Life’s Living toward Dying

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In the past several years our culture's long-standing prohibitions against suicide and euthanasia have been seriously challenged. A great tidal change in morality and law may be occurring as the courts seem to be creating a new right — the individual's right to die. Life's Living toward Dying responds to this challenge. Vigen Guroian discusses society's moral confusion over the meaning of death and gives a Christian alternative for care of the dying that is consistent with the strong value that the Christian church has ascribed to human life. Booklist "Readers may find Guroian's weaving of a variety of literary allusions into his evocation of theological tradition instructive as they construct their own responses to death and Dr. Kevorkian."
Catholic News Service "Thoughtful book."
Edmund D. Pellegrino, M. D. (Georgetown University Medical Center) "This book reasserts the Christian tradition of a 'good death,' one that cannot include euthanasia or assisted suicide. Believers will be reminded of the richness of Christian teaching about dying and salvation; nonbelievers, of the dangers of disconnecting compassion from its roots in the Christian gospel of love."
The Christian Century "Continuing his work in liturgy and ethics, Guroian demonstrates how the Christian tradition—richly embodied in liturgical worship—provides a cogent alternative to the contemporary 'culture of death' prophetically depicted in Walker Percy's Thanatos Syndrome and exemplified in the words and deeds of Jack Kevorkian. Through an engaging analysis of literature and contemporary culture, Guroian traces the dynamics of our simultaneous aversion to and obsession with death." Vigen Guroian is Professor of Religious Studies in Orthodox Christianity at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. He tends a large perennial and vegetable garden with his wife, June, in Culpeper, Virginia. His books include Inheriting Paradise: Meditations on Gardening, Life's Living toward Dying (both Eerdmans), and Tending the Heart of Virtue: How Classic Stories Awaken a Child's Moral Imagination (Oxford).

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