Download PDF: COMING SOON Bioethics: A Primer for Christians, 4th edition Gilbert Meilaender, Eerdmans, 2020. ISBN 978-0-8028-7816-8, 156 pages, Paperback, $20.99.   Gilbert Meilaender, I believe, is among us for such a time as this. I first met Dr. Meilaender in the late 1970s as a pre-med student enrolled in his course on C.S. Lewis. It was a wonderfully demanding course, and Dr. Meilaender, formerly a Lutheran pastor, challenged us to “go deeper” in all we thought and wrote. A year or two later, I stopped by his office to pay my respects as each of us was preparing to leave the University of Virginia, he to teach at Oberlin and I to study medicine in Washington. Many years later, he and I have never entirely left behind that meeting space and that attitude, and his thought continues to encourage and inform this thirty-year veteran of critical care medicine. Bioethics: A Primer for Christians, now in its fourth edition, first appeared in 1996—an era vastly different from our own, yet one in which the challenging bioethical thickets of today were taking root. In the current text, Meilaender preserves his twelve-chapter format and subject headings, updating his book to keep pace […]

Kapic writes in a well-researched yet accessible and engaging manner. With today’s societal obsession with youth, health, diet, and optimization of physical performance and personal appearance, Kapic firmly but gently reminds us that despite our best efforts, we are all aging and dying and that this is not necessarily bad.

Download PDF: COMING SOON Gender Identity & Faith: Clinical Postures, Tools, and Case Studies for Client-Centered Care Mark A. Yarhouse and Julia A. Sadusky, IVP Academic, 2022. ISBN 978-0-8308-4181-3, 224 pages, Paperback, $28.00   Wrestling with our flesh is a tough battle. We all experience mental and emotional pain when struggling to understand how we feel or who we are. This struggle is especially true of gender identity, which has become a sensitive and controversial topic in recent years. It is profoundly personal and increasingly politicized. More research and data are needed to discern the issue properly, but people need help now. In their new book, Gender Identity & Faith, psychologists Mark Yarhouse and Julia Sadusky offer insights to aid clinicians caring for clients with gender identity issues. Though sometimes theologically questionable, the book is a worthwhile contribution to the debate. Yarhouse and Sadusky bring extensive academic, clinical, and personal credentials to this subject. They have previously teamed up to write other works on sexuality and gender in a Christian context. This volume is a shift from the philosophical to the practical, written for a broader audience within the mental health profession. Their purpose is to “serve as a resource […]

“Embodiment is the proper state of human existence,” according to Gregg Allison, author of Embodied: Living as Whole People in a Fractured World (p. 14). His purpose is to unpack an understanding of what is meant by the term and to develop a “theology of human embodiment” (p. 15). The idea of embodiment is under attack in our society. On the one hand, modern variations of Gnosticism teach that the body is inherently evil and merely an instrument for our use, justifying such moral controversies as seen in sexual dysphoria and transgenderism. On the other hand, some elevate their bodies to an object of worship, striving for perfection through physical exercise and cosmetic procedures to enhance their appearance, even when the end goal is unclear. Allison brings clarity to embodiment and what it means for how we should live out our lives amongst the mixed signals of the world.

Words are powerful. They impart shared meaning and serve as the foundation for any area of human study, and bioethics is no different. In addition, the meanings of terms may change over time, influenced by prominent cultural thinkers. With this in mind, William Eisenhower has crafted A Bioethicist’s Dictionary to help ethicists and clinicians alike speak the same language and recognize the contributions of key individuals who have formed our modern understanding of bioethics.

In Losing Our Dignity, Camosy’s central driving thesis is that the authority and power of modern medicine “have put an increasing number of human beings outside the circle of protection based on fundamental human equality” (p. 13). This loss of human equality and dignity is based primarily on cognitive disadvantages among neurologically diverse individuals, from those with Down syndrome to others with Alzheimer’s disease. In the eyes of an increasingly secular world, such people have less to offer, therefore less dignity.

Along with nurses and medical doctors, pharmacists have long been recognized, and honored, by the public as professionals exhibiting honesty and high ethical standards. Serving as the medication expert in the healthcare system, both other medical professionals and patients alike rely heavily on the pharmacist’s knowledge and skills related to an increasingly complex landscape of medications and the diseases (or situations) that such are intended to prevent or treat. And it is expected—assumed even—that the pharmacist will leverage such expertise in the best interest of the patient—as a fiduciary, if you will—exercising a competent, selfless, and wise approach to each patient’s care.

Carl Trueman, a church historian by training and, in recent years, a cultural analyst, has given the evangelical world—and others willing to listen—a sophisticated historical and philosophical genealogy of the current cultural crisis in the West. It is a “how we arrived at our present situation” book, filled with evidence and intellectual connections over about 300 years. Trueman searches for the roots, not only of our sexual mores and practices, but of the broader ideas that form what many would label the reigning worldview.

Sometimes a book has pages filled with the reality of truth. The Way of Medicine: Ethics and the Healing Profession, by Farr Curlin and Christopher Tollefsen, is one such work. In a relatively short and readable volume, the authors explore and analyze the how’s and why’s of medical practice, from the ancient model of Hippocrates to the modern “service-provider model.” Using case examples, moral theory, foundational ethics, and experience, they charge after the conflicts between the modern model and the more ancient “way of medicine,” which they espouse as “a practice oriented toward the patient’s health as one basic human good” (p. 54). Their central questions are: “what is medicine?” and “what is medicine for?” They answer these by embracing clinical practice as a profession, not a job.