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Assisted dying
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Assisted dying: ethical and theological perspectives

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Nick is the senior editor of Seen & Unseen.

A open hand is held out and up towards a strong source of light

The bill introduced early in the new parliament to allow assisted dying in the UK raises many complex ethical, medical and practical questions. It is an emotive and vexed issue on all sides and raises strong feelings. We are told that the public mood has shifted since the last time such a bill came to parliament in 2015, in that the majority of the population now support assisted dying, and that a majority of MPs would back it too. However, the arguments around it have not always been understood, and will no doubt be rehearsed in a debate which is likely to continue over the coming months.

Christians do not all agree on assisted suicide, however it is probably true to say that many Christians in the UK have serious questions about the possibility of adopting it legally. For many Christians, this means that many vulnerable people will feel under pressure to end their lives before their time, and force an unfair choice upon them. It may lead to many lives palliative care which seems a much better approach to easing the suffering of those coming towards the end of that lives. It seems like a line that once crossed, will be hard to go back on.

Seen and Unseen is a website established in 2023 by the Centre for Cultural Witness based in Lambeth Palace. It seeks to offer Christian perspectives on a wide range of issues in contemporary life. Over recent months the site has published a number of articles relating to assisted suicide and some of them are reproduced here to give a range of resources for people thinking through the ethical and theological issues around assisted suicide. They are not the last word on the topic and do not cover all the arguments but hopefully they give a starting point for thinking about these issues. Our hope is that they can be used by many people, for example, clergy in preaching on the topic, sharing with others to stimulate debate and helping people understand the arguments against assisted suicide and to help Christians think through the ramifications of this step.

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Death & life
Music
2 min read

Lullabies and lists that tell of lifelong love

A Laura Marling gig and an All Souls remembrance reverberate life.

Jess Scott is an assistant professor at the University of Nottingham. 

A misty back lit stage hosts a singing guitarist and a double base player
Laura Marling performs at Hackney Church.
YouTube.

This year, I did not go to my own church’s All Souls Day service.  I went instead to another church - Hackney Church - to hear Laura Marling perform her new album, Patterns in Repeat. Marling wrote its songs in the months following the birth of her first child. Her daughter’s coos and gurgles occasionally overwrite the recording of Marling’s own ethereal, elastic voice as she contemplates parenthood, heritage, and new domesticity. Critics are in agreement: this is Marling’s most accomplished album yet.  

As I stood amid the congregation gathered to hear her, I was struck by the overwhelming love contained in those lullabetic songs. As if line by line Marling swaddles her daughter, each lyric wrapping her with words that hold and assure. Sleep my angel, you’re safe with me. What she conjures is the magnificent reorientation entailed in love - Time won’t ever feel the same - and the promises that tip from the mouths of those experiencing it - I’m not gonna miss it, child of mine.  

Of course, love is not always so pure. We may find, miserably, our own love tilting this way or that, towards dominance or possessiveness, or muddied by some other perversion. But this isn’t to deny that there really are pockets of pure love in our midst. All around us are people writing their own lullabies: sending texts, preparing meals, writing cards, taking photos. And, in these ways, saying to one another, as the theologian Josef Pieper paraphrases the affirmation of love, ‘I am glad you exist’.  

While I listened to Marling sing lullabies for her baby daughter in one church, the gathered faithful of my own congregation read out the names of the dead in another. Each year the list is long and spans several minutes. By its end the names start to undo themselves, beginning to sound only like their component syllables, blurring towards the non-words found in a book of phonics. But each name uttered - perhaps for the only time that year - tells of a whole beloved life, witnessing some homely love swirling still, years later, in the memory of a congregant. In years past I have sat around that altar as those names are read out. I have listened out for the names I added, like a child seeking the face of her mother. 

These two Saturday evenings, unfolding a few Overground stops apart, were not wholly discrepant. Each sounded the cry of love from one person to another, against cynicism, even against death. Each told of love that reverberates where love cannot yet, or still, be reciprocated.  All these hearts swelling and bending and breaking for each other strikes me as a kind of Grand Canyon: a remarkable thing to consider, seeming to be a miracle that might, if we let it, render us speechless.