ABSTRACT
In comparison with well-entrenched disciplines in the modern university, bioethics is a young field where people from many backgrounds—including religious ones—can carve out niches. Yet the discipline of bioethics came of age just as secularism crested as a social movement and was formed by people—including some theologians—who often found secular institutions and causes more promising than religious ones. The ethos of bioethics is pronouncedly secular. Religious communities may function to widen current bioethical horizons. The discoveries would have considerable implications for bioethics. Stephen Toulmin has written that the encounter with concrete cases and issues in medicine and biomedical research helped reorient philosophical ethics from a drift toward abstraction and irrelevance. It is only fair, after suggesting potential contributions that might flow from religion to bioethics, to ask if someday a religious thinker might write a similar article about medicine's impact upon religion.
