The subject of poverty is rich in meanings and associations, among them hunger, stench, disease, disfigurement, shame, revulsion, and loss. It is a topic that has preoccupied the mind and hearts of the faithful since the inception of Christianity.
In this insightful volume, Susan R. Holman blends personal memoir and scholarly research into ancient writings to illuminate the age-old issues of need, poverty, and social justice in the history of the Christian tradition. Holman weaves together stories from late antiquity with three conceptual paradigms that can bridge the gap between historical story and modern action: sensing need, sharing the world, and embodying sacred kingdom. In the first four chapters, the author explores how personal need influences the way that we look at the world and the needs of others. Beginning with the story of her own encounters with need and her discovery of the world of early Christian texts on poverty and religious response, the author re-tells these historical narratives in new ways, and traces their influence on post-Reformation history. The second half of the book uses a complex amalgam of images and stories to consider several recurrent themes in any religious responses to poverty and need: poverty and gender, the dilemma of justice in material distribution, ascetic models of social activism and contemplation, the language of human rights and the "common good," challenges of hospitality, and the role of liturgy in constructing a vision for restorative righteousness.
Tying these historical texts to modern responses to need, Holman begins with her own encounters with need and describes her discovery of the existence of never-before-translated early Christian texts on responses to poverty, hunger, and disease. Holman's embrace of the historical perspective will prove useful in interdenominational and ecumenical dialogue on religious responses to social welfare needs. Through their sensitive exploration of nuances and tensions, these essays invite reflection, conversation, and response for scholars and students as well as concerned laypeople across a range of Christian faith communities.

The goal of this book is to provide readers interested in questions about medical research with orientation concerning the latest controversial developments in gene and stem cell research. It explains the scientific basis and processes, throws light on the possible benefits and risks, and provides an ethical evaluation. At the core of the book is a stage model with which the possible medical applications of gene and stem cell research are arranged in four stages of medical and ethical responsibility.

At present, human beings worldwide are using an estimated 115.3 million animals in experiments-a normalization of the unthinkable on an immense scale. In terms of harm, pain, suffering, and death, animal experiments constitute one of the major moral issues of our time. Given today's deeper understanding of animal sentience, the contributors to this volume argue that we must afford animals a special moral consideration that precludes their use in experiments. The Ethical Case against Animal Experiments begins with the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics's groundbreaking and comprehensive ethical critique of the practice of animal experiments. A second section offers original writings that engage with, and elaborate on, aspects of the Oxford Centre report. The essayists explore historical, philosophical, and personal perspectives that range from animal experiments in classical times to the place of necessity in animal research to one researcher's painful journey from researcher to opponent. A devastating look at a contemporary moral crisis, The Ethical Case against Animal Experiments melds logic and compassion to mount a powerful challenge to human cruelty.

For the faithful and the seeker- the inspiring "New York Times" bestseller from the author of "The Reason for God."

Harsh economic realities are casting new light on the pursuits of sex, money, and success for happiness: careers, fortunes, marriages, and retirement security have collapsed. Many feel lost, disenchanted, and resentful.

In this inspiring new book, Timothy Keller, one of the country's most popular spiritual guides, reveals the unvarnished truth about faith, our hearts' desires, and the pursuit of happiness-and where all of it can ultimately be found.

Wie kann man ehrlicherweise heute Christ sein und es im Dialog mit anderen Religionen und dem Atheismus vertreten? Es bedarf (trotz Karl Barth) einer philosophischen (metaphysischen) Ergrundung des Fur und Widers des Gottesglaubens sowie eines auch psychologischen, ethischen und politischen Verstandnisses von Christusglauben und Kirche. In einer Art phanomenologischer "Wesensschau" und stets korrigierbar wird hier nach der Idee gefahndet, aus der das Christentum in seiner gesamten Geschichte bis heute lebt, und eine entsprechende Erfassung des Wesens der Alternativen gewagt. Man gewinnt fur die Auseinandersetzung eine Basis, die Probleme differenzierter zu sehen.

This textbook untangles the complicated ethical dilemmas that arise during the day-to-day work of healthcare chaplaincy, and offers a sturdy but flexible framework which chaplains can use to reflect on their own practice. Tackling essential issues such as consent, life support, abortion, beginning and end of life and human dignity, it enables chaplains to tease out the ethical implications of situations they encounter, to educate themselves on relevant legal matters and to engage with different ethical viewpoints. The book combines case studies of familiar scenarios with thorough information on legal matters, while providing ample opportunity for workplace reflection and offering guidance as to how chaplains can best support patients and their families while preserving their own integrity and well-being. Clear, sensitive and user-friendly, this will be an indispensable resource for healthcare chaplains and all healthcare professionals interested in spiritual care.

Das reformatorische Schriftprinzip gilt vielen als nicht mehr tragfahig. Grund dafur ist die Losloesung der Schriftautoritat von ihrer kritischen und heilsamen Wirkung in Gesetz und Evangelium. Dagegen weisen die Aufsatze dieses Bandes Wege zu einer Wiederentdeckung der lebensgestaltenden Kraft der Schrift als Kanon und Sakrament. Dies geschieht in Auseinandersetzung mit theologischen Ansatzen, die selber die Relevanz der biblischen Botschaft gewahrleisten wollen und Gefahr laufen, das aussere Bibelwort in seiner Widerstandigkeit zu uberspringen. Auch die Ethik lebt von Grundlagen, die sie nicht schaffen kann. Gerade in der Debatte um Freiheit und Nachhaltigkeit erweist sich die biblisch-reformatorische Schoepfungstheologie als wichtiges Korrektiv in verschiedenen sozialethischen Kontexten.

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, and-fixed deeply in the collective consciousness-hell 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 England's 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 America's intellectual and cultural history.

In this new textbook two Catholic ethicists with extensive teaching experience present a moral theology based on vision-the idea that how we see the world shapes our choices and actions. David Matzko McCarthy and James M. Donohue draw widely from the western philosophical tradition while integrating biblical and theological themes in order to explore such fundamental questions as What is good? The book's fourteen chapters are short and thematic. Substantive study questions engage with primary texts and get students to apply theory to everyday life and common human experiences. The book is accessibly written and flexible enough to fit into any undergraduate or seminary course on ethics.

What would it mean to imagine Islam as an immanent critique of the West? Sayyid Ahmad Khan lived in a time of great tribulation for Muslim India under British rule. By examining Khan's work as a critical expression of modernity rooted in the Muslim experience of it, Islam as Critique argues that Khan is essential to understanding the problematics of modern Islam and its relationship to the West. The book re-imagines Islam as an interpretive strategy for investigating the modern condition, and as an engaged alternative to mainstream Western thought. Using the life and work of nineteenth-century Indian Muslim polymath Khan (1817-1898), it identifies Muslims as a viable resource for both critical intervention in important ethical debates of our times and as legitimate participants in humanistic discourses that underpin a just global order. Islam as Critique locates Khan within a broader strain in modern Islamic thought that is neither a rejection of the West, nor a wholesale acceptance of it. The author calls this "Critical Islam". By bringing Khan's critical engagement with modernity into conversation with similar critical analyses of the modern by Reinhold Niebuhr, Hannah Arendt, and Alasdair MacIntyre, the author shows how Islam can be read as critique.

Can a Christian organization with colonial roots work towards reproductive justice for Kenyan women and resist sexist interpretations of Christianity? How does a women's organization in Africa navigate controversial ethical dilemmas, while dealing with the pressures of imperialism in international development? Based on a case study of the Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) in Kenya, this book explores the answers to these questions. It also introduces a theoretical framework drawn from postcolonial feminist critique, narrative identity theory and the work of the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians: 'everyday Christian ethics'. The book evaluates the theory's implications as a cross-disciplinary theme in feminist studies of religion and theology. Eleanor Tiplady Higgs argues that Kenya YWCA's narratives of its Christian history and constitution sustain a link between its ethical perspective and its identity. The ethical insights that emerge from these practices proclaim the relevance of the value of 'fulfilled lives', as prescribed in the New Testament, for Christian women's experiences of reproductive injustice.

In contemporary culture, accountability is usually understood in terms of holding people who have done something wrong accountable for their actions. As such, it is virtually synonymous with punishing someone. Living Accountably argues that accountability should also be understood as a significant, forward-looking virtue, an excellence possessed by those who willingly embrace being accountable to those who have proper standing, when that standing is exercised appropriately. Those who have this virtue are people who strive to live accountably. The book gives a fine-grained description of the virtue and how it is exercised, including an account of the motivational profile of the one who has the virtue. It examines the relation of accountability to other virtues, such as honesty and humility, as well as opposing vices, such as self-deception, arrogance, and servility. Though the virtue of accountability is compatible with individual autonomy, recognizing the importance of the virtue does justice to the social character of human persons. C. Stephen Evans also explores the history of this virtue in other cultures and historical eras, providing evidence that the virtue is widely recognized, even if it is somewhat eclipsed in modern western societies. Accountability is also a virtue that connects ethical life with religious life for many people, since it is common for people to have a sense that they are accountable in a global way for how they live their lives. Living Accountably explores the question as to whether global accountability can be understood in a purely secular way, as accountability to other humans, or whether it must be understood as accountability to God, or some other transcendent reality.

William LaFleur (1936-2010), an eminent scholar of Japanese studies, left behind a substantial number of influential publications, as well as several unpublished works. The most significant of these examines debates concerning the practice of organ transplantation in Japan and the United States, and is published here for the first time. This provocative book challenges the North American medical and bioethical consensus that considers the transplantation of organs from brain dead donors as an unalloyed good. It joins a growing chorus of voices that question the assumption that brain death can be equated facilely with death. It provides a deep investigation of debates in Japan, introducing numerous Japanese bioethicists whose work has never been treated in English. It also provides a history of similar debates in the United States, problematizing the commonly held view that the American public was quick and eager to accept the redefinition of death. A work of intellectual and social history, this book also directly engages with questions that grow ever more relevant as the technologies we develop to extend life continue to advance. While the benefits of these technologies are obvious, their costs are often more difficult to articulate. Calling attention to the risks associated with our current biotech trajectory, LaFleur stakes out a highly original position that does not fall neatly onto either side of contemporary US ideological divides.