Redeeming Marketplace Medicine

This book will be an invaluable resource for all Christians who are concerned about implementing a holistic ministry of healing and wholeness in the spirit of the Great Physician. It is must reading for those in health care professions (usually sickness care), and those in chaplaincies and other ministries focusing on healing and wholeness including pastoral counseling. It will guide those who believe, as do I, that the health care crisis creates unprecedented opportunities for congregations to be major providers of preventative health care education that is so desperately needed in our society with its multiple levels of personal and social pathology and 'brokenness.'--Howard Clinebell, author of Anchoring Your Well Being: Christian Wholeness in a Fractured World and Ecotherapy: Healing Ourselves, Healing the EarthAdvocates of the free market system often celebrate it as a mechanism, unabashedly driven by self-interest, that lets us exchange goods without the need for redemption. However, Dr. Abigail Evans calls for 'redeeming the marketplace' in the delivery of the fundamental good of healthcare. Why? Healing is more important than treating diseases; health care more than a commodity; and huge corporations not the vehicle of choice for its delivery. A widely experienced church leader and educator and a long-term student of the literature in health care, Dr. Evans maps out the role of the church in our national quest for a comprehensive and accessible health care system.--William F. May, author of Testing the Medical Covenant: Euthanasia and Health Care ReformAbigail Rian Evans is Charlotte W. Newcombe Professor of Practical Theology and Academic Coordinator of Field Education at Princeton Theological Seminary. She founded and directed (1983-1991) the National Capital Health Ministries program in Washington, DC, and served on the Clinton Health Care Task Force (1993).