Embodiment: An Approach to Sexuality and Christian Theology. By James B. Nelson. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing House, 1978. Reissued: Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1990. 274 pp., notes, index. Paperback, ISBN 0-8066-1701-2, $20.00.

Abstract

sources in Family Therapy (Walsh, 1999); Psychiatry and Religion: The Convergence Of Mind and Spirit (Boehnlein, 2000); and the revised and updated Clinical Handbook of Pastoral Counseling, volume 1 (Wicks, Parsons & Capps, 1993). But the creme de Ia creme is the newly published Handbook of Religion and Health. None of the authors are clergy. Hurray! Harold Koenig, MD, is Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Associate Professor of Medicine at Duke University Medical Center. Michael E. McCullough, PhD, is Associate Professor of Psychology at Southern Methodist University. David Larson, MD, is Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry at Duke University Medical Center and at Northwestern University Medical School. In this exhaustive 712-page handbook, the authors set out to review and discuss the research on the relationship between religion and health conducted between 1900 and 2000. They touch on such areas as depression, anxiety, heart disease, and immune system dysfunction, as well as health-destructive behaviors such as smoking, substance abuse, and risky sexual behavior. They examine both the positive and negative effects on health throughout the lifespan. For. instance, they report on a study done with 10,059 men in Israel, and published only in Hebrew, that "one of the factors which stood out was the inverse relationship between the degree of religiosity and the 3-year incidence of myocardial infarction-in other words, the more religious developed fewer infarcts" (p. 346). This is just one of the 1,200 research articles reviewed. This is a dip-and-dig book. After hearing about it from Dr. Harold Lief, I spent a week just leafing through to savor the gems. One day I read about depression, another suicide, another delinquency, then heart disease, disability, pain, and marital instability. And so it went. I spent a weekend on research methods and measurement tools and another weekend on priorities for future research. Yum. If you are looking for a doctoral project or an advisor, here is the place for you to dip-and-dig. Here is their invitation: