Introduction

Welcome to world religions from a healthcare perspective! The study of world religions offers you the opportunity to more adequately meet the needs of your patients and clients, because you will possess a more accurate knowledge of their religious beliefs and practices. Extensive research supports the claim that patients who actively participate in a religion enjoy a longer life span and shorter stays in hospital than their counterparts. In a seminal, critical review, Jeff Levin (1994: 1475-82) concluded that the available published research at that time supported an association between religion and health, that the association is valid and was probably causal. Subsequent research has served to confirm this early position. Levin continues to study this phenomenon and a large body of literature has developed in the subsequent years (2001). Evidence that the financial interests of a hospital are better served when the religious needs of patients are addressed while in the hospital has led to a growing use of spiritual assessment tools by both physicians and nurses, and the introduction of spirituality and medicine into the curricula of medical schools. In 1994 only 17 out of 126 medical schools offered courses in medicine and spirituality. By 2004 the number had risen to 84 schools (Fortin and Barnett 2004: 2883). A particularly important finding for our purposes is that the health benefits from religious affiliation are not restricted to one specific religion. As we will note, the number of patients with religious affiliations other than Christianity has significantly increased because the general population of the United States has become more religiously diverse, due to largely unexpected and dramatic effects from the revision of immigration regulations enacted through legislation in 1965. That year, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Immigration and Nationality Act that ended the national quota system that had discriminated against persons from Asia and the Middle East. In the ensuing years preferential access has been given to applicants with scientific and medical expertise needed in the United States. A study by Cornell University in 2002 disclosed that one in ten Muslim households in the United States includes a physician (Allied Media Corporation 2007). The study of world religions will enable you to better understand the

growing number of healthcare professionals who actively embrace a faith tradition. Nearly all of my graduate nursing students report working alongside nurses or physicians who openly hold to a faith other than their own. Hopefully as a result of this volume you will become more aware of the religious minorities in your own community and perhaps more sensitive to the challenges they face in maintaining their religious practices and culture. The majority of legal immigrants, particularly from Central and South America, continues to be Christian since the largest percentage of immigrants to the United States are from Central and South America. But significant numbers of Hindus and Muslims, particularly from South Asia, have immigrated and become naturalized citizens. Mosques and temples sprout up in suburban American neighborhoods to meet the religious needs of the growing population of immigrants and their children. Funding for these projects is underwritten in part by affluent immigrant professionals including those in healthcare and engineering. At the dedication of a new temple in Florida on June 15-19, 2005, a souvenir booklet itemized the names of donors; out of a total of 77 named devotees contributing $10,000 or more each, 42 were listed as “Dr.,” with ten of these double listed as “Drs.,” indicating both marriage partners held doctorates (Hindu Society of Central Florida 2005). On a wider front, your knowledge about the religions of the world here in North America will give you one more window into understanding current events. Predictions of futurists a generation ago that organized religion would just wither away under the advance of secularism have turned out to be wrong. In the wider world peoples are as prone as ever to identify with ancient religious traditions. Religious fundamentalism is alive and even growing within most of the major religions of the world, including Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism. While religious difference is usually only one of several root causes of armed conflicts, it often functions to give a justification for continuing conflicts between tribes or nations. The universally recognized Dalai Lama from Tibet has brought new luster to Buddhism while being castigated by the Chinese government for fomenting a separatist movement. Muslims around the world have been judged by the actions of the terrorists who flew the two airliners loaded with jet fuel into the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001.

We are more than healthcare professionals. We are, first of all, human beings who share with all other human beings, including our patients, the mysteries of existence and the common experience of suffering and the certainty of death. As creatures with a bent to find meaning in our lives we seek to cope with events that seem to defy any rational explanation. The medical explanation of an immediate cause for the death of a child falls