Global Health after Pentecost: Toward Theological Reflection as a Religious Health Asset

Matthew T Bersagel Braley

doi:10.15566/cjgh.v1i2.34

Abstract

This article examines the recent turn on the part of global health leaders to Christian communities as allies in the response to the HIV pandemic. A cursory survey of this turn highlights how global health leaders have used the language of religious health assets to revalue the activities of faith-based organizations, including Christian churches. In this way, religious health assets—tangible and intangible—become valuable if they can be rendered intelligible and appreciated using the existing lexicon and logic of global health. As a result, the primary activity of religious entities in partnerships with global health institutions is limited to conforming their practices to the best practices of HIV programs. But a closer examination of this revaluation reveals how it obscures a distinctive dimension of Christian participation, namely, critical theological reflection.The current turn to religion as a global health ally presents an opportunity to re-imagine the spaces in which complex social phenomena are described, interpreted, and responded to. Christians live into the role of co-participants in these spaces when they seek to develop a greater competence for engaging the complex arena of global health policy and programming. This competence emerges from demonstrating understanding of the empirical context in which global health is carried out as well as showing in an imaginative and compelling manner how the theological resources from their own tradition illumine the patterns and processes of human suffering.

Highlights

This article examines the recent turn on the part of global health leaders to Christian communities as allies in the response to the HIV pandemic
The 2008 International AIDS Conference in Mexico City began with a gathering of people witnessing an evocative religious ritual
The encouragement for the prophetic voice of faith rings hollow if religious entities are merely asked to transpose the language of prevention and treatment into a theological key. While it can be a form of confession for denouncing theologies of exclusion, the prophetic voice of faith runs the risk of merely amplifying existing best practices in the global health response to AIDS

Summary

Health Outcomes

What exactly the concept of intangible religious health asset refers to remains elusive — and for public health folks. It is the case that religious entities have turned to global health institutions for assistance in living out their theo-ethical commitments to more inclusive and appropriate responses to PLWHA in and near their communities Recognizing their lack of staffing and resources for effectively monitoring and evaluating the diverse and rapidly increasing number of church-affiliated HIV programs, Christian communions have requested the UNAIDS and WHO monitoring and evaluation toolkit be distributed more widely to church networks. While it can be a form of confession for denouncing theologies of exclusion, the prophetic voice of faith runs the risk of merely amplifying existing best practices in the global health response to AIDS To be sure, this amplification is necessary and welcome, but something of the power religions claim is lost when religious leaders mistake conforming to existing global health practices for the more difficult task of articulating and enacting theo-ethical commitments capable of transforming the practices, themselves. Become an asset to be valued, not for the processes of critical theological reflection they encourage, but for any outcomes of their theological reflection that can be readily appropriated in the service of existing global health paradigms

Health For All Is History?

Global Health after Pentecost