This study begins with a reconstructive history of the Afro-American woman's situation in America, the emergence of the Black woman's literary tradition, and the distinctive moral character of the Afro-American women's community.

THE FORTY TWO PRECEPTS OF MAAT, THE PHILOSOPHY OF RIGHTEOUS ACTION AND THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN WISDOM TEXTS ADVANCED STUDIES This manual is designed for use with the 1998 Maat Philosophy Class conducted by Dr. Muata Ashby. This is a detailed study of Maat Philosophy. It contains a compilation of the 42 laws or precepts of Maat and the corresponding principles which they represent along with the teachings of the ancient Egyptian Sages relating to each. Maat philosophy was the basis of Ancient Egyptian society and government as well as the heart of Ancient Egyptian myth and spirituality. Maat is at once a goddess, a cosmic force and a living social doctrine, which promotes social harmony and thereby paves the way for spiritual evolution in all levels of society.

The ecological crisis faced by our planet may have the effect of transforming religious ideas. Religions were born and took their distinctive shapes by the need of people to find harmony in their internal and external worlds. In our day that harmony is being challenged by a breakdown in the relationship between human beings and their global environment. Do the religious views held by most believers today provide an adequate basis for interacting with nature? Theologian John Haught believes they do not. Nor, he says, do stereotyped religious attitudes about the natural world enable believers to dialogue with physical scientists, many of whom are nonbelievers. To make the dialogue work we need a common language about nature and how it works. Haught maintains that process language will not only assist the ecological dialogue but help to transform religion itself. Nature is "holy" not because it originated at the hand of a creator or because it transparently reveals God now. It is holy primarily because of its direction: it is promise. This "future dimension" of nature lets us deal intelligently with the present crisis without forsaking the mysterious power that nature has for us.

By the time of early modernity, a widely deployed tenet of Christian thought had begun to vanish. The divine ideas tradition, the teaching that all beings have an eternal existence as aspects of God's mind, had functioned across a wide range of central Christian doctrines, providing Christian thinkers and mystical teachers with a powerful theological capacity: to illuminate the Trinitarian ground of all creatures, and to renew the divine truth of all creatures through human contemplation. Already by the time of the Middle Platonists, Plato's forms had been reinterpreted as ideas in the mind of God. Yet that was only the beginning of the transformation of the divine ideas, for Christian belief in God as Trinity and in the incarnation of the Word imbued the divine ideas tradition with a remarkable conceptual agility. The divine ideas teaching allowed mystical theologians to conceive the hidden presence of God in all creatures, and the power of every creature's truth in God to consummate the full dynamic of every creature's calling. The Divine Ideas Tradition in Christian Mystical Theology brings to life the striking role of the divine ideas tradition in the teaching of its central exponents, and also suggests how the divine ideas might constructively inform Christian theology and spirituality today. Especially in an age of global crises, when the truth of the natural environment, of racial injustice, and of public health is denied and disputed for political ends, the divine ideas tradition affords contemporary thinkers a creative and contemplative vision that reveres the deep truth of all beings and seeks their mending and fulfilment.

This book is a detailed study of how, according to Thomas Aquinas, God's Holy Spirit is continuously at work in and through humanity's moral activity. Jack Mahoney, SJ, documents from Aquinas's interpretation of scripture his portrait of the Holy Spirit in action, showing that for Aquinas, "the grace of the Holy Spirit" was a matter of the "prompting" or instigation (instinctus) of the Holy Spirit, who "drives" God's children in their decisions (Romans 8:14) and enlightens their minds through the "law of the Spirit of life" (Romans 8:2). Mahoney examines Aquinas's descriptions of various biblical characters responded in the Spirit to personal moral choices and dilemmas, sometimes in unexpected ways, and how the same can happen today, especially in the light of biblical and Aristotelian teaching on the flexible application of general moral rules in varying circumstances. He elaborates the three "constants" that serve for Aquinas as criteria for authenticating the Spirit's dynamic presence in people's moral activity. Finally, Mahoney shows that the overarching structure of Aquinas's thought on the Holy Spirit's role is the deployment in history of God's all-embracing wisdom, "ordering all things well" (Wisdom 8:1).

A new ethics for understanding the social forces that shape moral character. It is easy to be vicious and difficult to be virtuous in today's world, especially given that many of the social structures that connect and sustain us enable exploitation and disincentivize justice. There are others, though, that encourage virtue. In his book Daniel J. Daly uses the lens of virtue and vice to reimagine from the ground up a Catholic ethics that can better scrutinize the social forces that both affect our moral character and contribute to human well-being or human suffering. Daly's approach uses both traditional and contemporary sources, drawing on the works of Thomas Aquinas as well as incorporating theories such as critical realist social theory, to illustrate the nature and function of social structures and the factors that transform them. Daly's ethics focus on the relationship between structure and agency and the different structures that enable and constrain an individual's pursuit of the virtuous life. His approach defines with unique clarity the virtuous structures that facilitate a love of God, self, neighbor, and creation, and the vicious structures that cultivate hatred, intemperance, and indifference to suffering. In doing so, Daly creates a Catholic ethical framework for responding virtuously to the problems caused by global social systems, from poverty to climate change.

Why do we care more about winning than about playing by the rules?

Integrity - all of us are in favor of it, but nobody seems to know how to make sure that we get it. From presidential candidates to crusading journalists to the lords of collegiate sports, everybody promises to deliver integrity, yet all too often, the promises go unfulfilled.

Stephen Carter examines why the virtue of integrity holds such sway over the American political imagination. By weaving together insights from philosophy, theology, history and law, along with examples drawn from current events and a dose of personal experience, Carter offers a vision of integrity that has implications for everything from marriage and politics to professional football. He discusses the difficulties involved in trying to legislate integrity as well as the possibilities for teaching it.

As the Cleveland Plain Dealer said, "In a measured and sensible voice, Carter attempts to document some of the paradoxes and pathologies that result from pervasive ethical realism... If the modern drift into relativism has left us in a cultural and political morass, Carter suggests that the assumption of personal integrity is the way out."

What is the ethical import of contemporary scientific cosmology? How does our understanding of the universe relate to our most pressing social concerns? How do the disparate fields of theology, ethics, and the sciences relate to each other? Murphy and Ellis offer a coherent construction of these relations and show how a particular moral vision-a "kenotic" ethic-is supported "from below" by the social sciences and "from above" by theology. The theological import of contemporary cosmology, they argue, points ultimately to an ethic that centers on self-sacrifice and nonviolence. In ambition, rigor, and scale, in its search for an integrated and coherent worldview at a time of unprecedented complexity and uncertainty, readers will find this volume daring and important.

Ethics in Ancient Israel is a study of ethical thinking in ancient Israel from around the eighth to the second century BC. The evidence for this consists primarily of the Old Testament/ Hebrew Bible and Apocrypha, but also other ancient Jewish writings such as the Dead Sea Scrolls and various anonymous and pseudonymous texts from shortly before the New Testament period. Professor John Barton argues that there were several models for thinking about ethics, including a 'divine command' theory, something approximating to natural law, a virtue ethic, and a belief in human custom and convention. Moreover, he examines ideas of reward and punishment, purity and impurity, the status of moral agents and patients, imitation of God, and the image of God in humanity. Barton maintains that ethical thinking can be found not only in laws but also in the wisdom literature, in the Psalms, and in narrative texts. There is much interaction with recent scholarship in both English and German. The book features discussion of comparative material from other ancient Near Eastern cultures and a chapter on short summaries of moral teaching, such as the Ten Commandments. This innovative work should be of interest to those concerned with the interpretation of the Old Testament but also to students of ethics.

This edited volume offers expert insights into core questions of ethics, education, and religion during what is often termed the "Golden Age" of Islamic culture and intellectual history. It focuses on the scholarly oeuvre of the Muslim philosopher and historian Miskawayh (d. 1030), who is known in the contemporary Muslim world as the "founder of Islamic ethics". Written by internationally renowned scholars in Islamic studies, the chapters trace the significance of ancient Greek, Iranian, and Arabic intellectual traditions, among others, in the Islamic educational discourse. They also show how historical research on concepts of education and ethics specific to religion and culture can help find answers to key issues in contemporary societies.

This international volume provides a comprehensive account of contemporary research, new perspectives and cutting-edge issues surrounding religion and spirituality in social work. The introduction introduces key themes and conceptual issues such as understandings of religion and spirituality as well as definitions of social work, which can vary between countries. The main body of the book is divided up into sections on regional perspectives; religious and spiritual traditions; faith-based service provision; religion and spirituality across the lifespan; and social work practice. The final chapter identifies key challenges and opportunities for developing both social work scholarship and practice in this area. Including a wide range of international perspectives from Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Israel, Malta, New Zealand, South Africa, Sweden, the UK and the USA, this Handbook succeeds in extending the dominant paradigms and comprises a mix of authors including major names, significant contributors and emerging scholars in the field, as well as leading contributors in other fields of social work who have an interest in religion and spirituality. The Routledge Handbook of Religion, Spirituality and Social Work is an authoritative and comprehensive reference for academics and researchers as well as for organisations and practitioners committed to exploring why, and how, religion and spirituality should be integral to social work practice.

This book explores the diversity and dynamism of Islam in Southeast Asia through the concept of adab, or beautiful behavior. Amid the complexity of Islamic civilization, adab provides Muslims with a shared sense of sacred history, identity, and morality. In the context of Islamic ethics, adab defines the rules of personal and public etiquette: good manners, proper conduct, civility and humaneness. Featuring the interdisciplinary research of nine prominent scholars of Islam, the book offers new perspectives on adab's multiple meanings and myriad applications for Muslim communities in Malaysia and Indonesia. The chapters examine a wide range of texts, spotlighting the writings of prominent Muslim thinkers, and contexts, focusing on the everyday experiences of lay Muslims. Drawing on a variety of theoretical and methodological lenses, the essays reveal how beautiful behavior impacts local institutions, cultural practices, and religious imaginations via politics and law, spirituality and piety, ethics and experience. With its careful textual analysis, detailed case studies, and attention to historical continuities and disjunctures, Piety, Politics and Everyday Ethics in Southeast Asian Islam is essential reading for students and scholars interested in global Islam and the lived, local dynamics of Muslim Southeast Asia.

Moral injury is a profound violation of a human being's core moral identity through experiences of violence or trauma. This is the first book in which scholars from different faith and academic backgrounds consider the concept of moral injury not merely from a pastoral or philosophical point of view but through critical engagement with the sacred texts of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and American Civil Religion. This collection of essays explores the ambiguities of personal culpability among both perpetrators and victims of violence and the suffering involved in accepting personal agency in trauma. Contributors provide fresh and compelling readings of texts from different faith traditions and use their findings to reflect on real-life strategies for recovery from violations of core moral beliefs and their consequences such as shame, depression and addiction. With interpretations of the sacred texts, contributors reflect on the concerns of the morally-injured today and offer particular aspects of healing from their communities as support, making this a groundbreaking contribution to the study of moral injury and trauma.

What might we learn if the study of ethics focused less on hard cases and more on the practices of everyday life? In Everyday Ethics, Michael Lamb and Brian Williams gather some of the world's leading scholars and practitioners of moral theology (including some GUP authors) to explore that question in dialogue with anthropology and the social sciences. Inspired by the work of Michael Banner, these scholars cross disciplinary boundaries to analyze the ethics of ordinary practices-from eating, learning, and loving thy neighbor to borrowing and spending, using technology, and working in a flexible economy. Along the way, they consider the moral and methodological questions that emerge from this interdisciplinary dialogue and assess the implications for the future of moral theology.

The scope of interest and reflection on virtue and the virtues is as wide and deep as the questions we can ask about what makes a moral agent's life decent, or noble, or holy rather than cruel, or base, or sinful; or about the conditions of human character and circumstance that make for good relations between family members, friends, workers, fellow citizens, and strangers, and the sorts of conditions that do not. Clearly these questions will inevitably be directed to more finely grained features of everyday life in particular contexts. Virtue and the Moral Life: Theological and Philosophical Perspectives takes up these questions. In its ten timely and original chapters, it considers the specific importance of virtue ethics, its public significance for shaping a society's common good, the value of civic integrity, warfare and returning soldiers' sense of enlarged moral responsibility, the care for and agency of children in contemporary secular consumer society, and other questions involving moral failure, humility, and forgiveness.

Given the largely Eurocentric nature of moral theology in the history of the Roman Catholic Church, what will it take to invest the theological community in the history and moral challenges of the Church in other parts of the world, especially Africa? What is to be gained for the whole Church when this happens in a deep and lasting way? In this timely and important study, Paulinus Ikechukwu Odozor brings greater theological clarity to the issue of the relationship between Christianity and African tradition in the area of ethical foundations. He also provides a constructive example of what fundamental moral theology done from an African and Christian (especially Catholic) moral theological point of view could look like.
Following a brief history of the development of African Christian theology, Odozor examines responses of African theologians to African tradition and Christian responses to the reality of non-Christian religions. In a context where the African religious experience and heritage are powerful sources of meaning and identity, Christian evangelization raises questions both about the African primal religions and about Christianity itself and its claims. Odozor takes up the subject of moral reasoning in an African Christian theological ethics and concludes with case studies that show how the African Church has tried to inculturate moral discourse on a religiously pluralistic continent and relate the healing gospel message to African situations. Students and scholars of moral theology and ethics and church leaders will profit from the issues raised in "Morality Truly Christian, Truly African."
"This is an ambitious book. The scholarship is sound and the author engages a range of authors and their views. Odozor takes seriously the critical and moral demands of Christian theology as well as those of African indigenous religions and their cultures. There is perhaps nothing so thoroughgoing on this topic since Benezet Bujo's "Foundations of an African Ethic: Beyond the Universal Claims of Western Morality."" --M. Shawn Copeland, Boston College

Christianity's demographics, vitality, and influence have tipped markedly toward the global South and East. Addressing this seismic shift, one of today's leading Christian scholars reflects on what he has learned about justice through his encounters with world Christianity.
Philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff's experiences in South Africa, the Middle East, and Honduras have shaped his views on justice through the years. In this book he offers readers an autobiographical tour, distilling the essence of his thoughts on the topic. After describing how he came to think about justice as he does and reviewing the theory of justice he developed in earlier writings, Wolterstorff shows how deeply embedded justice is in Christian Scripture. He reflects on the difficult struggle to right injustice and examines the necessity of just punishment. Finally, he explores the relationship between justice and beauty and between justice and hope.
This book is the first in the Turning South series, which offers reflections by eminent Christian scholars who have turned their attention and commitments toward the global South and East.