Health or Radical Grace

Health

Author: Mildred Blaxter

This book provides a comprehensive and highly readable introduction to the key debates surrounding the concept of health today. It discusses how health is defined, constructed, experienced and acted out in contemporary developed societies, drawing on a range of empirical data and theoretical approaches from the USA, Britain, France, Germany and other countries. Throughout the text special emphasis is given to the lay perspective to show how people themselves think about and experience health and illness. The author guides students through all the relevant conceptual models of the relationship of health to the structure of society, from inequality in health to the ideas of social capital, the risk society and theories of evolutionary biology. The book concludes with a thought-provoking discussion of the impact of new knowledge and technology on our understanding of health and illness in the contemporary world. Health will be an invaluable textbook for students of medicine and other health professions, as well as those studying sociology, health sciences and health promotion.

Table of Contents:

1	How is health defined?	4
2	How is health constructed?	26
3	How is health experienced?	45
4	How is health enacted?	71
5	How is health related to social systems?	91
6	Where is the concept of health going in the contemporary world?	122

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Radical Grace: How Belief in a Benevolent God Benefits Our Health

Author: J Harold Ellens

The esteemed editor who brought is the acclaimed set The Destructive Power of Religion, 4 volumes, turns his attention here to a similarly powerful yet positive side of religion - how our concept of God can fuel healthy body and mind. This book contends all health - mental and physical - is shaped, for good or ill, by our spiritual, theological and psychological notions about the nature of God, and by the way we form an outlook on life as a result of these notions. Across history, a large percentage of notions people have about God are that He is a threat, and among what Ellens describes as "sick Gods created through pathological beliefs," or "sick Gods that make sick people." But Ellens grounds his brighter perspective in this text on God as a source of unconditional grace and goodwill, then illuminates the affect this perspective has on people who have incorporated it into their minds and lives.