Preserving the Penultimate: The Impact of Bonhoeffer and Schweitzer on Healthcare

Preserving the Penultimate brings two of the 20th century's most renowned Christian thinkers, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Albert Schweitzer, into conversation around the emerging possibilities of healthcare. Here Bonhoeffer's theology meets Schweitzer's philosophy and praxis to examine the place that healthcare should hold within the Church and its mission. Using the crisis within the National Health Service in the United Kingdom as an example, the insights which these renowned thinkers bring to healthcare are explored. Is the Church ignoring a part of its mission having retreated from the world of healthcare? Taking Bonhoeffer's notion of redeeming the penultimate (our present reality), as well as Schweitzer's emphasis on the practical application of Christian tenets, Preserving the Penultimate courses a path through the overlaps of these two thinkers, ultimately leading to a 're-envisioning the praxis of healthcare as theologically central to the mission of the Church.' As questions around healthcare become more urgent than ever, the role of Christianity to offer alternatives and inspire a broader vision of care is illuminated, considering not only the physical but the spiritual well-being of the person.