In Searching for Jesus' Healing Ministry, award-winning journalist and longtime health writer Cal Samra offers a series of incisive, compassionate essays exploring the gaps in our modern mental health system -- and the surprising ways spirituality, community, and humor can help fill them.
Drawing on decades of writing for and publishing The Joyful Noiseletter, in addition to reporting, research, and engagement with faith-based health movements, Samra examines the high costs, missed opportunities, and quiet successes that shape mental healthcare today. His own encounter with a devastating depression -- an experience that introduced him to holistic, spiritually informed psychiatric care -- sets the stage for a broader question: How have Christians across history understood healing, and what might they teach us now?
From the early church in Antioch to Greek Orthodox traditions, Catholic and Franciscan healers, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Methodists, Seventh-day Adventists, Quakers, Christian Scientists, and modern charismatic communities, Samra guides readers through a sweeping, centuries-spanning exploration of how believers have made valiant efforts to continue Jesus' ministry of compassion and restoration.
Blending scholarship, storytelling, and a signature touch of humor, Samra invites clergy, clinicians, and medical practitioners worldwide to rethink the relationship between faith and mental health. Praise for his work has come from icons ranging from Erma Bombeck to pastors and practitioners nationwide.
Thought-provoking, hopeful, and deeply humane, this collection challenges us to envision a more holistic approach to healing -- one that honors both scientific insight and the enduring power of spiritual care. Samra maintains that our modern epidemic of madness and violence is not a psychological problem, but a spiritual, moral, and nutritional problem.
