Overview
In the capital city of Nairobi, Kenya, African Catholic and Sunni Muslim leaders addressing HIV and AIDS are faced with a unique challenge. On the one hand, they are called to attend to the spiritual wellbeing of the infected individual; on the other hand, they are increasingly charged with serving as the stewards of the physical bodies of those negatively affected by such a physiologically debilitating and social stigmatized disease through certain identifiable interreligious traditions common to both faiths. This book explores this development firsthand. While conducting fieldwork in Nairobi, Carey interviewed Muslim and Catholic leaders working in three areas—HIV and AIDS prevention, education, and destigmatization. These recorded observations and accounts help to illustrate that religious officials from within African Catholicism and Sunni Islam are attempting to provide the common inter-religious traditions of mercy, hospitality, and justice in a holistic manner for those living with the virus in the city. The research that produced this book involved six weeks of fieldwork during the summer of 2014 to help fill in the interstices between anthropological, sociological, and ethnographic accounts provided by other leading academics in their respective fields. It presumed that religious traditions in Kenya exhibit a susceptibility to culture and context and a practical openness to its social environment which then affords this particular work a unique theological perspective in its attempt to identify and analyze patterns of social behavior and religious organization.
Full Product Details
Author: Timothy James Carey
Publisher: Lexington Books
Imprint: Lexington Books
Dimensions:
Width: 15.90cm
, Height: 2.40cm
, Length: 23.10cm
Weight: 0.513kg
ISBN: 9781498578288
ISBN 10: 1498578284
Pages: 228
Publication Date: 15 September 2018
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Manufactured on demand
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.
Reviews
Carey (Boston College) explores how theology, culture, and religious authority shaped Catholic and Muslim responses to the HIV and AIDS crisis in Nairobi, Kenya. The book is not an abstract theology of how religious communities should respond to the HIV/AIDS crisis. Rather, it chronicles the complexity of their response given concrete cultural and medical obstacles, and how those responses both fit within the teachings of their traditions and fall short of them. He begins with an account of the arrival of each tradition in Kenya, and then alternates chapters on each. He explores how Catholic and Muslim responses were shaped by their authority structures, and how those responses have evolved based on the spread of scientific knowledge as well as advances in treatment. Finally, the book closes with theological explorations of how each tradition grounds the duty to care for the sick. . . an important and constructive work of comparative theology grounded in lived realities. Students of religious ethics and public health will find it a worthwhile volume. Summing Up: Recommended. Advanced undergraduates and above. * CHOICE * In this careful study of the intersection of Islam and Roman Catholicism in Nairobi during the time of AIDS, Timothy James Carey expands considerably our understanding of the role of religion in public health in general and HIV/AIDS in particular. In light of his findings from each tradition, Carey brilliantly synthesizes their positions on prevention, education, and destigmatization through the language of virtue, an idiom commonly used in religious traditions. Mining the virtues of mercy, hospitality, and justice, Carey advances the work of local religious leaders responding positively to the pandemic but leaves us and them with further questions regarding religion and sexuality and gender. A work of great integrity and compassion. -- James F. Keenan, S.J., Boston College An insightful, carefully researched, and nuanced account of the complex responses to Kenya's ongoing HIV/AIDS crisis among lay populations, religious leaders, and medical professionals from both Catholic and Muslim communities, often echoing familiar public reactions during the initial AIDS crisis in the United States. Dr. Carey's work is particularly helpful in emphasizing the deeper human social, ethical, and spiritual ramifications and challenges of this epidemic, too often hidden behind the familiar journalistic rhetoric of public health and policy discussions. -- James Morris, Boston College
In this careful study of the intersection of Islam and Roman Catholicism in Nairobi during the time of AIDS, Timothy James Carey expands considerably our understanding of the role of religion in public health in general and HIV/AIDS in particular. In light of his findings from each tradition, Carey brilliantly synthesizes their positions on prevention, education, and destigmatization through the language of virtue, an idiom commonly used in religious traditions. Mining the virtues of mercy, hospitality, and justice, Carey advances the work of local religious leaders responding positively to the pandemic but leaves us and them with further questions regarding religion and sexuality and gender. A work of great integrity and compassion.--James F. Keenan S.J., Boston College An insightful, carefully researched, and nuanced account of the complex responses to Kenya's ongoing HIV/AIDS crisis among lay populations, religious leaders, and medical professionals from both Catholic and Muslim communities, often echoing familiar public reactions during the initial AIDS crisis in the United States. Dr. Carey's work is particularly helpful in emphasizing the deeper human social, ethical, and spiritual ramifications and challenges of this epidemic, too often hidden behind the familiar journalistic rhetoric of public health and policy discussions.--James Morris, Boston College
In this careful study of the intersection of Islam and Roman Catholicism in Nairobi during the time of AIDS, Timothy James Carey expands considerably our understanding of the role of religion in public health in general and HIV/AIDS in particular. In light of his findings from each tradition, Carey brilliantly synthesizes their positions on prevention, education, and destigmatization through the language of virtue, an idiom commonly used in religious traditions. Mining the virtues of mercy, hospitality, and justice, Carey advances the work of local religious leaders responding positively to the pandemic but leaves us and them with further questions regarding religion and sexuality and gender. A work of great integrity and compassion. -- James F. Keenan S.J., Boston College An insightful, carefully researched, and nuanced account of the complex responses to Kenya’s ongoing HIV/AIDS crisis among lay populations, religious leaders, and medical professionals from both Catholic and Muslim communities, often echoing familiar public reactions during the initial AIDS crisis in the United States. Dr. Carey’s work is particularly helpful in emphasizing the deeper human social, ethical, and spiritual ramifications and challenges of this epidemic, too often hidden behind the familiar journalistic rhetoric of public health and policy discussions. -- James Morris, Boston College
In this careful study of the intersection of Islam and Roman Catholicism in Nairobi during the time of AIDS, Timothy James Carey expands considerably our understanding of the role of religion in public health in general and HIV/AIDS in particular. In light of his findings from each tradition, Carey brilliantly synthesizes their positions on prevention, education, and destigmatization through the language of virtue, an idiom commonly used in religious traditions. Mining the virtues of mercy, hospitality, and justice, Carey advances the work of local religious leaders responding positively to the pandemic but leaves us and them with further questions regarding religion and sexuality and gender. A work of great integrity and compassion. -- James F. Keenan S.J., Boston College An insightful, carefully researched, and nuanced account of the complex responses to Kenya's ongoing HIV/AIDS crisis among lay populations, religious leaders, and medical professionals from both Catholic and Muslim communities, often echoing familiar public reactions during the initial AIDS crisis in the United States. Dr. Carey's work is particularly helpful in emphasizing the deeper human social, ethical, and spiritual ramifications and challenges of this epidemic, too often hidden behind the familiar journalistic rhetoric of public health and policy discussions. -- James Morris, Boston College
Author Information
Timothy James Carey received his doctorate in comparative theology from Boston College.
