In Faith-Based Health Justice, a stellar assembly of scholars mines critical insights into the promotion of health justice across Christian and Islamic faith traditions and beyond. Contributors to the volume consider what health justice might mean today, if developed in accordance with faith traditions whose commandment to care for the poor, ill, and marginalized lies at the core of their theology. And what kind of transformation of both faith traditions and public policies would be needed in the face of the health justice challenges in our turbulent time? Contributors to the volume come from a wide range of backgrounds, and the result will be of interest to scholars and students in social ethics, development studies, global theology, interreligious studies, and global health as well as experts, practitioners, and policy-makers in health and development work.

"This book combines a religiously non-confessional approach to justice with health together with an analysis of the faith-based promotion of justice with health and focuses mainly on the time period beginning from the mid-1960s. Here "justice with health" means a particular reasonable conception of socio-political justice that includes health-related capabilities among its central components. The faith-based heritage in question is Protestant, especially Lutheran, Christianity. Drawing on some of the most prominent theories of justice from the past few decades, primarily those by John Rawls and Amartya Sen, the constructive part of the study defends a moderately structured account of reasonable justice identified through ten guidelines. Although these guidelines are first defended in terms of religiously non-confessional theories, it is argued that they could be properly supported by insights of faith as well. The guidelines--concerning the foundations, principles, and goals of justice--allow comparatively flexible variation across contexts. Yet they are intended to help achieve a firmer consensus in the promotion of health-related justice than the status quo among various responsible agencies usually indicates. A broad historical review of the Protestant promotion of social justice and health, from the Reformation era onwards, illuminates the importance of this faith-based heritage. Insights inspired by a holistic theology of human dignity, faith in freedom, a calling to serve one's neighbor, the two kingdoms doctrine, natural law theology, and advocacy for the sick and the poor have functioned as highly significant reasons to assume responsibilities for justice and health long before the era of secular welfare states and explicit programs for global health [...].".

The world's poorest people are struggling to access quality, affordable health care. Change is urgently required. Faith-based organizations deliver more than 40 percent of health services in many of the poorest places. This book argues FBOs can--and must--deliver quality health services without sacrificing their faith in the process. Dean Pallant asks an awkward question: "If its faith does not drive an FBO, whose faith does?" Pallant visited Salvation Army health ministries in more than forty countries in four years, and this book records his global reflections structured around a practical theological model of enquiry. His goal is to identify a faithful future for hundreds of Salvation Army hospitals and clinics and thousands of congregation-based health ministries. Pallant finds answers in the work of Karl Polanyi, John Wesley, Stanley Hauerwas, William Booth, and Luke Bretherton, among others. Pallant challenges the bio-medical definition of health and proposes a comprehensive appreciation of people as "healthy persons"--the people God created us to be. Pallant's proposals are bold and far-reaching for the Salvation Army and other FBOs. They are insightful and challenging for everyone--of whatever faith--committed to improve the health of the poorest people.

Missio Alliance Essential Reading List Hearts Minds Bookstore's Best Books RELEVANT's Top 10 Books Englewood Review of Books Best Books When Soong-Chan Rah planted an urban church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, his first full sermon series was a six-week exposition of the book of Lamentations. Preaching on an obscure, depressing Old Testament book was probably not the most seeker-sensitive way to launch a church. But it shaped their community with a radically countercultural perspective. The American church avoids lament. But lament is a missing, essential component of Christian faith. Lament recognizes struggles and suffering, that the world is not as it ought to be. Lament challenges the status quo and cries out for justice against existing injustices. Soong-Chan Rah's prophetic exposition of the book of Lamentations provides a biblical and theological lens for examining the church's relationship with a suffering world. It critiques our success-centered triumphalism and calls us to repent of our hubris. And it opens up new ways to encounter the other. Hear the prophet's lament as the necessary corrective for Christianity's future. A Resonate exposition of the book of Lamentations.

In a world beset by serious and unconscionable health disparities, by dangerous contagions that can circle our globalized planet in hours, and by a bewildering confusion of health actors and systems, humankind needs a new vision, a new architecture, new coordination among renewed systems to ensure central health capabilities for all. Global Health Justice and Governance lays out the critical problems facing the world today and offers a new theory of justice and governance as a way to resolve these seemingly intractable issues. A fundamental responsibility of society is to ensure human flourishing. The central role that health plays in flourishing places a unique claim on our public institutions and resources, to ensure central health capabilities to reduce premature death and avoid preventable morbidities. Faced with staggering inequalities, imperiling epidemics, and inadequate systems, the world desperately needs a new global health architecture. Global Health Justice and Governance lays out this vision.