Spiritual healing is a topic that has been strangely neglected in the academic literature. Most books on spiritual healing are written by enthusiasts, and make no attempt to advance our understanding of it in a dispassionate way. Spiritual healing is being increasingly widely practised, in both religious and non-religious contexts, and there is an urgent need to understand it better.

The present book is a contribution from the joint perspectives of science and religion. The dialogue between science and religion has become a rich field of interdisciplinary enquiry in recent years. However, rather surprisingly, spiritual healing is a topic that has so far been completely neglected in that literature. That is all the more surprising as the related topic of divine action has attracted particular attention. I hope that the chapters of this book advance our understanding of spiritual healing from the perspectives of both science and religious studies. The basic assumption is that, if spiritual healing is to be understood, it is important not to neglect the perspectives of either science or religion. It is implicit that neither science nor religion can provide a complete account of spiritual healing on their own. Some of the most interesting issues about spiritual healing arise at the point where these two perspectives intersect.

This book had its origins in a three-day symposium, jointly chaired by Sarah Coakley and me, which took place under the aegis of the John Templeton Foundation's Humble Approach Initiative.