Cancer and Faith: The Intertwining of Narratives in Episcopal Perspectives

Illness narratives can be understood as the language that emerges from the experiences of the body. Many studies have explored these fascinating narratives in which individuals afflicted by illness seek to make sense of their experiences. These studies have involved individuals from a variety of backgrounds, but few have explored the impact of cancer on those within mainline Protestant traditions. This study contributes to the often overlooked yet highly individualized experience of cancer survivors within the Episcopal tradition. This study explores the intersections between the illness narratives and the religious narratives constructed and retold by six self-identifying Episcopalians. Religious narratives can be understood as the language that emerges from faith, as informed by personal beliefs and religious tradition. Analysis of the interviews conducted with each of these individuals demonstrated that there was no standard response to illness even within the same tradition. Instead, these individuals were informed to varying extents by their faith tradition, in order craft religious narratives in conjunction with their illness narratives in order to make meaning of the trauma of their cancer experience. From this study, it is shown that for these six individuals, illness narratives function to capture and contain the cancer experience in order to find closure, while the crafting of religious narratives initiates a process of ongoing reflection, in which trauma can be overcome and replaced by self-cultivation, closeness to the divine, and reliance upon community