HEALTH CARE SOCIAL STATMENTS - LUTHERAN

Health Care Issues

http://www.elca.org/socialstatements/health/

People unnecessarily endure poor health. Rising health care costs leave a growing number of people without adequate health care. Health care resources often are rationed based on ability to pay rather than need.

Responding to those who were sick was integral to the life and ministry of Jesus and has been a central aspect of the Church’s mission throughout its history. Health care and healing are concrete manifestations of God’s ongoing care for and redemption of all creation.

God continues to call the Church—its institutions and believers—to work in society for individual and collective actions that promote health and ensure care for those who suffer.

God creates human beings as whole persons—each one a dynamic unity of body, mind, and spirit. Health concerns the proper functioning and well-being of the whole person. A Christian perspective on health, therefore, shares the concern of the apostle Paul that “our spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless” (1 Thessalonians 5:23). This understanding of human wholeness means that concern for health should attend to the physical, mental, spiritual, and communal dimensions of a person’s entire well-being.

Because of our sinful nature, we often turn in on ourselves and away from God and neighbor. We frequently become unfaithful stewards of our health, tending at times to disregard it and at other times to idolize it. Sin also corrupts our social systems and relationships in ways that directly and indirectly threaten health. We see sin at work in the environmental damage, poverty, social isolation, discrimination, oppression, and violence that degrade health and the relationships necessary to support it.

Patients and caregivers are more than consumers or providers; they are whole persons working together in healing relationships that depend on and preserve community. Although health care goods and services may be bought and sold, health care is above all an activity of caring that grows out of relationships of mutual responsibility, concern, and trust—and that cannot be reduced to a commodity.

Center Priorities (.pdf)

Bulletin Inserts
Child Support (.pdf)
Environment (.pdf)
Housing Trust (.pdf)
Indigent Defense (.pdf)
Payday Lending (.pdf)
Minimum Wage (.pdf)

Advocacy Resources
Advocacy Guide (.doc)
Advocacy Portal (link)
Lending Info. (.ppt)
Richmond Map (.pdf)

For Small Groups
Eco-Stewardship (link)
Prayers for Creation (link)
Poverty Diet (link)

Policy Briefs
EITC (.doc)
TANF Child Support (.doc)
Payday Loans (.doc)
Healing Creation (.doc)
Child Ombudsman (.doc)
Affordable Housing (.doc)
Indigent Defense (.doc)
Minimum Wage (.doc)
Wage & EITC (.doc)
VA Tribes (.link)

Actions
Lending Petition (link)
Title Petition (link)
Wage Petition (link)

Reports
Budget Analysis (.pdf)
Food Stamps (.doc)
Lottery Study (link)

FAQ's (link)

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