Christian Theology after Christendom: Engaging the Thought of Douglas John Hall brings together contemporary thinkers to engage and build upon Douglas John Hall's work-and to take up his challenge to reclaim a contextual and de-colonizing theology of the cross as a means to speak of the realities of life and faith today. With a focus on contemporary issues, this collection of essays critically analyzes and deconstructs the centuries-old colonial triumphalism of Christian theology and the church in the West. This edited collection seeks to frame present day crises in ways that honor a deeply rooted theologia crucis that does not colonize the "other." It explores constructive decolonizing possibilities for Christian theology at the end of Christendom.

The overturning of Roe v Wade makes the ethical consideration of abortion more important than ever. Appealing to reason rather than religious belief, this book is the most comprehensive case against the choice of abortion yet published. This third edition of The Ethics of Abortion critically evaluates all the major grounds for denying basic rights to fetal human beings, including the views of those who defend not only abortion but also post-birth abortion. It also provides several (non-theological) justifications for the conclusion that all human beings, including those in utero, should be respected as persons. This book also critiques the view that abortion is not wrong even if the human fetus is a person. The Ethics of Abortion examines hard cases for those who are prolife, such as abortion in cases of rape or in order to save the woman's life, as well as hard cases for defenders of abortion, such as sex selection abortion and the rationale for being "personally opposed" but publicly supportive of abortion. It concludes with a discussion of whether artificial wombs might end the abortion debate. Answering the arguments of defenders of abortion, this book provides reasoned justification for the view that all intentional abortions are ethically wrong and that doctors and nurses who object to abortion should not be forced to act against their consciences. Updates and Revisions to the Third Edition Include: Discusses Achas Burin's 2014 essay, "Beyond Pragmatism: Defending the 'Bright Line' of Birth" in chapter 3 Incorporates into chapter 8 David Boonin's cogently argued 2019 book, Beyond Roe: Why Abortion Should be Legal - Even if the Fetus is a Person Expands chapter 9 to examine tragic cases in which prenatal diagnosis determines with certainty that a fetus will die shortly after birth Includes an updated and expanded section in chapter 11 on recent debates about conscience protections Considers in chapter 12 recent arguments that parents have a right to kill if the product of conception is in an artificial womb Updates statistics on numbers of abortions in the United States, including corrections to statistics that were once thought true but are now known as erroneous Updated bibliography

In The Morality Wars, contributors from religious and non-religious backgrounds debate the origin and nature of human goodness. While the subject is often addressed by prominent figures on both sides of the believer/atheist divide on public platforms and social media, participants seldom get the opportunity to explain their viewpoints in depth. In addition to engaging the question of the role of religious faith or its absence in the development of the moral conscience, the contributors draw on and engage with philosophers and other thinkers who are often neglected when committed theologians and atheists debate each other, such as Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Jacques Lacan.

This volume draws together leading theologians and Christian ethicists from across the globe to critically engage with and reflect upon Gerald McKenny, widely acknowledged as one of the most original and important Christian ethicists working today. The essays highlight the significance of McKenny's interventions with a range of important debates in contemporary theological ethics, ranging from analyses of the Protestant conception of grace to bioethics and medicine. The Ethics of Grace is the first volume to facilitate critical engagements with a number of key themes in McKenny's work, not in the least his interpretation of Karl Barth. Among the contributions, Jennifer Herdt discusses McKenny's Barthian interest in the relationship between nature and grace; Angela Carpenter uses his Barthian understanding of grace and human action as a framework to discuss Jonathan Edwards; Stanley Hauerwas pushes McKenny's theology beyond Barth. Economic, political, and technological themes are also discussed in depth, for instance in Robert Song's chapter on the phenomenology of biotechnological enhancement. Reaching far beyond the work of Gerald McKenny, this multifaceted volume is a high-level resource for students and scholars of theological and philosophical ethics.

This book considers the situation of intersex people who have faced erasure in the areas of science, law, culture, and theology due to the assumption that all humans are either 'female' or 'male.' Centered in interviews conducted with German intersex Christians, this book argues that moving from a paradigm of sexual dimorphism to sexual polymorphism will help promote the full humanity and flourishing of intersex people by creating a world where intersex individuals are no longer coerced and/or forced to undergo non-consensual, medically unnecessary treatment, no longer experience human rights violations because of their lack of legal protection, no longer feel inhuman and Other due to epistemic injustice that stems from socio-cultural norms and stereotypes, are no longer told they are not made in God's image as a result of a sexually dimorphic understanding of Genesis 1:27, and no longer feel excluded and invisible in worship services that do not recognize them. This combination of the practical and the spiritual allows for a reconsideration of the medical treatment and pastoral care that should be available to intersex people. This book will be helpful to those in the disciplines of science, law, culture, and theology, particularly those in gender and theological studies and those already in and studying for lay and ordained ministry.

What is the place 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.

During the Trump administration, more people sought sanctuary in churches in Philadelphia than any other city in the United States. The city was also on the front lines of progressive policy making, defending its sanctuary policies in federal court. In this collection of essays and interviews, a diverse set of authors examine the promise and limits of sanctuary. Contributors include Carmela Apolonio Hernandez, who spent over three years living in sanctuary to resist deportation, community organizers who work to build a more just and inclusive city, and leading academics who explore the origins of sanctuary and its intersections with the workplace, policing, and university campuses. Collectively, these authors offer a roadmap for how sanctuary is created and sustained and argue for a future in which no human being is illegal.

What happens when two intelligent and highly informed fictional college students, one strongly pro-choice and the other vigorously pro-life, are asked to put together a presentation on abortion? Their conversations over five days - friendly but lively, charitable but clear - are captured in this book. Through these dialogues, students and other interested readers are introduced to the difficult moral issues of abortion. In Chapter 1, readers learn about Roe v. Wade and other relevant legal cases. Chapter 2 covers basic, philosophical issues such as: What is a person? Are fetuses persons? Is fetal potential morally relevant? How shall we define the moral community? Chapter 3 introduces students to Don Marquis's "Why Abortion is Immoral" and also the metaphysical issues of personal identity and its relevance to abortion. Chapter 4 covers Judith Jarvis Thomson's "A Defense of Abortion", including objections and responses to the argument from bodily autonomy. Finally, Chapter 5 looks at abortion in hard cases, such as in cases of rape, fetal disability, non-viable pregnancies, and sex-selection; the chapter also includes a conversation on fathers and abortion. With a Foreword by Laurie Shrage, topics headings in the margins, and an annotated bibliography, Dialogues on the Ethics of Abortion is an easy-to-use volume and valuable resource for anyone interested in a fair and clear-headed approach to one of the most contentious moral issues of our time.

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.

This book offers a compelling new interpretation of James' moral philosophy: an "ethics of responsible self-fashioning." James' performative writing style articulates this conception by showing how moral inquiry serves both social and personal transformation. James the social moral philosopher seeks to create an inclusive moral order through expansion of sympathetic concern among those committed to different ideals. James the existential moral philosopher defends the right to adopt hope-grounding metaphysical beliefs which encourage strenuous moral action in the face of evil and suffering. The power of James' ethics is demonstrated by its application to current discussions about the status of marginalized nonhuman animals and that of the cognitively disabled. William James and the Moral Life is of interest to a wide variety of ethicists and has special appeal to scholars and advanced students in moral philosophy, social philosophy, pragmatism, and American philosophy.

This is a timely and relevant volume, considering the many manipulations and enhancements upon our ideas of reality in the 21st century The book explores how and why we deny, manipulate, convert, or enhance reality The book argues that examining the many ways in which we manipulate, deny, convert or enhance our realities can give us an idea of how to deal with reality, which in turn can provide us with a blueprint for how to live responsibly The book brings together an international team of contributors to discuss contemporary issues such as fake news, propaganda, virtual reality, theatre as real life and reality TV This book draws on examples from vast fields such as film studies, sociology, the social sciences and medicine This volume will appeal to scholars and upper-level students in the areas of communication and media studies, comparative literature, film studies, economics, English, international affairs, journalism, philosophy, psychology, sociology, and theatre

Difference, diversity and disagreement are inevitable features of our ethical, social and political landscape. This collection of new essays investigates the ways that various ethical and religious traditions have dealt with intramural dissent; the volume covers nine separate traditions: Confucianism, Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, liberalism, Marxism, South Asian religions and natural law. Each chapter lays out the distinctive features, history and challenges of intramural dissent within each tradition, enabling readers to identify similarities and differences between traditions. The book concludes with an Afterword by Michael Walzer, offering a synoptic overview of the challenge of intramural dissent and the responses to that challenge. Committed to dialogue across cultures and traditions, the collection begins that dialogue with the common challenges facing all traditions: how to maintain cohesion and core values in the face of pluralism, and how to do this in a way that is consistent with the internal ethical principles of the traditions.

This book explores what constitutes an enhancement fit for humanity in the age of nanotechnologies, biotechnologies, information technologies, and technologies related to the cognitive sciences. It considers the influence of emergent technology upon our understanding of human nature and the impact on future generations. Drawing on the Catholic tradition, in particular, the book gathers international contributions from scientific, philosophical, legal, and religious perspectives. Together they offer a positive step in an ongoing dialogue regarding the promises and perils of emergent technology for man's integral human development.

The American justice system was founded on the idea of "majority-rule," but in a democracy this is achievable only if the majority has the interests of the whole at heart. Since the days of America's founding, white, Christian males created laws from their standpoint as the majority, leading them to exercise power in a largely "majoritarian" way rather than upholding the interests of all citizens. The nation has not realized its stated ideals of equality of liberty, opportunity and justice for all. As a solution, W. Royce Clark formulates a non-majoritarian ethic based not on any majority but on a universal instinct, the combination of Albert Schweitzer's "will-to-live" and Friedrich Nietzsche's "will-to-power," along with democratic principles articulated by John Rawls and James Madison, which would represent all citizens.

The Other Black Church will explore the movements led by Father Divine, Charles Mason and Albert Cleage 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 the Christian text and re-imagined 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 US-based democracy. These prophets of Black theological thought and their attention to the limits of the state are most fully articulated in 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 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.

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.

Chaplain G.A. Studdert Kennedy has been described as the most popular British chaplain of the First World War. Widely known as "Woodbine Willie" for the cigarettes he distributed to the troops, his wartime poetry and prose communicated the challenges, hardships and hopes of the soldiers he served. As a chaplain, he was subject to the same hardships as his soldiers. This book analyses his experiences through the contemporary understanding of psychological, moral and spiritual impact of war on its survivors and suggests that the chaplain suffered from Combat Stress, Moral Injury, and Spiritual Injury. Through the analysis of his wartime and postwar publications, the author illustrates the continuing impact of war on the life of a veteran of the Great War.

The proximity of many different religions, each with its own unique metaphysics and ethics, did not exist in the ancient world when those religions came into existence. Many went uncontested for centuries, and many merged with governments to shape the laws for the entire people of a culture or nation. Theocracies can exist only where there is no plurality of religions or where the minor religions do not mind the dominant one dictating policy for all citizens. In the word's two greatest democracies, the U.S. and India, despite the diversity that a democratic society presupposes, a majoritarian religion continues to assert an advantage over others to shape the social contract. An Ethic of Trust: Mutual Autonomy and the Common Will-to-Live addresses this problem, moving beyond sheer utilitarianism. W. Royce Clark argues that because of religious pluralism, a nation's ethic must be grounded on "freestanding" principles. This means that its base must be universally obvious, and its principles must be agreeable to all citizens. The base is instinctual, the "will-to-live" which is present in all living creatures, and the recognition of that can influence people to agree to a voluntary unity and a couple of other basic principles to which all would agree, principles which embrace differences within relationships, whether in a marriage or a constitutional republic. But to voluntarily agree to these requires a genuine mutual trust and mutual autonomy which can maximize unity while allowing individual liberties. To arrive at this point, Clark blends scholars who are often cast as opposites-Albert Schweitzer, Friedrich Nietzsche, and John Rawls-to forge a new path for an inclusive ethic for a nation, within which both the religious and non-religious will have equal freedom and stability.

Can religions supply an ethics that can unite rather than divide peoples? In ancient times, many people believed in super-human powers spatially beyond them, whether above or below them. They conceived of them in anthropomorphic terms, and developed symbols, rituals, and general ways of life to court their favor because they felt dependent upon these powers for certain essentials of daily living such as warmth, water, or good health. Some deities were believed to have personally intervened in human history, and took a human form to fight their enemies, provided humans with rules for living, or re-created the world after its destruction. As time passed, these claims became more comprehensive, finally universal, even Absolute, even as the process of questioning the claims, which is called "desacralization," became more widespread. Many sensed that if their absolutized deity were dislodged by doubt, the world would flounder without an ethic. Some religions tried to defend their deity by emphasizing that it was really beyond any "attributes," beyond human reason. It became the Ineffable, the Incommensurable, even the "Wholly-Other." If it was thought to have become Incarnate, that had to be defended in a similar way. In order to solve the problem of the Absolute, W. Royce Clark analyzes the thought of four prominent Christian theologians and philosophers- Friedrich Schleiermacher, G.W.F. Hegel, Paul Tillich, and Robert P. Scharlemann-as the grounds for the basis of a possible universal ethic.

Anne Carson (b. June 21, 1950, in Toronto, Canada) is one of the most versatile of contemporary classicists, poets and translators in the English language. In this book, Ruprecht explores the role played by generic transgressions on the one hand, and by embodied spirituality on the other, throughout Carson's ambitious literary career. Where others see classical dichotomies (soul versus body, Classical versus Christian), Carson sees connection. Like Nietzsche before her, Carson decries the image of the Classics as merely bookish, and classicists as disembodied intellects. She has brought religious, bodily erotics back into the heart of the classical tradition.

This book brings development theory and practice into dialogue with a religious tradition in order to construct a new, transdisciplinary vision of development with integral ecology at its heart. It focuses on the Catholic social tradition and its conception of integral human development, on the one hand, and on the works of economist and philosopher Amartya Sen which underpin the human development approach, on the other. The book discusses how these two perspectives can mutually enrich each other around three areas: their views on the concept and meaning of development and progress; their understanding of what it is to be human - that is, their anthropological vision; and their analysis of transformational pathways for addressing social and environmental degradation. It also examines how both human development and the Catholic social tradition can function as complementary analytical lenses and mobilizing frames for embarking on the journey of structural and personal transformation to bring all life systems, human and non-human, back into balance. This book is written for researchers and students in development studies, theology, and religious studies, as well as professional audiences in development organizations.

This volume proposes a move away from the universalized and general modern ethical method, as it is currently practiced in biomedical ethics, while aiming toward a decision making process rooted in an ontology of relationality. Moyse uses the theological ethics of Karl Barth, in conversation with a range of thinkers, to achieve this turn.

This collection features essays from top experts in ethics and philosophy of love that offer varying perspectives on the value of a contemporary secular virtue of chastity. The virtue of chastity has traditionally been portrayed as an excellent personal disposition concerning the ideal ordering of sexual desire such that the person desires that which is actually good for both the self and others affected by his or her sexual desires and actions. Yet, for roughly the past half century chastity has been increasingly portrayed as an unnecessary ideal with few secular benefits that could not be otherwise obtained. Instead, chastity is sometimes portrayed as an odd kind of religious asceticism with few secular benefits. The essays in this volume ask whether there may be advantages to reconsidering a contemporary virtue of chastity. A recovered and reconceptualized concept of chastity can offer partial solutions to problems associated with externalized sexual desire, including sweeping patterns of sexual harassment, the high divorce/relationship-failure rate, and widespread pornography use. Sexual Ethics in a Secular Age will appeal to researchers and advanced students interested in the philosophy of sex and love, virtue ethics, and philosophical accounts of secularity.