A Natural Right to Health?

Too many in this self-proclaimed Christian nation fought against a national healthcare system, against paid maternal leave, against prison reform. I do not think this opposition was all that Christ-like.

Reading PATRISTIC ROOTS FOR A RIGHT TO HEALTH? from Public Orthodoxy leaves me feeling justified in thinking a Christian provides healthcare to its citizens. It is a longish, detailed argument deserving to be read in full. Maybe this will induce the reading:

A Patristic perspective, then, strongly affirms human rights, including the right to health. In a move which prefigured 20th century liberation theology, the Cappadocians give special attention to poverty and to the poor as the “favorites of heaven,” even as natural citizens of heaven who “may act as legal witnesses before the eternal Judge to prosecute the rich for their greed and injustice” (Mark Engler, “Toward the ‘Rights of the Poor’: Human Rights in Liberation Theology,” The Journal of Religious Ethics 28.3 [2000], 485). In America, the healthcare system and COVID-19 are in the business of making the poor poorer, which is a direct affront to the vision of justice and human rights that the Cappadocians offer.

May America do better.

sch 5/18/22