How much accommodation does your practice have to make for employees' religious beliefs? Recent court decisions offer guidance.

The investigation of spiritual/religious factors in health is clearly warranted and clinically relevant. This special section explores the persistent predictive relationship between religious variables and health, and its implications for future research and practice. The section reviews epidemiological evidence linking religiousness to morbidity and mortality, possible biological pathways link...

Adaptations, modifications, and realignments of religious doctrine and practice can be found in any period of social history. It can be official and highly orchestrated (as in Vatican II) but more often it takes a subjective and reactionary form (as in the Hindutva movement). This paper promotes the idea of “experimental religion” as both an analytical concept and an observable set of behaviors...

The relationship between religious obligations and female genital cutting is explored using data from Burkina Faso, a religiously and ethnically diverse country where approximately three-quarters of adult women are circumcised. Data from the 2003 Burkina Faso Demographic and Health Survey are used to estimate multilevel models of religious variation in the intergenerational transmission of fema...

BACKGROUND Patients' religious commitments and religious communities are known to influence their experiences of illness and their medical decisions. Physicians are also dynamic partners in the doctor-patient relationship, yet little is known about the religious characteristics of physicians or how physicians' religious commitments shape the clinical encounter. OBJECTIVE To provide a baseline...

Historic social study that aims to describe the circumstances of creation of the Union of Brazilian Religious Nurses (UBRN); to analyze the strategies of the religious nurses in their seek for space in nursing area; to comment the importance UBRN for education area and nursing practice. Primary sources: written documents and oral report; secondary sources: books, articles, thesis and dissertati...

The recent deaths of two children from parental decisions to rely on faith healing rather than medical treatment raises fundamental questions about the extent and limits of religious liberty in a liberal democratic society. This essay seeks to identify and critically examine three central issues internal to the ethics of religious communities that engage in faith healing regarding children: (1)...

The empirical literature from epidemiological and clinical studies regarding the relationship between religious factors (eg, frequency of religious attendance, private religious involvement, and relying on one's religious beliefs as a source of strength and coping) and physical and mental health status in the areas of prevention, coping, and recovery was reviewed. Empirical studies from the pub...