This book represents a new direction in the study of religion and marriage by using a postmodern theoretical framework focusing on gendered discourse and culture, to examine the meaning of sacred marriage within social contexts. Drawing upon data from in-depth interviews of couples in long-term, sacred marriages living in the American Midwest, together with an analysis of Christian marriage advice manuals, Sacred Marriages explores how couples use religious and nonreligious discourses and cultures to give their marriages meaning, and how those sacred meanings are used in their daily lives and the spaces that they embody. The study shows how religious and secular beliefs are combined to formulate cultural strategies for approaching the sacralization of marriage, and how religious and nonreligious discourses and cultures are ordered, depending on circumstances and social contexts. This often results in other relationships being subordinated in favour of the sacred bond believed to exist between husband and wife. The book argues that sacred marriage is a malleable concept, as people bend religious culture to form new and altered sacred marriages during emotional extremes. A thoughtful examination of long-term Christian marriages, this volume will appeal to scholars of religion and sociology with interests in marriage and the family.

This title was first published in 2002. Misguided Morality presents a survey of how the Catholic moral programme has failed to make a decisive impact on the behaviour of the Church's members. Despite a cogent theology of human conduct, The author argues that its effectiveness is not impressive. This book analyses what has gone wrong in the transmission of the New Testament ideals. The book covers the whole field of morality, starting with the bible and tracing the historical and sociological factors which have effected the dilution of those ideals, frequently to the level of anodyne respectability. Having explored the causes of failure, the author offers positive suggestions for improvement in each area where shortcomings have been revealed. Combining loyalty to the Roman Catholic Church, with constructive criticism of shortcomings in implementing moral policies, this book is essential reading to those studying and participating in Catholic moral teaching in the contemporary church. The author is well known for his books on the challenges to the Church after Vatican II, including his books Mission or Maintenance, and Whatever Happened to Vatican II.

This title was first published in 2003. This book develops a moral ontology for a theistic ethic that engages the work of contemporary moral and political philosophers, and reaffirms the relevance of a theistic tradition of God's relation to the world reflected in the fundamental teachings of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Drawing on recent thought in the non-religious fields of psychology and political and moral philosophy, which build around the concept of human flourishing in community, Kirkpatrick argues that a theistic ethic need not be the captive of parochial or sectarian theological camps. He proposes a common or universal ethic that transcends the fashionable ethnocentric 'incommensurate differences' in morality alleged by many post-modern deconstructionists. In the wake of ethnic religious strife post September 11th 2001, this book argues for a common morality built on the inclusivity of love, community, and justice that can transcend sectarian and parochial boundaries.

This book builds on work that examines the interactions between immigration and gender-based violence, to explore how both the justification and condemnation of violence in the name of religion further complicates our societal relationships. Violence has been described as a universal challenge that is rooted in the social formation process. As humans seek to exert power on the other, conflict occurs. Gender based violence, immigration, and religious values have often intersected where patriarchy-based power is exerted on the other. An international panel of contributors take a multidisciplinary approach to investigating three central themes. Firstly, the intersection between religion, immigration, domestic violence, and human rights. Secondly, the possibility of collaboration between various social units for the protection of immigrants' human rights. Finally, the need to integrate faith-based initiatives and religious leaders into efforts to transform attitude formation and general social behavior. This is a wide-ranging and multi-layered examination of the role of religion in gender-based violence and immigration. As such, it will be of keen interest to academics working in religious studies, gender studies, politics, and ethics.

'The Trinitarian Self' argues that the insights of three key authors - Soren Kierkegaard, Eric Voegelin, and Rene Girard - can be synthesised to produce a Trinitarian theological anthropology. Their reflections on the deep roots of human behavior illuminate three structural dimensions of human existence: the temporal trajectory of selfhood, the vertical axis (God and nature), and the horizontal plane of cultural formation. An understanding of these dimensions and how they interrelate proves very fruitful in making sense of a wide variety of pathological forms of behavior that human beings have engaged in during the modern era. This work links together various realms of thought, such as Trinitarian theology, a plea for a "New Copernican Revolution" that will result in a broadly held psychological understanding of violence, the ethics of war and peace, atonement theologies, and critical commentaries on terrorism and the war on terror. The interplay between these topics will likely prove very stimulating to a wide variety of readers. Charles K. Bellinger is Associate Professor of Theology and Ethics at Brite Divinity School, Fort Worth, Texas. He is the author of 'The Genealogy of Violence: Reflections on Creation, Freedom, and Evil' (2001). "Bellinger has thrown a clarifying spotlight on the question of violence as the crucial intersection between our human sciences and theology, a dialogue that proves as fruitful in theory as it is necessary in practice. His telling readings of Soren Kierkegaard, Eric Voegelin, and Rene Girard are woven together into an interpretive framework that multiplies the diagnostic relevance of each one for our conflicted human condition. Ambitious, clear, and creative, this book is a welcome contribution to the theological understanding of humanity and to the struggle to overcome violence." - S. Mark Heim, Samuel Abbot Professor of Christian Theology, Andover Newton Theological School "The lethal blow is as ancient as Cain, and it is this mystery of human malice that Charles Bellinger explores with creativity and verve. His ambitious theological anthropology, closely tied to the doctrine of God and ethics, consistently provokes insights into our painfully predictable tendency toward pyscho-social pathology - and gives us valuable hints about the way toward peace." - R.R. Reno, Professor of Theological Ethics, Creighton University

For more than four decades, David Lyle Jeffrey has enriched the world of Christian scholarship. Throughout his work, Jeffrey has drawn attention to the ways in which imaginative engagements with biblical texts have been central to major shifts in Christian and post-Christian hermeneutics, ethics, and aesthetics. The purpose of this volume is to challenge and deepen that growing discourse by showing how English literature across varied traditions unfolds a central Christian interaction between divine Incarnation, invented narrative, and ethical praxis. In their essays, the authors demonstrate how an imaginative engagement with biblical narratives, in historical or contemporary writing, continues to provide a fruitful means to address the intellectual and ethical antinomies of the postmodern scene. The articles in this collection form two groups: the first set of essays focuses on specific episodes or moments of historical change within European biblical literary traditions; the second group focuses on the dissemination of biblical literary engagements in areas outside of European contexts, ranging from North America to South Africa to China. Unique in the wide range of topics it covers-itself a reflection of Jeffrey's own broad scope of scholarship-the collection functions as a working example of Jeffrey's thesis that the biblical tradition has a far-reaching influence on the development of Western literature, even by those who are reluctant to acknowledge its present influence.

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.

Originally published in 1937. This book addresses the importance of the theory of values that rests on a general metaphysical understanding founded on a comprehensive view of all aspects of the world. The author speaks against the absolutist theories with a realistic one encompassing a theory of space and time and considering value as an object of immediate intuition. These great philosophical questions feed into discussions of the philosophy of religion and of science. Garnett distinguishes between spiritual and other values on the ground that the spiritual values are not subjective to satiety, while other values are. He contends that our knowledge of mind is as direct and reliable as our knowledge of the physical world. This is an important early book by an influential 20th Century thinker.

The overarching crisis of our times is a crisis of the way we think. There is an underlying separation - of mind from body, from emotions, from spirit - fundamental to many Westerners' ways of knowing the world, contributing to alienating beliefs and practices that fail to be personally fulfilling or ecologically sustainable. Education could be means to foreground the sacred character of human-earth relations and mediate ecological imbalances between humans and the natural world. Ecology, Spirituality, and Education draws on ecofeminist theory, deep ecology, and postmodern process theory to explore human knowing as a bridge toward human being, the sustainable health of the human species, and the web of relations within which we reside.

Practical Theology has emerged as an important discipline in recent decades, making a major contribution both in the academy and amongst reflective practitioners on the ground. The Journal Practical Theology celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2018 and this book presents ten journal articles chosen from over 180 that were published in that period. Reflecting on the progress the discipline has made and indicating some future directions in the field, the book is a 'showcase' of examples of good practical theology utilising a wide range of methodologies and written by an interesting cross-section of authors from a variety of backgrounds. This is a book which answers the question 'what is practical theology?' with real live examples that are accessible, readable and engaging.

Written in non-technical language accessible to non-specialist readers, this book is a theological synthesis of the findings of scripture scholars and ethicists on what the Bible teaches about economic life. It proposes a biblical theology of economic life that addresses three questions, namely: -What do the individual books of Sacred Scripture say about proper economic conduct? -How do these teachings fit within the larger theology and ethics of the books in which they are found? -Are there recurring themes, underlying patterns, or issues running across these different sections of the Bible when read together as a single canon? - The economic norms of the Old and New Testament exhibit both continuity and change. Despite their diverse social settings and theological visions, the books of the Bible nonetheless share recurring themes: care for the poor, generosity, wariness over the idolatry of wealth, the inseparability of genuine worship and upright moral conduct, and the acknowledgment of an underlying divine order in economic life. Contrary to most people s first impression that the Bible offers merely random economic teachings without rhyme or reason, there is, in fact, a specific vision undergirding these scriptural norms. Moreover, far from being burdensome impositions of do s and don ts, this book finds that the Bible s economic norms are, in fact, an invitation to participate in God s providence. To this end, we have been granted a threefold benefaction the gift of divine friendship, the gift of one another, and the gift of the earth. Thus, biblical economic ethics is best characterized as a chronicle of how God provides for humanity through people s mutual solicitude and hard work. The economic ordinances, aphorisms, and admonitions of the Old and New Testament turn out to be an unmerited divine invitation to participate in God s governance of the world. Our economic conduct provides us with a unique opportunity to shine forth in our creation in the image and likeness of God. Often extremely demanding, hard, and even fraught with temptations and distractions, economic life nevertheless is, at its core, an occasion for humans to grow in holiness, charity, and perfection."

Moral Wisdom introduces readers to moral theory through a Catholic lens. In a warm, conversational style, Father Keenan shares a wealth of stories and examples to highlight the resources in the Catholic tradition for developing moral wisdom. Connecting formative influences of the Catholic heritage with themes of love, consciences, sin, and suffering, the book helps readers appreciate what gives meaning to our lives. The third edition has been revised throughout to help the reader better understand how to develop and apply moral wisdom in real life. It features additional examples, as well as new material on the teachings of Pope Francis. Chapters on the Ten Commandments and the teachings of Jesus have been re-worked in light of new scholarship. The book also features a new final chapter, Moral Agency, which addresses making practical decisions based on the lessons and texts from the book. Each chapter includes study questions to help readers further reflect on key themes.

Recent research in the humanities and social sciences suggests that individuals who understand themselves as belonging to something greater than the self-a family, community, or religious or spiritual group-often feel happier, have a deeper sense of purpose or meaning in their lives, and have overall better life outcomes than those who do not. Some positive and personality psychologists have labeled this location of the self within a broader perspective "self-transcendence." This book presents and integrates new, interdisciplinary research into virtue, happiness, and the meaning of life by re-orienting these discussions around the concept of self-transcendence. The essays are organized around three broad themes connected to self-transcendence. First, they investigate how self-transcendence helps us to understand aspects of the moral life as it is studied within psychology, including the development of wisdom, the practice of moral praise, and psychological well-being. Second, they explore how self-transcendence is linked to virtue in different religious and spiritual traditions including Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, and Confucianism. Finally, they ask how self-transcendence can help us theorize about Aristotelean and Thomist conceptions of virtue, like hope and piety, and how this helps us to re-conceptualize happiness and meaning in life.

Does the Bible allow us to deceive? Is it ever right to lie? These are perennial questions that have been discussed and debated by theologians for centuries with little consensus. Entering this conversation, Just Deceivers provides a fresh analysis of this important topic through a comprehensive examination of the motif of deception in the books of Samuel. While many studies have explored deception in other Old Testament texts - especially the patriarchal narratives of Genesis - and a few articles have initiated examination of this motif in Samuel, Just Deceivers builds upon this groundwork and offers an exhaustive treatment of this theme in this important portion of the Hebrew Bible. Newkirk takes the reader through the books of Samuel, investigating every occurrence of deception in the narrative, exploring how the author depicts these various acts of deception, and then synthesising the results to offer an exegetically based theology of deception. In so doing, this study both challenges commonly held views concerning the Bible's stance on falsehood and illustrates the importance of attending to the sophisticated literary character of biblical narrative.

How does a Christian discern the will of God? While this question lies at the heart of Christian moral life, religious communities struggle to articulate responses that balance simple faith and rational reflection. Some characterise discernment as simple obedience to the commandments in Scripture; others portray it as an exercise of human reason and conscience. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian, pastor, and political conspirator who embodied a life of discernment amidst difficult circumstances in WWII Germany, offers a compelling theological account of how to seek and respond to God's will. By tracing Bonhoeffer's understanding of moral discernment throughout his writings, and especially in his Ethics, Joshua A. Kaiser demonstrates the importance of discernment for Bonhoeffer's vision of Christian ethics and explores how his view combines elements of simple faith and rational reflection. While the results of the study will be significant for those interested in Bonhoeffer, they will also be relevant to all who struggle along the path of Christian discipleship.

Nonviolent methods of action have been a powerful tool since the early twentieth century for social protest and revolutionary social and political change, and there is diffuse awareness that nonviolence is an efficient spontaneous choice of movements, individuals and whole nations. Yet from a conceptual standpoint, nonviolence struggles to engage with key contemporary political issues: the role of religion in a post-secular world; the crisis of democracy; and the use of supposedly 'nonviolent techniques' for violent aims. Drawing on classic thinkers and contemporary authors, in particular the Italian philosopher Aldo Capitini, this book shows that nonviolence is inherently a non-systematic and flexible system with no pure, immaculate thought at its core. Instead, at the core of nonviolence there is praxis, which is impure because while it aims at freedom and plurality it is made of less than perfect actions performed in an imperfect environment by flawed individuals. Offering a more progressive, transformative and at the same time pluralistic concept of nonviolence, this book is an original conceptual analysis of political theory which will appeal to students of international relations, global politics, security studies, peace studies and democratic theory.

In recent years the sexual abuse of children in religious institutions has gripped the Western world, as churches, governments and civil society attempt to come to terms with the magnitude of widespread historical abuses. Questions continue to be asked about why it is that perpetrators were able to offend repeatedly and with impunity; what is it about institutions that facilitate or foster abuse; and why have survivors of abuse often been treated inadequately by diverse national and international justice and political systems throughout the last century? This volume makes a significant contribution to international understandings of the vexed and sensitive 'wicked problem' of child sexual abuse in religious institutions. The chapters in this volume are written from a range of feminist disciplinary responses, including law, criminology, anthropology and history. Together, they provide important historical context for the current social and political interest in clerical sex crimes. They examine political and legal avenues for redress for survivors of these crimes and critically examine the ways in which church cultures position clergy and clergy offenders in relation to victims. The chapters originally published in a special issue of the Australian Feminist Law Journal.

Ever since Antiquity, reflections about economic problems have always been intertwined with questions relating to politics, ethics and religion. From the 18th century onwards, economic thought seemed to have been gradually disentangled from any other field, and to have gained the status of an autonomous scientific discipline, especially with the later use of mathematics. In fact, the growth of economic knowledge never broke off any ties with these other fields, and, especially with religion and ethics, even though the links with them became less obvious, they only changed shape. This is what this book illustrates, each chapter dealing with different periods and authors from the Middle Ages to the present times. Focusing in turn on the thought of the Scholastics, Ibn Rushd (Averroes), John Calvin, the French liberal Jansenists, Dugald Stewart, David Ricardo, Henri de Saint-Simon, Charles de Coux and French Christian Political Economy, Auguste Comte and Emile Durkheim, Henry Sidgwick, Arthur Cecil Pigou, and finally John Maynard Keynes, the studies collected here show how religious themes played an important role in the development of economic thought. This book was originally published as a Special Issue of The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought.

This scientific research focuses on the Church and society on special youth formation coupled with the essence for the real workable, formidable and systematic orientations for the youth problems, human dignity and Pro-life phenomenon, and prospects in order to get well with their youthful exuberance as the future leaders of tomorrow. Today's youth being in dire need of the active formation and training in the modern world is a great challenge not only to the Church itself but on the whole to be one of the top priorities of the government to prepare some concrete steps for the special care of youth development. The rational, mental or spiritual (soul and body) educational dimensions are more on the adaptability in course of their growth, and acceptance, to practice the Church teachings and being loyal to the State laws and regulations for the common good. The handling of the youth problems requires constant attention with immense interest and zeal on the part of the various families, trainers, counsellors and leaders entrusted with such typical social work to be able to understand them, to listen to them, and to direct and harness their potentialities and enterprising spirit.

The major humanitarian crises of recent years are well known: the Shoah, the killing fields of Cambodia, the Rwandan genocide, the massacre in Bosnia, and the tsunami in Southeast Asia, as well as the bloody conflicts in South Sudan, Syria, and Afghanistan. Millions have been killed and many millions more have been driven from their homes; the number of refugees and internally displaced persons has reached record levels. Could these crises have been prevented? Why do they continue to happen? This book seeks to understand how humanity itself is in crisis, and what we can do about it. Hollenbach draws on the values that have shaped major humanitarian initiatives over the past century and a half, such as the commitments of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Oxfam, Doctors Without Borders, as well as the values of diverse religious traditions, including Catholicism, to examine the scope of our responsibilities and practical solutions to these global crises. He also explores the economic and political causes of these tragedies, and uncovers key moral issues for both policy-makers and for practitioners working in humanitarian agencies and faith communities.

Bringing together articles and chapters from his considerable work in theological ethics, India, and the social order, Duncan Forrester incorporates new writing and introductions to each thematic section to guide readers through this invaluable resource. This book offers stimulating studies in three related areas - Indian Christianity with particular attention to the caste system, contemporary Christian theological ethics, and the distinctive and challenging theological approach that Duncan Forrester has developed in relation to public issues such as prisons and punishment, welfare provision, social justice, and poverty.

As society becomes more concerned with the future of our planet, the study of apocalypse and eschatology become increasingly pertinent. Whether religious or not, peoples' views on this topic can have a profound effect on their attitudes to issues such as climate change and social justice and so it cannot be ignored. This book investigates how different approaches in historical and contemporary Christian theology make sense in reflecting about the final things, or the eschata, and why it is so important to consider their multi-faceted impact on our lives. A team of Nordic scholars analyse historical and contemporary eschatological thinking in a broad range of sources from theology and other related disciplines, such as moral philosophy, art history and literature. Specific social and environmental challenges, such as the Norwegian Breivik massacre in 2011, climatic change narratives and the ambiguity of discourses about euthanasia are investigated in order to demonstrate the complexity and significance of modes of thinking about the end times. This book addresses the theology of the end of the world in a more serious academic tone than it is usually afforded. As such, it will be of great interest to academics working in eschatology, practical theology, religious studies and the philosophy of religion.

This book represents a new direction in the study of religion and marriage by using a postmodern theoretical framework focusing on gendered discourse and culture, to examine the meaning of sacred marriage within social contexts. Drawing upon data from in-depth interviews of couples in long-term, sacred marriages living in the American Midwest, together with an analysis of Christian marriage advice manuals, Sacred Marriages explores how couples use religious and nonreligious discourses and cultures to give their marriages meaning, and how those sacred meanings are used in their daily lives and the spaces that they embody. The study shows how religious and secular beliefs are combined to formulate cultural strategies for approaching the sacralization of marriage, and how religious and nonreligious discourses and cultures are ordered, depending on circumstances and social contexts. This often results in other relationships being subordinated in favour of the sacred bond believed to exist between husband and wife. The book argues that sacred marriage is a malleable concept, as people bend religious culture to form new and altered sacred marriages during emotional extremes. A thoughtful examination of long-term Christian marriages, this volume will appeal to scholars of religion and sociology with interests in marriage and the family.

This title was first published in 2002: Kolnai's later work in moral philosophy is well-known, and interest in it continues to grow, but his dissertation, Ethical Value and Reality, has received little attention - although Kolnai himself said that it contains the germs of nearly all his subsequent thought. This first English translation of the dissertation and of two related papers from the same period will enable the English-speaking reader to explore Kolnai's ethical work as a whole. In Ethical Value and Reality Kolnai proposes a 'completion' of phenomenological value-ethics which takes account of 'the embeddedness of ethical values in reality'. Kolnai explores moral psychology and offers important perspectives on political activity in its moral dimensions, on the relation between morality and religion, and on the relation between the moral point of view and the psycho-therapeutic. Dunlop's comprehensive introduction to the translation provides the reader with assistance in understanding the text, setting it in its contemporary context, and relating it to Kolnai's subsequent writings.

Please note this book is suitable for any student studying: Exam board: OCR Level: A Level Subject: Religious Education First teaching: September 2016 First exams: June 2018 Oxford A Level Religious Studies for OCR is a brand new course developed by renowned authors Libby Ahluwalia and Robert Bowie for the 2016 OCR specification. This textbook supports a deep engagement with philosophy, ethics and the study of Christianity using language and an approach accessible to all students. Key terms are clearly defined, and case studies and scenarios are used to give students a practical understanding of key theories and how they might be applied to the big ethical and philosophical questions of the day. The book includes a section on 'Developments in Christian Thought' to support the new requirement for a systematic study of a religious tradition. There is also dedicated support for developing students' essay-writing skills, as well as revision summaries and practice questions to ensure students feel ready for their exam.