1. Personhood and Palliative
Sedation:
A Community of Christ Response
Andi Chatburn
MA in Bioethics Final Project
May 12, 2010

2. Why Palliative Sedation?
The Hastings Center Report
“Choosing Death: Should medicine’s “last resort” be
legal? Vol. 38, No. 5 September-October 2008
Relevance: 20 years since “It’s Over, Debbie”
The Case of Mrs. B: The Patient I will never forget

3. Residency in Spokane, WA

4. Why a Community of Christ
Perspective?
This is my own faith community
A new way of expressing our beliefs:
The Enduring Principles

5. What is the Community of Christ?
Non-credal Christian faith community
Share a common beginning history with the Latter Day Saint
movement
Believe in continuing revelation
Now resonate with peace church movements
Focus on community and value unity in diversity

6. Enduring Principles
Grace and Generosity
Sacredness of Creation
Continuing Revelation
All Are Called
Responsible Choices
Unity in Diversity
Pursuit of Peace
Worth of All Persons
Blessings of Community

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Method: Wesleyan Quadrilateral

8. Questions on personhood
How ought we ethically care for someone at the end-of-life?
What ought community look like for one at the end-of-
life?
How ought we value the worth of one who is dying?
What ought peace/shalom look like for one who is
dying?

9. Blessings in Community
Trinity: God’s love for Godself
Augustine: The lover, the beloved, the loving
Imago dei
“The Tribe”
Saint Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, The Trinity ed. Edmund Hill “Throught the Looking Glass” VIII: 14 (1991 New City Press, Hyde Par, NY).

10. Blessings of Community
I am loved, therefore I am.
I am part of community, therefore I am.
God exists in community
We were created in the image of God
Were we created to live in community?

11. Pursuit of Peace
Ira Byock’s Four Things
Please forgive me
I forgive you
Thank you
I love you
Ira Byock, The Four Things That Matter Most: A Book About Living, (2004 Free Press, New York, NY) 12.

12. Pursuit of Peace
“God’s peace has to do with personhood, not property or
comfort or convenience or ambience. It has to do with
personhood that recognizes the inestimable worth of each
soul and their interconnectivity.”
Danny A. Belrose, Vulnerable to Grace: A Study and Worship Resource Exploring Doctrine and Covenants Section 163, (2008 Community of Christ), 23.

13. Worth of All Persons
Sometimes those who
have a terminal illness
and are in the last
months of life are
marginalized.
Solidarity.
Image of community as
a round, inclusive table;
a circle without a
circumference

14. Community and the
Worth of All Persons
Daniel Day Williams:
We either suffer inside of community or outside of
community. When a community shares the suffering of
one in its midst, the inherent love, which comes from
God, can be transformed into something almost
sacramental.
Daniel Day Williams, The Spirit and the Forms of Love,(1968 Harper & Row, New York, NY) 185-190.

15. Palliative Sedation
How does terminal restlessness impact questions of personhood at the end of
life?
In light of this, when is Palliative Sedation an ethical end-of-life option?
What ought community look like at the end-of-life from a Community of Christ
perspective
What ought the above community look like in the case of Palliative Sedation?