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

Modern Jewish debate about euthanasia regularly pivots on interpretations of the Talmudic story of Rabbi Chananya ben Teryadon being burned alive by the Romans sometime in the second century. Though many modern bioethicists say this fiery story presents a clear and precise position on euthanasia, the narrative itself is more complicated and ambiguous. The implications of this disconnect between the story as it is and how bioethicists read it are problematic for patients, the Jewish textual tradition, and for modern bioethics as a whole. Applying fresh critical analysis to this tale, Jonathan Crane traces the fascinating and challenging story of narratives and norms in modern Jewish bioethics. The result is an unprecedented examination of the impact of a classic story in all its variants, and of narrative in general, on contemporary bioethical discourse.

Forgiveness was a preoccupation of writers in the Victorian period, bridging literatures highbrow and low, sacred and secular. Yet if forgiveness represented a common value and language, literary scholarship has often ignored the diverse meanings and practices behind this apparently uncomplicated value in the Victorian period. "Forgiveness in Victorian Literature" examines how eminent writers such as Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, and Oscar Wilde wrestled with the religious and social meanings of forgiveness in an age of theological controversy and increasing pluralism in ethical matters. In novels, poems, and essays, Richard Gibson here discovers unorthodox uses of the language of forgiveness and delicate negotiations between rival ethical and religious frameworks, which complicated forgiveness's traditional powers to create or restore community and, within narratives, offered resolution and closure. Illuminated by contemporary philosophical and theological investigations of forgiveness, this study also suggests that Victorian literature offers new perspectives on the ongoing debate about the possibility and potency of forgiving.

Engaging variously with the legacy of Paul L. Lehmann, these essays argue for a reorientation in Christian theology that better honours the formative power of the gospel to animate and shape doctrine and witness, as well as ethical and political life. The authors explore key themes in Christian theology and ethics - forgiveness, discernment, responsibility, spirituality, the present day tasks of theology and the role of faith in public life - making plain the unabated importance of Lehmann's work at this juncture in contemporary theology. The internationally recognized contributors draw crucial connections between the gospel of reconciliation, the form of Christian theology and witness, and the challenges of contemporary ethical and political reflection. This book demonstrates why this close friend of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and author of Ethics in a Christian Context and The Transfiguration of Politics continues to influence generations of theologians in both the English-speaking world and beyond.

This volume considers the phenomenon of yoga travel as an instance of a broader genre of 'spiritual travel' involving journeys to places 'elsewhere', which are imagined to offer the possibility of profound personal transformation. These imaginings are tied up in a continued exoticization of the East, but they are not limited to that. Contributors identify various themes such as authenticity, suffering, space, material markers, and the idea of the 'spiritual', tracing how these ideas manifest in conceptions and fetishizations of 'elsewhere.' To deepen its analysis of this phenomenon, the book incorporates a wide range of disciplines including architecture, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, women's studies, religious studies, and history. While the book's primary focus is yoga and yoga travel, contributors offer up an array of other case studies. Chapters delve into the complex questions of agency and authenticity that accompany the concept of 'spiritual travel' and ideas of 'elsewhere.'

The objective of Arab Criminology is to establish a criminological sub-field called 'Arab Criminology.' The ever-evolving field of criminology has advanced in the past decade, yet many impediments remain. Unlike criminology in Africa, Asia, the Americas, Europe, and Oceania based merely on geopolitical constructs, the Arab world has unique commonalities that do not exist in the other established sub-fields on criminology. The Arab world has largely remained in criminology's periphery despite the region's considerable importance to current international affairs. In response, this book explores two main questions: Why should we and how do we establish a sub-field in Arab Criminology? The authors examine the state of criminology in the Arab world, define its parameters, and present four components that bond and distinguish Arab criminology from other criminological area studies. They then identify the requirements for establishing Arab criminology and detail how local, regional, and international researchers can collaborate, develop, and expand the sub-field. Arab Criminology will challenge some of the recurrent Orientalist and Islamophobic tropes in Northern criminology and progress the discipline of criminology to reflect a more diverse focus that embraces regions from the Global South. Presenting compelling arguments and examples that support the establishment of this sub-field, Arab Criminology will be of great interest to Criminology, Criminal Justice, Legal Studies, and Middle Eastern/North African studies scholars, particularly those working on Southern Criminology, Comparative Criminology, International Criminal Justice Systems, and Arab studies.

This book takes up the question of Christian queer theology and ethics through the contested lens of "redemption." Starting from the root infinitive "to deem," the authors argue that queer lives and struggles can illuminate and re-value the richness of embodied experience that is implied in Christian incarnational theology and ethics. Offering a set of virtues gleaned from contemporary lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer, and asexual (LGBTIQA) lives and communities, this book introduces a new framework of ethical reasoning. Battered and wrongly condemned by life-denying theologies of redemption and dessicating ethics of virtue, this book asserts that the resilience, creativity, and epistemology manifesting in queer lives and communities are essential to a more generous and liberative Christian theology. In this book, queer "virtues" not only reveal and re-value queer soul but expose covert viciousness in the traditional (i.e., inherently colonial and racist, and thus ungodly) "family values" of dominant Christian ethics and theology. It argues that such re-imagining has redemptive potential for Christian life writ large, including the redemption of God. This book will be a key resource for scholars of queer theology and ethics as well as queer theory, gender and race studies, religious studies, and theology more generally.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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