The similarities between how Read, and physicians in general, interact with and are perceived by patients and clergy and their interactions with believers of the faith are notable. Levin says that “physicians have been compared to a secular priesthood.”[1] This I find to be true in the case of Read in the way he positions himself as a prophet, preaching his “gospel of natural childbirth”. Read’s patients, the mothers, seek him out for his guidance and his unwavering faith in his method and in the idea of painless childbirth. The repetition and the allegorical storytelling Read uses to engage his readers and listeners mimics that of a preacher or priest on the pulpit.

Louw, in a commentary on preaching says, “Words and communication are attempts to transcend the immediacy of the experience – its aim is to take human life further than merely the phenomenology of facts and observation of mundane entities. Its aim is to give language and vocabulary to life events and spiritual experiences.”[2] Birth is therefore viewed as a life event that is both medical and spiritual.

This association between medical and spiritual can be seen in Messikomer’s ethnographic study on the spirituality of modern physicians. She found that her sample group all agreed that their desire to become physicians was a calling, not unlike a calling to the ministry.[3] One of her subjects stated, “Apart from being called to ministry, I think it’s (medicine) the highest calling.”[4] It becomes the highest calling one can have because of the duty to serve, protect and heal the sick. Though Messikomer doesn’t use the term moral theology I will choose to use it in the context of physicians and their practice. Given that physicians tackle the issues of pain, suffering, accidents, depression, anxiety, birth and death, and religion does the same then physicians are practicing a variant of moral theology.

This goes beyond the traditional definition of the term relating to Christian ethics. We can look at moral theology through the broader perspective of decision making which is relative not only to one’s own actions and how that relates to God or to any one specific religious doctrine. Moral theology can be applied to any religion, philosophy or model of behaviors. In this case, with physicians relating their calling to medicine as to that of the ministry, and with physicians having to adhere to specific codes of ethics such as: the Hippocratic Oath, HIPPA regulations, privacy guidelines, informed consent rules, and so on, they are provided with a moral framework within which they must work. This moral framework for physicians mirrors that of organized religion.  Authority from on high, within a hierarchical structure, creates and enforces these moral and ethical guidelines for physicians.

Vanderpool suggests that “religious and medical professionals rely upon certain common dynamics”.[5] He lists six shared functions between faith and medicine: postulating, prescribing and proscribing, establishing, alleviating, managing and enhancing and that each of these reflects both religion and medicine.[6] These shared axioms regard the interplay between body and mind, the meaning of suffering, sexuality, death, strives to understand or manipulate the body and mind, and define personhood.[7] These six shared functions allow for a mapping of faith based, or religious thinking and ritual to be replaced, in part, with medical thinking and ritual.

Vanderpool states, “Religious beliefs thus sustain and shape the practice of medicine, whether or not religion is overtly recognized or practiced within medical institutions.”[8] This is especially recognizable when it comes to the nature and care of a gravid woman. Her beliefs will influence everything from whether she chooses to give birth in a hospital, a free-standing birth center or at home. Her faith in the process, herself and her care providers will inform her sense of safety when making the choice as to where she births and with whom. This is the intangible aspect of pregnancy and birth which Read so successfully tapped into with the mothers who held him in reverence. Vanderpool notes that, “religion and medicine are widely used as ethical gatekeepers for the daily decisions of ordinary persons. In concert with law, religion and medicine specific normative and deviant action for many areas of human life.”[9]

Ethics are moral principles which provide guidance in how people are to live and interact. Religion and medicine both have a framework of ethical precepts and behaviors. Both attempt to define a universal truth about life and how things function. Wardlaw claims that, “science was a particularly appealing tool for an intellectual climate that focused on a search for universalizable truths, and medicine was the ideal conduit for the application of these truths to the human body.”[10] She says that “medical thinking began to function religiously.”[11] Like Vanderpool and Levin, Wardlaw sees doctors as a new type of priesthood, she uses Foucault’s term, “therapeutic clergy.” This is an apt way to describe both Read and his method. Like those entering the clergy, Read felt a calling for medicine. This calling, along with Read’s revelation of natural childbirth and preacher-like style embody this idea of the inseparability of faith and medicine. He, whether intentionally or not, set himself up as a leader of a movement among women, akin to a new religious movement in is fervency and dogmatic structure.

Next up: Rethinking Faith vs. Medicine to become, Faith and Medicine

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[1] Levin, J. (2018), The discourse on faith and medicine, a tale of two literatures, p. 275

[2] Louw, D. (2016), Preaching as art (imaging the unseen) and art as homiletics (verbalizing the unseen): Towards the aesthetics if iconic thinking and poetic communication in homiletics, p. 2

[3] Messikomer, C. (2002), The Spirituality of Academic Physicians: An Ethnography of a Scripture-based Group in an Academic Medical Center, p. 562

[4] Messikomer, C. (2002), The Spirituality of Academic Physicians: An Ethnography of a Scripture-based Group in an Academic Medical Center, p. 572

[5] Vanderpool H.Y. and Levine J.S. (1990), Religion and Medicine, how are they related? p. 10-11

[6] Vanderpool H.Y. and Levine J.S. (1990), Religion and Medicine, how are they related? p. 14

[7] Vanderpool H.Y. and Levine J.S. (1990), Religion and Medicine, how are they related? p. 11-12

[8] Vanderpool H.Y. and Levine J.S. (1990), Religion and Medicine, how are they related? p. 12

[9] Vanderpool, H.Y. and Levine J.S. (1990), Religion and Medicine, how are they related? p. 12-13

[10] Wardlaw, M. P., (2010), America medicine as religious practice: care of sick as a sacred obligation and the decent into secularization, p 64

[11] ibid

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