Candy Gunther Brown > Quotes

“Claiming devotion to Jesus is the ultimate evangelical argument stopper.”
― Candy Gunther Brown, The Healing Gods: Complementary and Alternative Medicine in Christian America

“Gotquestions.org describes acupuncture as “rooted in superstition, occultism, and false religions that are in direct opposition to God’s Word” yet vindicates Christian participation by asking rhetorically, “If inserting acupuncture needles into a person’s body at strategic points results in physical healing or relief from pain, does it matter if the practitioner is wrong about why it works?”
― Candy Gunther Brown, The Healing Gods: Complementary and Alternative Medicine in Christian America

“Asking Do Chiropractors Pray? in a book by that title, B. J. Palmer answered definitively that “no Chiropractor would pray on his knees in a supplication to some invisible power.” He conceptualized “Innate Intelligence WITHIN man as the all-wise, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent Director-General who asserts that THE ONLY possible cause and cure are WITHIN man.”
― Candy Gunther Brown, The Healing Gods: Complementary and Alternative Medicine in Christian America

“In today’s cultural climate, it is hard to imagine the NCCAM funding research on the efficacy of Christian healing-prayer practices, although numerous published studies report health benefits from Christian prayer and churchgoing. Yet CAM advocates use studies claiming efficacy to justify government support of metaphysical healing despite an absence of evidence that practices such as meditation and yoga are more effective than Christian practices or nonreligious physical exercise and relaxation in reducing stress or conveying other health benefits. If the same logic were followed for CAM as for Christian prayer—in other words, if the law equally protected and restrained both sets of practices—neither would be funded by the public purse.”
― Candy Gunther Brown, The Healing Gods: Complementary and Alternative Medicine in Christian America

“Evangelicals who disdain religious combinations as idolatrous worship of other gods domesticate healing practices rooted in and productive of metaphysical religion by linguistically reclassifying these practices from the category of illegitimate “New Age” spirituality to that of scientifically legitimate, effective therapeutics.”
― Candy Gunther Brown, The Healing Gods: Complementary and Alternative Medicine in Christian America

“Homeopaths make medicines out of such unlikely substances as dog’s ear wax, dental plaque, vomit, tears from a weeping young girl, polyurethane, Braille paper, mercury, Stonehenge, arsenic, New York City, live scorpions, blood from an AIDS patient, and cancerous tumors. Some homeopathic remedies are not material but “imponderables” such as moonlight (luna), computer-terminal rays, wind (ventus), the north pole of a magnet (magnetis polus arcticus), and a vacuum (i.e., empty space).”
― Candy Gunther Brown, The Healing Gods: Complementary and Alternative Medicine in Christian America

“The “typical North American chiropractor,” regardless of whether a broad scope/mixer (34 percent), a focused scope/straight (19 percent), or a middle scope (47 percent), believes that “adjustment should not be limited to musculoskeletal conditions” (90 percent), “subluxation” is a “significant contributing factor in sixty-two percent of visceral ailments,” and only 40 percent of prescribed medicines are beneficial; 50 percent question the value of immunization.”
― Candy Gunther Brown, The Healing Gods: Complementary and Alternative Medicine in Christian America

“Although interpreted as nonreligious, chiropractic is premised on a vitalistic, harmonial philosophy and fulfills many of the same functions as religion. More than a medical service, chiropractic helps explain life’s struggles, cope with present stressors, and anticipate the future with hope.”
― Candy Gunther Brown, The Healing Gods: Complementary and Alternative Medicine in Christian America

“According to chiropractic historian Joseph Donahue, 80 percent of chiropractors “evade professional accountability” by firing at patients a “barrage of quasi-scientific information” about particular techniques, while remaining intentionally vague about the meanings of Innate Intelligence, because they realize that this “religious doctrine … if understood by the patient, would be reprehensible to many of them.”
― Candy Gunther Brown, The Healing Gods: Complementary and Alternative Medicine in Christian America

“There is evidence that many, though by no means all, recipients of prayer perceive themselves to have been healed; medical records confirm that some of those reporting healing exhibited medically surprising recoveries; and data indicate that proximal intercessory prayer sometimes produces measurable health effects.”
― Candy Gunther Brown, Testing Prayer: Science and Healing

“The propensity of Americans, evangelicals among them, to replace decisions of conscience with unthinking, pragmatic choices—especially when health is at stake—may have an unforeseen consequence for those who have freed themselves from external tyranny: subjection to internal tyranny of ignorance.”
― Candy Gunther Brown, The Healing Gods: Complementary and Alternative Medicine in Christian America