Susan Eastman, M.Div., Ph.D., is Associate Research Professor Emerita of New Testament, Duke Divinity School. She presented "Christian Flourishing and Reimagining Healthcare: An End to Magical Thinking" for the TMC Virtual Seminar Series on January 24, 2025. "Magical thinking" is "if-then" thinking, which plays an important role in medical research and care, but falters in the face of mystery and the infinite diversity of human beings, and leads to a truncated version of human "flourishing." Christian thinking is "because-therefore" -- because God in Christ has entered into the depths of what is humanly unfixable, therefore we can articulate a vision of flourishing that includes even failure and finitude, and acknowledges the mysteries that elude our grasp. We will probe the differences such a reframing of "flourishing" might make for the care of persons.

Dr. Annie Friedrich joined TMC for a virtual seminar on Friday, October 11th, 2024. Dr. Friedrich is an Assistant Professor of Bioethics and Medical Humanities in the Institute for Health & Equity at the Medical College of Wisconsin. She received her PhD in Health Care Ethics from Saint Louis University with a focus on clinical ethics, pediatric ethics, and empirical research methods. She is a certified clinical ethics consultant (HEC-C) and is the co-chair of the ethics committee at Children’s Wisconsin, in addition to serving on other affiliated ethics committees. She is also an ethics educator and teaches bioethics to medical students, graduate students, and other health professionals.

This seminar, titled "Flourishing in the Cracks: Cultivating Moral Resilience in the Midst of Moral Distress," explores moral complexity, confusion, uncertainty, and distress as inevitable features of the healthcare system. Leaving this distress unacknowledged and unresolved can lead to frustration, lack of meaning in work, and burnout. In this presentation, Dr. Friedrich examines the moral and spiritual dimensions of wellbeing and burnout, with a particular focus on factors contributing to moral distress, and will discuss how we can build flourishing, morally resilient communities for both patients and practitioners.

A problem plagues modern healthcare: machines are setting the standard of care, and human clinicians are struggling to keep up. Artificial intelligence will only make this worse. The technical mindset fragments patient care and draws us further from shalom even as pursue surrogate markers that are meant to restore health. How can we, as Christian clinicians, respond wisely and well to this problem? One response is found in the story of the God's people in the Bible, specifically in the story of Israel's adoption into the family of God.

The Theology, Medicine, and Culture Initiative (TMC) at Duke Divinity School and the Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities & History of Medicine at Duke co-sponsored this seminar entitled "The Uncanny Valley: Remaining Human in Healthcare" on November 8, 2024 with Dr. Joshua Briscoe. Joshua Briscoe, MD is a Hospice and Palliative Care physician at the Durham VA Medical Center where he also serves on the Ethics Consultation Service. He's an assistant professor of Medicine and of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University School of Medicine, and faculty associate with the Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities and History of Medicine. He writes about issues at the intersection of medicine, technology, and moral formation in a monthly newsletter entitled Notes from a Family Meeting.

Dr. Matthew Rubach, Associate Professor in the School of Medicine & Associate Research Professor in the Global Health Institute at Duke, offered a TMC seminar in March, 2024.

Dr. Rubach is a specialist in clinical infectious diseases with medical specialty training in Pediatrics, Internal Medicine and Medical Microbiology. Since November 2015, he has been based full-time as a clinical researcher and clinician in Moshi, Tanzania where he serves as Co-Director of the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre (KCMC)-Duke Health Collaboration. He conducts clinical research on causes of severe febrile illness, sepsis management, vascular pathology of severe malaria, and zoonotic disease epidemiology. In addition to clinical research, he serves as Medical Director of the laboratory that supports clinical investigation at KCMC and he provides medical care & training in the HIV clinic and Medical Ward of KCMC.

In this TMC seminar, "Colonialism, Global Health & Catholic Social Teaching: Notes from a Decade at Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre," Dr. Rubach presents his work and experience at KCMC through the lens of Catholic social teaching.

The Theology, Medicine, and Culture Initiative (TMC) at Duke Divinity School hosted this TMC seminar, "Whose Body is This: A Theological Anthropology for the Care of the Sick and Dying" on March 1, 2024. The Reverend Dr. Esther E. Acolatse is a professor of pastoral theology and world Christianity at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary. She has wealth of experience in teaching and academic scholarship at the intersection of psychology and Christian thought in aid of human flourishing, with interests in the gendered body, cultural anthropological dimensions of medicine, health, and healing, and their implications for suffering, death, dying, and care at the end of life.

On February 17, 2024 Dr. Andrew Michel, Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Belmont University, presented "Toward a Neo-Salesian Spirituality for Students of Medicine." In it, he hopes that DeSales, the doctor of divine love, might inflame a Neo-Saleisan Pentecost in contemporary medicine. He invites healers to take a posture of humility and others-centered surrender in their practice of healing. In so doing, healers could also become agents of social change sent out as apostles into the contemporary healthcare ecosystem.

He goes on, "In the solidarity of missional friendship, such a Neo-Salesian physician-apostle might reawaken justice alongside healing in a land parched and fragmented by inequities, caught up in the spirit of a neocapitalist age that has forgotten the true ends of healing and wholeness for all people.

In becoming physician-apostolates in these secular spaces, each Neo-Salesian medical practitioner would be a little brother or sister of Jesus of Nazareth–heart on fire, with divine love, in mission to reenchant medicine like yeast worked all through the dough."

Andrew Michel, M.D. is Associate Professor of Psychiatry in the Department of Integrated Medical Education at the Frist College of Medicine at Belmont University, where he currently serves as the curriculum committee chair. Dr. Michel earned his M.D. from Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and completed the Harvard Longwood Psychiatry Residency Training Program; Dr. Michel is a board-certified psychiatrist. Dr. Michel’s scholarship has focused on the interface of philosophy (virtue ethics), theology, contemplative spirituality, and clinical psychiatry. Dr. Michel’s academic ventures are heavily informed by clinical experience in caring for persons who suffer with a range of mental health challenges, including trauma, addiction, and disruptions of mood and cognition. Dr. Michel’s style of practice has a contemplative foundation, centered in being deeply present in solidarity with persons who suffer with psychiatric illness, with the aim of healing and flourishing in the context of vulnerability.

The Theology, Medicine, and Culture Initiative (TMC) at Duke Divinity School and the Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities & History of Medicine at Duke co-sponsored this seminar entitled "To Change the World of Medicine: Lawndale Christian Health Center as a Model of Faithful Presence" with Dr. Wayne Detmer. In this webinar, Dr. Detmer shares a vision of medicine rooted in the love of Jesus, by promoting wellness and providing quality, affordable healthcare–a model actualized in the Lawndale community in Chicago. Dr. Detmer is Chief Clinical Officer, Operations at Lawndale Christian Health Center.

On Friday, February 2, 2024, TMC hosted Finnegan-Hosey for this virtual seminar titled, "Stewarding Sacred Stories: A Shared Vocation."

David is the author of "Christ on the Psych Ward" and "Grace is a Pre-Existing Condition: Faith, Systems, and Mental Healthcare." He currently serves as the minister of Bon Air Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), having previously worked in a variety of campus ministry, non-profit, and congregational settings. He holds an M.Div. from Wesley Theological Seminary and a unit of Clinical Pastoral Education from the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center.

The Theology, Medicine, and Culture Initiative (TMC) welcomed Dr. Tonya Armstrong for this virtual seminar on September 22, 2023. Dr. Tonya Armstrong is an international speaker, health and wellness entrepreneur, psychology expert and consultant, author, and singer/songwriter. After seven years in academia and solo, part-time practice, Dr. Armstrong launched The Armstrong Center for Hope, a behavioral health practice centering psychological and spiritual wellness for clients all ages. Dr. Armstrong shares more about her work in this seminar.

The Theology, Medicine, and Culture Initiative (TMC) welcomed Dr. Brewer Eberly for this virtual seminar on September 8, 2023. He is a third-generation family physician at Fischer Clinic in Raleigh, NC, and a McDonald Agape Fellow in the Theology, Medicine, and Culture Initiative at Duke Divinity School. He completed his family medicine residency and chief residency at AnMed Health in Anderson, SC. Dr. Eberly has been published widely, including JAMA, the New Atlantis, and Christianity Today, with artwork on the cover of Academic Medicine and in the AMA Journal of Ethics. While the majority of his work is caring for his patients, his writing and research is rooted in the intersections of medicine, aesthetics, and Christian theology, with a particular eye toward medical trainee formation, the relationship between beauty and ethics, and the nourishment of weary clinicians.