Compromised worship has serious roots--and serious consequences. The Israelites can vouch for that. Through an effort to have the best of both worlds, they spent centuries attempting to worship both Yahweh and the fertility god, Baal. With this misguided concept of the true God and true worship, the Israelites' lives became immersed in a conspiracy to maintain a love of God and a love of everyday gods.In The Baal Conspiracy, author Al Truesdale exposes the truth behind what this Baal conspiracy meant for the Israelites: that God, in fact, cannot be denied or shared in any form of worship. With solid biblical scholarship, Truesdale employs historical fiction to explain and explore how Christians can confront and defeat the Baal conspiracy in the Church and in daily living.

Recovers the religious origins of the War on Drugs Many people view the War on Drugs as a contemporary phenomenon invented by the Nixon administration. But as this new book shows, the conflict actually began more than a century before, when American Protestants began the temperance movement and linked drug use with immorality. Christian Nationalism and the Birth of the War on Drugs argues that this early drug war was deeply rooted in Christian impulses. While many scholars understand Prohibition to have been a Protestant undertaking, it is considerably less common to consider the War on Drugs this way, in part because racism has understandably been the focal point of discussions of the drug war. Antidrug activists expressed—and still do express--blatant white supremacist and nativist motives. Yet this book argues that that racism was intertwined with religious impulses. Reformers pursued the “civilizing mission,” a wide-ranging project that sought to protect “child races” from harmful influences while remodeling their cultures to look like Europe and the United States. Most reformers saw Christianity as essential to civilization and missionaries felt that banning drugs would encourage religious conversion and progress. This compelling work of scholarship radically reshapes our understanding of one of the longest and most damaging conflicts in modern American history, making the case that we cannot understand the War on Drugs unless we understand its religious origins.

The ethical treatment of non-human animals is an increasingly significant issue, directly affecting how people share the planet with other creatures and visualize themselves within the natural world. The Routledge Handbook of Religion and Animal Ethics is a key reference source in this area, looking specifically at the role religion plays in the formation of ethics around these concerns. Featuring thirty-five chapters by a team of international contributors, the handbook is divided into two parts. The first gives an overview of fifteen of the major world religions' attitudes towards animal ethics and protection. The second features five sections addressing the following topics: Human Interaction with Animals Killing and Exploitation Religious and Secular Law Evil and Theodicy Souls and Afterlife This handbook demonstrates that religious traditions, despite often being anthropocentric, do have much to offer to those seeking a framework for a more enlightened relationship between humans and non-human animals. As such, The Routledge Handbook of Religion and Animal Ethics is essential reading for students and researchers in religious studies, theology, and animal ethics as well as those studying the philosophy of religion and ethics more generally.

In Complicity and Moral Accountability, Gregory Mellema presents a philosophical approach to the moral issues involved in complicity. Starting with a taxonomy of Thomas Aquinas, according to whom there are nine ways for one to become complicit in the wrongdoing of another, Mellema analyzes each kind of complicity and examines the moral status of someone complicit in each of these ways. Mellema's central argument is that one must perform a contributing action to qualify as an accomplice, and that it is always morally blameworthy to perform such an action. Additionally, he argues that an accomplice frequently bears moral responsibility for the outcome of the other's wrongdoing, but he distinguishes this case from cases in which the accomplice is tainted by the wrongdoing of the principal actor. He further distinguishes between enabling, facilitating, and condoning harm, and introduces the concept of indirect complicity. Mellema tackles issues that are clearly important to any case of collective and shared responsibility and yet are rarely discussed in depth, and he always presents his arguments clearly, concisely, and engagingly. His account of the nonmoral as well as moral qualities of complicity in wrongdoing-especially of the many and varied ways in which principles and accomplices can interact-is highly illuminating. Liberally sprinkled with helpful and nuanced examples, Complicity and Moral Accountability vividly illustrates the many ways in which one may be complicit in wrongdoing.

Richard Baxter, one of the most famous Puritans of the seventeenth century, is generally known as a writer of practical and devotional literature. But he also excelled in knowledge of medieval and early modern scholastic theology, and was conversant with a wide variety of seventeenth-century philosophies. Baxter was among the early English polemicists to write against the mechanical philosophy of Rene Descartes and Pierre Gassendi in the years immediately following the establishment of the Royal Society. At the same time, he was friends with Robert Boyle and Matthew Hale, corresponded with Joseph Glanvill, and engaged in philosophical controversy with Henry More. In this book, David Sytsma presents a chronological and thematic account of Baxter's relation to the people and concepts involved in the rise of mechanical philosophy in late-seventeenth-century England. Drawing on largely unexamined works, including Baxter's Methodus Theologiae Christianae (1681) and manuscript treatises and correspondence, Sytsma discusses Baxter's response to mechanical philosophers on the nature of substance, laws of motion, the soul, and ethics. Analysis of these topics is framed by a consideration of the growth of Christian Epicureanism in England, Baxter's overall approach to reason and philosophy, and his attempt to understand creation as an analogical reflection of God's power, wisdom, and goodness, understood as vestigia Trinitatis. Baxter's views on reason, analogical knowledge of God, and vestigia Trinitatis draw on medieval precedents and directly inform a largely hostile, though partially accommodating, response to mechanical philosophy.

Longing and Letting Go explores and compares the energies of desire and non-attachment in the writings of Hadewijch, a thirteenth-century Christian Beguine, and Mirabai, a sixteenth-century Hindu bhakta. Through an examination of the relational power of their respective mystical poetics of longing, the book invites interreligious meditation in the middle spaces of longing as a resource for an ethic of social justice: passionate non-attachment thus surfaces as an interreligious value and practice in the service of a less oppressive world. Mirabai and Hadewijch are both read through the primary comparative framework of viraha-bhakti, a mystical eroticism from Mirabai's Vaisnava Hindu tradition that fosters communal experiences of longing. Mirabai's songs of viraha-bhakti are conversely read through the lens of Hadewijch's concept of "noble unfaith," which will be construed as a particular version of passionate non-attachment. Reading back and forth across the traditions, the comparative currents move into the thematics of apophatic theological anthropology, comparative feminist ethics, and religiously plural identities. Judith Butler provides a philosophically complementary schema through which to consider how the mystics' desire, manifest in the grief of separation and the erotic bliss of near union, operates as a force of "dispossession" that creates the very conditions for non-attachment. Hadewijch's and Mirabai's practices of longing, read in terms of Butler's concept of dispossession, offer clues for a lived ethic that encourages desire for the flourishing of the world, without that passion consuming the world, the other, or the self. Longing-in its vulnerable, relational, apophatic, dispossessive aspects-informs a lived ethic of passionate non-attachment, which holds space for the desires of others in an interrelated, fragile world. When configured as performative relationality and applied to the discipline of comparative theology, practices of longing decenter the self and allow for the emergence of dynamic, even plural, religious identities.

The Bonhoeffer Legacy: Australasian Journal of Bonhoeffer Studies is a fully refereed academic journal aimed principally at providing an outlet for an ever expanding Bonhoeffer scholarship in Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific region, as well as being open to article submissions from Bonhoeffer scholars throughout the world. It also aims to elicit and encourage future and ongoing scholarship in the field. The focus of the journal, captured in the notion of 'Legacy', is on any aspect of Bonhoeffer's life, theology and political action that is relevant to his immense contribution to twentieth century events and scholarship. 'Legacy' can be understood as including those events and ideas that contributed to Bonhoeffer's own development, those that constituted his own context or those that have developed since his time as a result of his work. The editors encourage and welcome any scholarship that contributes to the journal's aims. The journal also has book reviews.

Nonviolence is emerging as a topic of great interest in activist, academic and community settings. In particular, nonviolence is being recognized as a necessary component of constructive and sustainable social change. This book considers nonviolence in relationship to specific social, political, ecological and spiritual issues. Through case studies and examinations of social resistance, gender, the arts, and education, it provides specialists and non-specialists with a solid introduction to the importance and relevance of nonviolence in various contexts.Advancing Nonviolence and Social Transformation is organized into five sections. The first section is a set of essays on various historical and contemporary perspectives on nonviolence. The second section consists of essays on philosophical and theoretical explorations of the topic. The third and fourth sections expand the scope of nonviolence into the areas of thought and action, including Indigenous resistance, student protests, human trafficking, intimate partner violence and ecological issues. The final section takes nonviolence into the study of wonder, music, education and hope.The book will be useful to anyone working in the theories and practices of social change.

Many of the most controversial moral decisions we face hinge upon competing descriptions of life, and never is this truer than at the beginning of life. James Mumford draws upon phenomenology (a branch of continental philosophy) to question the descriptive adequacy, the essential 'purchase upon reality', of many of the approaches, attitudes and arguments which make up beginning of life ethics today. He argues that many of the most prevalent positions and practices in our late modern culture have simply failed to take into account the reality of human emergence, the particular way that new members of our species first appear in the world. Historically, phenomenologists have been far more interested in death than in birth. Mumford therefore first develops his own phenomenological investigation of human emergence, taking leads and developing approaches from phenomenologists both French and German, both living and dead. In the second half of the book phenomenology is finally applied to ethics, and acute moral questions are divided into two kinds: first those concerning 'what' it is that we are dealing; and, secondly, the more contextual 'where' questions relating to the situation in which the subject is found. Finally, although this book primarily constitutes a philosophical rather than a religious critique of contemporary ethics, with the findings from continental philosophy being brought to bear upon core convictions of English-speaking 'liberal' moral and political philosophers, Mumford concludes by exploring an alternative theological basis for human rights which might fill the vacuum created.

Der Islamische Staat in Syrien und im Irak, die Massaker von Boko Haram in Nigeria - immer neue religioes motivierte Terrorakte rufen weltweite Betroffenheit hervor, auch unter glaubigen Menschen. Weder Bibel noch Koran rechtfertigen einfach jegliche Gewalttat oder Krieg im Namen Gottes, wenn man sich mit Sprache und Sinn dieser Texte kritisch auseinandersetzt. Der Tagungsband der 16. OEkumenischen Sommerakademie Kremsmunster 2014 dokumentiert Vortrage mit unterschiedlichem konfessionellen, religioesen und weltanschaulichen Hintergrund. Sie alle beschaftigen sich mit der Thematik religioes motivierter Gewalt aus der Perspektive der Philosophie, der Praktischen Theologie und Religionspadagogik, der Religions-, Bibel- und Islamwissenschaft. Zu Wort kommen auch Reprasentanten der Friedensarbeit im Militar, in christlichen Vereinigungen und in der kirchlichen Pastoral.

For many Westerners, the most appealing teachings of the Buddhist tradition pertain to ethics. Buddhist ethical views have much in common with certain modern ethical theories, and contain many insights relevant to contemporary moral problems. In Consequences of Compassion, Charles Goodman illuminates the relationship between Buddhism and Western ethical theories. Buddhist texts offer an interesting approach to the demands of morality and a powerful critique of what we would identify as the concept of free will-a critique which leads to a hard determinist view of human action. But rather than being a threat to morality, this view supports Buddhist values of compassion, nonviolence and forgiveness, and leads to a more humane approach to the justification of punishment. Drawing on Buddhist religious values, Goodman argues against the death penalty and mandatory minimum sentences. Every version of Buddhist ethics, says Goodman, takes the welfare of sentient beings to be the only source of moral obligations. Buddhist ethics can thus be said to be based on compassion in the sense of a motivation to pursue the welfare of others. On this interpretation, the fundamental basis of the various forms of Buddhist ethics is the same as that of the welfarist members of the family of ethical theories that analytic philosophers call "consequentialism." Goodman uses this hypothesis to illuminate a variety of questions. He examines the three types of compassion practiced in Buddhism and argues for their implications for important issues in applied ethics. Goodman argues that the Buddhist tradition can and will ultimately make important contributions to contemporary global conversations about ethical issues while placing Buddhist views into the mainstream of current ethical analysis.

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, andfixed deeply in the collective consciousnesshell 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 Englands 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 Americas intellectual and cultural history.

Of the world's three major religions, only Christianity holds to a doctrine of original sin. Ideas are powerful, and they shape who we are and who we become. The fact that many Christians believe there is something in human nature that is, and will always be, contrary to Gold, is not just a problem but a tragedy. So why do the doctrine's assumptions of human nature so infiltrate our pulpits, sermons, and theological bookshelves? How is it so misconstrued in times of grief, pastoral care, and personal shame? How did we fall so far from God's original blessing in the garden to this pervasive belief in humanity's innate inability to do good? In this book, Danielle Shroyer takes readers through an overview of the historical development of the doctrine, pointing out important missteps and over calculations, and providing alternative ways to approach often-used Scriptures. Throughout, she brings the primary claims of original sin to their untenable (and unbiblical) conclusions.In Original Blessing, she shows not only how we got this doctrine wrong, but how we can put sin back in its rightful place: in a broader context of redemption and the blessing of humanity's creation in the image of God.

The crisis of multiculturalism in the West and the failure of the Arab uprisings in the Middle East have pushed the question of how to live peacefully within a diverse society to the forefront of global discussion. Against this backdrop, Indonesia has taken on a particular importance: with a population of 265 million people (87.7 percent of whom are Muslim), Indonesia is both the largest Muslim-majority country in the world and the third-largest democracy. In light of its return to electoral democracy from the authoritarianism of the former New Order regime, some analysts have argued that Indonesia offers clear proof of the compatibility of Islam and democracy. Skeptics argue, however, that the growing religious intolerance that has marred the country's political transition discredits any claim of the country to democratic exemplarity. Based on a twenty-month project carried out in several regions of Indonesia, Indonesian Pluralities: Islam, Citizenship, and Democracy shows that, in assessing the quality and dynamics of democracy and citizenship in Indonesia today, we must examine not only elections and official politics, but also the less formal, yet more pervasive, processes of social recognition at work in this deeply plural society. The contributors demonstrate that, in fact, citizen ethics are not static discourses but living traditions that co-evolve in relation to broader patterns of politics, gender, religious resurgence, and ethnicity in society. Indonesian Pluralities offers important insights on the state of Indonesian politics and society more than twenty years after its return to democracy. It will appeal to political scholars, public analysts, and those interested in Islam, Southeast Asia, citizenship, and peace and conflict studies around the world. Contributors: Robert W. Hefner, Erica M. Larson, Kelli Swazey, Mohammad Iqbal Ahnaf, Marthen Tahun, Alimatul Qibtiyah, and Zainal Abidin Bagir

In his sharp, observant book, Stan Goff grapples with a problem crucial to modern Christian values. The sanctification of war and contempt for women are both grounded in a fear that breeds hostility, a hostility that valorises conquest and murder. In 'Borderline', Goff dissects the driving force behind the darkest impulses of the human heart. The un-Christian history of loving war and hating women are not merely similar but two sides of the same coin, he argues, in an 'autobiography' that spans two millennia of war and misogyny. 'Borderline' is the personal and conceptual history of an American career army veteran transformed by Jesus into a passionate advocate for nonviolence, written by a man who narrates his conversion to Christianity through feminism.

"Contents: " Maria Antonaccio, "Asceticism, Ethics, and Contemporary Culture"; John Bowlin, "Tolerance Among the Fathers"; Jennifer Herdt, "Virtue's Semblance: Erasmus and Luther on Pagan Virtue and the Christian Life"; Mary Hirschfeld, "Standard of Living and Economic Virtue: Building a Bridge Between Aquinas and the 21st Century; Jan Jans, "The Belgian Act on Euthanasia"; John Langan, "Hope in and for the United States"; Melissa Snarr, "A New Discipline? Beverly Harrison and 'Malestream' Christian Ethics"; and Linda Hogan, Edna McDonagh, Stanley Hauerwas, "The Case for the Abolition of War in the Twenty-First Century."

Europaweit bestehen verschiedene Praktiken, aber auch Debatten uber die Legalisierung moeglicher Formen "aktiver" Sterbehilfe. Umso bedeutsamer ist es, dass Christen auf Grund ihres schoepfungsmassigen Menschenbildes und eines umfassenden Lebensschutzes fur eine menschenwurdige Sterbebegleitung eintreten, die sich an den Grundsatzen der Leidminderung, Zuwendung und Fursorge orientiert und jede Form auch "nur" einer Unterstutzung der Selbsttoetung ablehnt. Ein Problem stellt dabei die gesellschaftliche Tabuisierung des Lebensendes und Todes dar. So intensiv Grenzfragen der Medizinethik medial diskutiert werden, so sehr wird das konkret erfahrbare Lebensende aus der OEffentlichkeit verdrangt. Daher stellte sich die 14. OEkumenische Sommerakademie 2012 in Kremsmunster der Gesamtthematik menschlicher Endlichkeit im Horizont der Hoffnung auf ewiges Leben. In dem Tagungsband werden die kontroversen Vortrage dokumentiert, mit denen sich die ReferentInnen vor unterschiedlichem konfessionellen oder weltanschaulichen Hintergrund als Vertreter von Medizin, Soziologie, Rechtsphilosophie und Strafrecht dem Dialog mit ReprasentantInnen von philosophischer Ethik, Moraltheologie, Systematischer Theologie und kirchlicher Pastoral stellten.

The theological virtue of hope has long been neglected in Christian ethics. However, as social, civic and global anxieties mount, the need to overcome despair has become urgent. This book proposes the theological virtue of hope as a promising source of rejuvenation. Theological hope sustains us from the sloth, presumption and despair that threaten amid injustice, tragedy and dying; it provides an ultimate meaning and transcendent purpose to our lives; and it rejoices and refreshes us 'on the way' with the prospect of eternal beatitude. Rather than degrading this life and world, hope ordains earthly goods to our eschatological end, forming us to pursue social justice with a resilience and vitality that transcend the cynicism and disillusionment so widespread at present. Drawing on Thomas Aquinas and virtue ethics, the book shows how the virtue of hope contributes to human happiness in this life and not just the next.

Zunehmend wird Religion als ein stoerender Faktor fur das gesellschaftliche Zusammenleben wahrgenommen. Dennoch enthalten Religionen eigene Ressourcen, die Autonomie des Politischen zu achten. Diese Ressourcen werden in dem Band prazise beschrieben. Dabei spielt der Toleranzbegriff eine erhebliche Rolle. Toleranz beschreibt nicht nur das Verhaltnis der Religionen zu Andersdenkenden, sondern auch umgekehrt das Verhaltnis nicht-religioeser Personen und Institutionen zu den Religionen. Dabei enthalt der Toleranzbegriff mehrere ethische Paradoxien, die eine theologische Interpretation erforderlich machen. Ohne eine theologische Bestimmung bleibt Toleranz ein widerspruchliches Konzept fur das friedliche Zusammenleben. Diese These wird auf prinzipieller und praktischer Ebene begrundet.

Talking about ethics tends to involve talking about what we should or, more often, shouldn't do. We talk about setting limits on actions that, for whatever reason, we think are either wrong or somehow harmful to ourselves or others. The aim of this book, however, is to explore Christian ethics within a wider, more positive framework - one that that views Christianity's moral resources as part of the good news that it proclaims to all creation. Ethics, says Hovey, need not be characterized primarily by negative prohibitions, limits, and tiresome hand-wringing. Rather, it's about a joyful and worshipful way of living, which flows naturally out of the abundant goodness God's life and character, as revealed in Jesus.

This enlightening book steers readers through the challenges and moral issues, providing a clear and decisive history of the main figures and texts in Christian ethics.
A short and lively history of Christian ethics, exploring how Christianity has always had to grapple with complex moral problems - from questions about the status of early Christians who renounced their religion under Roman torture, through to current debates about euthanasia
Engages with the main texts and figures in Christian ethics, including Augustine, Benedict, Aquinas, Luther and Barth
Considers questions such as human will, the proper form of Christian life, natural law, and whether human nature is at odds with Christian ethics
Concludes with a thought-provoking chapter considering the role that Christian ethics can play in contemporary moral debates and ethical dilemmas