TY  - CHAP
AB  - Purpose – Religious addiction treatment has experienced a rise both in its reach and exposure to attention from medical professionals. Largely autonomous conversion-based programs have received unprecedented support and legitimacy. We investigate “Victory Ministries,”11The organization ‘Victory Ministries’ is a pseudonym. Any resemblance to actual locales of this name or similar is entirely coincidental. All names have been change to protect the identity of the participants. a large Midwestern evangelical rehab facility, exploring the similarities and differences between formulations of addiction-as-disease found in “secular” rehab and the moral binaries that guide Victory's program.Methodology/approach – Qualitative case study: Interviews and ethnography.Findings – Working from in-depth interviews, we explore the inner workings of Victory's curriculum and program design, as it transmutes dominant therapeutic concepts and methods into its own Manichaean frame. Aided by superior financial resources and support of a tight-knit network of churches, it delivers its most successful clients into a new life “redeemed by Christ.”Social implications – Proponents of conversion-based service provision position religious institutions as the primary agents of willing compassion and generosity beyond the family compass, stripping the rest of civil society of any claims to promote the greater good. In Victory's metaphor of “invisible war,” a Manichaean vision is quite explicit. Every definition of recovery and reintegration in terms of conversion and submission to religious authority inherently suggests that substance use stems largely from immorality and that the unsaved in general are sinful and dangerous. By funding a conversion-based shadow welfare apparatus, we argue, the US government is intensifying the criminalization of poverty, the steady downgrading of more inclusive institutions, and ultimately the materialization of Victory's Manichaean vision in a polarized nation.
VL  - 14
SN  - 978-1-78052-930-1, 978-1-78052-931-8/1057-6290
DO  - 10.1108/S1057-6290(2012)0000014011
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1108/S1057-6290(2012)0000014011
AU  - Gowan Teresa
AU  - Atmore Jack
ED  - Julie Netherland
PY  - 2012
Y1  - 2012/01/01
TI  - Into the Light: Evangelical Rehab and the Seduction of New Life
T2  - Critical Perspectives on Addiction
T3  - Advances in Medical Sociology
PB  - Emerald Group Publishing Limited
SP  - 155
EP  - 178
Y2  - 2024/04/26
ER  -