Justice with Health: Faith in Support of Progress across Contexts

This book combines a religiously non-confessional approach to justice with health together with an analysis of the faith-based promotion of justice with health and focuses mainly on the time period beginning from the mid-1960s. Here “justice with health” means a particular reasonable conception of socio-political justice that includes health-related capabilities among its central components. The faith-based heritage in question is Protestant, especially Lutheran, Christianity.

Drawing on some of the most prominent theories of justice from the past few decades, primarily those by John Rawls and Amartya Sen, the constructive part of the study defends a moderately structured account of reasonable justice identified through ten guidelines. Although these guidelines are first defended in terms of religiously non-confessional theories, it is argued that they could be properly supported by insights of faith as well. The guidelines—concerning the foundations, principles, and goals of justice—allow comparatively flexible variation across contexts. Yet they are intended to help achieve a firmer consensus in the promotion of health-related justice than the status quo among various responsible agencies usually indicates.

A broad historical review of the Protestant promotion of social justice and health, from the Reformation era onwards, illuminates the importance of this faith-based heritage. Insights inspired by a holistic theology of human dignity, faith in freedom, a calling to serve one’s neighbor, the two kingdoms doctrine, natural law theology, and advocacy for the sick and the poor have functioned as highly significant reasons to assume responsibilities for justice and health long before the era of secular welfare states and explicit programs for global health. Concentrating on the mid-1960s to the early 2010s, the review serves as a basis for confirming that, despite important counter-examples, it is possible to identify an abundance of insights regarding both reasonable and practical health-related social justice among Protestant-Lutheran faith perspectives.