Abstract
Bioethical issues often arise in the most intimate and private moments of an individual’s life. Many patients may turn to their faiths and their religious authorities in an effort to find meaning in both the question and the answer. Healthcare providers seek guidance within their own faith traditions while recognizing that in any given situation, they must act in the patient’s best interests and consider the patient’s wishes and preferences. However, because religion is also a public matter, the interplay of religion and bioethics is often reflected in societal debates as well as personal decisionmaking. This chapter lays the foundation for an exploration of the relationship between religion, bioethics, policy, and law.
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Notes
- 1.
For an example of reliance on specific biblical passages as the basis for ethical arguments, see Payne, 2014.
- 2.
The “narrative of emancipation” alleges that the development of secular bioethics represents a freeing of bioethics from the worn, outdated, regimented approach offered by religiously premised approaches (Kahn, 2016). For other analyses that examine this characterization, albeit without using this term, see Carter (1993) and Hunter (1991). Hollinger (1989) has noted that evangelicalism has often led to efforts to apply moral principles in an absolutist, regimented fashion, an approach that fails to address morally ambiguous situations and acknowledge social pluralism. Gudolf (2013) similarly notes that the ethical system of many religions has been rule-based and exceptionless.
- 3.
One author has caustically asserted that when people “claim to be taking a neutral and impartial view, it is far more likely that they just don’t know where they are” (Stempsey, 2012, p. 18).
- 4.
In contrast to the narrative of emancipation, which claims that secular bioethics freed the field from the intransigence of religious dogma, the “narrative of lamentation” argues that “religious voices were marginalized” and “muted” (Lammers, 1996, p. 19) and that secular theorists attempted to hijack bioethical inquiry in the guise of neutrality. Narratives and counternarratives have been developed in an effort to solidify and proselytize each group’s position (Kahn, 2016).
- 5.
Englehardt’s assessment of Christian bioethics seems to suggest that no compromise is possible between secular and Christian bioethics. He has observed:
A community’s morality depends on the moral premises, rules of evidence, and rules of inference it acknowledges, as well as on the social structure of those in authority to rule knowledge claims in or out of a community’s set of commitments. For Christians, who is an authority and who is in authority are determined by the Holy tradition, through which in Mysteries one experiences the Holy Spirit. Because of the requirement of repentance and conversion to the message of Christ preserved in the tradition, the authority of the community must not only exclude heretical teaching but heretical communities from communion … Christian bioethics should be non-ecumenical by recognizing that true moral knowledge has particular moral content, is communal, and is not fully available outside of the community of right worship. (Englehardt, 1995, p. 182)
He has also asserted that:
[f]or Christians, resolution of bioethical controversies will not be found through appeals to foundational rational arguments or isolated scriptural quotations, but only in a Christian community united in authentic faith. (Englehardt, 1995, p. 29)
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United States Constitution, First Amendment
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Rosenberger v. Rector of the University of Virginia, 515 U.S. 753 (1995).
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Loue, S. (2020). Society, Religion, and Bioethics. In: Case Studies in Society, Religion, and Bioethics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44150-0_1
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