On Transparency: Christian Drug Rehabilitation Centers in Guatemala

Public lecture by Kevin Lewis O’Neill, University of Toronto as part of the Religion, Medicine,and Law Lecture Series.

Tuesday

4:30–6:00PM

Umrath Lounge Washington University in St. Louis

One Brookings Drive
Saint Louis, MO 63130

Videos

  • On Transparency: Christian Drug Rehabilitation Centers in Guatemala

    Kevin Lewis O’Neill, University of Toronto. This lecture was a part of the Religion, Medicine, and Law Lecture Series. (December 1, 2015)

    Transcript

Of the various areas in which religion and politics intersect, the domains of medicine, law, and public health display those convergences with particular intensity. The long-running debates over Obamacare are rife with religious concerns, hopes, and objections, but those highly visible conflicts bespeak a much wider range of issues. What, for example, is the role of chaplaincies in the delivery of health services? How do such spiritual offices fit within ostensibly secular institutions? In what ways are religious groups able to help generate greater access to medical care for the poor and uninsured? Can Christian-based recovery programs garner state support and endorsement, and, if so, on what terms? Our distinguished group of lecturers this fall will help us engage these pressing questions, expanding the way we think about the junctures of religion, medicine, and the law.

Kevin.Lewis.Oneill.CROPKevin Lewis O’Neill, Associate Professor in the Department for the Study of Religion and the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies at University of Toronto, will give the series’ final lecture, “On Transparency: Christian Drug Rehabilitation Centers in Guatemala,” on Tuesday, December 1, 2015, at 4:30 p.m. in Umrath Lounge. Please join us for a reception immediately following the lecture.

O’Neill’s work, deeply ethnographic, examines the moral dimensions of contemporary political practice.  His most recent book, Secure the Soul: Christian Piety and Gang Prevention in Guatemala (University of California Press, 2015), tracks Christian piety’s entanglement with Central American security. O’Neill earned his Ph.D. in Cultural and Social Anthropology from Stanford University.

This event is free and open to all; your RSVP is appreciated. Please contact us at
(314) 935-9345 or rap@wustl.edu for more information.

Presenters

  • Kevin Lewis O’Neill

  • R. Marie Griffith

    John C. Danforth Distinguished Professor in the Humanities