Prayer as Transgression?: The Social Relations of Prayer in Healthcare Settings

by Sheryl Reimer-Kirkham, Sonya Sharma, Rachel Brown, Melania Calestani

Overview

Healthcare settings are notoriously complex places where life and death co-exist, and where suffering is an everyday occurrence, giving rise to existential questions. The full range of society's diversity is reflected in patients and staff. Increasing religious and ethnic plurality, alongside decades of secularizing trends, is bringing new attention to how religion and nonreligion are expressed in public spaces. Through critical ethnographic research in Vancouver and London, Prayer as Transgression? reveals how prayer occurs in hospitals, long-term care facilities, and community-based clinics in a variety of forms and circumstances. Prayer occurs quietly on the edges of day-to-day healthcare provision and in designated sacred spaces. Some requests for prayer, however, interrupt and transgress the clinical machinery of a hospital, such as when a patient asks for prayer from the chaplain while the operating room waits. With contributions by researchers, healthcare practitioners, and chaplains, the authors consider how prayer transgresses the clinical priorities that mark healthcare, opening up ways to think differently about institutional norms and social structures. They show how prayer highlights trends of secularization and sacralization in healthcare settings. They also consider the ambivalences about prayer arising from staff and patients' varied views on religion and spirituality, and their associated ethical concerns amidst clinical and workload demands. A window onto religion in the public sphere, Prayer as Transgression? tells much about how people live well together, even in the face of personal crises and fragilities, suffering, diversity, and social change.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780228001652
Publisher:	McGill-Queens University Press
Publication date:	09/23/2020
Series:	Advancing Studies in Religion Series , #9
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Rachel Brown is program coordinator at the Centre for Studies in Religion and Society at University of Victoria.

Table of Contents

Table and Figures vii

Preface ix

Acknowledgments xiii

Introduction: Prayer as Transgression Sheryl Reimer-Kirkham Sonya Sharma 3

1 Expressions of Prayer in the Everyday Sonya Sharma Sheryl Reimer-Kirkham 20

2 Creating an Inclusive Public Sphere: Healthcare and the Role of Prayer Sheryl Reimer-Kirkham Lori G. Beaman 37

3 Mapping Geographies of Prayer Melania Calestani Sonya Sharma Christina Beardsley 54

4 Organizational Practices in the Management of Prayer Sheryl Reimer-Kirkham Christopher De Bono Barry Quinn 71

5 Chaplaincy in Canada and the United Kingdom: Prayer and the Dynamics of Spiritual Care Christina Beardsley Andrew Todd Sheryl Reimer-Kirkham 86

6 Prayer amongst the Many: Clinical Settings and Populations Sheryl Reimer-Kirkham Rachel Brown Christina Beardsley 105

7 Complicating Religious Identities through the Social Relations of Prayer Rachel Brown Paul Bramadat Sylvia Collins-Mayo 122

8 When Some "Body" Prays: Materiality and the Senses in Prayer Rachel Brown Melanin Calestani 138

9 Arts and Nature in Lived Experiences of Prayer Sonya Sharma Melanin Calestani 157

Conclusion: The Power of Prayer Sonya Sharma Sheryl Reimer-Kirkham 173

Appendix 1 Research Methods Brenda Corcoran Smith Sheryl Reimer-Kirkham Sonya Sharma 189

Appendix 2 Recommendations for Healthcare Sheryl Reimer-Kirkham Sonya Sharma Brenda Corcoran Smith 201

Notes 207

References 213

Contributors 230

Index 243

Editorial Reviews

"This is an important, well-conceived book that should be required reading for anyone interested in social scientific approaches to prayer, to the daily work of healthcare organizations, and to the multiple meanings embedded therein. The authors raise as many themes and questions as they address and speak to one another in carefully framed and connected chapters. I learned a great deal from this volume — it is an excellent example of how to do interdisciplinary research across national contexts in thoughtful analytic ways." Social Forces


"The authors' ethnographic fieldwork provides a strong framework for their findings. Their use of a qualitative and ethnographic approach, which has so rarely been used in the examination of prayer, is exciting. Prayer as Transgression? is a study of prayer-in-action, of prayer 'in the thick of it' - this book makes a major contribution to the way in which prayer can be understood." Peter J. Collins, University of Durham

From the Publisher