Anyone who pays attention to the news today knows how much the elderly and the issues that affect them figure into modern life and politics. This timely volume gathers discussions on aging that are highly relevant both to seniors and to those who care for them, both personally and professionally.

Written by physicians, healthcare professionals, theologians, and ministers, this book explores the experience of aging itself, examines a range of ethical issues that confront seniors today, and offers practical advice on caring for the elderly. Rather than offering dry assessments of the nature...

Twenty leading experts in the bioethics debate here engage matters of dignity and dying from a Christian perspective. The book begins with essays by David Schiedermayer, Arlene Miller, and Gregory Waybright that root the book in the experience of dying itself. This is followed by contributions from Nigel Cameron, John Dunlop, Marsha Fowler, and Allen Verhey on the topics that provide the guiding vision for approaches to dignity and dying: autonomy, death, suffering, and faithfulness. Four of the most pressing end-of-life challenges-forgoing treatment, medical futility, definition of death,...

The book opens with a look at people's actual experience of heath care today, from four different perspectives. Next, the volume addresses foundational questions, including the nature of medicine, nursing, and justice. Surveyed next are the changing economics of health care as well as the impact of these changes on such areas as mental health care, long-term care, health care for minorities, and legal malpractice. The dosing section of the book often several alternative models for health care funding and delivery that reflect Christian values.

While the Christian church has experienced extraordinary growth over the last century, Western culture has continued its seemingly inexorable drift into post-Christian forms. The contrast between our burgeoning churches and the scant impact that Christians have on public policy, the university, or the professions is distressing. And nowhere is this development more evident-and more consequential-than in the field of bioethics, where the dignity of human beings is constantly open to redefinition, and where much of our inheritance is coming under withering fire from those whose values are...