There is a growing crisis in scientific research characterized by failures to reproduce experimental results, fraud, lack of innovation, and burn-out. In Science and Christian Ethics, Paul Scherz traces these problems to the drive by governments and business to make scientists into competitive entrepreneurs who use their research results to stimulate economic growth. The result is a competitive environment aimed at commodifying the world. In order to confront this problem of character, Scherz examines the alternative Aristotelian and Stoic models of reforming character, found in the works of Alasdair MacIntyre and Michel Foucault. Against many prominent virtue ethicists, he argues that what individual scientists need is a regime of spiritual exercises, such as those found in Stoicism as it was adopted by Christianity, in order to refocus on the good of truth in the face of institutional pressure. His book illuminates pressing issues in research ethics, moral education, and anthropology.

Using interdisciplinary methods, this book is a pioneering exploration of Asian understandings of human dignity and human rights. It encompasses rigorous scrutiny of dignity jurisprudence in major Asian apex courts, detailed philosophical analysis of dignity in religious traditions, and contextualized socio-political analysis of religious dignity discourse in several Asian societies. This is an innovative systematic survey of how human dignity is understood in Asia, demonstrating how those understandings converge and diverge with other parts of the world. Synthesising legal, philosophical, and sociological expertise, this volume furthers the dialogue between Asia and the West, and advances debates on whether human rights are universal or particular to any one region. As many of the world's liberal democracies are challenged by polarization and populism, this comparative study of human dignity broadens our horizons and offers a potential alternative to a rigidified social imagination.

Soul food has played a critical role in preserving Black history, community, and culinary genius. It is also a response to--and marker of--centuries of food injustice. Given the harm that our food production system inflicts upon Black people, what should soul food look like today? Christopher Carter's answer to that question merges a history of Black American foodways with a Christian ethical response to food injustice. Carter reveals how racism and colonialism have long steered the development of US food policy. The very food we grow, distribute, and eat disproportionately harms Black people specifically and people of color among the global poor in general. Carter reflects on how people of color can eat in a way that reflects their cultural identities while remaining true to the principles of compassion, love, justice, and solidarity with the marginalized. Both a timely mediation and a call to action, The Spirit of Soul Food places today's Black foodways at the crossroads of food justice and Christian practice.

Music does not make itself. It is made by people: professionals and amateurs, singers and instrumentalists, composers and publishers, performers and audiences, entrepreneurs and consumers. In turn, making music shapes those who make it-spiritually, emotionally, physically, mentally, socially, politically, economically-for good or ill, harming and healing. This volume considers the social practice of music from a Christian point of view. Using a variety of methodological perspectives, the essays explore the ethical and doctrinal implications of music-making. The reflections are grouped according to the traditional threefold ministry of Christ: prophet, priest, and shepherd: the prophetic role of music, as a means of articulating protest against injustice, offering consolation, and embodying a harmonious order; the pastoral role of music: creating and sustaining community, building peace, fostering harmony with the whole of creation; and the priestly role of music: in service of reconciliation and restoration, for individuals and communities, offering prayers of praise and intercession to God. Using music in priestly, prophetic, and pastoral ways, Christians pray for and rehearse the coming of God's kingdom-whether in formal worship, social protest, concert performance, interfaith sharing, or peacebuilding. Whereas temperance was of prime importance in relation to the ethics of music from antiquity to the early modern period, justice has become central to contemporary debates. This book seeks to contribute to those debates by means of Christian theological reflection on a wide range of musics: including monastic chant, death metal, protest songs, psalms and worship music, punk rock, musical drama, interfaith choral singing, Sting, and Daft Punk.

This book sets the scene for the deliberations on ethics and its application to healthcare in the twenty-first century. The word ethics, in classical Greek, means the "beliefs of the people" the study of what is right and good in human conduct and the justification of such claims. Without a doubt this task is not simply about setting up a list of rights and wrongs. Rather, it is a discussion, a process that helps tease out the real issues and find and teach ethical solutions to complex practical problems. The centrality of the patient is of prime consideration in this book, and the health of the individual patient is the first consideration in the teaching considerations discussed. Applied ethics in healthcare may have lost sight of what traditional ethics was trying to accomplish: a good life for good people over a lifetime in society with others. We must put biomedical ethics into perspective and develop a truly comprehensive approach to health care ethics. On the practical level, we need structures integrating givers ethical perspectives. But, there seems to be a gap and significant perception differences among healthcare providers' learning environments and actual professional situations. Hence, teaching ethics and healthcare providers values is important to bridge this gap.

An insightful and fresh perspective of the Ten Commandments reveals how this ancient text is the underpinning for social justice, equality, and the foundation of society.

Each commandment is expanded beyond interpersonal morality to encompass the global economy and our hyper-connected age. Stealing, for example, is recast as the difference between the fair trade price of a commodity and what we pay. Keeping the Sabbath is recast as resistance to consumer culture, having enough.

The Ten Commandments are a resource for everyone, from the spiritual-but-not-religious to the deeply observant, who wants to resist injustice, heal our earth, and find personal dignity amid the free-for-alls of modern life.

We don't have to invent a bunch of new practices to meaningfully integrate our spirituality and politics. There is already a perfectly good set of ten of them, with as much progressive firepower as any of us can handle, that has existed for some 3000 years.

Introduction: The Ten Commandments Are Practices of Liberation

The First Commandment: You Shall Have No Other Gods Besides Me Dethrone the Modern Deities of Political, Social, and Corporate Power

The Second Commandment: Do Not Make for Yourself a Sculpted Image; Do Not Bow to Them, Do Not Serve Them Accept No Substitutes for God's Power of Liberation

The Third Commandment: Do Not Take the Name of God in Vain Defend the Goodness of God; Take Responsibility for Resistance and Change

The Fourth Commandment: Observe the Sabbath Day and Keep it Holy Squander One Day Every Week

The Fifth Commandment: Honor Your Father and Your Mother Stay Accountable to Where You Came From

The Sixth Commandment: Do Not Kill Renounce Human and Ecological Violence

The Seventh Commandment: Do Not Commit Adultery Stay In for the Long Run, Reject Throw-Away Culture

The Eighth Commandment: Do Not Steal Pay What Stuff Really Costs in Fair Wages and the Planet's Resources

The Ninth Commandment: Do Not Testify Against Your Neighbor As a Lying Witness Speak and Demand Truth in Every Sphere - Home, Corporations, Government

The Tenth Commandment: Do Not Covet Practice Your Liberation--You Have Enough, You Are Enough

In public debates over biotechnology, theologians, philosophers, and political theorists have proposed that biotechnology could have significant implications for human nature. They argue that ethical evaluations of biotechnologies that might affect human nature must take these implications into account. In this book, Gerald McKenny examines these important yet controversial arguments, which have in turn been criticized by many moral philosophers and professional bioethicists. He argues that Christian ethics is, in principle, committed to some version of the claim that human nature has normative status in relation to biotechnology. Showing how both criticisms and defences of this claim have often been facile, he identifies, develops, and critically evaluates three versions of the claim, and contributes a fourth, distinctively Christian version to the debate. Focusing on Christian ethics in conversation with secular ethics, McKenny's book is the first thorough analysis of a controversial contemporary issue.

Enter the packed courtroom and take your seat as a juror on the Cain v. Abel trial. Soon, the prosecution and defense attorneys (angels from Jewish legend) will call Cain, Abel, Sin, Adam, Eve, and God to the witness stand to present their perspectives on the world's first murder. Great Jewish commentators throughout the ages will also offer contradictory testimony on Cain's emotional, societal, and spiritual influences. As jurors, when we mete out Cain's punishment, must we factor in his family history, psychological makeup, and the human impulse to sin? In this highly eclectic and gripping compilation of insights by Jewish commentators on the Cain and Abel story, courtroom scenes are juxtaposed with the author's commentary, advancing novel insights and introspection. As each of us grapples with Cain's actions, we confront our own darkest traits. If Cain is a symbol for all humanity, what can we do to avoid becoming like him? Furthering this conversation, Rabbi Dan Ornstein includes a discussion and activity guide to promote open dialogue about human brokenness and healing, personal impulses, and societal responsibility.

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.

The threat of ecological collapse is increasingly becoming a reality for the world's populations, both human and nonhuman; addressing this global challenge requires enormous cultural creativity and demands a diversity of perspectives, especially from the humanities. Theology and Ecology Across the Disciplines draws from a variety of academic disciplines and positions in order to explore the role and nature of environmental responsibility, especially where such themes intersect with religious or theological viewpoints. Covering disciplines such as history, philosophy, literature, politics, peace studies, economics, women's studies, and the ecological sciences as well as systematic and moral theology, the contributors emphasize how these positions have begun to develop distinct perspectives on urgent ecological issues, as well as pointing toward specific practices at the local and international level. This volume provides a multidisciplinary point of departure for urgent conversations on environmental responsibility that resist simplistic solutions. Rather, the contributors highlight the complex nature of modern ecology, and suggest creative ways forward in the situation of an apparently intractable global problem.

Offers a faithful, constructive way to deal with dissent. What happens when we approach disagreement not as a problem to solve but as an opportunity to practice Christian virtue? In this book James Calvin Davis reclaims the biblical concept of forbearance to develop a theological ethic for faithful disagreement. Pointing to Ephesians and Colossians, in which Paul challenged his readers to "bear with each other" in spite of differences, Davis draws out a theologically grounded practice in which Christians work hard to maintain unity while still taking seriously matters on which they disagree. The practice of forbearance, Davis argues, offers Christians a dignified, graceful, and constructive way to deal with conflict. Forbearance can also strengthen the church's public witness, offering an antidote to the pervasive divisiveness present in contemporary culture.

The theological virtue of hope has long been neglected in Christian ethics. However, as social, civic and global anxieties mount, the need to overcome despair has become urgent. This book proposes the theological virtue of hope as a promising source of rejuvenation. Theological hope sustains us from the sloth, presumption and despair that threaten amid injustice, tragedy and dying; it provides an ultimate meaning and transcendent purpose to our lives; and it rejoices and refreshes us 'on the way' with the prospect of eternal beatitude. Rather than degrading this life and world, hope ordains earthly goods to our eschatological end, forming us to pursue social justice with a resilience and vitality that transcend the cynicism and disillusionment so widespread at present. Drawing on Thomas Aquinas and virtue ethics, the book shows how the virtue of hope contributes to human happiness in this life and not just the next.

Conceived at the same conference that produced the Student NonviolentCoordinating Committee (SNCC), the Student Interracial Ministry (SIM)was a national organisation devoted to dismantling Jim Crow while simultaneouslyadvancing American churches' approach to race. In this book, DavidP. Cline details how, between the founding of SIM in 1960 and its dissolutionat the end of the decade, the seminary students who created and ranthe organisation influenced hundreds of thousands of community membersthrough its various racial reconciliation and economic justice projects. Frominner-city ministry in Oakland to voter registration drives in southwesternGeorgia, participants modeled peaceful inter racialism nationwide. By tellingthe history of SIM-its theology, influences, and failures-Cline situates SIMwithin two larger frameworks: the long civil rights movement and the evenlonger tradition of liberal Christianity's activism for social reform. Pulling SIM from the shadow of its more famous twin, SNCC, Clinesheds light on an understudied facet of the movement's history. In doing so,he provokes an appreciation of the struggle of churches to remain relevantin swiftly changing times and shows how seminarians responded to institutionalconservatism by challenging the establishment to turn toward politicalactivism.

In Explaining Evil four prominent philosophers, two theists and two non-theists, present their arguments for why evil exists. Taking a "position and response" format, in which one philosopher offers an account of evil and three others respond, this book guides readers through the advantages and limitations of various philosophical positions on evil, making it ideal for classroom use as well as individual study. Divided into four chapters, Explaining Evil covers Theistic Libertarianism, Theistic Compatibilism, Atheistic Moral Realism and Atheistic Moral Non-realism. It features topics including free will, theism, atheism, goodness, Calvinism, evolutionary ethics, and pain, and demonstrates some of the dominant models of thinking within contemporary philosophy of religion and ethics. Written in accessible prose and with an approachable structure, this book provides a clear and useful overview of the central issues of the philosophy of evil.

Ethics is the culmination of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's theological and personal odyssey and one of the most important works of Christian ethics of the last century. Using the acclaimed DBWE translation, adapted to a more accessible format, this new edition features an insightful introduction by Clifford Green and supplemental material from Victoria J. Barnett. Written in the midst of the conspiracy to overthrow the Hitler regime, it is nonetheless chiefly concerned with ethics for the postwar time of reconstruction and peace. Though caught up in the vortex of momentous forces in the Nazi period, Bonhoeffer systematically envisioned a radically Christocentric, incarnational ethic for a postwar world, purposefully recasting Christians' relation to history, politics, and public life. Focused on Christ, the God who became human, and the vision of a world reconciled with God, Ethics shuns abstraction, seeks the will of God in concrete historical reality, and calls the church to be a transforming community in the world with a new responsibility to public life. This edition allows all readers to appreciate the cogency and relevance of Bonhoeffer's vision.

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.

Socrates famously said that the unexamined life is not worth living. In keeping with this dictum, taking ethics seriously means engaging with the real world where the human sense of right and wrong is daily tested. At their best, all faith traditions are challenged by such testing; and if faith-inspired ethics are thought to goven the whole of life, their guiding values need constantly to be interpreted by the believer to achieve a practical result. In the Muslim tradition, this is what the Qur'an really amounts to: a call to strive for belief with a social conscience. For fourteen centuries Muslim scholars have grappled with the implications of that call in matters of law, social practice and theology. And in our own time, the quests for civil society and the rule of law have much to do with the response given to these ethical questions. 'A Companion to Muslim Ethics' explores Islam's core conception of the good, shared with other great traditions. Leading experts examine issues such as gender equality, nonviolence, dispute resolution, the environment, health and finance. The volume will appeal to all those interested in how reason, faith and circumstance shape difficult moral choices in an increasingly globalised world.

Few issues are as complex and controversial as immigration in the United States. The only thing anyone seems to agree on is that the system is broken. Mark Amstutz offers a succinct overview and assessment of current immigration policy and argues for an approach to the complex immigration debate that is solidly grounded in Christian political thought. After analyzing key laws and institutions in the US immigration system, Amstutz examines how Catholics, evangelicals, and main-line Protestants have used Scripture to address social and political issues, including immigration. He critiques the ways in which many Christians have approached immigration reform and offers concrete suggestions on how Christian groups can offer a more credible political engagement with this urgent policy issue.

Where is the voice of theology in the public discourse around anthropogenic climate change? How do we understand the human relationship to Earth and the ecology of which we are a part? How can we account for the human attempt to dominate nature and the devastation we have caused to our own home? Dianne Rayson addresses these questions. She uses the creation theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer to examine what it means to be human in the post-Holocene age. Employing a range of Bonhoeffer's texts, Rayson posits that Bonhoeffer's Christological theology and this-worldly ethical orientation provide the tools for an Earthly Christianity. She responds to Bonhoeffer's question, "who actually is Jesus Christ, for us, today?" and proposes a Bonhoefferian ecoethic.

When King looked over into the promised land and tried to discern how we would get there, he called the poor to lead the way. The Poor People's Campaign was part of a political strategy for building a movement expansive enough to tackle the enmeshed evils of racism, poverty, and war. In Freedom Church of the Poor: Martin Luther King Jr.'s Poor People's Campaign, Colleen Wessel-McCoy roots King's political vision solidly in his theological ethics and traces the spirit of the campaign in the community and religious leaders who are responding to the devastating crises of inequality today.

Faiths in Green addresses the complex and fraught relationship between religious identity and environmental concern in the United States, particularly how that relationship has changed over time. Examining the effects of religious upbringing, belonging, and disaffiliation on environmental concern across multiple religious groups over several decades, the author shows where, when, how, and why religious groups and their memberships have responded constructively to environmental change over time. The author also visits the effects of gender, social class, race, and politics on both religion and environmental concern in the U.S. Faiths in Green offers an in-depth and accessible guide to understanding the at-times incongruous relationship between religious beliefs and motivations, as well as ways to follow cultural shifts that both drive and are driven by religious persons and institutions. In examining how religious and cultural factors are linked to environmental concern over time, Faiths in Green demonstrates the importance of morality and worldviews in confronting global hazards of unprecedented scale.

The Trauma of Doctrine is a theological investigation into the effects of abuse trauma upon the experience of Christian faith, the psychological mechanics of these effects, their resonances with Christian Scripture, and neglected research-informed strategies for cultivating post-traumatic resilience. Paul Maxwell examines the effect that the Calvinist belief can have upon the traumatized Christian who negatively internalizes its superlative doctrines of divine control and human moral corruption, and charts a way toward meaningful spiritual recovery.