Theological Activism, The Right to Health, and the Rights of Nature: An Exploration of Shalom
D. Brendan Johnson, Medical Student, University of Minnesota Medical School
O. Carter Snead has written that “[p]ublic bioethics is fundamentally concerned with human vulnerability, dependence, frailty, and finitude,”[1] realities which point public bioethics to the multiple overlapping and growing crises in human and environmental health. In theological terms, this must be a focus on shalom: sacred universal and interwoven creaturely flourishing. The weight of the challenges to creaturely flourishing impels religious and bioethical communities towards action, as well as towards firm political commitments.
It is in this vein that ‘theological activism’ is explored as an avenue towards shalom. First, Alasdair MacIntyre’s work offers its “radical pedagogy dedicated to the creation of thickly-engaged communities of virtue capable of resisting the fragmenting, isolating, and vicious forces of capital”[2] and other forces of destruction. Such communities are the ground of theological activism: they teach and embody both ideas and concrete practices of care and social change. Second, movements like the Right 2 Health, Partners in Health, and Faith In Healthcare show how theological activism is already active in the pursuit of health as a human right. By drawing on theology and notions of the sacred, they break down the private-public divide, challenge the common notion that rights-language is only at home in secular modernity, and engage with theological resources and communities from which they draw their strength.
However, the fullness of shalom includes all of creation beyond human health but is intertwined with it; The Lancet has declared that “climate change is the greatest global health threat facing the world in the 21st century.” Thus, the ‘right to health’ in human society finds its place alongside the larger ‘rights of nature’ movement which seeks to extend both the language of rights and the notions of creaturely community. In offering legal protection to fellow creatures, this movement attempts to politically recognize and protect the dignity of creation and protect it from destruction. By drawing on Catholic social thought, certain contemporary South American constitutions, and Indigenous thought, theological activism and the communities which sustain it can fulfill the concrete demands of shalom by striving towards the right to health and rights of nature. In the pursuit of this goal, they may refresh the witness of religiously-inflected public bioethics in light of contemporary threats to creaturely flourishing.
[1] Snead, O. Carter. What It Means to Be Human: The Case for the Body in Public Bioethics. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2020.
[2] Rhodes, Daniel P, and M Therese Lysaught. “Whose Revolution? Which Future? The Legacy of Alasdair MacIntyre for a Radical Pedagogy in Virtue.” Expositions 14, no. 1 (2020): 97.
It is in this vein that ‘theological activism’ is explored as an avenue towards shalom. First, Alasdair MacIntyre’s work offers its “radical pedagogy dedicated to the creation of thickly-engaged communities of virtue capable of resisting the fragmenting, isolating, and vicious forces of capital”[2] and other forces of destruction. Such communities are the ground of theological activism: they teach and embody both ideas and concrete practices of care and social change. Second, movements like the Right 2 Health, Partners in Health, and Faith In Healthcare show how theological activism is already active in the pursuit of health as a human right. By drawing on theology and notions of the sacred, they break down the private-public divide, challenge the common notion that rights-language is only at home in secular modernity, and engage with theological resources and communities from which they draw their strength.
However, the fullness of shalom includes all of creation beyond human health but is intertwined with it; The Lancet has declared that “climate change is the greatest global health threat facing the world in the 21st century.” Thus, the ‘right to health’ in human society finds its place alongside the larger ‘rights of nature’ movement which seeks to extend both the language of rights and the notions of creaturely community. In offering legal protection to fellow creatures, this movement attempts to politically recognize and protect the dignity of creation and protect it from destruction. By drawing on Catholic social thought, certain contemporary South American constitutions, and Indigenous thought, theological activism and the communities which sustain it can fulfill the concrete demands of shalom by striving towards the right to health and rights of nature. In the pursuit of this goal, they may refresh the witness of religiously-inflected public bioethics in light of contemporary threats to creaturely flourishing.
[1] Snead, O. Carter. What It Means to Be Human: The Case for the Body in Public Bioethics. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2020.
[2] Rhodes, Daniel P, and M Therese Lysaught. “Whose Revolution? Which Future? The Legacy of Alasdair MacIntyre for a Radical Pedagogy in Virtue.” Expositions 14, no. 1 (2020): 97.