The Religious Difference in Clinical Healthcare

When attempting to answer the question, “What difference does religion make?” in the context of clinical healthcare, one might be tempted to leap to either of two rather obvious, but seemingly contradictory conclusions. On the one hand, we might have a general impression of religion not making much of a distinctive and clear difference, at least in the actions and outcomes of most cases of clinical interaction. Those of us in the bioethics world of discourse are likely to think only of the less common cases of Christian Scientists, Jehovah's Witnesses, Orthodox Jews, or certain “fringe” religious groups who seem to the majority of the population to hold especially sectarian, if not “irrational,” beliefs about medical matters. The so-called mainstream religious groups do not get much attention because they largely don't cause much trouble (at least where their religion is concerned); they have learned to bracket their religious commitments from at least any professional settings (if they even understand how those commitments relate to healthcare at all); or they don't hold views entailing consequences any different from those of most nonbelieving, generally upright individuals. Furthermore, although religious believers may have some distinctive views, these views don't often noticeably manifest themselves in distinctive or significant “difference-making” ways.