Bedside Manners: The Broken Spirituality of Contemporary US Medical Practice
Sparked by his elderly mother’s impersonal medical care, our writer laments the fact that doctors aren’t spending nearly enough time listening to and getting to know their patients and its implications for a medical culture that focuses almost exclusively on the body; ignoring soul, spirit, and specificity.
A New Year’s Health Care Sobriety Test for Religious Progressives: It’s Not Obama
Responsible religious leaders need to stay sober and stop cheerleading for the Democrats and for the Obama White House just because they’re not total Visigoths.
Instead of worrying about making friends, pols should focus on greater transparency and separation of church and state.
Bad Religion Leaves Big Bruises: When Christians Threaten Health Care Reform
Two strands of Christianity battle against a bill ensuring that all Americans are cared for. One prefers John Locke to Jesus while the other has its issues with women.
Both pro-choice and pro-life supporters of health care reform must speak out against this immoral use of religious services.
Or is the opposition just to provide cover for them?
A right-wing blogger has a run-in with the “progressive evangelical” on abortion and leaves confused. He’s not alone.
And for that matter, why is an influential blogger writing straight from dubious press releases?
Is Universal Coverage the only moral touchstone in health care reform? Religious progressives need to think again.
Mythmaking 101, or, Why We Believe in Death Panels
Forget what you learned about myth from Joseph Campbell—this death panel rumor is the real deal: values masquerading as truth, all in service of one heckuva group fantasy.
The Silence of Religious Voices in the Health Care Debates
The national conversation about health care has been about everything but care, or compassion, for those truly in need. Isn’t it simply wrong for religious leaders to sit this one out?
Conservative 'Cafeteria Catholics' Favor Opposition to Gay Marriage Over Health Care
As the debate over gay marriage is reignited in New Jersey, the local Roman Catholic bishops threw themselves in with a zeal they have yet to display in the fight for universal health care, despite theological requirements that they fight for it. Are they acting like “cafeteria Catholics,” picking and choosing which parts of the Church’s mandates to follow?
Mobilizing Religious Progressives on Health Care
The President is reaching out to faith leaders to help reframe the health care debates in moral terms, and religious progressives are heeding the call(s).
When Words Kill: A Health Care Glossary
Euthanasia, end-of-life, death with dignity, assisted suicide: these mean entirely different things depending on whom you consult. The health care debates have enormously high stakes, and yet we don’t even agree on the terms.
Health Care Post-Mortem: Left is Right, Right is Left and Public is Loser
So long as the health care battle is focused on the model of market competition—the very notion that health care is best conceived as a for-profit industry—the whole debate is a non-starter. If a meaningful health care reform is to pass, Democrats and liberals will have to return to their social justice roots.
The truth is that Americans’ lives and wallets are both in danger if we don’t reform health care. A proposal to out-negative the naysayers.
The tragedy of this health care debate is that the protesters won’t be the only ones who lose access to care—we all will.
American Brokenness: A Lament
Conservatives in this country are undergoing an existential crisis, but this is not the time for liberals to sit by smugly and watch.
Health Care as Moral Drama
Myths of good versus evil have long sustained conservatism, but these narratives, with their shining heroes, and dastardly evildoers, are irrelevant to the civil debates at hand, and threaten to undermine the reforms that would help us all the most.
The debate about health has turned into a debate about death. Why has our heath care debate shifted so easily and so quickly into a fright-fest concerned with the care we owe to the dead and dying?
One reason we don't hear from "those who actually minister to real people with real problems" is that conservatives have successfully defined "people of faith" as abortion opponents
What We Really Talk About When We Talk About Health Care
What looks like discussion about deductibles and co-pays, preventative treatment, and end-of-life care, is really about something else entirely. And then there’s all the yelling.
The Resurrection of Terri Schiavo
Opponents of health care reform have raised the specter of Terri Schiavo to mobilize “pro-life” activists and the elderly, but what they forget is that this case was a powerful instance of an unpopular government intervention in a family matter. They can’t have it both ways.
Chuck Colson Writes a Lot of Nonsense in a Short Space
The Propaganda campaign against health care reform reaches a new low.
Politics at this level is a blood sport, not a seminar, and the president seems a bit behind on his combat training.