy Theories. Nova Religio 19(2): 17–29. https://doi.org/10.1525/nr.2015.19.2.17

Singleton, Andrew 2013 Echoes of the Past: The Influence of Spiritualism on Contemporary Belief. In The Spiritualist Movement: Speaking with the Dead in America and Around the World, edited by Christopher Moreman, 35–50. ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara.

Smith, F. B. 1976 Walker, Thomas (1858–1932). In Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol. 6. Melbourne University Press, Carlton. Online: https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/walker-thomas-4789 (accessed 30 July 2021).

Smith, F. B. 2011 Illness in Colonial Australia. Australian Scholarly Publishing, North Melbourne.

Stephen, Harold 1880 George Milner Stephen and his Marvellous Cures. Turner & Henderson, Sydney.

Sydney Daily Telegraph 1880 Mr Milner Stephen’s Marvellous Cures. 31 July: 6.

Taylor, Charles 1991 The Ethics of Authenticity. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.

Turner, Bryan 2009 Reshaping the Sociology of Religion: Globalization, Spirituality and the Erosion of the Social. The Sociological Review 57(1): 186–200. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-954X.2008.01810.x

Ward, Charlotte, and David Voas 2011 The Emergence of Conspirituality. Journal of Contemporary Religion 26(1): 103–121. https://doi.org/10.1080/13537903.2011.539846

Weber, Max 1917 Science as a Vocation. In The Vocation Lectures, edited by David Owen and Tracy Strong, translated by Rodney Livingstone (2004). Hackett, Indianapolis.

Weekly Times 1886 Death of Dr Motherwell. 17 April: 12.

Woodcock, Andrew 2021 Anti-vaxxers ‘exploiting blood clot warning to undermine jab campaign’. 8 April. Online: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/coronavirus-vaccine-antivaxx-astrazeneca-mhra-b1828761.html (accessed 18 August 2021).

Wootton, David 2017 The Invention of Science: A New History of the Scientific Revolution. Harper, New York.

York, Michael 2004 New Age Commodification and Appropriation of Spirituality. In Encyclopaedic Sourcebook of New Age Religions, edited by James Lewis, 369–75. Prometheus Books, New York.

Published

2022-07-22

How to Cite

Roginski, A., & Rocha, C. (2022). The Body as Evidence of Truth: Biomedicine and Enduring Narratives of Religious and Spiritual Healing. Journal for the Academic Study of Religion, 35(2), 168-191. https://doi.org/10.1558/jasr.22167