Medicine as Religion?
Benjamin R. Doolittle, MD, MDIV
Is the practice of medicine a religion? I have been a physician for 29 years and a church pastor for 35. I am struck by the similarities between my two vocations. Both disciplines require tell-tale vestments. In the hospital, I wear a long white coat; in church, a long black robe. In both, we enjoy poignant moments of gathering. On Sunday mornings, we gather in church with a spirit of reverence to reflect, ponder, grow together as a community. On Thursday mornings, for departmental grand rounds, our communal posture is no less reverent. In this weekly lecture, the learned professor elucidates the community of the latest scientific advances. In medicine, we even portray a devotion to sacred writ that is akin to a Christian’s understanding of scripture. The latest randomized controlled trial from the New England Journal of Medicine is sure to change a physician’s attitude and behavior as much as a precept from the Ten Commandments.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the definition of a religion is, “a belief in or acknowledgment of some superhuman power or powers (esp god or gods) which is typically manifested in obedience, reverence, and worship, such a belief as part of a system defining a code of living esp as a means of achieving spiritual or material improvement.”1 In medicine, we check all these boxes, except maybe the except maybe the “god or gods.” Instead, we have an ineffable wonder, even reverence, of the capricious surprise of disease. We certainly have humble obedience to the relentless grind of our patients’ suffering.
Do we worship in medicine, the third part of the OED’s definition? We are certainly beholden to rites and rituals, the morning rounds on the hospital wards, the liturgical calendar of academic processions. In medicine, we strive to capture the sublime, the transcendence, amidst the urine-scented hallways and EMR-driven algorithms. On our best days, perhaps there is a posture of worship towards those whom we care.
With medicine, there is even a beautiful altruism that is shared with religion. We seek the healing and well-being of our patients, and by extension, the world. This is a noble, even joyful pursuit, with intellectual challenge, rich community, and expansive purpose. We can live out our lives with the daily exercise of care for hurting people, an intrinsically meaningful, virtuous vocation, one grounded in Gospel principles of agape.
We sacrifice greatly for this end, toiling for years, often at great financial expense. This sacrifice often takes on a monastic quality, even martyrdom. After medical school, we enter a period of training called “residency” where, historically, trainees lived in the hospital, rarely seen outside their cloistered confines. Although today trainees enjoy some work-hour restrictions, the schedule is nonetheless grueling relative to other professions. While there is a certain social respect (at least our parents are proud of us), the financial recompense does not seem to justify the sacrifice of our bodies and spirits.
Indeed, the practice of medicine fulfills the OED definition of a true religion. But, are the gods of medicine false gods? Have we deceived ourselves?
After decades of practice in the church and the hospital, I recognize that medicine has one singular, crucial deficiency: medicine cannot save us. Medicine can cure illness and relieve suffering. Medicine can even provide profound meaning. And yet, precisely when we crave a true religion, medicine falls short.
There is an architecture of language that does not exist in medicine. Forgiveness, reconciliation, hope, faith, and love are concepts rarely articulated in the pages of the BMJ and JAMA. In medicine, we may borrow such religious concepts, but there is a hollowness when we do. From whence comes our hope? In what do we have our faith? Our pills and potions, our traditions and liturgies are not enough when we need it most.
It is no surprise that more than 50% of physicians meet criteria for burnout, and nearly 60% struggle with debilitating anger, tearfulness, or anxiety.2 It is precisely when we need a religion – when we make an error, when the patient dies unexpectantly, when the futility of illness overwhelms – that medicine falls short.
I do not think the answer is to make medicine more like a religion. Rather, I think the exercise is to recognize precisely the ways that medicine is not a religion – and then seek our reconnection in ways that only religion and spirituality can provide. We can celebrate the great gifts that medicine has brought to the world: vaccines, antibiotics, anesthesia, stem cell transplants, and on and on. It is a near miracle that we have added so many decades to our life-span. But for love, peace, reconciliation, joy, we must go elsewhere besides the halls of the hospital.
Sir William Osler, the pioneer of modern medical education once wrote,
“Nothing in life is more wonderful that faith – the one great moving force which we can neither weigh in the balance nor test in the crucible. Intangible as the ether, ineluctable as gravitation, the radium of the moral and mental spheres, mysterious, indefinable, known only by its effects, faith pours out an unfailing stream of energy while abating nor jot nor tittle of its potency.”3
The language of medicine is not incompatible with the language of faith. Indeed, perhaps each gives meaning and sustenance to the other. Medicine asks that our faith be authentic, real, helpful, for how else can we contend with the travails of our suffering? Our faith gives the humanity to the human in the gurney. To separate the two domains – medicine and faith – denies our integrated nature: we are but human after all. To blend them together, to call them one, confuses their fundamentally different projects. Is medicine a religion? No. But medicine without religion – and religion without medicine – diminishes them both.
References:
- Oxford English Dictionary, accessed April 18th, 2026 at oed.com.
- The Physicians Foundation, The State of America’s Physicians: 2025 Wellbeing Survey. Accessed April 18th, 2026 at physiciansfoundation.org.
- Osler W. The faith that heals. BMJ 1910;1: 1470-2. doi: 10.1136/bmj.1.2581.1470.
