Drawing on her own experience as a surrogate mother, Grace Y. Kao assesses the ethics of surrogacy from a feminist and progressive Christian perspective, concluding that certain kinds of surrogacy arrangements can be morally permissible—and should even be embraced. While the use of assisted reproductive technology has brought joy to countless families, surrogacy remains the most controversial path to parenthood. My Body, Their Baby helps readers sort through objections to this way of bringing children into the world. Candidly reflecting on carrying a baby for her childless friends and informed by the reproductive justice framework developed by women of color activists, Kao highlights the importance of experience in feminist methodology and Christian ethics. She shows what surrogacy is like from the perspective of women becoming pregnant for others, parents who have opted for surrogacy (including queer couples), and the surrogate-born children themselves. Developing a constructive framework of ethical norms and principles to guide the formation of surrogacy relationships, Kao ultimately offers a vision for surrogacy that celebrates the reproductive generosity and solidarity displayed through the sharing of traditionally maternal roles.

Provides a thorough introductory overview of the intersection of death and religion from a multitude of religious perspectives. An accessible format with helpful pedagogic features such as a glossary, further reading and key terms. This volume can be used on a range of courses due to its interdisciplinary nature, appealing to students of religious studies, thanatology, anthropology, philosophy and sociology.

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.

Celebrating Biblical and Jewish holidays is most characteristic of the Messianic Jewish movement, and it arouses much interest among Gentile Christians. This practice arose in the struggle of Hebrew Christians in the 19th century against "Christian assimilation". From the 1970s onwards, a new generation of Messianic Jews identified strongly with their people's socio-cultural heritage, including the practice of Sabbath, Pesach and other Jewish holidays. A thorough analysis of calendars, reinterpretations, observances and motives shows that this is a novel, Christian-Judaic practice. Why and how do Gentile Christians adopt it? To return to "Jewish roots"? What does this term stand for? As the author takes up these questions, he shows that this is rather a contextualisation of the Gospel.

Theology and Climate Change examines Progressive Dominion Theology (PDT) as a primary cultural driver of anthropogenic climate change. PDT is a distinctive and Western form of Christian theology out of which the modern scientific revolution and technological modernity arises. Basic attitudes to nature, to instrumental power over nature, and to an understanding of humanity's relationship with nature are a function of the deep theological preconditions of Western modernity. Much of what we like about Western modernity is indebted to PDT at the same time that this tacit cultural theology is propelling us towards climate disaster. This text argues that the urgent need to change the fundamental operational assumptions of our way of life is now very hard for us to do, because secular modernity is now largely unaware of its tacit theological commitments. Modern consumer society, including the global economy that supports this way of life, could not have the operational signatures it currently has without its distinctive theological origin and its ongoing submerged theological assumptions. Some forms of Christian theology are now acutely aware of this dynamic and are determined to change the modern life-world, from first assumptions up, in order to avert climate disaster. At the same time that other forms of Christian theology - aligned with pragmatic fossil fuel interests - advance climate change skepticism and overtly uphold PDT. Theology is, in fact, crucially integral with the politics of climate change, but this is not often understood in anything more than simplistic and polemically expedient ways in environmental and policy contexts. This text aims to dis-imbed climate change politics from polarized and unfruitful slinging-matches between conservatives and progressives of all or no religious commitments. This fascinating volume is a must read for those with an interest in environmental policy concerns and in culturally embedded first-order belief commitments.

In The Dynamics of Human Life in the Bible: Receptivity and Power, Martin J. Buss describes the dynamics of human life that are encouraged in the Bible and how biblical guidance compares with other religious traditions. The dynamics include both receptivity ("from" another) and power ("for" or "over" another), often in combination ("with" another). For example, love joins receptive cognition of worth with energetic support. Receptivity, the only way to deal with fundamental values, seeks material and religious benefits and is the human side of revelation and salvation. Public acknowledgement strengthens divine influence. Furthermore, receptivity accepts challenges. These include individual and social growth and semi-identification with others, which has societal rather than concrete individual consequences. Power is crucial in legal remedies and penalties. Life with others is important in practical "wisdom" and in Christian "mutual love." Busse finds that biblical directives parallel those of non-Christian religious traditions. This situation is in line with biblical views of general revelation and developments in history.

Through examining Douglass's and Fanon's concrete experiences of oppression, Cynthia R. Nielsen demonstrates the empirical validity of Foucault's theoretical analyses concerning power, resistance, and subject-formation. Going beyond merely confirming Foucault's insights, Douglass and Fanon expand, strengthen, and offer correctives to the emancipatory dimensions of Foucault's project. Unlike Foucault, Douglass and Fanon were not hesitant to make transhistorical judgments condemning slavery and colonization. Foucault's reticence here signals a weakness in his account of human being. This weakness sets him at cross-purposes not only with Scotus, but also with Douglass and Fanon. Scotus's anthropology provides a basis for transhistorical moral critique; thus he is a valuable dialogue partner for those concerned about social justice and human flourishing.

The term desire in the Hebrew Bible covers a wide range of human longings, emotions, and cravings. The direct and explicit term of desire is nevertheless limited to only two roots found in the Decalogue-the verb forms of the lexical roots and , which reflect not only the dynamics of desire occurring in human beings, but also in God. With an comprehensive semantic analysis and an overview of the synonyms and antonyms, the author shows that the verb form of the lexical root denotes a variety of needs related to human existence including aspiration for God while the verb form of the lexical root denotes the desire to acquire material wealth and possessions beyond basic needs. All the findings are compared on two levels-in relation to human beings (objects and people) and in relation to God-and ultimately serve for the interpretation of the roots in both versions of the Decalogue (Exod 20:17 and Deut 5:21) to resolve questions concerning the meaning of the desire in Tenth Commandment and substantiate whether the answers to life's questions provided by the Bible correspond to modern society.

The Other Black Church: Alternative Christian Movements and the Struggle for Black Freedom examines the movements led by Father Divine, Charles Mason, and Albert Cleage (later known as Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman) as alternative Christian movements in the middle of the twentieth century that radically re-envisioned the limits and possibilities of Black citizenship. These movements not only rethink the value and import of Christian texts and reimagined the role of the Black Christian prophetic tradition, but they also outlined a new model of protest that challenged the language and logic of Black essentialism, economic development, and the role of the state. By placing these movements in conversation with the long history of Black theology and Black religious studies, this book suggests that alternative Christian movements are essential for thinking about African American critiques of and responses to the failures of U.S.-based democracy. These prophets of Black theological thought and their attention to the limits of the state and traditional Black religious formations are most fully appreciated when studied in light of their conversations and interactions with other key Black prophetic and theological figures of the mid-twentieth century. Ultimately, The Other Black Church will use those conversations and archives from these movements to highlight their protest of the racial state, to explore the limits of the Black church, and to argue for their continued significance for thinking about the variety and vibrancy of Black protest, specifically Black religious protest, during the twentieth century.

From the concrete experience of war, Michael S. Yandell constructs a phenomenology of "negative revelation" in which false or distorted claims of goodness and justice disintegrate, becoming meaningless. Yandell argues that the disintegration of meaning in war is itself a meaningful experience; "revealing" comes to signify the presence of goodness and justice through the profound experience of their absence. The heart of this work adds a layer of complexity or depth to the term "moral injury" as a negative revelation. Yandell emphasizes the context and logic of war itself beyond the actions of individuals, paying specific attention to the U.S. led Global War on Terror. Moral injury as a negative revelation is a disintegration of false normative claims of goodness and justice, as well as a disintegration of one's sense of self oriented toward those normative claims. This disintegration is prompted by the recognition of life in the midst of war's diminishment of life.

Exam board: OCR Level: A-level Subject: Religious Studies First teaching: September 2016 First exams: Summer 2017 Target success in OCR A Level Religious Studies with this proven formula for effective, structured revision; key content coverage is combined with exam-style tasks and practical tips to create a revision guide you can rely on to review, strengthen and test their knowledge. With My Revision Notes you can: - Plan and manage a successful revision programme using the topic-by-topic planner - Consolidate subject knowledge by working through clear and focused content coverage - Test understanding and identify areas for improvement with regular 'Now Test Yourself' tasks and answers - Improve exam technique through practice questions, expert tips and examples of typical mistakes to avoid

Provides an accessible introduction to the Environmental Humanities, a complex and interdisciplinary area, and designed to provide a foundation for future study, projects and pursuits. Written by academics with experience of teaching and writing in the field. Content is engaging and includes case studies, discussion questions, annotated bibliographies, and links to online resources. Organised by subject, this book could be used on general environmental humanities courses, or individual chapters could be used on subject specific courses i.e. Environmental History, environmental film etc.

It is far more common nowadays to see references to the afterlife-angels playing harps, demons brandishing pitchforks, God among heavenly clouds, the fires of hell-in New Yorker cartoons than in serious Christian theological scholarship. Speculation about death and the afterlife seems to embarrass many of America's less-evangelical theologians, yet as Greg Garrett shows, popular culture in the U.S. has found rich ground for creative expression in what happens to us after death. The rock music of U2, Iron Maiden, and AC/DC, the storylines of TV's Lost, South Park, and Fantasy Island, the implied theology in films such as The Corpse Bride, Ghost, and Field of Dreams, the heavenly half-light of Thomas Kinkade's popular paintings, and the supernatural landscape of ghosts, shades, and waystations in the Harry Potter novels all speak to our hopes and fears about what comes next. Greg Garrett scrutinizes a wide array of cultural productions to find the stories being told about what awaits us: depictions of heaven, hell, and purgatory, angels, demons, and ghosts, all offering at least an implied theology of life after death. The citizens of the imagined afterlife, whether in heaven, hell, on earth, or in between, are telling us about what awaits us, at once shaping and reflecting our deeply held-if sometimes inchoate-beliefs. They teach us about reward and punishment, about divine assistance in this life, about diabolical interference, and about other ways of being after we die. Especially fascinating are the frequent appearances of purgatory, limbo, and other in-between places. Such beliefs are dismissed by the Protestant majority, and quietly disparaged even by many Catholics. Yet many pop culture narratives represent departed souls who must earn some sort of redemption, complete some unfinished task, before passing on. Garrett's incisive analysis sheds new light on what popular culture can tell us about the startlingly sharp divide between what modern people profess to believe and what they truly hope to find after death.

Western Monastic Spirituality presents three authors as individuals, certainly, but also as textual informants who, like road markers, represent a line of the development of a Western monastic spiritual tradition. John Cassian (ca. 360-435) helped bring the wisdom of northern Egyptian ascetical life of the late fourth century to southern France in the early fifth century. Caesarius of Arles (468/470-542), drawing on his own monastic experience and Augustine's monastic rule, composed a rule for a women's monastery in the city of Arles. Not many years later, Benedict wrote the most influential rule in Western monasticism, one that still regulates the lives of monks today all over the world. These three texts, when looked at serially and together, offer a theology of monastic spirituality, an example of a relatively short but comprehensive early monastic rule, and a present day Benedictine interpretation of how Benedict's monastic spirituality can be summed up in a short present day digest of his rule. Reflection on early Western monasticism retrieves some basic Christian spiritual values that should inform life today outside the monastery in a busy, secular culture.

Why do we have children and what do we raise them for? Does the proliferation of depictions of suffering in the media enhance, or endanger, compassion? How do we live and die well in the extended periods of debility which old age now threatens? Why and how should we grieve for the dead? And how should we properly remember other grief and grievances? In addressing such questions, the Christian imagination of human life has been powerfully shaped by the imagination of Christ's life Christs conception, birth, suffering, death, and burial have been subjects of profound attention in Christian thought, just as they are moments of special interest and concern in each and every human life. However, they are also sites of contention and controversy, where what it is to be human is discovered, constructed, and contested. Conception, birth, suffering, burial, and death are occasions, in other words, for profound and continuing questioning regarding the meaning of human life, as controversies to do with IVF, abortion, euthanasia, and the use of bodies and body parts post mortem, indicate. In The Ethics of Everyday Life, Michael Banner argues that moral theology must reconceive its nature and tasks if it is not only to articulate its own account of human being, but also to enter into constructive contention with other accounts. In particular, it must be willing to learn from and engage with social anthropology if it is to offer powerful and plausible portrayals of the moral life and answers to the questions which trouble modernity. Drawing in wide-ranging fashion from social anthropology and from Christian thought and practice from many periods, and influenced especially by his engagement in public policy matters including as a member of the UK's Human Tissue Authority, Banner develops the outlines of an everyday ethics, stretching from before the cradle to after the grave.

Buddhism points out that emphasizing individuality and promoting the greatest fulfillment of the desires of the individual conjointly lead to destruction. The book promotes the basic value-choices of Buddhism, namely happiness, peace and permanence.

Happiness research convincingly shows that not material wealth but the richness of personal relationships determines happiness. Not things, but people make people happy. Western economics tries to provide people with happiness by supplying enormous quantities of things and today's dominating business models are based on and cultivates narrow self-centeredness.But what people need are caring relationships and generosity. Buddhist economics makes these values accessible by direct provision. Peace can be achieved in nonviolent ways. Wanting less can substantially contribute to this endeavor and make it happen more easily. Permanence, or ecological sustainability, requires a drastic cutback in the present level of consumption and production globally. This reduction should not be an inconvenient exercise of self-sacrifice. In the noble ethos of reducing suffering it can be a positive development path for humanity.

Necropolitics: The Religious Crisis of Mass Incarceration in America explores the pernicious and persistent presence of mass incarceration in American public life. Christophe D. Ringer argues that mass incarceration persists largely because the othering and criminalization of Black people in times of crisis is a significant part of the religious meaning of America. This book traces representations from the Puritan era to the beginning of the War on Drugs in the 1980s to demonstrate their centrality in this issue, revealing how these images have become accepted as fact and used by various aspects of governance to wield the power to punish indiscriminately. Ringer demonstrates how these vilifying images contribute to racism and political economy, creating a politics of death that uses jails and prisons to conceal social inequalities and political exclusion.

If Thomas Aquinas was born in 1225, as is commonly thought, then he died before reaching the age of fifty after producing the single most influential systematic theology of the Western Christian tradition. He did this with a formula: He internalized the thought of Aristotle as it was being introduced into western Europe and translated into Latin, and he in turn "translated" Christianity into this Aristotelian language. One can use the principles of hermeneutics outlined in Retrieving the Spiritual Teaching of Jesus of this series to analyze what was going on as Aquinas went through some of the basic doctrines of the Church in his Summa Theologiae. He laid out their contents by answering an exhaustive series of questions and responding to each of them in intricate detail. The model for each question and answer was drawn directly from the pattern of learning at the University of Paris. Although systematic and abstract, it also enabled an extensive conversation with the tradition of classical theologians and his own contemporaries. This may seem quite distant from spiritual life on the ground, but the method produced a clear understanding of the structure of spiritual life in terms of its goal and the means of attaining it. Aquinas's analysis of grace-how it enabled genuine Christian spirituality, empowered the virtues, and led to eternal life-constitutes a classic substructure of Western Christian spirituality that became all the more distinctive when Reformation spiritualities offered alternatives to it.

Martin Luther (1483-1546) is a classic Christian author who spearheaded the Reformation and whose witness has relevance for life in the present-day world. Grace and Gratitude presents two texts that represent his spirituality. Because Luther wrote so much in so many different genres, the choice of only two texts provides a limited taste of his spirituality. But they open up a specific, central, and distinctive mark of his conception of the structure of Christian life. The name of the theme, justification by grace through faith, often spontaneously correlates with Luther's name and his theology. The phrase points to a key theological doctrine that centered his thinking; it lay so deeply ingrained in his outlook that it sometimes explicitly but always tacitly shaped all his early theological views and bestowed a distinctive character to his ethics and spirituality. The two texts are chosen to illustrate how the conviction represented by the phrase draws its authority from scripture, especially Paul, and was discursively analyzed in an early foundational work on Christian life, The Freedom of a Christian. These texts do not represent all there is to say about spirituality in Luther's thought by any means, and this part should not be taken for the whole. But the coupling of these texts penetrates deeply into what may be called Luther's Christian spirituality of gratitude.

Icon of modern-day fundamentalist movements, firebrand religious purist, tireless polemicist against the intellectual schools of his timeathe Ibn Taymiyya we know is a thinker we often associate with hard attitudes and dogmatic stances. Yet there is another Ibn Taymiyya that stands out from the pages of his work, the thinker who fashions himself as a master of the via media and as a defender of the harmony between human reason and the religious faith. The aim of this book is to shed fresh light on Ibn Taymiyya's intellectual identity by a close investigation of his ethical thought. Earlier Muslim thinkers debating ethical value had been exercised by a number of core questions. What makes actions right or wrong? How do human beings know it? And what is God's relationship to the evaluative standards discerned by the human mind? An investigation of Ibn Taymiyya's engagement with such questions has much to teach us about his intellectual program and particularly about the role of reason and the linchpin concept of human nature (fitra) within this program. It also has much to teach us about Ibn Taymiyya's relationship to the intellectual landscape of his time, bringing us up against a rich tapestry of ethical discussions unfolding within theology, philosophy and legal theory in the classical period. At the same time, a close reading of Ibn Taymiyya's ethics invites us to confront not only the content of his thought but its form, and more particularly those features of his writing that fracture our efforts to unify his thought.