‘Faith Matters’ during Health Crises but Religious Sentiments May Lead to Blaming Others, Scholar Cautions

When illness threatens, “faith matters” because it can help strengthen our resistance to infection and disease, says Baylor University epidemiologist Jeff Levin. During this COVID-19 pandemic, Levin said, it’s important “to maintain continuity in our spiritual life.”

Despite this positive aspect of religious practice, Levin also cautions that the challenge of a widespread health crisis can also result in blaming and “scapegoating.”

Levin’s comments, reported in a Baylor news release, are from a Q&A with him about the COVID-19 outbreak and its religious dimensions. Levin holds a doctorate in Preventive Medicine and Community Health from the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at The University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston.

At Baylor, based in Waco, Texas, Levin is director of the Program on Religion and Population Health in the university’s Institute for Studies of Religion. He is also an adjunct professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University School of Medicine. 

Levin’s website, Religion and Health, describes him as a religious scholar and biomedical scientist who “in the 1980s pioneered the study of religion and health.”

When asked “What can we do to strengthen our resistance to the infection and the disease?” Levin replied, “One of the important things that we can do – and decades of…