As a – now retired – called and ordained pastor in a mainline US denomination, I reliably receive most of my prescriptions in the mail. For immediate needs, I hop into my car and drive five minutes to a nearby CVS. Great – for me. But what if I weren’t privileged enough to have such a plan or even to be able to get to my local CVS? What, indeed, if there were no CVS in my hood?
Consider these findings, reported recently in the Boston Globe (12/27/2025), highlighting an inner city neighborhood where I once belonged to a mainline congregation for many years:
Poorer neighborhoods already grapple with higher rates of hypertension, diabetes, and asthma. So much so that the average life expectancy in Roxbury is 68, 23 years fewer than in Back Bay.
In Nubian Square, [where Resurrection Lutheran Church is located and] where many residents are Black, low income, and without access to a car, the nearest pharmacy is more than a mile away. But many white and well-off residents in Back Bay can walk to two or three pharmacies within a half-mile. The neighborhood has three times as many pharmacies per capita as Roxbury.
As a card-carrying member of the Church of Jesus Christ and therefore as one whose deepest life commitment, I would like to think, is to struggle to develop a society in which the poor can indeed be blessed, at least in some minimal social sense, what the hell – if I may invoke a theological construct of some standing – am I supposed to do? Sell all my goods and give to the poor? That thought crosses my mind sometimes, usually on Sundays. Be that as it may, everyday: shouldn’t I be a raging anti-capitalist? Surely for pharmacies’ sake?
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