Lecture Festival: Can Faith Move Mountains?

The relationship between faith and health has been relatively overlooked in Danish healthcare research. However, most cultures see a crucial link between faith and health, focusing on the interplay between body, psyche, and soul. In Western cultures, different professions care separately for body, psyche, and soul. Often, patients feel they are not seen as whole individuals. Thus, modern healthcare aims to treat the whole person, partnering with patients. This lecture highlights and contributes to this ambition by focusing on existential and spiritual care.

Niels Christian Hvidt, theologian and professor of existential and spiritual care at the Faculty of Health Sciences at SDU, addresses these issues at the intersection of faith, hope, meaning, and science.

The lecture builds on ten years of foundational Danish research initiated and led by Hvidt. He presents findings from Denmark and abroad, indicating that people with faith practices have lower disease risks and live longer.

He then discusses the role of faith during illness in a secularized society like Denmark, where religion plays a minor role, yet over 70% of the population identifies as "believers". Illness, more than anything else, prompts Danes to reflect on existential matters. As the lecture title suggests: Faith moves mountains, but mountains of illness also move faith!

Research indicates many patients hope and pray for miracles, finding essential resources in existential spaces for comfort and hope in difficult times. Being present and addressing patients' psychosocial and existential issues improves our quality of life.

Niels Christian Hvidt is Denmark's most experienced lecturer in this field. His talk addresses:

1. How does faith influence health and quality of life?

2. How do illness and crisis intensify faith?

3. How can healthcare improve its approach to psychosocial and existential needs?