The Secular–Sacred Divide in Medicine

Modern Western consciousness is built on a series of fundamental splits—between body and soul, science and revelation, immanence and transcendence—that leave no unity between opposing spheres. Medicine, as a social institution, aligns with the side of these divides that excludes religion. This dualistic thinking shapes social structures that privatize religion, secularize time and space, and strictly separate church and state.

Study at a glance

Abstract

This chapter argues, in addition to the plausibility structures described in Chapter 6, that modern consciousness comprises a series of related bifurcations of life and that medicine is a social institution that is informed by understandings of human nature, human knowledge, and social structures that fall on the opposite side of the wall from religion. Modern Western societies advance this dualism to such an extent that there appears to be no unity or interconnection between “opposite” spheres, divided between immanence and transcendence. This consciousness leads to social structures that divide human nature (body vs. soul), human knowledge (science vs. special revelation), and social structures based on a privatization of religion, the secularization of time and space, and a strict separation between the state and church.