Europe Shrinks from Health-Religion Research

Europe's greatest continental divide -- the chasm between scientific research and theology -- has begun to close, as scores of university institutes and medical associations from Arkhangelsk to Zurich are gathering to see how the two fields might help each other. The movement, though, is at a glacial pace, as an increasingly secular Western Europe and a post-communist Eastern Europe continue to resist any efforts that smack of church and state collaboration.

Croatia's University of Zagreb Medical School is typical. Candid discussions concerning religion and medical science take place but never in a formal research environment, said Lucija Fabijanic, a medical student who recently graduated from the school. "Some medical doctors do speak about this topic, but it is mainly not acknowledged by the university and hospital staff," said Fabijanic. "From the medical point of view, I understand that after a long era of communism a lot of people still think that religion is something personal and that it has nothing to do with science and medicine."

Similarly, in Sweden's Karolinska Institutet, where 40 percent of the country's medical academic research is conducted, religion and science are only rarely mentioned in the same breath. Of the 2,814 dissertations published since 1995, only half a dozen mention the words together, and only two -- a 2005 study on Islam's perpetuation of female genital mutilation in Sudan, and a 2000 paper on mortality and injury rates in Northern and Western Europe -- look at religion with more than a passing glance.

Across Europe, empirical research has been conducted primarily in the areas of mental health and ethnography. In both cases, though, the research has taken place in isolated institutional pockets and with little academic or media fanfare.

Most European researchers, instead, host symposia, satisfied to conduct what is often among the first science-and-religion dialogues in their institution or country. In many instances, the discussions are funded by Metanexus Institute's Local Societies Initiatives, or LSI. Metanexus, in turn, is funded by the John Templeton Foundation, which also funds Science & Theology News.

For example, Austria's Universität Innsbruck, an LSI grant recipient, has formed a society called The Complementarity of Science and Theology within the prestigious Austrian Academy of Science. The society, chaired by renowned mathematical physicist Walter Thirring, aims to study "the concept and meaning of life." But to date it's been all talk and no research.

The same holds true in former Soviet states. At Ukraine's National University in Kharkiv, philosophy professor Ivan Tsekhmistro chairs a newly formed, and LSI-funded, East-Ukrainian Center of Science and Religion. Its charge, he said, is to eradicate communism's legacy of "aggressive atheism in the public consciousness and in the sphere of interrelations between science and religion." And while Tsekhmistro has written extensively on the subject -- in June delivering his most recent paper, Scientific Picture of the Word in the Last 25 Years, at the Metanexus Institute in Philadelphia -- the university center offers no empirical research.

Likewise, in 2002, Estonia's University of Tartu founded the Collegium of Science and Religion to revive the "tradition of science and faith dialogue that was forgotten during half a century of imposed atheism," according to its mission statement. The LSI-funded collegium has long-term plans to conduct empirical studies, but immediate plans only include seminars, colloquiums and college courses.

Given the centuries-old struggle between science and religion to define European culture, the research torpor is understandable, said Harald Walach, editor of Swiss research journal, Forschende Komplementärmedizin und Klassische Naturheilkunde (Research in Complementary and Classical Natural Medicine). "What has to be borne in mind historically is the fact that especially for Germany there are great fears of intellectuals and academics of the culture and the political stage being again hijacked by ideology, as happened during the Nazi regime," said Walach. Indeed, Adolph Hitler insisted to the very end that his actions were inspired by providence. "Hence, the connotation of religion and any official institution, such as politics and academia, does not go down well in European culture, understandably so."

That has certainly been true in the Netherlands, where academia often recoils from the authoritarian habits and influence of organized religion. "This criticism prevented the approval of efforts to study the subject scientifically," said Dr. Arjan Braam, a researcher at Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam.

The criticism has softened noticeably in the Netherlands since the mid-1980s, thanks largely to the prolific Braam's research. One of his oft-cited papers, published in 2004 in the Journal of Aging and Health, involves a six-year study of prayer and depressive symptoms in older Dutch adults. The study of 1,840 adults, aged 55 to 85, found that church attendance and religious inclinations eased the symptoms of depression. "The interest on the subject of religion and health is increasing, but slowly," said Braam, who chaired a symposium on prayer and depressive symptoms, at the 13th World Congress of Psychiatry, held last September in Cairo, Egypt.

Also in the Netherlands, the Catholic Study Centre for Mental Health, acts as a clearinghouse for scientists conducting primary and secondary research on mental health and religion. Although founded in 1972, the lion's share of its work has been done in the past five years. As of 2005, the Catholic center counted "more than 2,400 members and benefactors from mental and physical health care, spiritual and pastoral care, the churches, social services, and education," according to its Web site.

Barriers are falling in Switzerland as well. For example, the University Hospital of Geneva recently investigated the importance of religion as a coping mechanism for psychiatric patients. The study found that clinicians dealing with psychotic patients might neglect religious issues, even if religion may constitute an important means of coping, said Sylvia Mohr, the hospital researcher who led the study. Half the clinicians' perceptions of patients' religious involvement were inaccurate, Mohr's team found, even though a majority of the patients reported that religion was an important aspect of their lives.

Mohr's biggest surprise, though, came before she interviewed the first patient: "Our research was welcomed," she said. Mohr had anticipated stiff resistance, particularly from clinicians. Instead, the hospital and its ethics committee gave the study their blessing, and only 3 percent of the patients declined to participate. "From my experience, I think the most powerful resistance is in researchers' minds," she said.

And now that Mohr has overcome her resistance, what will it take to gain widespread European acceptance of such research? "The only way to change this is good science," said Walach.

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