Julia Neuberger

Julia Neuberger

Chair, Commission on the Future of Volunteering in England

Baroness Julia Neuberger is an ordained rabbi and member of Britian's House of Lords. The "On Faith" panelist also is a trustee of the British Council, Jewish Care, and the Booker Prize Foundation, as well as founding trustee of the Walter and Liesel Schwab Charitable Trust. She has served as Chairman of Camden & Islington Community Health Services NHS Trust and Chief Executive of the King's Fund—a major independent health charity. Currently she chairs the Commission on the Future of Volunteering in England . In the House of Lords, she is a Liberal Democrat member and in early 2006 she was Bloomberg Professor at Harvard University Divinity School . Neuberger writes, speaks, makes trouble, and has published several books, of which the latest is The Moral State We're In (2006). She is working on a book about old age, and thinking about a new book on death and dying, as well as one as a counterblast to Richard Dawkins on why religion is so important in the rather godless United Kingdom. Close.

Julia Neuberger

Chair, Commission on the Future of Volunteering in England

Baroness Julia Neuberger is an ordained rabbi and member of Britian's House of Lords. The "On Faith" panelist also is a trustee of the British Council, Jewish Care, and the Booker Prize Foundation, as well as founding trustee of the Walter and Liesel Schwab Charitable Trust. more »

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Physicians, Heal Others

Physicians' primary obligations are to their patients, without a doubt.

They have other obligations, of course, including to wider society, to their professional colleagues, both physicians and other health care professionals, to their employing institutions, and to their own ethical codes (which may or may not accord completely with their personal religious convictions.) We know that many physicians have strong moral objections to carrying out certain procedures for religious reasons-- e.g. Catholics and abortion. But they must tell their patients that that is the case, and be honest with them. And they must advise them to go elsewhere if the patients hold other and differing religious views. To pretend that physicians' own religious views trump those of their patients or wider society is both arrogant and wrong headed.

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