Anxious Experts

Disasters now seem to arrive without pause, from the Coronavirus epidemic and mass incarceration to hurricanes and earthquakes, and spiritual care has become a standard part of how societies respond. Joshua Moses traces the growth of disaster-related spiritual expertise in the years after the attacks of 9/11. The approaches to trauma that emerged range widely, taking in meditation and acupuncture as well as trauma therapy and restorative justice.

Moses reads this rise of spiritual expertise as the latest chapter in a long-running tension between secular health practice and champions of religious and spiritual care. The book also offers a way to understand the history of disaster-related trauma and its treatment, and shows how therapeutic and spiritual practices carry political implications.

By looking at where mental health and spirituality meet in times of disaster, the book sheds light on the apocalyptic and dystopian beliefs common across the United States and beyond. It considers how particular kinds of expertise define meaning, and what that meaning may do to the way we picture our relations with other humans and nonhumans, the climate crisis, and the future itself. These therapeutic and spiritual practices will be tested as the climate crisis and other cascading disasters intensify, and Moses questions whether the knowledge we have pieced together can give us the capacities we will need to face what lies ahead.