Partnership with the Dying

At a time when many are seeking scientific proof for the health effects of religious rituals, David Smith calls for a deeper understanding of the role of religion and spirituality in healing, and especially in care of the severely and terminally ill. Partnership with the Dying is an important book for both health professionals and religious leaders and their communities. It deserves a wide reading. -- Larry R. Churchill, Ph.D.,, Ann Geddes Stahlman Professor of Medical Ethics, Vanderbilt University Medical Center
Like Robert Cole, David H. Smith builds his book on interviews, in this case with various caregivers to the dying—physicians, nurses, chaplains, and social workers. Robert Cole is always eloquent, but the people he talks to all sound like the celebrated author who speaks through them. Smith's interviewees remain distinctively themselves, while the author converses thoughtfully with them. The results are a rich trove of insights for professionals, family members, friends, and church members who must reckon with death and the dying. -- William F. May Ph.D, Cary M. Maguire Professor of Ethics Emeritus, Southern Methodist University
In the efforts to improve the treatment of dying people in the United States, the religious or spiritual commitments of health care professionals have often been understood as irrelevant to or even as inconsistent with their caretaking obligations in our pluralist, secular culture. David Smith shows how explicit attention by professionals to their deepest convictions about human mortality can be the wellspring for more profound and therefore more caring interactions with dying patients without in any way disrespecting the differing religious or spiritual traditions that may be professed by these patients. This is a wise and thoughtful book. -- Robert A. Burt, Professor of Law, Yale University, and author of Death Is That Man Taking Names: Intersections of American Medicine, Law, and Cu