Although key speaker is sidetracked, faith-health conference applauds him
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, March 8, 2001
DURHAM, N.C. – A blizzard and mechanical trouble before his flight got off the runway prevented John J. DiIulio Jr. from attending a prestigious pep rally for his new role as director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.
DiIulio is a former Philadelphia street kid, Democrat, Al Gore supporter and Roman Catholic. The conference he missed combined his passions: scholarship, demographics, religion, philanthropy and caring. And even in his absence, which prevented him from making the final address at the conference, DiIulio got an outpouring of attaboys.
The title of the March 4-5 conference at Duke University was “Faith in the Future: Religion, Aging and Healthcare in the 21st Century,” and was sponsored by Duke University and the John Templeton Foundation.
Here’s the picture sketched by national experts at the conference:
The aging population in America will skyrocket as baby boomers enter retirement. The cost of the government’s Medicare program for retirees will multiply. Caring communities provide a quantifiable health benefit through prayer and social engagement. Volunteers must take an even larger role in health care, both to contain costs and enhance the quality of life. And, studies show, by virtue of their service to others, the volunteers themselves will be healthier and happier and live longer.
Much of the conference focused on the elderly – not only as beneficiaries of health care, but also as providers through philanthropy and service.
“My desire is that some of you would write a book called ‘Retirement is Deadly,'” said Sir John Templeton, 88, one of the nation’s leading philanthropists.
A director emeritus of the Presbyterian Lay Committee, Templeton established the Templeton Foundation that has supported cutting-edge scholarship on the relationship between faith and health. The Templeton Foundation also sponsors the annual Templeton Prize in Religion, now valued at $948,000.
Speaking at the conference’s banquet, Templeton said, “Having a life of purpose is fundamental to being a child of God.” That purpose should not end with retirement at age 65, he said.
“What a blessing it would be if people were not planning to retire,” he said. “They would be better off. Everybody would be better off … Those who are idle almost inevitably go downhill.”
Templeton urged the elderly to continue working, to find “practical ways that, I believe, you could help people spiritually.”
DiIulio’s Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives opened in late February. The idea of government support for faith-based groups to delivery social and health-care services has been criticized by people on both sides of the political spectrum.
But that criticism, focusing on the so-called “wall of separation” between church and statement, was wholly absent from the conference at Duke.
A burly weightlifter who has been described as being “built like Stonehenge,” DiIulio is a political scientist, a trench warrior in inner-city social crises and a highly respected urban crusader through his books and op-ed pieces in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post.
Record in tenure
The son of a Philadelphia sheriff’s deputy, DiIulio was the first in his family to go to college. Two years after earning his Ph.D. at Harvard, DiIulio was a tenured political science professor at Princeton University – the earliest post-doctorate tenure Princeton has ever granted.
In a profile published in Christianity Today in June 1999, DiIulio said the best thing Christianity has to offer urban areas in social and economic crisis is Christianity itself.
The Duke conference was not limited to Christianity, but the Christian researchers, psychiatrists, physicians, philanthropists and other speakers were emphatic that their faith is in Christ.