Re-enchanting Medicine through Re-imagined Monastic Living in a Contemporary Biomedical Academic Setting
Moderator -
Tracy Balboni, M.D., MPH, Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School
Panelists -
Roman Gusztak, M.D., Royal University Hospital, University of Saskatchewan
Holly Hodges, M.D., Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School
Bill Pearson, PhD., Augusta University
Paul Whiting, M.D., University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health
“What matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us. And if the tradition of the virtues was able to survive the horrors of the last dark ages, we are not entirely without grounds for hope. This time however the barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been governing us for quite some time. And it is our lack of consciousness of this that constitutes part of our predicament. We are waiting not for a Godot, but for another—doubtless very different—St. Benedict.” Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue
A secular, materialist perspective on health, illness, and healing dominates the academic medical context. This worldview’s hegemony within biomedicine is rendered all the more powerful by the fact that it remains largely unrecognized; it is simply the way things are, infiltrating everything from individual patient-clinician interactions to the very social and institutional structures that form medical settings.
Healthcare practitioners and researchers coming into this context, even if well formed within religious worldviews, are consistently unable to individually overcome the momentum of this pervasive secular, materialist worldview. Medical trainees in particular can find that they, though intending to have their own religious worldview as central to their professional formation, are unable to surmount, let alone change, the rigid structure of this worldview. Hence it is not uncommon for persons within healthcare to privatize their own religious worldview and/or to shift priorities for formation and practice to only those in consistency with the secular, materialist worldview (e.g., working hard to be excellent technically in your field). This preserves the dominance of the secular, materialist approach to biomedicine, despite the fact that many clinicians remain deeply religious and desire their spiritual tradition to inform and ground their work within healthcare.
This conundrum raises two related questions. First, how are religious persons within biomedicine to preserve their worldviews in this secular healthcare context? And second, how are they to bring these worldviews into the secular healthcare setting in a manner that fosters true interchange with the currently dominant worldview, as part of the ongoing shaping of health care and of persons working within this sphere?
One approach to these questions is to consider historically how healthcare has been informed by religious worldviews, even while applying material, technical approaches to biomedicine, and then to attempt to adapt and re-invent such models within the current biomedical context. In considering Western biomedicine’s history, a prominent example is that of monastic communities – the context within which Western hospitals first arose. Monastic communities carried both deeply formed religious views and practices in caring for the sick and socially needy while integrating contemporary technical approaches to health, illness, and healing. The flourishing and longstanding influence of monastic communities on biomedicine raises the possibility that true interface and dialogue with the current secular, materialist worldview within healthcare cannot occur via the means of many religiously formed individuals within healthcare, but rather through religiously formed communities. As persons let go of their servitude to individualism and dwell together, share and argue with one another, pray and ponder together, perhaps vocation within medicine can be re-enchanted with a beauty and power that speaks into and even softens the rigid structures that undergird health care. “How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity! It is like precious oil upon the head, coming down the beard, even Aaron’s beard, coming down upon the edge of his robes. It is as if the dew of Hermon were falling on Mount Zion. For there the LORD bestows his blessing, even life forevermore.” Psalm 133
The Longwood Christian Community (LCC)– located in Boston, Massachusetts in immediate proximity to Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard Medical School, three Harvard-affiliated hospitals, and countless area research laboratories – is such a community. LCC was established 14 years ago as a reimagining of Christian monastic life within the modern, academic biomedical context to form trainees within a diversity of healthcare settings (e.g., physicians, nurses, researchers, physical therapists) and to communally engage the academic biomedical context as our neighbor. We are a local community of Christians in healthcare, seeking to spiritually encourage one another and to engage the practice of healthcare based upon the foundation of the Christian faith. As of 2017, there are 40 adults and 12 children living in LCC, with a total of approximately 125 persons being part of LCC since its inception.
Our panel of five will describe the 1) calling, 2) history, 3) practical structures and practices of this post-modern monastic community, and through the experiences of LCC members, illustrate how the vision and lived experience of communal living – in all its glories, mundaneness, and hardships – 4) has shaped individuals as well as 5) established a foundation for interfacing with the culture of biomedicine.
Tracy Balboni, M.D., MPH, Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School
Panelists -
Roman Gusztak, M.D., Royal University Hospital, University of Saskatchewan
Holly Hodges, M.D., Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School
Bill Pearson, PhD., Augusta University
Paul Whiting, M.D., University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health
“What matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us. And if the tradition of the virtues was able to survive the horrors of the last dark ages, we are not entirely without grounds for hope. This time however the barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been governing us for quite some time. And it is our lack of consciousness of this that constitutes part of our predicament. We are waiting not for a Godot, but for another—doubtless very different—St. Benedict.” Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue
A secular, materialist perspective on health, illness, and healing dominates the academic medical context. This worldview’s hegemony within biomedicine is rendered all the more powerful by the fact that it remains largely unrecognized; it is simply the way things are, infiltrating everything from individual patient-clinician interactions to the very social and institutional structures that form medical settings.
Healthcare practitioners and researchers coming into this context, even if well formed within religious worldviews, are consistently unable to individually overcome the momentum of this pervasive secular, materialist worldview. Medical trainees in particular can find that they, though intending to have their own religious worldview as central to their professional formation, are unable to surmount, let alone change, the rigid structure of this worldview. Hence it is not uncommon for persons within healthcare to privatize their own religious worldview and/or to shift priorities for formation and practice to only those in consistency with the secular, materialist worldview (e.g., working hard to be excellent technically in your field). This preserves the dominance of the secular, materialist approach to biomedicine, despite the fact that many clinicians remain deeply religious and desire their spiritual tradition to inform and ground their work within healthcare.
This conundrum raises two related questions. First, how are religious persons within biomedicine to preserve their worldviews in this secular healthcare context? And second, how are they to bring these worldviews into the secular healthcare setting in a manner that fosters true interchange with the currently dominant worldview, as part of the ongoing shaping of health care and of persons working within this sphere?
One approach to these questions is to consider historically how healthcare has been informed by religious worldviews, even while applying material, technical approaches to biomedicine, and then to attempt to adapt and re-invent such models within the current biomedical context. In considering Western biomedicine’s history, a prominent example is that of monastic communities – the context within which Western hospitals first arose. Monastic communities carried both deeply formed religious views and practices in caring for the sick and socially needy while integrating contemporary technical approaches to health, illness, and healing. The flourishing and longstanding influence of monastic communities on biomedicine raises the possibility that true interface and dialogue with the current secular, materialist worldview within healthcare cannot occur via the means of many religiously formed individuals within healthcare, but rather through religiously formed communities. As persons let go of their servitude to individualism and dwell together, share and argue with one another, pray and ponder together, perhaps vocation within medicine can be re-enchanted with a beauty and power that speaks into and even softens the rigid structures that undergird health care. “How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity! It is like precious oil upon the head, coming down the beard, even Aaron’s beard, coming down upon the edge of his robes. It is as if the dew of Hermon were falling on Mount Zion. For there the LORD bestows his blessing, even life forevermore.” Psalm 133
The Longwood Christian Community (LCC)– located in Boston, Massachusetts in immediate proximity to Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard Medical School, three Harvard-affiliated hospitals, and countless area research laboratories – is such a community. LCC was established 14 years ago as a reimagining of Christian monastic life within the modern, academic biomedical context to form trainees within a diversity of healthcare settings (e.g., physicians, nurses, researchers, physical therapists) and to communally engage the academic biomedical context as our neighbor. We are a local community of Christians in healthcare, seeking to spiritually encourage one another and to engage the practice of healthcare based upon the foundation of the Christian faith. As of 2017, there are 40 adults and 12 children living in LCC, with a total of approximately 125 persons being part of LCC since its inception.
Our panel of five will describe the 1) calling, 2) history, 3) practical structures and practices of this post-modern monastic community, and through the experiences of LCC members, illustrate how the vision and lived experience of communal living – in all its glories, mundaneness, and hardships – 4) has shaped individuals as well as 5) established a foundation for interfacing with the culture of biomedicine.