Fall 2015

Health Beyond The Hospital

Health is not just the province of the hospital, or even just the health-care industry. Just as nurses and doctors and patients are dependent on the architect, engineers, and plant managers, so the health-care industry is dependent on homes, families, churches, and schools to cultivate a healthy citizenry and a healthy society.

This issue of Comment invites you to consider aspects of health and health care that don’t always get our attention.

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In The Print Issue

Editorial

James K.A. Smith

Editorial: Health Beyond the Hospital

Because a healthy social architecture requires healthy citizens

Essay

James K.A. Smith

World View

An annotated reading of your world. Topics this issue include Calvinist vacations, a visit paid to the Clapham House, too-long political campaigns, praise for newspapers, and attacks on video games.

Cardus

Milton Friesen

Headquarters

Our Social Cities program asks, Are local faith communities growing or shrinking? Are people more or less involved in neighbourhood groups than they have been in the past?

Essay

Raymond C. Barfield

Mortals Telling Stories on the Threshold of Mystery

If we want a better medicine, we have to become better patients, and that means becoming better storytellers.

Essay

Jonathan Patrick

Trusting Math

Sometimes caring about numbers is how we care for the vulnerable. Sometimes it’s a way of effacing the image of God

Essay

Matthew Loftus

Democratizing Community Health

Money for health care often bypasses the powerless.

Essay

Marilyn Mcentyre

Learning to Let Go

Seeking wisdom at the end of life.

Q&a

“Healthism” and a Healthy Society: A Conversation with Margaret Somerville, part II

Stretching the imagination of a secular society.

Book Review

Bryan Kibbe

In the Bodies and Labours of Women

Maternal testimony should not be treated as auxiliary to the real work of modern medicine, but instead should be esteemed and sought after as a foundational building block for the delivery of health care.