Thursday, October 29, 2020
“Departing in Peace: Walking Alongside Those Making End-of-Life Decisions”
Everyone—patients, family members, medical staff—is blessed when loved ones talk early and clearly about the priorities they want honored when end-of-life medical decisions must be made. Yet very few people manage to have the conversations. This seminar will explain how to have these conversations: how to get them started, how to keep your loved ones from panicking or checking out, and how to know when the task is completed. The Tennessee Advance Care Plan will be used as a useful tool, and pastoral care concerns will be in the foreground throughout.
Missed the event? Watch it here.
Dr. Bill Davis
Professor of Philosophy at Covenant College
William C. (Bill) Davis (Ph.D., University of Notre Dame; M.A., Westminster Theological Seminary, California; B.A., Covenant College) is a Professor of Philosophy at Covenant College and an adjunct professor of systematic theology at Reformed Theological Seminary in Atlanta and Washington, D.C. Bill has been teaching philosophy since 1992. He has also been teaching first grade Sunday School at Lookout Mountain Presbyterian Church (PCA) for the last seventeen years. He has served as a ruling elder at LMPC for seven years.
Bill’s philosophical research has focused on medical ethics and the moral epistemology of the 18th century Scottish philosopher Thomas Reid, most recently publishing Departing in Peace: Biblical Decision-Making at the End of Life (Presbyterian & Reformed, 2017). He is also the author of Thomas Reid’s Ethics (Continuum, 2006), and chapters in The Lord of the Rings and Philosophy (Open Court, 2003, “Choosing to Die: The Gift of Mortality in Middle-earth”), The Chronicles of Narnia and Philosophy (Open Court, 2005, “Extreme Makeover: Moral Development and the Encounter with Aslan”), and Reason for the Hope Within (Eerdmans, 1997, “Theistic Arguments”).
His talk for this conference arises from twenty years of volunteer participation on the CHI Memorial Hospital Ethics Committee, ten years of research on end-of-life decision-making, and the experience of making medical decisions with and for his father as he died in 2014.
Bill has been married to Lynda for over 37 years, and they have four children: Jonathan, Amy, Rachel, and Mark. When not playing the philosopher, Bill channels Sisyphus on a stationary bike. He redeems the time (sort of) by listening to philosophy lectures, sermons, and sports talk radio.