Allen Verhey
Allen Verhey teaches at Duke Divinity School. He recently wrote The Christian Art of Dying.
Can medicine be cured?
Jeffrey Bishop is both a physician and a philosopher. Here he turns his clinical and analytical gaze on medicine, and his diagnosis is bleak.
The emphasis on patients' rights and autonomy has been a weak remedy for medicalized death.
What would Jesus do?
Some of my students wear bracelets bearing the legend "WWJD"—What Would Jesus Do? Sometimes in the midst of a discussion about some hard issue, I ask a student sporting such a bracelet to apply that question to the problem. The replies range from embarrassed silence and empty platitudes to wonderfully astute observations. The astute replies are usually based on the story or stories of Jesus, and exercise what William Spohn calls "the analogical imagination."