Photo by Waiting For The Word | CC BY 2.0
As a hospital chaplain at Boston Medical Center for over 20 years, I observed firsthand the power of belief in enabling patients and their loved ones to face life-threatening illnesses, surgeries and death. Like the 80-year-old man, who was dying of cancer and wanted to see the chaplain. He said that he was “a believer, but not a good Christian” because he didn’t go to church. Long ago, he wanted to be a minister, but as an African American, the segregated schools he attended in the South discouraged that aspiration. Now, faced with a terminal illness, he asked to see the chaplain: “To get tight with God,” he said. He took my hand, held it tight, and didn’t let go. It was not my prayer, but what his belief in his god brought to my prayer, that led him to say at the end of my visit, “I feel much stronger now.” Religious beliefs strengthen and comfort countless ill and dying persons
Faith-based beliefs also inspire just behavior. Many acts and programs of caring are done out of the moral goodness of believers’ hearts. Like faith-based sponsored soup kitchens and shelters for homeless people. Immigration rights organizations. Sanctuary churches and cities. Refugee and settlement support groups. Inter-faith peace and justice groups. Faith-based health care centers and chaplains. Disaster and other emergency relief organizations.
Here religious faith takes the form of good works. The…