Jim

“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

“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

“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

“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