In this important new work in political and constitutional theory, Michael J. Perry elaborates and defends an account of the political morality of liberal democracy: the moral convictions and commitments that in a liberal democracy should govern decisions about what laws to enact and what policies to pursue. The fundamental questions addressed in this book concern (1) the grounding, (2) the content, (3) the implications for one or another moral controversy and (4) the judicial enforcement of the political morality of liberal democracy. The particular issues discussed include whether government may ban pre-viability abortion, whether government may refuse to extend the benefit of law to same-sex couples and what role religion should play in the politics and law of a liberal democracy.

This book develops a theory of existential security. It demonstrates that the publics of virtually all advanced industrial societies have been moving toward more secular orientations during the past half century, but also that the world as a whole now has more people with traditional religious views than ever before. This second edition expands the theory and provides new and updated evidence from a broad perspective and in a wide range of countries. This confirms that religiosity persists most strongly among vulnerable populations, especially in poorer nations and in failed states. Conversely, a systematic erosion of religious practices, values and beliefs has occurred among the more prosperous strata in rich nations.

For many Westerners, the most appealing teachings of the Buddhist tradition pertain to ethics. Buddhist ethical views have much in common with certain modern ethical theories, and contain many insights relevant to contemporary moral problems. In Consequences of Compassion, Charles Goodman illuminates the relationship between Buddhism and Western ethical theories. Buddhist texts offer an interesting approach to the demands of morality and a powerful critique of what we would identify as the concept of free will-a critique which leads to a hard determinist view of human action. But rather than being a threat to morality, this view supports Buddhist values of compassion, nonviolence and forgiveness, and leads to a more humane approach to the justification of punishment. Drawing on Buddhist religious values, Goodman argues against the death penalty and mandatory minimum sentences. Every version of Buddhist ethics, says Goodman, takes the welfare of sentient beings to be the only source of moral obligations. Buddhist ethics can thus be said to be based on compassion in the sense of a motivation to pursue the welfare of others. On this interpretation, the fundamental basis of the various forms of Buddhist ethics is the same as that of the welfarist members of the family of ethical theories that analytic philosophers call "consequentialism." Goodman uses this hypothesis to illuminate a variety of questions. He examines the three types of compassion practiced in Buddhism and argues for their implications for important issues in applied ethics. Goodman argues that the Buddhist tradition can and will ultimately make important contributions to contemporary global conversations about ethical issues while placing Buddhist views into the mainstream of current ethical analysis.

For close to half a century, the work of Germain Grisez has been highly influential, and his writings continue to receive considerable attention from philosophers and theologians of diverse viewpoints. His co-author for this work is the professor and noted moral theologian Fr. Peter Ryan, S.J., currently the executive director of the Secretariat of Doctrine and Canonical Affairs of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). These two eminent scholars explore fundamental questions about Christian eschatology, moral theory, the purpose of human life, and the promise of human fulfilment. The authors examine Christian teaching on the final destiny of persons, investigating the meaning of God's kingdom, the hope of the beatific vision, and the centrality of moral goodness and divine grace in one's final end. This work is an ideal source for students, scholars, ministers and lay persons interested in basic questions of Christian theology, the philosophy of religion, ethical theory, and Catholic doctrine.

Among the pressing concerns of Americans in the first century of nationhood were day-to-day survival, political harmony, exploration of the continent, foreign policy, andfixed deeply in the collective consciousnesshell and eternal damnation. The fear of fire and brimstone and the worm that never dies exerted a profound and lasting influence on Americans ideas about themselves, their neighbors, and the rest of the world. Kathryn Gin Lum poses a number of vital questions: why did the fear of hell survive Enlightenment critiques in America, after largely subsiding in Europe and elsewhere? What were the consequences for early and antebellum Americans of living with the fear of seeing themselves and many people they knew eternally damned? How did they live under the weighty obligation to save as many souls as possible? What about those who rejected this sense of obligation and fear? Gin Lum shows that beneath early Americans vaunted millennial optimism lurked a pervasive anxiety: that rather than being favored by God, they and their nation might be the object of divine wrath. As time-honored social hierarchies crumbled before revival fire, economic unease, and political chaos, saved and damned became as crucial distinctions as race, class, and gender. The threat of damnation became an impetus for or deterrent from all kinds of behaviors, from reading novels to owning slaves. Gin Lum tracks the idea of hell from the Revolution to Reconstruction. She considers the ideas of theological leaders like Jonathan Edwards and Charles Finney, as well as those of ordinary women and men. She discusses the views of Native Americans, Americans of European and African descent, residents of Northern insane asylums and Southern plantations, New Englands clergy and missionaries overseas, and even proponents of Swedenborgianism and annihilationism. Damned Nation offers a captivating account of an idea that played a transformative role in Americas intellectual and cultural history.

Conventional wisdom holds that attempts to combine religion and politics will produce unlimited violence. Concepts such as jihad, crusade, and sacrifice need to be rooted out, the story goes, for the sake of more bounded and secular understandings of violence. Ted Smith upends this dominant view, drawing on Walter Benjamin, Giorgio Agamben, and others to trace the ways that seemingly secular politics produce their own forms of violence without limit. He brings this argument to life--and digs deep into the American political imagination--through a string of surprising reflections on John Brown, the nineteenth-century abolitionist who took up arms against the state in the name of a higher law. Smith argues that the key to limiting violence is not its separation from religion, but its reconnection to richer and more critical modes of religious reflection. Only political theology can keep secular politics secular. A historical and theoretical intervention, "Weird John Brown" is also a constructive theological proposal for rethinking the nature, meaning, and exercise of violence, both human and divine.

Conventional wisdom holds that attempts to combine religion and politics will produce unlimited violence. Concepts such as jihad, crusade, and sacrifice need to be rooted out, the story goes, for the sake of more bounded and secular understandings of violence. Ted Smith upends this dominant view, drawing on Walter Benjamin, Giorgio Agamben, and others to trace the ways that seemingly secular politics produce their own forms of violence without limit. He brings this argument to life--and digs deep into the American political imagination--through a string of surprising reflections on John Brown, the nineteenth-century abolitionist who took up arms against the state in the name of a higher law. Smith argues that the key to limiting violence is not its separation from religion, but its reconnection to richer and more critical modes of religious reflection. Only political theology can keep secular politics secular. A historical and theoretical intervention, "Weird John Brown" is also a constructive theological proposal for rethinking the nature, meaning, and exercise of violence, both human and divine.

The marketplace is a remarkable social institution that has greatly extended our reach so shoppers in the West can now buy fresh-cut flowers, vegetables, and tropical fruits grown halfway across the globe even in the depths of winter. However, these expanded choices have also come with considerable moral responsibilities as our economic decisions can have far-reaching effects by either ennobling or debasing human lives. In this book, Albino Barrera examines our own moral responsibilities for the distant harms of our market transactions from a Christian viewpoint, identifying how the market's division of labour makes us unwitting collaborators in others' wrongdoing and in collective ills. His important account covers a range of different subjects, including law, economics, philosophy, and theology, in order to identify the injurious ripple effects of our market activities.

In this important new book, Michael J. Perry examines three of the most disputed constitutional issues of our time: capital punishment, state laws banning abortion, and state policies denying the benefit of law to same-sex unions. The author, a leading constitutional scholar, explains that if a majority of the justices of the Supreme Court believes that a law violates the Constitution, it does not necessarily follow that the Court should rule that the law is unconstitutional. In cases in which it is argued that a law violates the Constitution, the Supreme Court must decide which of two importantly different questions it should address: (1) Is the challenged law unconstitutional? (2) Is the lawmakers' judgment that the challenged law is constitutional a reasonable judgment? (One can answer both questions in the affirmative.) By focusing on the death penalty, abortion, and same-sex unions, Perry provides illuminating new perspectives not only on moral controversies that implicate one or more constitutionally entrenched human rights, but also on the fundamental question of the Supreme Court's proper role in adjudicating such controversies.

This book examines and critiques secular modes of self-writing in Ethiopia that put considerable emphasis on the enactment of national/ethnic identity leading to an equivocal situation wherein the ethos that binds people has been greatly eroded. Its analysis demonstrates that such modes of thought are flawed not only on the notion of the human subject, but also inappropriately position the religious or the theological. The book argues that a theological turn generates theological resources for a social horizon of hope - for the apotheosis of the bond of togetherness - which risks thinking politics in an altogether different way beyond the ethno-national logic. This, as the author argues, paves the way for the possibility of a new political subject and the reinvention of politics.

A Compelling Defense of the Faith for Our Time

Addressing the central question facing the church today--Is the Gospel true?--Dallas Willard offers an impassioned argument that Christian spiritual ideals are a reliable source of wisdom that should be granted the same authority as other intellectual disciplines such as science or philosophy. He shows how faith and reason are complementary and confronts the difficult issues of Christian pluralism (the challenge of other faiths) and how we can know God exists.

Is it ethical to manufacture designer babies or experiment on human embryos? Is abortion morally justifiable as well as legally acceptable? Do terminally ill people have the right to choose when to end their lives? Sinse the birth of the first baby through in vitro fertilization just over thirty years ago, scientific advances in this field have been startling. Developments associated with cloning, human-animal hybrids and pre-implantation genetic diagnosis - so disturbing for many people - raise a crucial question about the moral status of the very early embryo. And, just as much as arguements about the right to interfere with the beginning of human life, the debate about the individual's right to choose when to die also provokes strong emotional responses.

This commentary demonstrates that the Gospel of Mark is a result of a consistent, strictly sequential, hypertextual reworking of the contents of three of Paul's letters: Galatians, First Corinthians and Philippians. Consequently, it shows that the Marcan Jesus narratively embodies the features of God's Son who was revealed in the person, teaching, and course of life of Paul the Apostle. The analysis of the topographic and historical details of the Marcan Gospel reveals that they were mainly borrowed from the Septuagint and from the writings of Flavius Josephus. Other literary motifs were taken from various Jewish and Greek writings, including the works of Homer, Herodotus, and Plato. The Gospel of Mark should therefore be regarded as a strictly theological-ethopoeic work, rather than a biographic one.

The first edition of Living Faithfully in a Fragmented World became one of the founding and guiding texts for new monastic communities. In this revised edition, Jonathan Wilson focuses more directly on lessons for these communities from Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue. In the midst of the unsettling cultural shifts from modernity to postmodernity, a new monastic movement is arising that strives to be a faithful witness to the gospel. These new monastic communities seek to participate in Christ's life in the world and bear witness by learning to live intentionally as the church in Western culture. This movement is about finding the church's center in Christ in the midst of a fragmented world, overcoming the failure of the Enlightenment project and our complicity with it, resisting the temptation to Nietzschean power, and building communities of disciples. This new edition is greatly enlarged from the original volume. It includes responses to critics of the new monasticism such as D. A. Carson, an entirely new chapter on the Nietzschean temptation, an afterword on properly understanding the new monastic movement, the dangers it faces, and the work yet to be done, as well as an appendix on the supposed post-modern agenda of Jonathan Wilson and Brian McLaren. For those striving to understand the path the church should take in this fragmented world, this book is essential reading.

What is the relationship between the command to love one's enemies and the use of violence and/or other coercive political means? This work examines this question by comparing and contrasting two important contemporary approaches to Christian ethics, neoAugustinian and the ecclesial or neoAnabaptist. It traces the complicated conversation that has taken place since John Howard Yoder took on Reinhold Niebuhr's interpretation of the Anabaptists in the 1940's. It consists of three parts. The first part traces the development of the Augustinian-Niebuhrian approach to ethics from Niebuhr through those who have advanced his work including Paul Ramsey, Timothy Jackson, Charles Mathewes, Eric Gregory, and Jennifer Herdt. It also examines the Augustinian ethics of Oliver O'Donovan, John Milbank and Nicholas Wolterstorff. Along with tracing the Augustinian approach and its trajectories through agapism, theology and the interpretation of Augustine, it identifies fifteen criticisms that this approach brings against the neoAnabaptists. The second part traces the origin of the ecclesial or neoAnabaptist approach, and then examines its relationship to, and criticism of, agapism, what theological doctrines are central and its interpretation of Augustine. Its purpose is primarily constructive by explaining the role that ecclesiology, Christology and eschatology have among the neoAnabaptists. The third part addresses the criticisms levied by Augustinians against the neoAnabaptists by drawing on the constructive theology in the second part. It intends to show where the Augustinian critics are correct, where they have missed key theological teachings, and where they misrepresent. It also assesses the summons to the nationalist project the Augustinians put to the neoAnabaptists. If this work is successful, this third part will not be defensive. It will instead illumine the reasons for the criticisms and suggest means by which the conversation that began between Yoder and Niebuhr can continue and possibly bear fruit for theological ethics in both its ecclesial and nationalist projects for generations to come.

Kieran Cronin aims in this book to show how a Christian perspective may have something fruitful to contribute to the language of rights. In so doing, he examines some of the complexities involved in using this language, drawing from literature in moral philosophy and jurisprudence in the process. The novelty of his approach lies in the attempt to distinguish two complementary aspects within metaethics, aspects which the author calls the 'discursive' and the 'imaginative'. Cronin regards the use of models (which are extended metaphors) as providing a bridge between these two aspects, and the imaginative metaethics which emerges is seen to be rich in possibilities for both secular and Christian understandings of rights-talk.

One of the most profound, deeply affecting questions we face as human beings is the matter of our mortality-and its connection to immortality. Ancient animist ghost cultures, Egyptian mummification, late Jewish hopes of resurrection, Christian eternal salvation, Muslim belief in hell and paradise all spring from a remarkably consistent impulse to tether a triumph over death to our conduct in life. In After Lives, British scholar John Casey provides a rich historical and philosophical exploration of the world beyond, from the ancient Egyptians to St. Thomas Aquinas, from Martin Luther to modern Mormons. In a lively, wide-ranging discussion, he examines such topics as predestination, purgatory, Spiritualism, the Rapture, Armageddon and current Muslim apocalyptics, as well as the impact of such influences as the New Testament, St. Augustine, Dante, and the Second Vatican Council. Ideas of heaven and hell, Casey argues, illuminate how we understand the ultimate nature of sin, justice, punishment, and our moral sense itself. The concepts of eternal bliss and eternal punishment express-and test-our ideas of good and evil. For example, the ancient Egyptians saw the afterlife as flowing from ma'at, a sense of being in harmony with life, a concept that includes truth, order, justice, and the fundamental law of the universe. "It is an optimistic view of life," he writes. "It is an ethic that connects wisdom with moral goodness." Perhaps just as revealing, Casey finds, are modern secular interpretations of heaven and hell, as he probes the place of goodness, virtue, and happiness in the age of psychology and scientific investigation. With elegant prose, a magisterial grasp of a vast literary and religious history, and moments of humor and irony, After Lives sheds new light on the question of life, death, and morality in human culture.

C. S. Lewis, fantasy novelist, literary scholar, and Christian apologist, is one of the most original and well-known literary figures of the twentieth century. As one who stood at the crossroads of Edwardian and modern thinking, he is often read as a sexist or even misogynistic man of his time, but this fresh rereading assesses Lewis as a prescient thinker who transformed typical Western gender paradigms. The Gender Dance: Ironic Subversion in C. S. Lewis's Cosmic Trilogy, the second volume in a triad, proposes that Lewis's highly nuanced metaphorical view of gender relations has been misunderstood precisely because it challenges Western chauvinist assumptions on sex and gender. Instead of perpetuating sexism, Lewis subverts the culturally inherited chauvinism of "masculine" classical heroism with the biblically inspired vision of a surprisingly "feminine" spiritual heroism. His view that we are all "feminine" in relation to the "masculine" God - a theological feminism which crosses gender lines - means that qualities we tend to gender as feminine, such as humility, are the qualities essential to being fully human. The study's theoretical framework is Lewis's own, grounded in his view of biblical thinking, and as he was informed by writers such as Milton, Wordsworth, and George MacDonald, and in terms of the uniquely progressive implications for twentieth-first-century cultural studies. This highly insightful and entertaining study of theological feminism in Lewis's Cosmic Trilogy will be compelling for anyone interested in fantasy literature, Inklings scholarship, gender discourse, ethical and spiritual discourse, literature and theology, and cultural studies in general.

In this important book, Michael J. Perry examines three of the most disputed constitutional issues of our time: capital punishment, state laws banning abortion, and state policies denying the benefit of law to same-sex unions. The author, a leading constitutional scholar, explains that if a majority of the justices of the Supreme Court believes that a law violates the Constitution, it does not necessarily follow that the Court should rule that the law is unconstitutional. In cases in which it is argued that a law violates the Constitution, the Supreme Court must decide which of two importantly different questions it should address: is the challenged law unconstitutional? Is the lawmakers' judgment that the challenged law is constitutional a reasonable judgment? Perry not only illuminates moral controversies that implicate one or more constitutionally entrenched human rights, but also the fundamental question of the Supreme Court's proper role in adjudicating such controversies.

There is a great deal of popular belief in the connection between religious extremism and terrorism. There are also numerous statistical analyses that reject that connection. Upon a deeper analysis, however, both of these approaches are oversimplifications. To adequately answer the question of whether there is a significant causal relationship between organizational religions and terrorism, it is necessary to take a closer and more critical look at the ideologies and practices of both religious practitioners and terrorists. It is important to focus on the causality of the relationship, because, if there is no causal relationship between religion and terrorism, then removing adherence to religion will do nothing to ameliorate the problem of terrorism. The Root of All Evil? Religious Perspectives on Terrorism conducts this kind of analysis.

Responding to how little theological research has been done on intellectual (as opposed to physical) disability, this book asks, on behalf of individuals with profound intellectual disabilities, what it means to be human. That question has traditionally been answered with an emphasis on an intellectual capacity the ability to employ concepts or to make moral choicesand has ignored the value of individuals who lack such intellectual capacities.
The author suggests, rather, that human being be understood in terms of participation in relationships of mutual responsiveness, which includes but is not limited to intellectual forms of communicating.
She supports her argument by developing a phenomenology of how an individual with a profound intellectual disability relates, drawn from her clinical experience as a physical therapist. She thereby demonstrates that these individuals participate in relationships of mutual responsiveness, though in nonsymbolic, bodily ways.
To be human, to image God, she argues, is to respond to the world around us in any number of ways, bodily or symbolically. Such an understanding does not exclude people with intellectual disabilities but rather includes them among those who participate in the image of God.

Informal customs are the casual norms for most young adults in matters of sexual intimacy. Unfortunately, the sexual revolution has not proven to be as beneficial to women as was once thought and young men enjoy themselves without preparing themselves to be husbands and fathers. In this book, Piderit argues that a natural law approach to morality provides a grounded pathway toward marriage, and shows why these fairly traditional practices help young people find a partner to whom he or she can realistically promise love "until death do us part." Any effective culture consists of practices, which are accompanied by narratives, norms, and benefits. By offering theory but focusing on practices, this book helps young adults understand why sexual intimacy should be reserved to marriage. The first two thirds of the book develop the natural law approach; seeking common ground early in the volume makes it possible to understand a Christian approach to morality as grounded in nature, not primarily in religion. The goal is to highlight the reasonableness of this approach. The final third (Part III) of the book explores what religious practice and membership in a Christian denomination adds to the natural law approach. In addition to a morality based on natural law, Piderit also proposes a morality based on virtue ethics, which give precedence to positive goals over forbidden actions. The focus is on individual actions, explaining why any individual action falls into the category of exemplary, acceptable, or corrosive; these are terms developed, explained, and used in the book. Individual actions, of course, get repeated over time, and this leads to the formation of habits. And the reason for bracketing the formation of habits is to focus on individual actions and in this way make clear to young readers why certain actions lead to human fulfillment and why others actions undermine that fulfillment.

The past decade has witnessed a renaissance in scientific approaches to the study of morality. Once understood to be the domain of moral psychology, the newer approach to morality is largely interdisciplinary, driven in no small part by developments in behavioural economics and evolutionary biology, as well as advances in neuroscientific imaging capabilities, among other fields. To date, scientists studying moral cognition and behaviour have paid little attention to virtue theory, while virtue theorists have yet to acknowledge the new research results emerging from the new science of morality. Theology and the Science of Morality explores a new approach to ethical thinking that promotes dialogue and integration between recent research in the scientific study of moral cognition and behaviour -- including neuroscience, moral psychology, and behavioural economics -- and virtue theoretic approaches to ethics in both philosophy and theology. More particularly, the book evaluates the concept of moral exemplarity and its significance in philosophical and theological ethics as well as for ongoing research programs in the cognitive sciences.

Hope and Healing to Break Free From Sexual Addiction There is a battle going on. Millions of victims are trapped in the struggle of sexual addiction with no apparent way out. Pure Desire is the answer to this desperate cry for help from men and women who have tried to build sexual holiness into their lives and failed...and failed...and failed. This book is also for the shattered souls of mates who are puzzled, shamed, and wounded by their husband's or wife's sexual bondage and secret life. And, this book is for the Church to come alongside those who have come to them for help. Here is hope for establishing healthy personal boundaries with proven, practical applications to claim Christ's healing power and presence, perhaps for the first time. If you, someone you love, or someone you are counseling struggles with sexual addiction, Pure Desire is an anchor amid rough waters and the offer of a new appreciation for Christ's healing power and presence. The time is now to begin walking in victory and help others to do the same. Learn how to tackle this issue with confidence, clarity, and biblical perspective.

Using ethnographic research, The Work of Inclusion brings the standpoints of people with intellectual disabilities to the forefront of the theological conversation around disability, inclusion, grace, and sin. In a world shaped by interdependency, developing a theological attunement to intellectual disability helps us to understand that human agency is both enabled by and limited by dependency relationships. Only by recognizing the kinds of complex layers of agency seen in this ethnographic study can Christian ethics more broadly address the place of hope, grace, and resistance against structures of sin and injustice.