"The hospital is an exceptional crossroads of humanity. It is actually a global neighborhood, and therefore calls for a chaplain who embraces diversity of belief-- 'without exception.' Chaplains with theological blinders. The stories herein are about the struggles and wisdom and faith of people who enter the especially humanizing crossroads of this global neighborhood."--Introduction

"COVID-19 thrust chaplains-especially those in healthcare-into the national spotlight as they cared for patients, family members, and exhausted and traumatized medical staff fighting the pandemic in real time. That spotlight, like COVID-19, was new, but the work of chaplains was not. I step back from the spotlight in this book to ask who chaplains are, what they do across the United States, how that work is connected to the settings where they do it, and how they have responded to and helped to shape contemporary shifts in the American religious landscape. I focus on Boston as a case study to show how chaplains have been, and remain, an important part of institutional religious ecologies, both locally and nationally. I engage with scholarly literatures in sociology, religious studies, and organizational studies to contextualize these data. I encourage scholars, religious leaders, and educators to step back and look broadly enough that they can see chaplains and integrate their work into thinking about American religious life. Considering the work of chaplains and keeping it on the radar of scholars and religious leaders may be a source of continuing insights into the future of religious life in the United States"--

Combining history, ethnography, and culture theory, this book explores how residents in northwestern Malawi have responded over time to the early missionary assertion that local religious and healing practices were incompatible with Christianity and western medicine. It details how local agents, in the past and today, have constructed new cultural forms that weave facets of ancestral spiritualism and divination with Christianity and biomedicine. Alongside a rich historical review of the late-19th century encounter between Tumbuka-speakers and the Scottish Presbyterians of the Livingstonia Mission, the book explores the contemporary therapeutic dance complex known as Vimbuza and considers two case studies, each the story of a man confronting illness and struggling to understand the roots and meaning of his affliction. In the process, the book considers the enduring missiological and anthropological topics of conversion and syncretism, and questions the assertion by some scholars that Western missionaries in Africa have been successful agents of religious hegemony.

From a leading expert comes the gripping tale of the largest single atrocity committed against American POWs on the Western Front in World War II.