Alternative Therapies: The New Frontier in the Christian Ministry of Healing

This book introduces popular alternative therapies and provides a framework for evaluation of each therapy from a Christian point of view.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction
How Did I Come to Write This Book?
Chapter 1. Chiropractic and Iridology
Chapter 2. Acupuncture
Chapter 3. Crystal Healing
Chapter 4. Detoxification
Chapter 5. Energy Healing
Chapter 6. Massage
Chapter 7. Meditation, Visualization, Relaxation
Chapter 8. Native American Healing and Australian Indigenous Healing
Chapter 9. Reflexology
Chapter 10. Reiki
Chapter 11. Therapeutic Touch
Chapter 12. Traditional Chinese Medicine
Chapter 13. The New Frontier in the Christian Ministry of Healing
A Final Word
Endnotes

FROM THE PREFACE

This is a book about the need we have for alternative therapies re-framed in Christian terms by practicing Christians for Christian acupuncture and Christian reflexology , Christian aromatherapy and Christian hypnotherapy , for example. A second book is projected in which the theological and philosophical issues are explored more deeply, but this book focuses upon the alternative therapies themselves, as one finds them in the world and as they fall short of the revelation of God in Christ Jesus. It addresses some of the issues Christians need to consider as they develop explicitly Christian expressions of alternative therapies with a Christian worldview and vision of God and the Gospel. . . .

The chapters on the therapies are preceded by selected stories of Christian people s experience of these therapies and their attitudes towards them, both positive and negative. Other stories are woven into the chapters themselves. These stories come from more than 23 years of conversations and interviews with church-going clients, alternative therapists and medical practitioners, with members of the Order of St Luke the Physician, and also with ministers of religion, theological and ministry students, individually and in seminar groups. The purpose of these stories is to show the human face of the Christian experience of alternative therapy more clearly and to alert the reader to the diversity of views there are among Christians. It is also to show that the questions raised in this book in a more theoretical way have daily relevance in lives of Christian people who, in the pursuit of health, must choose between the safe and the risky, the known and unknown, proven and unproven, true and false, right and wrong. These are every-day practical decisions, and are not academic or theoretical.