In 21st century America, personhood is under daily assault, sometimes with dire consequences. Scientist, ethicist, and ordained minister Craig C. Malbon encourages the reader to consider such assaults on personhood endured by victims of abortion, ageism, Alzheimer's disease, drug addiction, mental and physical disabilities, gender, gender orientation, racism, sexual preference, identity politics, and our will-to-power over the "other." In exploring personhood status, Malbon poses difficult questions for us. Is personhood assigned as all-or-nothing, or is it a sliding scale based upon criteria arbitrarily aimed at our vulnerabilities? Does the voiceless embryo and fetus have advocates who can speak to the moral question of abortion? Is the personhood of an economically insecure pregnant woman degraded to the point where lack of access to early termination of pregnancy results in "coercive childbearing?" Does being a member of the LGBTQI+ community target one for assaults on personhood, to the extreme of being killed? In delving into the biology and psychology of assaults of "self" upon the "other," Malbon sees powerful linkages of everyday assaults on personhood to darker, profound "original sins" that are foundational to the rise of the American empire, i.e., assaults on the indigenous Native Americans and assaults derivative to the institution of slavery upon Africans, African Americans, and their descendants.

While some see the comic as trivial, fit mainly for amusement or distraction, Soren Kierkegaard disagrees. This book examines Kierkegaard's earnest understanding of the nature of the comic and how even the triviality of comic jest is deeply tied to ethics and religion. It rigorously explicates terms such as "irony," "humor," "jest," and "comic" in Kierkegaard, revealing them to be essential to his philosophical and theological program, beyond aesthetic interest alone. Drawing centrally from Kierkegaard's most concentrated treatment of these ideas, Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846), this account argues that he defines the comic as a "contradiction" or misrelation that is essentially (though not absolutely) painless because it provides a "way out." The comic lies in a contradiction between norms and so springs from one's viewpoint, whether ethical or religious. "Irony" and "humor" play essential transitional roles for Kierkegaard's famous account of the stages of existence because subjective development is closely tied to one's capacity to perceive the comic, making the comic both diagnostic of and formative for one's subjective maturity. For Kierkegaard, the Christian is far from humorless, instead having the maximal comic perception because he has the highest possible subjective development. The book demonstrates that the comic is not the expression of a particular pseudonym or of a single period in Kierkegaard's thinking but is an abiding and fundamental concept for him. It finds his comic understanding even outside of Postscript, locating it in such differing works as Prefaces (1844), Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits (1847), and the Corsair affair (c.1845-1848). The book also examines the comic in contemporary Kierkegaard scholarship. First, it argues that Deconstructionists, while accurately perceiving the widespread irony in Kierkegaard's corpus, incorrectly take the irony to imply a lack of earnest interest in philosophy and theology, misunderstanding Kierkegaard on the nature of irony. Second, it considers two theological readings to argue that their positions, while generally preferable to the Deconstructionists', lack the same attentiveness to the comic's role in Kierkegaard. Their significant theological arguments would be strengthened by increased appreciation of the legitimate power of the comic for cultivating ethics and religion.

If God rescues us to be his people, then how can our lives demonstrate our love for him? Luke Davis takes us on a journey through some of the big questions in the arena of Christian ethics, highlighting why our ideas matter. He helps us to have a firm grasp of what the issue is, what God's Word has to say about it, and what practical impact that has on our lives.

Autumn Alcott Ridenour offers a Christian theological discussion on the meaning of aging toward death with purpose, identity, and communal significance. Drawing from both explicit claims and constructive interpretations of St. Augustine's and Karl Barth's understanding of death and aging, this volume describes moral virtue as participation in Christ across generations, culminating in preparation for Sabbath rest during the aging stage of life. Addressing the inevitability of aging, the prospect of mortality, the importance of contemplative action and expanding upon the virtues of growing older, Ridenour analyzes how locating moral agency as union with Christ results in virtuous practices for aging individuals and their surrounding communities. By responding with constructive theology to challenges from transhumanist, bioethical and medical arenas, the volume highlights implications not only for virtue ethics, but also for the goals of medicine.

Migration and Islamic Ethics, Issues of Residence, Naturalization and Citizenship contains various cases of migration movements in the Muslim world from ethical and legal perspectives to argue that Muslim migration experiences can offer a new paradigm of how the religious and the moral can play a significant role in addressing forced migration and displacement

Imitating Christ in Magwi: An Anthropological Theology achieves two things. First, focusing on indigenous Roman Catholics in northern Uganda and South Sudan, it is a detailed ethnography of how a community sustains hope in the midst of one of the most brutal wars in recent memory, that between the Ugandan government and the rebel Lord's Resistance Army. Whitmore finds that the belief that the spirit of Jesus Christ can enter into a person through such devotions as the Adoration of the Eucharist gave people the wherewithal to carry out striking works of mercy during the conflict, and, like Jesus of Nazareth, to risk their lives in the process. Traditional devotion leveraged radical witness. Second, Gospel Mimesis is a call for theology itself to be a practice of imitating Christ. Such practice requires both living among people on the far margins of society - Whitmore carried out his fieldwork in Internally Displaced Persons camps - and articulating a theology that foregrounds the daily, if extraordinary, lives of people. Here, ethnography is not an add-on to theological concepts; rather, ethnography is a way of doing theology, and includes what anthropologists call "thick description" of lives of faith. Unlike theology that draws only upon abstract concepts, what Whitmore calls "anthropological theology" is consonant with the fact that God did indeed become human. It may well involve risk to one's own life - Whitmore had to leave Uganda for three years after writing an article critical of the President - but that is what imitatio Christi sometimes requires.

The Year without a Purchase is the story of one family's quest to stop shopping and start connecting. Scott Dannemiller and his wife, Gabby, are former missionaries who served in Guatemala. Ten years removed from their vow of simple living, they found themselves on a never-ending treadmill of consumption where each purchase created a desire for more and never led to true satisfaction. The difference between needs and wants had grown very fuzzy, and making that distinction clear again would require drastic action: no nonessential purchases for a whole year. No clothes, no books, no new toys for the kids. If they couldn't eat it or use it up within a year (toilet paper and shampoo, for example), they wouldn't buy it. Filled with humorous wit, curious statistics, and poignant conclusions, the book examines modern America's spending habits and chronicles the highs and lows of dropping out of our consumer culture. As the family bypasses the checkout line to wrestle with the challenges of gift giving, child rearing, and keeping up with the Joneses, they discover important truths about human nature and the secret to finding true joy. The Year without a Purchase offers valuable food for thought for anyone who has ever wanted to reduce stress by shopping less and living more.

In the last fifty years, the Appalachian Mountains have suffered permanent and profound change due to the expansion of surface coal mining. The irrevocable devastation caused by this practice has forced local citizens to redefine their identities, their connections to global economic forces, their pasts, and their futures. Religion is a key factor in the fierce debate over mountaintop removal; some argue that it violates a divine mandate to protect the earth, while others contend that coal mining is a God-given gift to ensure human prosperity and comfort. In Religion and Resistance in Appalachia: Faith and the Fight against Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining, Joseph D. Witt examines how religious and environmental ethics foster resistance to mountaintop removal coal mining. Drawing on extensive interviews with activists, teachers, preachers, and community leaders, Witt's research offers a fresh analysis of an important and dynamic topic. His study reflects a diversity of denominational perspectives, exploring Catholic and mainline Protestant views of social and environmental justice, evangelical Christian readings of biblical ethics, and Native and nontraditional spiritual traditions. By placing Appalachian resistance to mountaintop removal in a comparative international context, Witt's work also provides new outlooks on the future of the region and its inhabitants. His timely study enhances, challenges, and advances conversations not only about the region, but also about the relationship between religion and environmental activism.

To take a journey, travelers must know where they are, where they are going, and how to get there. Moral theology examines the same three truths. The Christian Moral Life is a handbook for moral theology that uses the theme of a journey to explain its key ethical concepts. First, humans begin with their creation in the image of God. Secondly, the goal of the journey is explained as a loving union with God, to achieve a share in his eternal happiness. Third and finally, the majority of the book examines how to attain this goal. Within the journey motif, the book covers the moral principles essential for attaining true happiness. Based on an examination of the moral methodology in the bible, the book discusses the importance of participating in divine nature through grace in order to attain eternal happiness. It further notes the role of law, virtue, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit in guiding and transforming humans into friends of God, who participate in his happiness. Following this section on moral theology in general, the book analyzes the individual virtues to give more concrete guidance. The entire project builds upon the insights of great Christian thinkers, such as Thomas Aquinas, Therese of Lisieux, and John Paul II, to uncover the moral wisdom in scripture and to show people how to be truly happy both in this life and the next. This book will be of great interest to undergraduate students of moral theology, priests and seminarians, parents and teachers seeking to raise and to form happy children, and anyone interested in discovering the meaning of true happiness.

This book establishes that normativity has necessary characteristics explicable only through the natural law formulation developed by Aquinas and based on loving God and neighbor, albeit understood in terms other than Christian charity and updated according to the personalism of John Paul II. The resulting personalist natural law can counter objections rising from classical and contemporary metaethics, moral diversity, undeserved suffering, antithetical interpretations of Aquinas's natural law, and alternative ethical theories, e.g., atheistic eudaimonism. Also established are the virtues of love; the nature of indefeasibility, moral objectivity, human flourishing, and Thomistic self-evidence; the relationship between the Bonum Precept (good is to be done and pursued; evil is to be avoided) and the love precepts (God is to be loved above all; neighbors are to be loved as oneself) as well as specific moral and legal obligations. These specifications update the nature of the common good, Just War Theory, the warrant for capital punishment, environmental obligations, and the basis for universal, unalienable rights, including religious liberty. The Appendix sketches the history of natural law from its origins in ancient Greek philosophy and Roman law, through developments during the Enlightenment and the American revolution, to contemporary incarnations. Overall, the book's scope and detailed arguments make it a comprehensive resource for those interested in normative foundations, justifying morality's objectivity and universality, global jurisprudence, and recasting Thomistic natural law in terms of personalist love.

This is a collection of the most important writings of Charles E. Curran from the 1980s and 1990s. He examines the history of moral theology in general, the development of Catholic medical ethics, the role of the laity in the thought of John Courtney Murray, and the evolution of Catholic moral theology from the end of World War II to the close of the 20th century. The volume also includes a selection of his writings on fertility control, homosexuality, public policy, gay rights, academic freedom and Catholic higher education.

Forgiveness was a preoccupation of writers in the Victorian period, bridging literatures highbrow and low, sacred and secular. Yet if forgiveness represented a common value and language, literary scholarship has often ignored the diverse meanings and practices behind this apparently uncomplicated value in the Victorian period. Forgiveness in Victorian Literature examines how eminent writers such as Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, and Oscar Wilde wrestled with the religious and social meanings of forgiveness in an age of theological controversy and increasing pluralism in ethical matters. Richard Gibson discovers unorthodox uses of the language of forgiveness and delicate negotiations between rival ethical and religious frameworks, which complicated forgiveness's traditional powers to create or restore community and, within narratives, offered resolution and closure. Illuminated by contemporary philosophical and theological investigations of forgiveness, this study also suggests that Victorian literature offers new perspectives on the ongoing debate about the possibility and potency of forgiving.

Ecclesia and Ethics considers the subject of Ecclesial Ethics within its theological, theoretical and exegetical contexts. Part one presents the biblical-theological foundations of an ecclesial ethic - examining issues such as creation, and Paul's theology of the Cross. Part two moves on to examine issues of character formation and community. Finally, part three presents a range of exegetical applications, which examine scripture and ethics in praxis. These essays look at hot-button issues such as the 'virtual self' in the digital age, economics, and attitudes to war. The collection includes luminaries such as N.T. Wright, Michael J. Gorman, Stanley Hauerwas and Dennis Hollinger, as well as giving space to new theological and exegetical voices. As such Ecclesia and Ethics provides a challenging and contemporary examination of modern ethical debates in the light of up-to-date theology and exegesis.

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.

This book explores the normative implications for both general and sexual ethics of the methodological and anthropological developments in Catholic tradition. It also attempts to stimulate dialogue in the Church about ethics, particularly sexual ethics, a dialogue that must necessarily include all in the communion-Church, laity, theologians, and hierarchy.

Between 1850 and 1970, around three hundred thousand children were sent to new homes through child migration programmes run by churches, charities and religious orders in the United States and the United Kingdom. Intended as humanitarian initiatives to save children from social and moral harm and to build them up as national and imperial citizens, these schemes have in many cases since become the focus of public censure, apology and sometimes financial redress. Remembering Child Migration is the first book to examine both the American 'orphan train' programmes and Britain's child migration schemes to its imperial colonies. Setting their work in historical context, it discusses their assumptions, methods and effects on the lives of those they claimed to help. Rather than seeing them as reflecting conventional child-care practice of their time, the book demonstrates that they were subject to criticism for much of the period in which they operated. Noting similarities between the American 'orphan trains' and early British migration schemes to Canada, it also shows how later British child migration schemes to Australia constituted a reversal of what had been understood to be good practice in the late Victorian period. At its heart, the book considers how welfare interventions motivated by humanitarian piety came to have such harmful effects in the lives of many child migrants. By examining how strong moral motivations can deflect critical reflection, legitimise power and build unwarranted bonds of trust, it explores the promise and risks of humanitarian sentiment.

David G. Horrell presents a study of Pauline ethics, examining how Paul's moral discourse envisages and constructs communities in which there is a strong sense of solidarity but also legitimate difference in various aspects of ethical practice. Horrell reads New Testament texts with an explicit awareness of contemporary ethical theory, and assesses Paul's contribution as a moral thinker in the context of modern debate. Using a framework indebted to the social sciences, as well as to contemporary ethical theory, Horrell examines the construction of community in Paul's letters, the notions of purity, boundaries and identity, Paul's attempts to deal with diversity in his churches, the role of imitating Christ in Paul's ethics, and the ethic Paul develops for interaction with 'outsiders'. Finally, the pattern of Paul's moral thinking is considered in relation to the liberal-communitarian debate, with explicit consideration given to the central moral norms of Pauline thought, and the prospects for, and problems with, appropriating these in the contemporary world. This Cornerstones edition includes an extended reflective introduction and a substantial foreword from N.T. Wright.

A Crisis of Belief, Ethics and Faith presents a self-corrective and contemporary system of philosophy in a very readable format. The current rate of technological, scientific and social change is such that being ready and able to change with the evidence is needed in any attempt to render an intelligible account of our experiences. This work attempts to explain how we might go about forming our thoughts and beliefs about ourselves, our world and how we should properly conduct ourselves in a justifiable and non-arbitrary fashion.