For thousands of years the Jewish tradition has been a source of moral guidance, for Jews and non-Jews alike. As the essays in this volume show, the theologians and practitioners of Judaism have a long history of wrestling with moral questions, responding to them in an open, argumentative mode that reveals the strengths and weaknesses of all sides of a question. The Jewish tradition also offers guidance for moral conduct in both children and adults, and how to motivate people to do the right thing despite weakness and temptation. The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Ethics and Morality offers a collection of original essays addressing these topics-historical and contemporary, as well as philosophical and practical-by leading scholars from around the world. The first section of the volume describes the history of the Jewish tradition's moral thought, from the Bible to contemporary Jewish approaches. The second part includes chapters on specific fields in ethics, including the ethics of medicine, business, sex, speech, politics, war, and the environment.

Given the current sense of helplessness in dealing with environmental change and other urgent issues, a new world view is needed that emphasizes the unique contribution that individual citizens can make to the common good as opposed to their individual needs and desires. In a recent encyclical on the environment, Pope Francis set forth reasons from Scripture and Church teaching for this shift in perspective, but he did not provide a philosophically based foundation for this change of heart. To fill that gap, Joseph Bracken examines key writings of process-oriented philosophers like Henri Bergson and Alfred North Whitehead along with systems-oriented thinkers like Ludwig von Bertalanffy and Ervin Laszlo to create a systems-oriented understanding of the God-world relation.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

While there has been sustained interest in Gandhi's methods and continued academic inquiry, Gandhi's Global Legacy: Moral Methods and Modern Challenges is unique in bringing together an interdisciplinary group of scholars who analyze Gandhi's tactics, moral methods, and philosophical principles, not just in the fields of social and political activism, but in the areas of philosophy, religion, literature, economics, health, international relations, and interpersonal communication. Bringing this wide range of disciplinary backgrounds, the contributors provide fresh perspectives on Gandhi's thought and practice as well as critical analyses of his work and its contemporary relevance. Edited by Veena R. Howard, this book reveals the need for reconstructing Gandhi's ideas and moral methods in today's context through a broad spectrum of crucial issues, including pacifism, health, communal living, gender dynamics, the role of anger, and peacebuilding. Gandhi's methods have been refined and reimagined to fit different situations, but there remains a need to consider his concept of Sarvodaya (uplift of all), the importance of economic, gender, and racial equity, as well as the value of dialogue and dissenting voices in building a just society. The book points to new directions for the study of Gandhi in the globalized world.

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 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 important, 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.

Josh Morris privileges the voices of veterans to argue that returning soldiers need families, friends, and religious communities to listen to their stories with compassion to avoid amplifying the effects of moral injury. When society greets returning soldiers in ways that reinforce cultural norms that frame military service as heroic, rather than acknowledging its ambiguities and harmful effects, it exacerbates moral injury and keeps veterans from resolving inner conflicts and coping effectively with civilian life. Morris, a military chaplain and veteran who served in Afghanistan, knows these difficulties first hand. Using stories from other veterans, Morris helps us see how cultural assumptions about military service can complicate moral injury and a veteran's return home. Drawing from liberation theologies, ideology critique, and Antonio Gramsci's advocacy for the working class, the book suggests useful perspectives and spiritual care resources for military chaplains, religious leaders, caregivers, and concerned civilians. Morris argues that military chaplains are uniquely positioned to help returning soldiers resist the amplification of existing moral injury. Moving from "thank you for your service" to liberative solidarity can galvanize resistance and make change possible.

The crown jewel of Bonhoeffer's body of work, Ethics is the culmination of his theological and personal odyssey. Based on careful reconstruction of the manuscripts, freshly and expertly translated and annotated, this new critical edition features an insightful Introduction by Clifford Green and an Afterword from the German edition's editors. Though caught up in the vortex of momentous forces in the Nazi period, Bonhoeffer systematically envisioned a radically Christocentric, incarnational ethic for a post-war world, purposefully recasting Christians' relation to history, politics, and public life. This edition allows scholars, theologians, ethicists, and serious Christians to appreciate the cogency and relevance of Bonhoeffer's vision.

A compelling analysis tying the work of Aquinas to contemporary literature on virtue Despite heightened attention to virtue, contemporary philosophical and theological literature has failed to offer detailed analysis of how people attain and grow in the good habits we know as the virtues. Though popular literature provides instruction on attaining and growing in virtue, it lacks careful scholarly analysis of what exactly these good habits are in which we grow. Growing in Virtue is the only comprehensive account of growth in virtue in the thought of Thomas Aquinas. Mattison offers a robust account of habits, including what habits are, why they are needed, and what they supply once possessed. He draws on Aquinas to carefully delineate the commonalities and differences between natural (acquired) virtues and graced (infused) virtues. Along the way, Mattison discusses the distinction between disposition and habit; the role of “custom” in virtue formation; the nature of virtuous passions; the distinct contribution of the gifts of the Holy Spirit to graced life; explanations for persistent activity after the loss of virtue; and the possibility of coexistence of the infused and acquired virtues in the same person. For readers interested in virtue and morality from a philosophical perspective and scholars of theological ethics and moral theology in particular, Mattison offers compelling arguments from the work of Aquinas explicitly connected to contemporary scholarship in philosophical virtue ethics.

Can the Hippocratic and Judeo-Christian traditions be synthesized with contemporary thought about practical reason, virtue and community to provide real-life answers to the dilemmas of healthcare today? Bishop Anthony Fisher discusses conscience, relationships and law in relation to the modern-day controversies surrounding stem cell research, abortion, transplants, artificial feeding and euthanasia, using case studies to offer insight and illumination. What emerges is a reason-based bioethics for the twenty-first century; a bioethics that treats faith and reason with equal seriousness, that shows the relevance of ancient wisdom to the complexities of modern healthcare scenarios and that offers new suggestions for social policy and regulation. Philosophical argument is complemented by Catholic theology and analysis of social and biomedical trends, to make this an auspicious example of a new generation of Catholic bioethical writing which has relevance for people of all faiths and none.

In this second edition of the best-selling Cambridge Companion to Christian Ethics, Robin Gill brings together twenty essays by leading experts, to provide a comprehensive introduction to Christian ethics which is both authoritative and up to date. This volume boasts four entirely new chapters, while previous chapters and all bibliographies have been updated to reflect significant developments in the field over the last decade. Gill offers a superb overview of the subject, examining the scriptural bases of ethics as well as discussing Christian ethics in the context of contemporary issues, including war and the arms trade, social justice, ecology, economics, medicine and genetics. All of the contributors have a proven track record of balanced, comprehensive and comprehensible writing making this book an accessible and invaluable source not only for students in upper-level undergraduate courses, graduate students and teachers, but anyone interested in Christian ethics today.