There’s a surprising quality to the prayers left at the feet of a statue of Jesus at the Johns Hopkins University Hospital; they’re not simple petitions or requests for an all-powerful God to fix their problems—they are snippets of ongoing conversations.
Wendy Cadge
Wendy Cadge teaches sociology at Brandeis University. Her first book, Heartwood: the First Generation of Theravada Buddhism in America, is an ethnographic study of how immigrant Buddhists from Thailand and mostly white convert Buddhists in the U.S. understand and practice Buddhism in their everyday lives. Her current book project, Paging God: Religion in the Halls of Medicine, examines the historical and current institutional presence of religion and spirituality in hospitals.
