Abstract
From its earliest manifestations Christianity has been motivated to provide important services to the sick and dying. As we are aware, monasteries were centres of medical provision and alms giving, while functioning as institutions that gave long-term care to the elderly.1 This lineage is important since one genuine cornerstone of secularisation theory, as advanced in its earliest stages by Peter Berger, saw medical and social services apparently ‘liberated’ from clerical control. Implicitly it has been an assumption the theory’s proponents have made ever since.
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Notes
See Andrew T. Crislip (2005) From Monastery to Hospital: Christian Monasticism and the Transformation of Health Care in Late Antiquity ( Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press )
Amanda Porterfield (2005) Healing in the History of Christianity ( Oxford: Oxford University Press).
See also Charles Taylor (2007) A Secular Age ( New York: Belknap ), p. 737.
See the interesting discussion on the ‘therapeutic turn’ in Taylor, A Secular Age, pp. 618–23. See also Piet Zuidgeest (2001) The Absence of God: Exploring the Christian Tradition in a Situation of Mourning ( Leiden: Brill ), p. 40. This argues that the experience of being bereaved compels individuals to recall and replay essential narratives that give meaning to loss.
For more on this area see David S. Nash (1995) ‘“Look in Her Face and Lose Thy Dread of Dying”: The Ideological Importance of Death to the Secularist Community in Nineteenth Century Britain’. Journal of Religious History 19, 2 (December): 158–80.
George Jacob Holyoake ( 1850, 1863 and 1902 editions) The Logic of Death ( London: Watts and Co. ), p. 14.
B. Harris Cowper (1865) The Logic of Life and Death ( London: Elliot Stock ), p. 3.
Sarah Williams (1999) Religious Belief and Popular Culture in Southwark, c. 1880–1939 ( Oxford: OUP ).
Ibid. See also See James Gordon Cox (1955) A Priest’s Work in Hospital: A Handbook for Hospital Chaplains and Others of the Clergy who Visit Hospitals ( London: SPCK ), pp. 75–6. For the assertion that ‘The average Anglican seems sadly unprepared, spiritually, for sickness’.
See Ian Morris (2006) The Motorcycle Hearse and Other Undertakings ( Reading: Crossover Communications ), p. 50. Morris also notes that, unhelpfully, the appearance of the clergy could be associated with immanent death by anxious patients. For a modern view arguing for the professionalisation of such work, see
Christina M. Puchalski (2006) ‘On Sacred Ground–The Role of Chaplains in the Care of the Dying: A Partnership between the Religious Community and the Healthcare Community’. In Christina M. Puchalski, ed., A Time for Listening and Caring: Spirituality and the Care of the Chronically Ill and Dying ( Oxford: Oxford University Press ), pp. 115–28. This argues for the individualisation of death with each interaction a ‘sacred event’ (p. 128). Again this might further stress the quest to address the demands of the deathbed as a marketplace of comfort.
Michael Wilson (1971) The Hospital–A Place of Truth: A Study of the Role of the Hospital Chaplain ( Birmingham: University of Birmingham Institute for the Study of Worship and Religious Architecture ), p. 67.
Some inspiration for ideas around of end of life care came from the St Lukes ‘home for the dying poor’, which had been opened in 1893. See Shirley Du Boulay ( 1984, 1994 edition) Cicely Saunders: The Founder of the Modern Hospice Movement ( London: Hodder and Stoughton ), pp. 60–1.
Phillipe Aries (1981) The Hour of Our Death ( London: Allen Lane), final chapter.
See for example Allan Kellehear (2005) Compassionate Cities; Public Health and End-of-Life Care ( Milton Park: Routledge). Intriguingly this argued for a ‘Third Wave’ of public health-care approaches, which stressed and emphasised ideas associated with ‘compassion’ arguably focussing upon the individual’s desire to change themselves and to be converted to the messages associated with improved health. It might be particularly informative to compare these to the ideas associated with the ‘narcissism of the self’ noted in Chapter 3.
The author, in updated chapters in the expanded 2007 version of Du Boulay’s biography, described Saunders subsequent institution (St Christopher’s) as ‘a place of pilgrimage for those involved in the care of the dying’. This is recorded alongside the elevation of Saunders to the status of an international celebrity with publicity of her methods ensuring a widespread knowledge of the simplicity of her approach to the management of death. This culminated in recognition of the profession she had created and a ‘Three Step Programme’ of palliative care. Shirley Du Boulay ( 2007 edition) Cicely Saunders: The Founder of the Modern Hospice Movement. Updated, with additional chapters by Marianne Rankin ( London: SPCK ), pp. 193, and 204.
John Hinton (1975) Dying ( Harmondsworth: Penguin ), p. 146.
See Laurence O’Connell (2006) ‘Spirituality in Palliative Care: An Ethical Imperative’. In Christina M. Puchalski, ed., A Time for Listening and Caring: Spirituality and the Care of the Chronically Ill and Dying ( Oxford: Oxford University Press ), pp. 27–38.
Ludovic Kennedy (1993) Euthanasia. The Stevens Lectures for the Laity 1993 (Royal Society of Medicine), p. 10.
Leslie Wetherhead (1965) The Christian Agnostic ( London: Hodder and Stoughton ), p. 187.
Robin Gill (1998), ed., Euthanasia and the Churches ( London: Cassell).
Alistair V. Campbell, ‘Euthanasia and the Principle of Justice’ in Gill, Euthanasia and the Churches, pp. 83–97. For a 1980s summary of the Christian arguments in favour of limited forms of Euthanasia see William Purcell (1981) Euthanasia ( London: Mowbray’s Enquirer’s Library ), for a 1990s summary of the Christian arguments against Euthanasia see
Nigel Biggar (1995) Euthanasia Ethical Issues 1 ( Oxford: Farmington papers ).
Interestingly palliative care contained its own central reserved space for the importance of narrative. This assessed the ‘impact of the illness’ upon the individual patient and their desire to create narratives of their own lives to be left for relatives and friends. See Kathryn Boog (2008) ‘Telling Tales–The Importance of Narrative in Our Lives’. In Kathryn Boog and Claire Tester, eds, Palliative Care: A Practical Guide for the Health Professional: Finding Meaning and Purpose in Life and Death ( London: Churchill Livingstone Elsevier ), pp. 135–46.
See also Yasmin Gunaratnam and David Oliviere (2009) Narrative Stories in Health Care: Illness, Dying and Bereavement ( Oxford: OUP).
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Nash, D. (2013). ‘Our Way to Eternal Joy is to Suffer Here with Christ’ — Sickness, Pain and Dying. In: Christian Ideals in British Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137349057_6
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