Cicely Saunders: The Founder of the Modern Hospice Movement
My Recent Longform Essay in Religion & Liberty
[Religion & Liberty: Volume 34, Number 2]
This week, Lord willing, I’m in Vancouver, British Columbia, teaching at Regent College. I taught there two summers ago, and as anyone who has been there knows, Vancouver is lovely. And Regent is a fabulous school. It is a transdenominational, evangelical graduate school for theology, one rich in the arts and culture.
Because I’m busy teaching this week (a course I created called Christian Poetics, which is the study of literary aesthetics), I thought I’d share with you a recent article I wrote on the founder of the modern hospice movement, examined within the context of today’s rising embrace of medical aid in dying (assisted suicide). It isn’t lost on me that I am here in Canada where this has become a matter of national policy, but not without controversy, as my article shows.
I hope you will take time to sit down and read it. I learned a lot in writing it. The late Dame Cicely Saunders was an amazing woman. She left an incredible legacy and it was my honor to honor her.
https://www.acton.org/religion-liberty/volume-34-number-2/who-will-comfort-me-total-care-cicely-saunders
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Upon my return, Lord willing, we will begin a few weeks on the poetry of John Donne. We will begin with “Batter My Heart.”
In some order or another, we will also read:
Any other requests, readers?
"Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.”1
Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace, trans. By Emma Crawford and Mario von der Ruhr (London: Routledge, 2002), 117.
Thanks for such a thorough article. I don't know how you get so much thoughtful pieces out there. This hit me personally in 2 areas:
One, I spent 2 years as a hospice chaplain and saw so much of this first hand. I had to do lots of learning as I went along. I was thankful for colleagues who gave me good resources to read and conversations that made me wiser.
Two, we have an adult disabled son. He struggles with anxiety and depression. I could so easily see the medical establishment across the border not helping but encouraging suicide. I'm troubled by the number of people I meet in America who haven't thought through all these implications.
Thanks for putting this out. I'm sharing it with my network
Karen, as you know, I currently live in Canada and work in healthcare. I have told employers and prospective employers that I will not participate in the deliberate termination of human life, and so far haven't had to choose - I am currently limited in my ability to work anyway due to health issues. But I do feel concern for younger colleagues of conviction trying to navigate the ethical minefield.
I wasn't given any help to know how to deal with it myself. When the legislation legalizing MAiD in Canada was passed, I was studying for a further professional degree. The church I attended while going to school had multiple distinguished physicians in attendance, the community being a hub for healthcare education and research. I tried to discuss my concerns with two of those I knew personally, one the head of a research department, the other the head of a surgical speciality. They were morally outraged, but it wouldn't directly affect them. When I expressed concern that nurses would find it much harder to avoid getting involved, as they were direct employees of hospitals working under management, while physicians were contract workers who could set their own terms, they suggested I really should discuss my concerns with a Christian nurses group.
I have never had a pastor ask me how they could help with ethical problems I face. I am not sure, given the opinion pieces I see by pastors and other Christian figureheads commanding "resist the culture of death" from evangelical media outlets, that they would give any practical help. Their income to survive doesn't depend on making moral choices in the face of ethical dilemmas that could mean professional and economical ruin.
I muddle along as best I can. But I can think of ways the church might help, avenues that don't involve using one of those right wing political funding juggernauts to fund a test case through court (even if I had to go to court, I wouldn't take the money of one of those organizations if they offered it - I have seen them outright lie to increase donations). Things like setting up private elder care institutions and hospices run by churches - a few of these exist, but not nearly enough. But I am a low-income nobody, nearly as voiceless as those disabled and impoverished people considering MAiD. I find the Canadian evangelical church is more occupied in lamenting the decadent culture while carrying on as normal - or worse, bellyaching over past COVID measures (concerning which their ire is all too often directed at the healthcare professions) - to listen anyway. Canadian Christians were once the spearhead of healthcare in this country - the first province to develop public healthcare had a Christian premier at the time - now they just complain about it. It isn't progressivism that is endangering Christian conviction in Canada, it is our own complacency [if individualism is the U.S.'s Achilles heel, then complacency is Canada's] that ignores any issue that doesn't directly affect us, whether it be COVID or MAiD.