Online
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General Audience
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During this conversation, TMC co-director Farr Curlin, M.D., will sit down with Ekaterina Lomperis, Ph.D., to discuss her recent book, The Reformations of Medicine: Early Modern Beginnings and Contemporary Possibilities. In it, Lomperis looks to recover Martin Luther’s little-studied theology of medicine, arguing that Luther prized the proper use of medicine as a divinely preferred means of actively resisting bodily suffering. Curlin and Lomperis will explore how this early modern “reformation of healing” might inform contemporary practices of medicine and efforts to reform those practices.
Farr Curlin, M.D.
Josiah C. Trent Professor of Medical Humanities & TMC Co-Director
Farr Curlin, M.D., is Josiah Trent Professor of Medical Humanities in the Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities, & History of Medicine and Co-Director of the Theology, Medicine and Culture Initiative (TMC) at Duke University. Dr. Curlin has worked to bring attention to the intersection of medicine, ethics, and theology. In 2012 he helped to found both the University of Chicago’s Program on Medicine and Religion and the annual Conference on Medicine and Religion. Since 2015, through Duke Divinity School’s TMC Initiative, he and colleagues have brought graduate theological training to those with vocations to health care. Starting in 2023, Dr. Curlin also is working with colleagues across North America to develop the Hippocratic Society, an association of students and practitioners dedicated to fulfilling the profession to heal. He is co-author, with Chris Tollefsen, of The Way of Medicine: Ethics and the Healing Profession (Notre Dame University Press, 2021), as well as more than 150 articles and book chapters addressing the moral and spiritual dimensions of medical practice.
Ekaterina Lomperis, M.Div., Ph.D.
Scott and Susan Orr Family Endowed Chair in Medical Humanities and Christian Faith Associate Professor of Medical Humanities
Ekaterina Lomperis is the inaugural Scott and Susan Orr Family Associate Professor and Chair in Medical Humanities and Christian Faith at Baylor University it Waco, Texas. Raised and educated in the countries of Moldova and Russia, she moved to the United States to earn her M.Div. from Harvard University and her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.
Dr. Lomperis’s research focuses on past and present intersections between medicine and Christianity, with particular attention to their historical, theological, and ethical dimensions. Within medical humanities, her areas of academic interest span Christian theologies of medicine, the relationship between medicine and Christianity in the early modern era, gendered dimensions in the religious histories of healing, and contemporary Christian spiritualities in healthcare.
Dr. Lomperis is author of two books: the academically acclaimed The Reformations of Medicine: Early Modern Beginnings and Contemporary Possibilities (Fortress Press, 2025) and, with Gary Ferngren, Essential Readings in Medicine and Religion (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017). She has won numerous grants and fellowships, including most recently two grants from the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, deepening engagements between science and Christianity.
Dr. Lomperis has contributed her leadership to national scholarly organizations. In the last six years, she has been an advisory board member of the Conference on Medicine and Religion, where she most recently served on the Mission and Vision Statement Committee and is currently on the Planning and Hosting Committee. She is also an elected officer on the Executive Committee of the Society for Reformation Research.