Conceived at the same conference that produced the Student NonviolentCoordinating Committee (SNCC), the Student Interracial Ministry (SIM)was a national organisation devoted to dismantling Jim Crow while simultaneouslyadvancing American churches' approach to race. In this book, DavidP. Cline details how, between the founding of SIM in 1960 and its dissolutionat the end of the decade, the seminary students who created and ranthe organisation influenced hundreds of thousands of community membersthrough its various racial reconciliation and economic justice projects. Frominner-city ministry in Oakland to voter registration drives in southwesternGeorgia, participants modeled peaceful inter racialism nationwide. By tellingthe history of SIM-its theology, influences, and failures-Cline situates SIMwithin two larger frameworks: the long civil rights movement and the evenlonger tradition of liberal Christianity's activism for social reform. Pulling SIM from the shadow of its more famous twin, SNCC, Clinesheds light on an understudied facet of the movement's history. In doing so,he provokes an appreciation of the struggle of churches to remain relevantin swiftly changing times and shows how seminarians responded to institutionalconservatism by challenging the establishment to turn toward politicalactivism.

In Explaining Evil four prominent philosophers, two theists and two non-theists, present their arguments for why evil exists. Taking a "position and response" format, in which one philosopher offers an account of evil and three others respond, this book guides readers through the advantages and limitations of various philosophical positions on evil, making it ideal for classroom use as well as individual study. Divided into four chapters, Explaining Evil covers Theistic Libertarianism, Theistic Compatibilism, Atheistic Moral Realism and Atheistic Moral Non-realism. It features topics including free will, theism, atheism, goodness, Calvinism, evolutionary ethics, and pain, and demonstrates some of the dominant models of thinking within contemporary philosophy of religion and ethics. Written in accessible prose and with an approachable structure, this book provides a clear and useful overview of the central issues of the philosophy of evil.

Ethics is the culmination of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's theological and personal odyssey and one of the most important works of Christian ethics of the last century. Using the acclaimed DBWE translation, adapted to a more accessible format, this new edition features an insightful introduction by Clifford Green and supplemental material from Victoria J. Barnett. Written in the midst of the conspiracy to overthrow the Hitler regime, it is nonetheless chiefly concerned with ethics for the postwar time of reconstruction and peace. Though caught up in the vortex of momentous forces in the Nazi period, Bonhoeffer systematically envisioned a radically Christocentric, incarnational ethic for a postwar world, purposefully recasting Christians' relation to history, politics, and public life. Focused on Christ, the God who became human, and the vision of a world reconciled with God, Ethics shuns abstraction, seeks the will of God in concrete historical reality, and calls the church to be a transforming community in the world with a new responsibility to public life. This edition allows all readers to appreciate the cogency and relevance of Bonhoeffer's vision.

Christianity's demographics, vitality, and influence have tipped markedly toward the global South and East. Addressing this seismic shift, one of today's leading Christian scholars reflects on what he has learned about justice through his encounters with world Christianity.
Philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff's experiences in South Africa, the Middle East, and Honduras have shaped his views on justice through the years. In this book he offers readers an autobiographical tour, distilling the essence of his thoughts on the topic. After describing how he came to think about justice as he does and reviewing the theory of justice he developed in earlier writings, Wolterstorff shows how deeply embedded justice is in Christian Scripture. He reflects on the difficult struggle to right injustice and examines the necessity of just punishment. Finally, he explores the relationship between justice and beauty and between justice and hope.
This book is the first in the Turning South series, which offers reflections by eminent Christian scholars who have turned their attention and commitments toward the global South and East.

Socrates famously said that the unexamined life is not worth living. In keeping with this dictum, taking ethics seriously means engaging with the real world where the human sense of right and wrong is daily tested. At their best, all faith traditions are challenged by such testing; and if faith-inspired ethics are thought to goven the whole of life, their guiding values need constantly to be interpreted by the believer to achieve a practical result. In the Muslim tradition, this is what the Qur'an really amounts to: a call to strive for belief with a social conscience. For fourteen centuries Muslim scholars have grappled with the implications of that call in matters of law, social practice and theology. And in our own time, the quests for civil society and the rule of law have much to do with the response given to these ethical questions. 'A Companion to Muslim Ethics' explores Islam's core conception of the good, shared with other great traditions. Leading experts examine issues such as gender equality, nonviolence, dispute resolution, the environment, health and finance. The volume will appeal to all those interested in how reason, faith and circumstance shape difficult moral choices in an increasingly globalised world.

Few issues are as complex and controversial as immigration in the United States. The only thing anyone seems to agree on is that the system is broken. Mark Amstutz offers a succinct overview and assessment of current immigration policy and argues for an approach to the complex immigration debate that is solidly grounded in Christian political thought. After analyzing key laws and institutions in the US immigration system, Amstutz examines how Catholics, evangelicals, and main-line Protestants have used Scripture to address social and political issues, including immigration. He critiques the ways in which many Christians have approached immigration reform and offers concrete suggestions on how Christian groups can offer a more credible political engagement with this urgent policy issue.

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.

When King looked over into the promised land and tried to discern how we would get there, he called the poor to lead the way. The Poor People's Campaign was part of a political strategy for building a movement expansive enough to tackle the enmeshed evils of racism, poverty, and war. In Freedom Church of the Poor: Martin Luther King Jr.'s Poor People's Campaign, Colleen Wessel-McCoy roots King's political vision solidly in his theological ethics and traces the spirit of the campaign in the community and religious leaders who are responding to the devastating crises of inequality today.

Faiths in Green addresses the complex and fraught relationship between religious identity and environmental concern in the United States, particularly how that relationship has changed over time. Examining the effects of religious upbringing, belonging, and disaffiliation on environmental concern across multiple religious groups over several decades, the author shows where, when, how, and why religious groups and their memberships have responded constructively to environmental change over time. The author also visits the effects of gender, social class, race, and politics on both religion and environmental concern in the U.S. Faiths in Green offers an in-depth and accessible guide to understanding the at-times incongruous relationship between religious beliefs and motivations, as well as ways to follow cultural shifts that both drive and are driven by religious persons and institutions. In examining how religious and cultural factors are linked to environmental concern over time, Faiths in Green demonstrates the importance of morality and worldviews in confronting global hazards of unprecedented scale.

The Trauma of Doctrine is a theological investigation into the effects of abuse trauma upon the experience of Christian faith, the psychological mechanics of these effects, their resonances with Christian Scripture, and neglected research-informed strategies for cultivating post-traumatic resilience. Paul Maxwell examines the effect that the Calvinist belief can have upon the traumatized Christian who negatively internalizes its superlative doctrines of divine control and human moral corruption, and charts a way toward meaningful spiritual recovery.

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.

The Holy Spirit and Moral Action in Thomas Aquinas is a detailed study of how, according to one of Christianity's greatest visionary thinkers, God's Holy Spirit is continuously at work in and through humanity's moral activity. Jack Mahoney, SJ, documents, notably from Aquinas's commentaries on scripture, how "the grace of the Holy Spirit" prompts and influences people's minds, as well as their decisions to act, occasionally in unexpected ways. Through the gift of connatural wisdom, the Spirit empowers humans to appreciate God's own wise and loving design for the whole of creation, and enables them to cooperate freely in fulfilling their unique part in it.

In Indigenous and Christian Perspectives in Dialogue, Allen G. Jorgenson asks what Christian theologians might learn from Indigenous spiritualties and worldviews. Jorgenson argues that theology in North America has been captive to colonial conceits and has lost sight of key resources in a post-Christendom context. The volume is especially concerned with the loss of a sense of place, evident in theologies written without attention to context. Using a comparative theology methodology, wherein more than one faith tradition is engaged in dialogical exploration, Jorgenson uses insights from Indigenous understandings of place to illumine forgotten or obstructed themes in Christianity. In this constructive theological project, "kairotic" places are named as those that are kenotic, harmonic, poetic and especially enlightening at the margins, where we meet the religious other.

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.

This book explores the different types of compromises Indian people were forced to make and must continue to do so in order to be included in the colonizer's religion and culture. The contributors in this collection are in conversation with the contributions made by Tink Tinker, an American Indian scholar who is known for his work on Native American liberation theology. The contributors engage with the following questions in this book: How much of one's identity must be sacrificed in order to belong in the world of the colonizer? How much of one's culture requires silencing? And more importantly, how can the colonized survive when constantly asked and forced to compromise? Specifically, what is uniquely Indian and gets completely lost in this interaction? Scholars of religious studies, American studies, American Indian studies, theology, sociology, and anthropology will find this book particularly useful.

Critically surveying various approaches to Christian ecological ethics alongside the vexing moral ambiguities of the Anthropocene, Ecology of Vocation offers an integrative approach to responsible living vis a vis one of Protestantism's key theological resources- the doctrine of vocation. Drawing on H. Richard Niebuhr's germinal ethical framework with a decidedly ecofeminist perspective, Kiara A. Jorgenson demonstrates how vocation's emphasis on right relationship practically speaks to the embodied realities of planetary interrelatedness. By excavating the ecological promise of the early Reformers' democratized renderings of calling and linking their concerns to the contemporary context, she argues that vocation cannot be reduced to the particular aim of monetized work, nor to an elitist escape from it. Rather, vocation must be recast as the dynamic and vibrant space among the myriad roles any of us inhabits at any given time in a particular place. When understood in this light, vocation signals much more than a job, a passion, or a quest for self-discovery. An alternative understanding of vocation's very ecology can extend Christian conceptions of the neighbor beyond the human and lead the church to more faithfully pursue lives characterized by humility, restraint, wisdom, justice, and love.

In 1945, Dietrich Bonhoeffer-a theologian and pastor-was executed by the Nazis for his resistance to their unspeakable crimes against humanity. He was only 39 years old when he died, but Bonhoeffer left behind volumes of work exploring theological and ethical themes that have now inspired multiple generations of scholars, students, pastors, and activists. This book highlights the ways Dietrich Bonhoeffer's work informs political theology and examines Bonhoeffer's contributions in three ways: historical-critical interpretation, critical-constructive engagement, and constructive-practical application. With contributions from a broad array of scholars from around the world, chapters range from historical analysis of Bonhoeffer's early political resistance language to accounts of Bonhoeffer-inspired, front-line resistance to white supremacists in Charlottesville, VA. This volume speaks to the ongoing relevance of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's work and life in and out of the academy.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer is many things to many people-committed pacifist, reluctant revolutionary, Protestant saint but in Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Ethics of Formation, Ryan Huber argues that Bonhoeffer should be engaged as a Christian ethicist of formation. Huber demonstrates that formation lies at the heart of Bonhoeffer's ethical project and personal story, providing a third way between virtue and character ethics in contemporary Christian thought concerned with moral growth.

Volatile social dissonance in America's urban landscape is the backdrop as Valerie A. Miles-Tribble examines tensions in ecclesiology and public theology, focusing on theoethical dilemmas that complicate churches' public justice witness as prophetic change agents. She attributes churches' reticence to confront unjust disparities to conflicting views, for example, of Black Lives Matter protests as "mere politics," and disparities in leader and congregant preparation for public justice roles. As a practical theologian with experience in organizational leadership, Miles-Tribble applies adaptive change theory, public justice theory, and a womanist communitarian perspective, engaging Emilie Townes's construct of cultural evil as she presents a model of social reform activism re-envisioned as public discipleship. She contends that urban churches are urgently needed to embrace active prophetic roles and thus increase public justice witness. "Black Lives Matter times" compel churches to connect faith with public roles as spiritual catalysts of change.

The concept of moral injury emerged in the past decade as a way to understand how traumatic levels of moral emotions generate moral anguish experienced by some military service members. Interdisciplinary research on moral injury has included clinical psychologists (Litz et al., 2009; Drescher et al., 2011), theologians (Brock & Lettini, 2012; Graham, 2017), ethicists (Kinghorn, 2012), and philosophers (Sherman, 2015). This project articulates a new key concept-moral orienting systems- a dynamic matrix of meaningful values, beliefs, behaviors, and relationships learned and changed over time and through formative experiences and relationships such as family of origin, religious and other significant communities, mentors, and teachers. Military recruit training reengineers pre-existing moral orienting systems and indoctrinates a military moral orienting system designed to support functioning within the military context and the demands of the high-stress environment of combat, including immediate responses to perceived threat. This military moral orienting system includes new values and beliefs, new behaviors, and new meaningful relationships. Recognizing the profound impact of military recruit training, this project challenges dominant notions of post-deployment reentry and reintegration, and formulates a new paradigm for first, understanding the generative circumstances of ongoing moral stress that include moral emotions like guilt, shame, disgust, and contempt, and, second, for responding to such human suffering through compassionate care and comprehensive restorative support. This project calls for more effective participation of religious communities in the reentry and reintegration process and for a military-wide post-deployment reentry program comparable to the encompassing physio-psycho-spiritual-social transformative intensity experienced in recruit-training boot camp.

The essays gathered here provide a panoramic view of current thinking on biblical texts that play important roles in contemporary struggles for social justice - either as inspiration or impediment. Here, from the hands of an ecumenical array of leading biblical scholars, are fresh and compelling resources for thinking biblically about what justice is and what it demands. Individual essays treat key debates, themes, and texts, locating each within its historical and cultural settings while also linking them to the most pressing justice concerns of the twenty-first century. The volume aims to challenge academic and ecclesiastical complacency and highlight key avenues for future scholarship and action.

Set against an ethical-theological-philosophical framework of the role of love in the Abrahamic tradition (Islam, Judaism, and Christianity), The Ethics of Hospitality highlights the personal witness of refugee families seeking asylum from the Northern Triangle in Central America to the U.S. Their heart-wrenching stories include why they fled their homelands, their experiences along the arduous overland journey, and their inhospitable reception when they arrived to the U.S. and requested asylum. It includes an overview of the systemic connections between the U.S. and the violence which catapults these families to seek safety. The voices of the families join the witness of interreligious volunteers of greater San Antonio who assist the refugee families in diverse capacities and who testify to the mutual blessing they receive when love of God, expressed as love of neighbor, becomes central to the immigration conversation. Ultimately, the proposal is that the interreligious community has the privilege and responsibility to respond in love with refugees seeking asylum, while also leading the outcry in the public square for their radical welcome.

Divided into four parts-Earth, Air, Fire, and Water-this book takes an elemental approach to the study of religion and ecology. It reflects recent theoretical and methodological developments in this field which seek to understand the ways that ideas and matter, minds and bodies exist together within an immanent frame of reference. The Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion and Nature focuses on how these matters materialize in the world around us, thereby addressing key topics in this area of study. The editors provide an extensive introduction to the book, as well as useful introductions to each of its parts. The volume's international contributors are drawn from the USA, South Africa, Netherlands, Norway, Indonesia, and South Korea, and offer a variety of perspectives, voices, cultural settings, and geographical locales. This handbook shows that human concern and engagement with material existence is present in all sectors of the global community, regardless of religious tradition. It challenges the traditional methodological approach of comparative religion, and argues that globalization renders a comparative religious approach to the environment insufficient.

In this brilliant theological essay, Paul J. Griffiths takes the reader through all the stages of regret. To various degrees, all human beings experience regret. In this concise theological grammar, Paul J. Griffiths analyzes this attitude toward the past and distinguishes its various kinds. He examines attitudes encapsulated in the phrase, "I would it were otherwise," including regret, contrition, remorse, compunction, lament, and repentance. By using literature (especially poetry) and Christian theology, Griffiths shows both what is good about regret and what can be destructive about it. Griffiths argues that on the one hand regret can take the form of remorse-an agony produced by obsessive and ceaseless examination of the errors, sins, and omissions of the past. This kind of regret accomplishes nothing and produces only pain. On the other hand, when regret is coupled with contrition and genuine sorrow for past errors, it has the capacity both to transfigure the past-which is never merely past-and to open the future. Moreover, in thinking about the phenomenon of regret in the context of Christian theology, Griffiths focuses especially on the notion of the LORD's regret. Is it even reasonable to claim that the LORD regrets? Griffiths shows not only that it is but also that the LORD's regret should structure how we regret as human beings. Griffiths investigates the work of Henry James, Emily Dickinson, Tomas Transtroemer, Paul Celan, Jane Austen, George Herbert, and Robert Frost to show how regret is not a negative feature of human life but rather is essential for human flourishing and ultimately is to be patterned on the LORD's regret. Regret: A Theology will be of interest to scholars and students of philosophy, theology, and literature, as well as to literate readers who want to understand the phenomenon of regret more deeply.