The Influence of Religion on Perceptions of Holistic Health in a Faith-Based Health Education Programs

Date Presented:

February 7

Abstract:

This thesis uses Community Health Evangelism (CHE), a holistic, community-based Christian development methodology, as a case study to explore the challenges facing faith-based development organizations in their struggle to define a non-secular modernity. Focusing on the role of dichotomies in creating identity (e.g., sacred/secular, local/global, relative/absolute) I outline a history of the methodology and its broad ideological influences—which range from the WHO’s Alma-Ata conference, to the teachings of Paulo Freire, to the writings of evangelist Francis Schaeffer. Within the context of the rapidly increasing evangelization of sub-Saharan Africa, I explore how the legacy of colonialism has defined the role of medical missionaries on the continent and how the concept of “holistic health” has been conceived as a vehicle for biomedical moralizing in both the secular and faith-based development communities. Drawing upon field research and 150 interviews from Zambia, South Africa, and the United States, I illustrate the process by which the abstract global ideologies of CHE are translated into on-the-ground programs and then explore the reception of these programs by local communities.