What is to be done about the damaging impact of economic activity on the environment? In recent years, there has been growing debate over this question. This book, by an economist, urges Christians to support strong governmental and intergovernmental action to improve the workings of existing global economic systems so as to provide adequate environmental protection. As such, it draws on the tradition of mainstream environmental economics and on recent developments in "ecological economics." But it acknowledges that environmental policy raises important ethical and theological issues often briefly or inadequately covered within economic literature: ethically responsible attitudes to uncertainty, inequality within and between generations, the rights of traditional communities, and the obligation to respect nonhuman elements within creation. This book tries to develop sound ethical foundations for environmental policy, while providing concrete perspective on economic realities.

This is a collaborative volume on the concept of modern vegetarianism and the relationships between people's beliefs and food practices.What are the links between people's beliefs and the foods they choose to eat? In the modern Western world, dietary choices are a topic of ethical and political debate, but how can centuries of Christian thought and practice also inform them? And how do reasons for abstaining from particular foods in the modern world compare with earlier ones? This book will shed new light on modern vegetarianism and related forms of dietary choice by situating them in the context of historic Christian practice. It will show how the theological significance of embodied practice may be retrieved and reconceived in the present day.Food and diet is a neglected area of Christian theology, and Christianity is conspicuous among the modern world's religions in having few dietary rules or customs. Yet historically, food and the practices surrounding it have significantly shaped Christian lives and identities. This collection, prepared collaboratively, includes contributions on the relationship between Christian beliefs and food practices in specific historical contexts. It considers the relationship between eating and believing from non-Christian perspectives that have in turn shaped Christian attitudes and practices. It also examines ethical arguments about vegetarianism and their significance for emerging Christian theologies of food.

By bringing together the insights of ecclesial ethics, an approach that emphasizes the distinctive nature of the church as the community that forms its mind and character after its reading of Scripture, with the theory and practice of restorative justice, a way of conceiving justice-making that emerged from the Mennonite-Anabaptist tradition, this book shows why a theological account of the theory and practice of restorative justice is fruitful for articulating and clarifying the witness of the church, especially when faced with conflict or wrongdoing. This can help extend the church's imagination as to how it might better become God's community of restoration as it reflects on the ways in which the justice of God is taking shape in its own community. "How does an ecclesial context shape the theological apprehension and praxis of justice?" This question orientates the book. In particular, it asks how, in view of its members having been admitted into God's restoring justice in Christ, the church might embody in the world this same justice of restoring right relationships. While Christian reflection on the nature of justice has tended to favour a judicial and retributive conception of justice, it will be argued that the biblical understanding of the justice of God is best understood as a saving, liberating, and restorative justice. It is this restorative conception that ought to guide the community that reads Scripture so that it might be embodied in life.

Longing and Letting Go explores and compares the energies of desire and non-attachment in the writings of Hadewijch, a thirteenth-century Christian Beguine, and Mirabai, a sixteenth-century Hindu bhakta. Through an examination of the relational power of their respective mystical poetics of longing, the book invites interreligious meditation in the middle spaces of longing as a resource for an ethic of social justice: passionate non-attachment thus surfaces as an interreligious value and practice in the service of a less oppressive world. Mirabai and Hadewijch are both read through the primary comparative framework of viraha-bhakti, a mystical eroticism from Mirabai's Vaisnava Hindu tradition that fosters communal experiences of longing. Mirabai's songs of viraha-bhakti are conversely read through the lens of Hadewijch's concept of "noble unfaith," which will be construed as a particular version of passionate non-attachment. Reading back and forth across the traditions, the comparative currents move into the thematics of apophatic theological anthropology, comparative feminist ethics, and religiously plural identities. Judith Butler provides a philosophically complementary schema through which to consider how the mystics' desire, manifest in the grief of separation and the erotic bliss of near union, operates as a force of "dispossession" that creates the very conditions for non-attachment. Hadewijch's and Mirabai's practices of longing, read in terms of Butler's concept of dispossession, offer clues for a lived ethic that encourages desire for the flourishing of the world, without that passion consuming the world, the other, or the self. Longing-in its vulnerable, relational, apophatic, dispossessive aspects-informs a lived ethic of passionate non-attachment, which holds space for the desires of others in an interrelated, fragile world. When configured as performative relationality and applied to the discipline of comparative theology, practices of longing decenter the self and allow for the emergence of dynamic, even plural, religious identities.

Does God's existence make a difference to how we explain morality? Mark C. Murphy critiques the two dominant theistic accounts of morality--natural law theory and divine command theory--and presents a novel third view. He argues that we can value natural facts about humans and their good, while keeping God at the centre of our moral explanations.
The characteristic methodology of theistic ethics is to proceed by asking whether there are features of moral norms that can be adequately explained only if we hold that such norms have some sort of theistic foundation. But this methodology, fruitful as it has been, is one-sided. God and Moral Law proceeds not from the side of the moral norms, so to speak, but from the God side of things: what sort of explanatory relationship should we expect between God and moral norms given the existence of the God of orthodox theism? Mark C. Murphy asks whether the conception of God in orthodox theism as an absolutely perfect being militates in favor of a particular view of the explanation of morality by appeal to theistic facts. He puts this methodology to work and shows that, surprisingly, natural law theory and divine command theory fail to offer the sort of explanation of morality that we would expect given the existence of the God of orthodox theism. Drawing on the discussion of a structurally similar problem--that of the relationship between God and the laws of nature--Murphy articulates his new account of the relationship between God and morality, one in which facts about God and facts about nature cooperate in the explanation of moral law.

Drawing on decades of teaching and reflection, Princeton theologian Sang Lee probes what it means for Asian Americans to live as the followers of Christ in the "liminal space" between Asia and America and at the periphery of American society. As one moves away from the societal center, either intentionally or by virtue of marginalization, one often finds oppression and dehumanization. Yet, Lee argues, one can also sometimes find liminality--a creative and edgy space with openness to the new, the emergence of community, and the ability to take a prophetic stance over against the status quo. For Lee, the liminal is key to the authentic calling and future of Asian Americans, other ethnic-racial groups and minorities, persons with mixed identities, and indeed all Christians. From this insight, Lee unfolds a systematic theology. Searching the Gospels, one discovers that God became incarnate as a liminal and marginalized Galilean. Jesus the Galilean in his life and ministry widened the meaning of liminal creativity and exercised that creativity in embodying the boundary-breaking love of the Father. On the cross, he entered the ultimate space of liminality in which sinful humanity can experience communion with Christ. United in loving communion with God in Christ, Asian American Christians and all other believers are transformed into a new existence in which they are emboldened to struggle for justice and reconciliation. Asian American Christians, like the Galilean followers of Jesus, have the particular vocation to exercise the creative potentials of their liminal predicament and thereby to participate in God's own project of repeating in time and space the beauty of God's inter-Trinitarian communion.

Rebecca Todd Peters argues for an ethic of solidarity as a new model for how people of faith in the first world can live with integrity in the midst of global injustice and how we can shape our lives in ways that move us toward a more just future. Solidarity Ethics seeks to address concretely the economic and social structures that undergird the globalized context of the contemporary era and the problems brought to light within those 'vanishing' boundaries. Seeing religious communities as the primary source for moral and social education, Peters argues for a concrete ethics rooted in the Christian tradition of justice and transformation generative of deep patterns of solidarity and relationality. Utilizing these theologically rich resources, a substantive ethics of relational reflection, action, and construction is provided as an avenue for building viable strategies for social transformation.

Living in a world inundated with sexual images and messages, we're tempted at every turn. While most people are familiar with the Bible's clear admonitions concerning sexual practices such as adultery and fornication, less attention is given to biblical guidance in regard to the sexual activity exercised between husband and wife. What does the Bible have to say about the way we practice our sexuality? "Is God In Your Bedroom? Discovering the Joy of Sanctified Sexuality" is a startling plunge into the Word of God, revealing plain instruction from the Bible concerning God's creative expression of unconditional love toward man-the gift of sexuality. Learn the elements that define sacred sexuality, how to protect your marriage from sinful practices, and strategies to help restore relationships afflicted by infidelity. God created the institution of marriage to be a living, vibrant representation of the unity and oneness of God. Sexuality is a gift stemming from that unity, allowing the sanctity of sexual expression to be expressed within the covenant of marriage. Adhering to the desire and will of God in sexual intimacy, our relationships will bear the mark of God's favor and blessing. Find out how you can experience God's choice blessing for your love life.

Originally published in 1952, al-Din, by prominent Egyptian scholar Muhammad Abdullah Draz (1894-1958), has been critically acclaimed as one of the most influential Arab Muslim studies of universal 'religion' and forms of religiosity in modern times. Written as an introductory textbook for a course in the "History of Religions" at King Fuad I University in Cairo-the first of its kind offered at an Egyptian institution of higher learning-this book presents a critical overview of classical approaches to the scholarly study of religion. While ultimately adapted to an Islamic paradigm, the book is a novel attempt to construct a grand narrative about the large methodological issues of Religious Studies and the History of Religions and in relation to modernity and secularism. Translated for the first time in English by Yahya Haidar, this book demonstrates how the scholarly academic study of religion in the West, often described as 'Orientalist', came to influence and help shape a counter-discourse from one of the leading Arab Muslim scholars of his time.

Christianity is commonly held to have introduced an entirely new and better morality into the ancient world, a new morality that was decidedly universal, in contrast to the ethics of the philosophical schools which were only concerned with the intellectual few. Runar M. Thorsteinsson presents a challenge to this view by comparing Christian morality in first-century Rome with contemporary Stoic ethics in the city.
Thorsteinsson introduces and discusses the moral teaching of Roman Stoicism; of Seneca, Musonius Rufus, and Epictetus. He then presents the moral teaching of Roman Christianity as it is represented in Paul's Letter to the Romans, the First Letter of Peter, and the First Letter of Clement. Having established the bases for his comparison, he examines the similarities and differences between Roman Stoicism and Roman Christianity in terms of morality.
Five broad themes are used for the comparison, questions of Christian and Stoic views about: a particular morality or way of life as proper worship of the deity; certain individuals (like Jesus and Socrates) as paradigms for the proper way of life; the importance of mutual love and care; non-retaliation and 'love of enemies'; and the social dimension of ethics. This approach reveals a fundamental similarity between the moral teachings of Roman Christianity and Roman Stoicism. The most basic difference is found in the ethical scope of the two: While the latter teaches unqualified universal humanity, the former seems to condition the ethical scope in terms of religious adherence.

This book reconstructs the cornerstones of Jesus's moral teachings about how to lead a good, even exemplary, human life. It does so in a way that is compatible with the most prominent, competing versions of the historical Jesus. The work also contrast Jesus' understanding of the best way to lead our lives with that of Friedrich Nietzsche. Both Jesus and Nietzsche were self-consciously moral revolutionaries. Jesus refashioned the imperatives of Jewish law to conform to what he was firmly convinced was the divine will. Nietzsche aspired to transvalue the dominant values of his time -which themselves were influenced greatly by Christianity- in service of what he took to be a higher vision. The interplay of these radical versions of the good human life, seasoned with critical commentary emerging from modern findings in the sciences and humanities, opens possibilities and lines of inquiry that can inform our choices in answering that enduring, paramount question, "How should we live our lives?"

For a time of peril, world-renowned theologian Jrgen Moltmann offers an ethical framework for the future. Long distinguished as the architect of political theology and father of the theology of hope, Moltmann has shown how hope in the future decisively reconfigures the present and shapes our understanding of central Christian convictions, from creation to New Creation. Now, in an era of unprecedented scientific advances alongside unparalleled global dangers, Moltmann has formulated his long-awaited Ethics of Hope. Building on his conviction that Christian existence and social matters are inextricably tied together in the political sphere, Moltmann unfolds his ethics in light of eschatology, clearly distinguishing it from prior and competing visions of Christian ethics. He then specifies his vision with an ethic of life (against the dominant ethic of death), an ethic of earth (against todays utilitarian ethic), and an ethic of justice (against todays social injustice and global conflicts). In the process, he applies this framework to concrete issues of medical ethics, ecological ethics, and just-war ethics. A creative and programmatic work, Ethics of Hope is a realistic assessment of the human prospect, as well as its imperatives, from one who stakes everything on Gods promise to rescue life from the jaws of death.

Must religious voices keep quiet in public places? Does fairness in a plural society require it? Must the expression of religious belief be so authoritarian as to threaten civil peace? Do we need translation into 'secular' language, or should we try to manage polyglot conversation? How neutral is 'secular' language? Is a religious argument necessarily unreasonable? What issues are specific to Islam within this exchange?
These are just some of the pressing questions addressed by Religious Voices in Public Places. Drawn from Australia, Canada, France, Ireland and England-as well as the United States-thirteen contributors take the long-running discussion about religion in the public square beyond its usual American confines.
Religious Voices in Public Places comprehends both political philosophy and theology, and moves adeptly between political theory and practice. Whether offering critical analyses of key theorists such as John Rawls, Jeffrey Stout and Jurgen Habermas, or pursuing the issue of the public expression of religion into the debate about religious education in the USA, the legalisation of euthanasia in the UK, and human rights worldwide, this incisive volume speaks directly into crucial areas of religious and political complexity."

Neil Messer brings together a range of theoretical and practical questions raised by current research on the human brain: questions about both the 'ethics of neuroscience' and the 'neuroscience of ethics'. While some of these are familiar to theologians, others have been more or less ignored hitherto, and the field of neuroethics as a whole has received little theological attention. Drawing on both theological ethics and the science-and-theology field, Messer discusses cognitive-scientific and neuroscientific studies of religion, arguing that they do not give grounds to dismiss theological perspectives on the human self. He examines a representative range of topics across the whole field of neuroethics, including consciousness, the self and the value of human life; the neuroscience of morality; determinism, freewill and moral responsibility; and the ethics of cognitive enhancement.