Parentally Mandated Religious Healing for Children: A Therapeutic Justice Approach

Abstract

Significant controversy surrounds individuals' reliance on religious healing approaches to the treatment of illness, particularly when such efforts focus on the provision of care for children. These approaches, rooted in organized religions and their theologies, encompass a wide range of practices, ranging from prayer, meditation, and the laying on of hands, to exorcism, speaking in tongues, Spiritism, shamanic intervention, and various rituals of Santería. Numerous faith communities espouse one or more forms of religious healing while discouraging reliance on conventional medical treatments: These communities include the Christian Science Church, the Church of the First Born, End Time Ministries, Faith Tabernacle, Followers of Christ Church, Bible Believers' Fellowship, Christ Assembly, Christ Miracle Healing Center, Church of God Chapel, Church of God of the Union Assembly, Holiness Church, Jesus Through Jon and Judy, “No Name” Fellowship, Northeast Kingdom Community Church, and The Source.Others, such as the Assemblies of God, have moved away from an exclusive reliance on religious healing practices to a more holistic approach that combines religious-healing with at least some aspects of biomedicine. For many of these listed groups, health and illness represent the physical manifestation of moral concerns relating to salvation, which can only be addressed through religious healing.