Report: Revival of Pantheism

REPORT: REVIVAL OF PANTHEISM
“Science Meets Spirituality – Doctors, Clergy Discuss Higher Power, Healing – New York, Dec. 15 – This weekend about 700 health professionals, clergy members, social workers and insurance providers will meet in Boston to discuss the power of prayer. Part of a growing merger of spirituality and the sciences, the sixth annual Spirituality and Healing in Medicine conference, sponsored by Harvard Medical School, brings these various groups together to discuss the integration of mind/body medicine into mainstream health care…One of the largest of those studies tracked more than 5,000 Californians over 28 years. Led by Dr. William Strawbridge of the University of California at Berkeley, the research – released in 1997
- showed that people who frequently attended religious services had lower death rates, were more likely to stop smoking, exercised more, had more social contacts and stayed married longer than those who did not…acceptance of spirituality in medicine has grown. According to Dr. Deborah Danoff at the Association of American Medical Colleges in Washington, there has been a ‘significant increase’ in body/mind and spirituality in medicine classes at medical schools nationwide in the past 10 years. Of the 125 medical schools in the United States, 54 now require those classes for graduation, while 38 schools include body/mind medicine as a component of a required class…Koenig hypothesizes that aging baby boomers are growing more religious and influencing the new national enthusiasm for all things spiritual. ‘Our whole society,’ he says, ‘is in a little mini revival.’…” (ABC.News, 12-15-00)