EDITORIAL
This is the fifth issue of the journal and we are celebrating our fifth anniversary of publishing. We would like to think we have emerged from infancy even if there is some way to go to reach full adulthood. We monitor readership and find stability or slow growth. There continues to be a satisfactory flow of excellent submissions. The theme for this issue was to be Faith-based Engagement of the Global Refugee Crisis and we have several good submissions relating to this call for papers. However, a number of them are still in review, so we have decided to publish them together in a month as a supplement to this issue.
In the meantime and in advance of the yearly conference of Christian Connections in International Health, we offer a response by Professor Henry Moseley to the critique of evangelical participation in global family planning, published in our last issue. There is also an assessment of both sides of the debate by the editor who wonders if each side has omitted a third option. Raymond Downing contributes a parallel commentary that asks insightfully if modern medical missions with its technological, institutional, and membership trappings is inconsistent with essential features of a truly Biblical gospel witness.
An original article by students, staff and faculty from Singapore has measured the impact of values-based health education as part of Community Health Evangelism in Cambodia. A second original article, from investigators at Vanderbilt University, surveys attitudes held by political, religious, and social conservatives in the US toward funding for global health initiatives relating to nutrition and food security and compares them to the general population. Benjamin Dolittle shares a review of Andrew Sloan’s book, Vulnerability and Care: Christian Reflections on the Philosophy of Medicine which proposes that biblically-informed medicine will consider care to be the prime purpose Associate editor Michael Soderling reports on a conference in April hosted at the Vatican called Humanity 2.0 which deals with solutions to human problems, focused on a healthy environment for pregnancy, “conscious capitalist” business ethics and the power and potential of internet media to affect social change. Finally, Dwight Phillips and James Smith contribute a letter commenting on Mark Crouch’s 2017 submission on what constitutes “a proper college” for training in global health practice.
We will be issuing another call for papers relating to the imitation of Christ in global health, and how He responded to disease, economic disparities, fears and social alienation. Registered readers will be notified when the supplementary issue is published online. If you are not currently a registered reader, you are welcome to sign up for free access to this maturing, thought-provoking and practical scholarly work, and to consider how you might contribute to its vital content.