The health care policy debates in the US have challenged us all to think about individual and collective responsibilities in the area of health. In those debates it is important to remember toward what vision of the future we want to work. In business circles and project management, we're told someone at the top must lay out "what good looks like." Scriptures tell us what "good" looks like if we will only love our neighbor as ourself; if we forget that, then we are "like sheep without a shepherd."
Vision for health care has historically come from faith communities. Hospitals derive from the history of hospitality and healing exercised in the name of God, especially in the monastic tradition of Christianity.
The Kentucky Council of Churches articulated a vision 21 years ago. Please consider reading it together in your churches or using it to develop sermons and Sunday school classes, perhaps in relation to US Supreme Court decisions. The specific challenges and calls to action listed in relation to that vision read, sadly, as if they were written yesterday. Will they read the same 21 years from now, or will we move to a new and better place as a society?
Join the Kentucky Council of Churches at our assembly in Morehead, Kentucky, October 24-25 of 2012, as we revisit the health theme and explore together what the churches' vision is for the coming years.
