This article addresses the relationship between religion, spirituality, and health from an institutional perspective. Most research on this relationship ignores the institutional aspects of health provision and care. From a sociological perspective this is self-defeating, the discussion argues, for if research agendas included institutional dimensions, they could greatly enhance the knowledge of the specific relationship in itself, and at the same time provide an appropriate contextual frame for discussing and debating a host of other issues relating religion, spirituality, and health, such...

This article addresses the relationship between religion, spirituality, and health from an institutional perspective. Most research on this relationship ignores the institutional aspects of health provision and care. From a sociological perspective this is self-defeating, the discussion argues, for if research agendas included institutional dimensions, they could greatly enhance the knowledge of the specific relationship in itself, and at the same time provide an appropriate contextual frame for discussing and debating a host of other issues relating religion, spirituality, and health, such as health-care workers' religious and moral obligations, spiritually oriented alternative medical approaches, and spiritual and medical intervention at the end of life.