Overview

Madness is a sin. Those with emotional disabilities are shunned. Mental illness is not the church's problem. All three claims are wrong. In Madness, Heather H. Vacek traces the history of Protestant reactions to mental illness in America. She reveals how two distinct forces combined to thwart Christian care for the whole person. The professionalization of medicine worked to restrict the sphere of Christian authority to the private and spiritual realms, consigning healing and care - both physical and mental - to secular, medical specialists. Equally influential, a theological legacy that linked illness with sin deepened the social stigma surrounding people with a mental illness. The Protestant church, reluctant to engage sufferers lest it, too, be tainted by association, willingly abdicated care for people with a mental illness to secular professionals. While inattention formed the general rule, five historical exceptions to the pattern of benign neglect exemplify Protestant efforts to claim a distinctly Christian response. A close examination of the lives and work of colonial clergyman Cotton Mather, Revolutionary era physician Benjamin Rush, nineteenth-century activist Dorothea Dix, pastor and patient Anton Boisen, and psychiatrist Karl Menninger maps both the range and the progression of attentive Protestant care. Vacek chronicles Protestant attempts to make theological sense of sickness (Mather), to craft care as Christian vocation (Rush), to advocate for the helpless (Dix), to reclaim religious authority (Boisen), and to plead for people with a mental illness (Menninger). Vacek's historical narrative forms the basis for her theological reflection about contemporary Christian care of people with a mental illness and Christian understanding of mental illness. By demonstrating the gravity of what appeared - and failed to appear - on clerical and congregational agendas, Vacek explores how Christians should navigate the ever-shifting lines of cultural authority as they care for those who suffer.

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9781481300575

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Reviews

By telling the story of mental illness, faith, and ministry through and around the lives and stories of five prominent leaders since colonial times, Madness will help us recognize eternal questions and needs as well as the historical foundations on which new collaborations between ministry and medicine can be built for the sake of more holistic care in clinics, communities, and congregations. Bill Gaventa, Director, Summer Institute on Theology and Disability Madness offers a sensitive, in-depth treatment of the important and under-discussed subject of mental illness. Heather Vacek makes a signal contribution to histories of mental illness, medicine, and religion, and her book should be of great interest to scholars in each of these fields as well as to general audiences seeking to understand and respond to mental illness. Candy Gunther Brown, Professor of Religious Studies, Indiana University Vaceks exquisitely researched and written book gives us an account of the Protestant response to mental illness from the beginning of the nation. Though this is history done at its best, Vaceks passion for her subject makes this a book of theological significance. I heartily recommend it. Stanley Hauerwas, Gilbert T. Rowe Professor Emeritus of Divinity and Law, Duke Divinity School

Author Information

Heather H. Vacek is Vice President for Academic Affairs, Dean of Faculty, and Assistant Professor of Church History at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary.

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