Can Ethics Consultation be Liturgical?: Exploring Being Beheld: On the Liturgical Consummation of Clinical Ethics Consultation
Jaime Konerman-Sease, PhD, HEC-C, University of Minnesota, Jordan Mason, PhD, MDiv, HEC-C, Providence Health, Kimbell Kornu, MD, PhD, Belmont University, and Ashley Moyse, PhD, Department of Religion, Baylor University and Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford
Being Beheld offers a theological understanding of practical ethics, especially of the kind that clinical ethicists undertake in their consultative work. In this panel, the author will describe the book’s approach and its foundational questions regarding methodology in clinical ethics. They will then offer an overview of their Christian liturgical alternative to standardized methodologies, highlighting a liturgical stance’s key features: interruptibility, encounter, reciprocity, and humility. They will argue that the methods by which we solve clinical ethics problems are of essential importance, as methods determine both the goods (or goals) that can be sought and the people we become in the process. By interacting with this panel, the audience will be encouraged to consider their own ethics practice, what kind of world is brought into view by their approach to clinical ethics consultation, and what kind of ethicists they become as they engage with it.
Panelist X, a physician-ethicist and theologian, will highlight the distinctiveness of the Christian liturgical alternative to standardized methodologies by re-narrating medicine in general and clinical ethics in particular as a set of ersatz liturgies. The sense of “liturgy” draws on James K.A. Smith’s work on cultural liturgies, such that liturgies are rituals of ultimate concern, with the modern hospital as a central locus. Medical liturgies can be ersatz because they are oriented towards idolatrous, ultimate goods. Ventilator withdrawal will be used as an example of a cultural liturgy in the hospital that can have multiple valences but often can be ersatz. Then, panelist X will deepen the Christian liturgical alternative to standardized methodologies by reflecting on moral agency within clinical ethics using an Incarnational metaphysical paradigm, making it distinctively Christian and yet inclusive of all. Panelist X concludes with exploring how the author’s approach in Being Beheld offers one such incarnational metaphysical paradigm.
Panelist Y, a theologian and ethicist, will situate Being Beheld within the broader contest of moral formation with our technological milieu. In [book title] work, panelist Y attends to technology not simply as an instrument but as an ontology—an atmosphere in which all things, including persons, relations, and ethics itself, are rendered subject to technocratic logics of control, efficiency, and procedural mastery. Clinical ethics frameworks, in this light, risk becoming technologies of moral management rather than practices of discernment, while reducing the complexities of moral life to solvable problems rather than occasions for communal attention and care. Such frameworks disclose what William Stringfellow identifies as the principalities and powers at work in contemporary medicine, constraining our moral imagination and the very conditions under which ethical reasoning occurs. Against this background, Being Beheld’s liturgical bioethics appears not as a quaint ecclesial option but as a dissenting practice akin to what Stringfellow envisioned: a refusal to conform to the powers by cultivating a mode of life receptive to interruption, capable of confession, and open to reconciliation. The liturgical stance the author describes thus becomes a counter-liturgy within the technocratic order, an embodied protest that reorients both moral agency and clinical ethics toward worship rather than mastery, toward being beheld rather than controlling what is seen.
Finally, Panelist Z, a clinical ethicist and theologian, will explore how the approach to ethical consultation in Being Beheld can be applied in the secular hospital setting. They establish how a liturgical ethics framework improves consultation work in the secular space and offers a protective layer to moral distress that uniquely applies to spaces where deep values discussions might be scarce. This panelist then situates Being Beheld’s framework within the larger Christian tradition of sacred/secular space and draws on historical approaches from the 18th century to explore how Christians ought to engage in secular environments while promoting theological virtues. In particular, this panelist will highlight the book’s emphasis on reciprocity and humility and explore how these virtues are mirrored in the historical Christian tradition. Drawing on Jane Austen’s novels to reveal the importance of humility and reciprocity for Christians in secular spaces, it becomes clear that a liturgical approach to ethics consultation is both novel in its application and deeply grounded in the historical Christian tradition.
Panelist X, a physician-ethicist and theologian, will highlight the distinctiveness of the Christian liturgical alternative to standardized methodologies by re-narrating medicine in general and clinical ethics in particular as a set of ersatz liturgies. The sense of “liturgy” draws on James K.A. Smith’s work on cultural liturgies, such that liturgies are rituals of ultimate concern, with the modern hospital as a central locus. Medical liturgies can be ersatz because they are oriented towards idolatrous, ultimate goods. Ventilator withdrawal will be used as an example of a cultural liturgy in the hospital that can have multiple valences but often can be ersatz. Then, panelist X will deepen the Christian liturgical alternative to standardized methodologies by reflecting on moral agency within clinical ethics using an Incarnational metaphysical paradigm, making it distinctively Christian and yet inclusive of all. Panelist X concludes with exploring how the author’s approach in Being Beheld offers one such incarnational metaphysical paradigm.
Panelist Y, a theologian and ethicist, will situate Being Beheld within the broader contest of moral formation with our technological milieu. In [book title] work, panelist Y attends to technology not simply as an instrument but as an ontology—an atmosphere in which all things, including persons, relations, and ethics itself, are rendered subject to technocratic logics of control, efficiency, and procedural mastery. Clinical ethics frameworks, in this light, risk becoming technologies of moral management rather than practices of discernment, while reducing the complexities of moral life to solvable problems rather than occasions for communal attention and care. Such frameworks disclose what William Stringfellow identifies as the principalities and powers at work in contemporary medicine, constraining our moral imagination and the very conditions under which ethical reasoning occurs. Against this background, Being Beheld’s liturgical bioethics appears not as a quaint ecclesial option but as a dissenting practice akin to what Stringfellow envisioned: a refusal to conform to the powers by cultivating a mode of life receptive to interruption, capable of confession, and open to reconciliation. The liturgical stance the author describes thus becomes a counter-liturgy within the technocratic order, an embodied protest that reorients both moral agency and clinical ethics toward worship rather than mastery, toward being beheld rather than controlling what is seen.
Finally, Panelist Z, a clinical ethicist and theologian, will explore how the approach to ethical consultation in Being Beheld can be applied in the secular hospital setting. They establish how a liturgical ethics framework improves consultation work in the secular space and offers a protective layer to moral distress that uniquely applies to spaces where deep values discussions might be scarce. This panelist then situates Being Beheld’s framework within the larger Christian tradition of sacred/secular space and draws on historical approaches from the 18th century to explore how Christians ought to engage in secular environments while promoting theological virtues. In particular, this panelist will highlight the book’s emphasis on reciprocity and humility and explore how these virtues are mirrored in the historical Christian tradition. Drawing on Jane Austen’s novels to reveal the importance of humility and reciprocity for Christians in secular spaces, it becomes clear that a liturgical approach to ethics consultation is both novel in its application and deeply grounded in the historical Christian tradition.