G. Scott Morris (born March 6, 1954, in San Diego, California) is the founder and executive director of Church Health in Memphis, Tennessee. [1] A medical doctor and ordained minister in the United Methodist Church, he is a leader in the field of faith and health and an advocate for the poor in U.S. society. [2]
Dr. Morris is married to Mary Gilliland Morris and lives in Midtown Memphis.
After graduating with his B.S. from the University of Virginia, Morris earned his Masters of Divinity from Yale Divinity School and then his medical degree from Emory University. Morris spent time working at a clinic called Crossroads in Raleigh, North Carolina before moving to Memphis to open the Church Health Center on September 1, 1987. [3] The Church Health Center, now Church Health, began as a clinic for the working uninsured and has since expanded to include exercise and nutrition programming, healthcare advisory assistance for people enrolling in Church Health's MEMPHIS Plan, Medicare, Medicaid, and Affordable Care Act Marketplace plans, and a Congregational Health Promoter program. Morris also served an associate pastor at St. John's United Methodist Church in Memphis through 2016. [4]
Morris received the Excellence in Medicine Award from the American Medical Association in 2008. [5] Morris also received the Yale Divinity School Alumni Award for Distinction in Congregational Ministry in 1996. [6]
Morris is the author of the books Relief for the Body, Renewal for the Soul and Health Care You Can Live With and he is the editor of two books of sermons, I Am the Lord that Heals You and Hope & Healing: Words from the Clergy of a Southern City. Morris writes a column for the Daily Memphian.
Dr. Morris' newest book is Care: How People of Faith Can Respond to Our Broken Health System (Erdmanns ISBN 978-0-8028-8237-0).
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Faith healing is the practice of prayer and gestures that are believed by some to elicit divine intervention in spiritual and physical healing, especially the Christian practice. Believers assert that the healing of disease and disability can be brought about by religious faith through prayer or other rituals that, according to adherents, can stimulate a divine presence and power. Religious belief in divine intervention does not depend on empirical evidence of an evidence-based outcome achieved via faith healing. Virtually all scientists and philosophers dismiss faith healing as pseudoscience.
The University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC) is a public medical school in Memphis, Tennessee. It includes the Colleges of Health Professions, Dentistry, Graduate Health Sciences, Medicine, Nursing, and Pharmacy. Since 1911, the University of Tennessee Health Science Center has educated nearly 57,000 health care professionals. As of 2010, U.S. News & World Report ranked the College of Pharmacy 17th among American pharmacy schools.
The Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California teaches and trains physicians, biomedical scientists and other healthcare professionals, conducts medical research, and treats patients. Founded in 1885, it is the second oldest medical school in California after the UCSF School of Medicine.
The Divinity School at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, is one of ten graduate or professional schools within Duke University. It is also one of thirteen seminaries founded and supported by the United Methodist Church. It has 39 regular rank faculty and 15 joint, secondary or adjunct faculty, and, as of 2017, an enrollment of 543 full-time equivalent students. The current dean of the Divinity School is the Rev. Dr. Edgardo Colón-Emeric, who assumed the deanship on August 31, 2021. Former deans include the prominent New Testament scholar Richard B. Hays, who stepped down in 2015.
Yale Divinity School (YDS) is one of the twelve graduate and professional schools of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.
Andover Newton Theological School (ANTS) was a graduate school and seminary in Newton, Massachusetts, affiliated with the American Baptist Churches USA and the United Church of Christ. It was the product of a merger between Andover Theological Seminary and Newton Theological Institution. In recent years, it was an official open and affirming seminary, meaning that it was open to students of same-sex attraction or transgender orientation and generally advocated for tolerance of it in church and society.
Leonidas Harris Berry was an American and pioneer in gastroscopy and endoscopy. He served as the president of the National Medical Association from 1965 to 1966.
James W. Moore (1938–2019) was a bestselling author of over 40 books, Abingdon Press' top selling author. He was a preacher and pastor, an ordained elder in the United Methodist Church. He served as Senior Pastor of St. Luke's United Methodist Church –Houston from 1984 to 2006. In 2006, after 50 years of active ministry, he retired from full-time ministry in the Texas Conference of the UMC and moved to the Dallas area. At the time of his death, he was serving as Minister in Residence at Highland Park United Methodist Church.
Otis Moss III is the pastor of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ. He espouses black theology and speaks about reaching inner-city black youth.
Ashley Day Leavitt (1877–1959) was a Yale-educated Congregational minister who led the State Street Church in Portland, Maine, and later the Harvard Congregational Church in Brookline, Massachusetts. Leavitt was a frequent public speaker during the early twentieth century, and was awarded an honorary degree from Bowdoin College for his pastorship of several congregations during wartime.
The Excellence in Medicine Awards are accolades presented annually by the American Medical Association Foundation to recognize excellence of a select group of physicians and medical students who exemplify the medical profession’s highest values: commitment to service, community involvement, altruism, leadership and dedication to patient care. The AMA Foundation Excellence in Medicine Awards are considered the "Oscars" within the medical community.
Jacob Kenneth Kofi Kwakye-Maafo, also known as Nana Ohemeng Awere V, is a Ghanaian physician and a surgeon who specialises in Obstetrics and Gynecology and traditional ruler of Assin Nsuta and the chief executive of the West End Hospital, Kumasi. A past president of the Ghana Medical Association, he is an advocate of community health and has helped establish several health centres, rural hospitals and clinics in the Ashanti Region of Ghana notably the Ankaasi Faith Healing Methodist Hospital and the Lake Clinic at Amakom near Lake Bosomtwi. He was a member of the committee set up by the government of Ghana in 2003, tasked with the implementation of the National Health Insurance Scheme in Ghana.
The University of Tennessee College of Medicine is one of six graduate schools of the University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC) in downtown Memphis. The oldest public medical school in Tennessee, the UT College of Medicine is a LCME-accredited member of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) and awards graduates of the four-year program Doctor of Medicine (MD) degrees. The college's primary focus is to provide practicing health professionals for the state of Tennessee.
Children's Healthcare Is a Legal Duty (CHILD) was from 1983 to 2017 an American nonprofit membership organization that worked to stop child abuse and neglect based on religious beliefs, cultural traditions, and quackery. CHILD opposed religious exemptions from child health and safety laws. These exemptions have been used as a defense in criminal cases when parents have withheld lifesaving medical care on religious grounds. These exemptions also have discouraged reporting and investigation of religion-based medical neglect of children and spawned many outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases and deaths. CHILD publicized the ideological abuse and neglect of children, lobbied for equal protection laws for children, and filed lawsuits and amicus curiae briefs in related cases.
Monica A. Coleman is a contemporary theologian associated with process theology and womanist theology. She is currently Professor of Africana Studies and the John and Patricia Cochran Scholar for Inclusive Excellence at the University of Delaware, as well as the Faculty Co-Director Emerita for the Center for Process Studies. Her research interests include Whiteheadian metaphysics, constructive theology, philosophical theology, metaphorical theology, black and womanist theologies, African American religions, African traditional religions, theology and sexual and domestic violence, and mental health and theology. Coleman is an ordained elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
Randy L. Maddox is an American theologian and ordained minister in the United Methodist Church. He served until 2020 as the William Kellon Quick Professor of Wesleyan and Methodist Studies at Duke University. Maddox also serves as the General Editor of the Wesley Works Project, a major scholarly project responsible for producing the first comprehensive and critical edition of the works of John Wesley. He is considered one of the leading authorities on both the theology of John Wesley (1703-1791) and the theological developments of later Methodism.
Glenn M. Wagner is an American United Methodist pastor and author. Throughout his 40-year pastoral career, Wagner served congregations in four states and two countries, most notably in Freeport and Harvard, Illinois and North Muskegon, Holt, and Grand Haven, Michigan. Wagner announced his retirement from the United Methodist Church of the Dunes in Grand Haven in October 2016.
John F. Kilner is a bioethicist who held the Franklin and Dorothy Forman endowed chair in ethics and theology at Trinity International University, where he was also Professor of Bioethics and Contemporary Culture and Director of Bioethics Degree Programs. He is a Senior Fellow at The Center for Bioethics & Human Dignity (CBHD) in Deerfield, Illinois, where he served as Founding Director until Fall 2005.
William Francis May was an American ethicist, academic, theologian, and ordained Presbyterian minister. His work focused primarily on questions of medical and bioethics, professional ethics in general, and public responsibility and policy.
Richard F. Mollica is an American academic and writer. He is the Professor of Psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School and Director of the Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma at Massachusetts General Hospital. His research focuses on Psychological trauma and recovery. Mollica has published over 160 scientific manuscripts, and has published Healing Invisible Wounds (2006) and Manifesto IV Healing a Violent World (2018). In 2022, he received the lifetime award from Harvard Medical School, and in 2023, the Lux et Veritas Award from Yale Divinity School
