Integrating faith & science in serving the chronically addicted
posted: April 9, 2008 | category: faith, homelessness, mental health, substance abuse
tags: events, info
INTEGRATING FAITH & SCIENCE IN SERVING THE CHRONICALLY ADDICTED
When: Sat., April 19th, 9:00 am-1:00pm
Where: Grace Community Church
For those who do outreach with chronically homeless and chronically addicted people — focusing on the science of addiction and how to integrate science and faith as we love and serve people with substance abuse disorders.
With Paul Nagy from the Duke Addictions Program; Dr. Carey Cottle, a Christian psychiatrist in Greensboro; Joe Fortin from the Guilford Center; and members of the Guilford Academy of Substance
Abuse Recovery Advocates.
Registration required. No fee. Register online here. (Registration closed.)
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4 Responses to “Integrating faith & science in serving the chronically addicted”
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Of course Im not an outreach member, but this is really something that would be interesting enough to get educated on. Thank you CM, may others receive some more incites on this topic. Good luck with this seminar!
You’re welcome to come, LV.
I like this idea. Very much so. I don’t think joint praxis between science and faith ought be tactical for purposes of merely of building good will, but rather, we are called to bless the communities in which we live (Jeremiah) because of the trustworthy substance in those blessings – like helping people recover from chronic additions.
I recently encouraged a local pastor to become a mentor to a convicted felon who wants to become a peer-counselor to other felons. This pastor held a reasonable bias against becoming a mentor because of a false perception of so-called science findings. The science findings said that this type of felon cannot be rehabilitated! And, no mere theological-theoretical and ad hoc proverbial encouragement worked to dissuade the pastor out of his bias against mentoring the felon. So then, I resorted to a semi-technical breakdown of the actual science literature relating to this class of felony (actually an underlying condition for it). On review, scientific findings revealed that this felon did qualify in categories of exceptions favoring rehabilitation. And then, the two together – readiness to help because of faith-convictions, plus good science – merged to motivate the pastor to mentor this ex-felon to become a peer-counselor to other felons. Hifalutin metaphysical antagonisms and fanciful marriage-integrations of science-religion so often feel extraordinarily empty, disconnected from praxis, and just a waste of time to me. Sure, some future prodigy could formulate proofs to unify faith and science. But, I’m not waiting for it.
Cheers,
Jim
Jim, thanks for your comment. We’re looking forward to it. To me, it just seemed like a good thing to do, to talk about how we use what we know from science and what we know from the Word to better minister to and love and serve our friends with chronic addictions. I think it’s going to be good.