Just as it is impossible to understand the American religious landscape without some familiarity with evangelicalism, one cannot grasp the shape of contemporary Christian ethics without knowing the contributions of evangelical Protestants. This newest addition to the Library of Theological Ethics series begins by examining the core dynamic with which all evangelical ethics grapples: belief in an authoritative, inspired, and unchanging biblical text on the one hand, and engagement with a rapidly evolving and increasingly post-Christian culture on the other. It (...) explores the different roles that scholars and popular figures have played in forming evangelicals' understandings of Christian ethics. And it draws together the contributions of both senior and emerging figures in painting a portrait of this diverse, vibrant, and challenging theological and ethical tradition. This book represents the breadth of evangelical ethical voices, demonstrating that evangelical ethics involves nuance and theological insight that far transcend any political agenda. Contributors include David P. Gushee, Carl F. H. Henry, Jennifer McBride, Stephen Charles Mott, William E. Pannell, John Perkins, Soong-Chan Rah, Gabriel Salguero, Francis Schaeffer, Ron Sider, Helene Slessarev-Jamir, Glen H. Stassen, Eldin Villafañe, Allen Verhey, Jim Wallis, Nicholas Wolterstorff, and John Howard Yoder. The Library of Theological Ethics series focuses on what it means to think theologically and ethically. It presents a selection of important, and otherwise unavailable, texts—English-language texts and translations that have fallen out of print, new translations, and collections of significant statements about problems and themes of special importance—in an easily accessible form. This series enables sustained dialogue on new and classic works in the field. (shrink)

In the Fray collects David Gushee's most significant essays over twenty years as a Christian intellectual. Most of the essays were written in situations of ethical conflict on the highly contested ground of Christian public ethics. Topics addressed include torture, climate change, marriage and divorce, the treatment of gays and lesbians in the church, war, genocide, nuclear weapons, race, global poverty, faith and politics, Israel/Palestine, and even whether Christian ethics is a real academic discipline. Quite visible in the (...) collection is Gushee's deep research interest in the Nazi era in Germany and how the churches fared in resisting Nazi intimidations and seductions and, finally, the Holocaust. All essays reflect the desire for a church that has learned the lessons of that period--a church with resistance to racism, militarism, nationalism, and other social-ideological toxins, and with the discernment and courage to resist these in favor of a courageous allegiance to the lordship of Christ at the time of testing. Considerable attention is directed to contesting some of the public ethics found in the author's own US evangelical Christian community. Concluding reflections on Gushee's ethical vision are offered in an illuminating essay by senior Christian ethicist Glen Harold Stassen. (shrink)

Eighteen Christian theologians and ethicists offer a rich engagement with the theological ethics of Glen Stassen (1936-2014).

This SCE presidential address attempts an interpretation of the history of American Christian ethics that is simultaneously an intellectual autobiography. Seven types of Christian ethics receive attention: ecclesial-formational, Protestant social ethics, Niebuhrian, Catholic, evangelical, Hauerwasian, and liberationist. The discipline is described as methodologically fractured and professionally endangered, especially in the case of its founding strand, Protestant social ethics. The essay ends with a call for mutual respect and support among Christian ethicists, sustained attention to one another’s work, and shared efforts (...) to advance the discipline. (shrink)

Ever since its original publication in 2003, Glen Stassen and David Gushee's Kingdom Ethics has offered students, pastors, and other readers an outstanding framework for Christian ethical thought, one that is solidly rooted in Scripture, especially Jesus's teachings in the Sermon on the Mount. This substantially revised edition of Kingdom Ethics features enhanced and updated treatments of all major contemporary ethical issues. David Gushee's revisions include updated data and examples, a more global perspective, more gender-inclusive language, (...) a clearer focus on methodology, discussion questions added. (shrink)

This article interrogates the use of a Kingdom-of-God narrative frame, in the work both of progressive evangelicals Glen Stassen and David Gushee and in liberation theology, claiming that this narrative has often inspired hope and moral action but can be questioned on a variety of theological and methodological grounds. It considers startling recent claims by liberation ethicist Miguel De la Torre that all talk of a coming Kingdom of God is mythic, a middle-class illusion that undermines radical commitment (...) to ethical praxis for justice. Engagement with two classic liberationist texts confirms both that liberation theology offers a somewhat radicalized Kingdom-of-God narrative and that De la Torre’s new claims represent a clear break with liberationism. The article concludes by briefly considering options in eschatology for those who have heretofore invested considerable hope in an immanentist, participative, certainly-coming Kingdom-of-God narrative to ground their Christian ethics. (shrink)

The author analyzes Christian Smith's What Is a Person? from a Christian theological-ethical perspective, assessing the way in which he tackles sociological theories that reflect secularized and reductionist assumptions about the human person, and offering a friendly critique of the Christian personalist, humanist, and virtue ethic that he deploys to challenge his field.

THE STRONG SUPPORT OF EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANS FOR PRESIDENT George W. Bush contributed significantly to his reelection in November 2004. This was cause for celebration in some quarters and despair in others. It has led to an avalanche of attention to the perennial issue of the relationship between faith and politics, the role of "moral values" in determining evangelical voting patterns, and the growing political visibility and power of evangelical Christians in the United States. This essay is written by evangelical Christians (...) who currently reside in the western part of the "red state" of Tennessee. Its purpose is to shed light on several dimensions of evangelical engagement in contemporary American public life. First, we assess what is actually known about the voting patterns and motivations of evangelical Christians in the 2004 presidential election. Second, we consider the moral vision that animates the most visible conservative evangelical activists and organizations. Third, we consider alternative evangelical political/ethical stances that are being pursued today. Fourth and finally, we move to the normative ethical level, suggesting the contours of an evangelical political ethic in the U.S. context. (shrink)

Most evangelical Christians have understood their faith, rooted in a high view of biblical authority, to be irreconcilable with "homosexuality." This has meant that devoted LGBT people raised as evangelical Christians must choose between their sexuality and their faith/religious community. This creates enormous psychic distress, turns LGBT Christians and their allies away from Christianity, and contributes to intense alienation between the gay community and evangelicals all over the world. But traditional evangelical attitudes on LGBT people and their relationships are beginning (...) to change. This paper offers a description of the state of the conversation in the North American evangelical community on this issue, and summarizes my own normative proposal. (shrink)

The U.S. turn toward torture tested the moral resources of all faiths, but perhaps especially of Christianity, which has the greatest number of adherents in the United States. This moral crucible revealed that American Christian scholars and leaders were generally blind to the resources available in relation to the resources available to address torture in a study of scripture, early Christian experience under empire, Christian abuses of suspected heretics, and the just war theory, all of which are considered here. Uses (...) of just war theory have revealed a fracture in that theory between deontological/virtue orientations and consequentialist reasoning, the latter proving susceptible to exploitation in defense of torture. Just war theory also revealed a lacuna of explicit reasoning about torture through the centuries, in a world where torture has so often been an instrument of state power. (shrink)

THE DISCOVERY OF DETAINEE ABUSE AT ABU GHRAIB IN 2004 FOLLOWED by the gradual disclosure or release of government documents signaling that decisive policy shifts by the U.S. government led directly to such abuses contributed to a dispiriting national debate about the morality of torture—a debate that continues today. An ongoing fracture between competing social-political-ethical visions in the evangelical world has been revealed and further exacerbated by this debate over torture. Politically conservative evangelicals restrict their policy engagement to issues such (...) as abortion and gay marriage and either steer clear of the torture issue or actually defend torture and attack antitorture efforts; centrist and progressive evangelicals favor a broader agenda that has included opposition to torture. Employing analytical categories derived from a study of Christian behavior in Nazi Europe as well as from personal experiences, this essay recounts and analyzes the torture debate as it occurred in the American evangelical community. The analysis yields the conclusion that white American evangelicalism has displayed structural theological-ethical weaknesses that make this community profoundly susceptible to state abuses of power. In response to this integrity-testing moment in evangelical life, this essay calls for a renewed evangelical commitment to a Christ-centered vision of the dignity and rights of every human being. (shrink)

David Levine and Mathew Bowker explore cultural and political trends organized around the conviction that the world we live in is a dangerous place to be, that it is dominated by hate and destruction, and that in it our primary task is to survive by carrying on a life-long struggle against hostile forces. Their method involves the analysis of public fantasies to reveal their hidden meanings. The central fantasy explored is the fantasy of a destroyed world, which appears most (...) commonly in the form of post-apocalyptic and dystopian narratives. Their special concern in the book is with defenses against the painful consequences of the dominance of this fantasy in the inner world, especially defenses involving the use of guilt to assure that something can be done to repair the destroyed world. Topics explored include: the formation of internal fortresses and their projection into the world outside, forms of guilt including bystander guilt and survivor guilt, the loss of and search for home, and manic forms of reparation. (shrink)

This book presents a selection of David Gauthier's writings on Thomas Hobbes and the theory of political contractarianism. The essays cover topics including Hobbes on law, social contract theory, and public reason.

In this book, David Levine explores the unknown self. The unknown self is the self existing as a potential to become something yet to be determined. The shape our personalities and life experiences take depends on a process. At the outset of this process, the self is, in a sense, a stranger; both to us and to others. The more this is the case, the greater the openness of the process of self-formation to a kind of freedom, which is (...) the freedom from predetermination of its outcome. In exploring this process, the book considers such topics as: the nature of inner freedom and its relationship to deliberation and choice; stranger anxiety and its connection to group dynamics and social connection; the internal factors that enable us to make the decisions that shape our lives and through our actions realise the ends embedded in our decisions; how our memories shape our choices and the lives we lead that result from them; what makes it possible for us to live comfortably with and depend on people we do not know; concern for the welfare of strangers and how our welfare can be secure in a world where others do not care about us or us about them. (shrink)

Is morality rational? In this book Gauthier argues that moral principles are principles of rational choice. He proposes a principle whereby choice is made on an agreed basis of cooperation, rather than according to what would give an individual the greatest expectation of value. He shows that such a principle not only ensures mutual benefit and fairness, thus satisfying the standards of morality, but also that each person may actually expect greater utility by adhering to morality, even though the choice (...) did not have that end primarily in view. In resolving what may appear to be a paradox, the author establishes morals on the firm foundation of reason. Gauthier's argument includes an account of value, linking it to preference and utility; a discussion of the curcumstances in which morality is unnecessary; and an application of morals by agreement to relations between peoples at different levels of development and different generations. Finally, he reflects on the assumptions about individuality and community made by his account of rationality and morality. (shrink)

A science sutra -- Non-self (Anatman) -- Impermanence (Anitya) -- Connectedness (Pratitya-Samutpada) -- Engagement, part 1 (Dukkha) -- Engagement, part 2 (Karma) -- Meaning (existential Biobuddhism?).

I THE NATURE OF MAN To understand morals and politics, understand man. Leviathan , 'that mortal god, to which we owe under the immortal God, our peace and ...

The principle of alternate possibilities (PAP), making the ability to do otherwise a necessary condition for moral responsibility, is supposed by Harry Frankfurt, John Fischer, and others to succumb to a peculiar kind of counterexample. The paper reviews the main problems with the counterexample that have surfaced over the years, and shows how most can be addressed within the terms of the current debate. But one problem seems ineliminable: because Frankfurt''s example relies on a counterfactual intervener to preclude alternatives to (...) the person''s action, it is not possible for it to preclude all alternatives (intervention that is contingent upon a trigger cannot bring it about that the trigger never occurred). This makes it possible for the determined PAPist to maintain that some pre-intervention deviation is always available to ground moral responsibility. In reply, the critic of PAP can examine all the candidate deviations and argue their irrelevance to moral responsibility (a daunting prospect); or the critic can dispense with counterfactual intervention altogether. The paper pursues the second of these strategies, developing three examples of noncounterfactual intervention in which (i) the agent has no alternatives (and a fortiori no morally relevant alternatives), yet (ii) there is just as much reason to think that the agent is morally responsible as there was in Frankfurt''s original example. The new counterexamples do suffer from one liability, but this is insufficient in the end to repair PAP''s conceptual connection between moral responsibility and alternate possibilities. (shrink)

The Logic of Leviathan The Moral and Political Theory of Thomas Hobbes.

The use of remember–know judgments to assess subjective experience associated with memory retrieval, or as measures of recollection and familiarity processes, has been controversial. In the current study we had participants think aloud during study and provide verbal reports at test for remember–know and confidence judgments. Results indicated that the vast majority of remember judgments for studied items were associated with recollection from study , but this correspondence was less likely for high-confidence judgments . Instead, high-confidence judgments were more likely (...) than remember judgments to be associated with incorrect recollection and a lack of recollection. Know judgments were typically associated with a lack of recollection , but still included recollection from the study context . Thus, although remember judgments provided fairly accurate assessments of retrieval including contextual details, know judgments did not provide accurate assessments of retrieval lacking contextual details. (shrink)

From a pre-publication review by the late Austrian economist, Don Lavoie, of George Mason University: -/- "The book's radical re-interpretation of property and contract is, I think, among the most powerful critiques of mainstream economics ever developed. It undermines the neoclassical way of thinking about property by articulating a theory of inalienable rights, and constructs out of this perspective a "labor theory of property" which is as different from Marx's labor theory of value as it is from neoclassicism. It traces (...) roots of such ideas in some fascinating and largely forgotten strands of the history of economics. It draws attention to the question of "responsibility" which neoclassicism has utterly lost sight of. It is startlingly fresh in its overall approach, and unusually well written in its presentation. ... It constitutes a better case for its economic democracy viewpoint than anything else in the literature." . (shrink)

Reason, egoism, and utilitarianism, by H. Sidgwick.--Is egoism reasonable? By G. E. Moore.--Ultimate principles and ethical egoism, by B. Medlin.--In defense of egoism, by J. Kalin.--Virtuous affections and self-love, by F. Hutcheson.--Our obligation to virtue, by D. Hume.--Duty and interest, by H. A. Prichard.--The natural condition of mankind and the laws of nature, by T. Hobbes.--Why should we be moral? By K. Baier.--Morality and advantage, by D. P. Gauthier.--Bibliographical essay (p. 181-184).

The Sociosexual Orientation Inventory (SOI; Simpson & Gangestad 1991) is a self-report measure of individual differences in human mating strategies. Low SOI scores signify that a person is sociosexually restricted, or follows a more monogamous mating strategy. High SOI scores indicate that an individual is unrestricted, or has a more promiscuous mating strategy. As part of the International Sexuality Description Project (ISDP), the SOI was translated from English into 25 additional languages and administered to a total sample of 14,059 people (...) across 48 nations. Responses to the SOI were used to address four main issues. First, the psychometric properties of the SOI were examined in cross-cultural perspective. The SOI possessed adequate reliability and validity both within and across a diverse range of modern cultures. Second, theories concerning the systematic distribution of sociosexuality across cultures were evaluated. Both operational sex ratios and reproductively demanding environments related in evolutionary-predicted ways to national levels of sociosexuality. Third, sex differences in sociosexuality were generally large and demonstrated cross-cultural universality across the 48 nations of the ISDP, confirming several evolutionary theories of human mating. Fourth, sex differences in sociosexuality were significantly larger when reproductive environments were demanding but were reduced to more moderate levels in cultures with more political and economic gender equality. Implications for evolutionary and social role theories of human sexuality are discussed. Key Words: culture; gender; mating; reproduction; sex differences; sex roles; sexual strategies; sociosexuality. (shrink)

One strategy in recent discussions of theological fatalism is to draw on Harry Frankfurt’s famous counterexamples to the principle of alternate possibilities (PAP) to defend human freedom from divine foreknowledge. For those who endorse this line, “Frankfurt counterexamples” are supposed to show that PAP is false, and this conclusion is then extended to the foreknowledge case. This makes it critical to determine whether Frankfurt counterexamples perform as advertised, an issue recently debated in this journal via a pair of articles by (...) David Widerker and John Martin Fischer. I suggest that this debate can be avoided: divine foreknowledge is itself aparadigmatic counterexample to PAP, requiring no support from suspect Frankfurt counterexamples. (shrink)

The World Health Assembly adopted the new International Health Regulations on May 23, 2005. The new IHR represent the culmination of a decade-long revision process and an historic development for international law and public health. The new IHR appear at a moment when public health, security, and democracy have become intertwined, addressed at the highest levels of government. The United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, for example, identified IHR revision as a priority for moving humanity toward “larger freedom.” This article analyzes (...) the new IHR and their implications for global health and security in the 21st century.The WHA instructed the WHO Director-General to revise the IHR in 1995 because the Regulations did not provide an effective framework for addressing the international spread of disease. Doubts about the IHR's effectiveness had, however, been present long before 1995. The critiques identified the narrow scope of the regulations, the lack of compliance by states, and the absence of a strategy for responding to rapid changes in public health's global economic and technological environments. (shrink)

Here a group of philosophers, economists and political theorists discuss the work of David Gauthier, which seeks to show that rational individuals would accept certain moral constraints on their choices. The possibilities and limitations of a contractarian approach to issues of justice is analyzed.

Dramatic changes or revolutions in a field of science are often made by outsiders or 'trespassers,' who are not limited by the established, 'expert' approaches. Each essay in this diverse collection shows the fruits of intellectual trespassing and poaching among fields such as economics, Kantian ethics, Platonic philosophy, category theory, double-entry accounting, arbitrage, algebraic logic, series-parallel duality, and financial arithmetic.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Evangelical Peacemakers: Gospel Engagement in a War-Torn World ed. by David P. GusheeLisa Sowle CahillEvangelical Peacemakers: Gospel Engagement in a War-Torn World Edited by David P. Gushee EUGENE, OR: WIPF AND STOCK, 2013. 135 PP. $21.00This short volume collects papers from a 2012 Evangelicals for Peace conference at Georgetown University. This should not mislead potential readers as to the book's timeliness, coherence, significance, or ecumenical (...) and interreligious appeal. Much of its incisive analysis owes to the editor's preface, introductory chapter, and concluding critical discussion of the positions represented, including his own.Four chapters lay out the Christian arguments for just war, biblical pacifism, and the late Glen Stassen's "just peacemaking theory," presenting ten practices to deter or transform violent conflict. Although Gushee's chapter would have to be placed among just war theorists, he stresses that war must be a last resort to defend innocent life, carried out with the least violence possible. Gushee appreciates the paradox of expressing love through acts of violence. Lisa Sharon Harper insists this goes beyond paradox to outright denial of the redemption Jesus brings, failing to honor the image of God in all persons. Following Anglican theologian Oliver O'Donovan, Erik Patterson sees publicly authorized force to protect society as a positive Christian duty. Striving to unite these two sides in practice, Stassen derives alternative, nonviolent strategies from the Sermon on the Mount to transform conflict at the local, national, regional, and international levels.But are such efforts successful? Can and do Christian peacemakers actually bring about significant societal and political change? Twelve further chapters offer experience-based evidence from Evangelical organizations and ministries that the answer is yes. Authors describe initiatives at home and abroad, giving special attention to Christian–Muslim outreach and understanding. Examples range from Evangelical pastors and churches welcoming Muslims and mosques; to educational ventures in Pakistani madrassas; to organizing Afghan youth as "peace volunteers"; to conflict mediation in Egypt and Indonesia; and the memoir of a Lockerbie bombing victim's sister, who went personally to reconcile with Muammar Gaddafi. Sojourners editor Jim Wallis gives plenty of illustrations of the power in the United States of massive civil disobedience and efforts to pressure Congress or the president through letter and phone campaigns, protests, media attention, and high-level advocacy. Christian political resistance and mobilization can no longer be dismissed as utopian, naïve, or marginal. In many cases, it works.Gushee honestly and acutely articulates why pacifism and just war have had longstanding places in Christian political ethics, and why their adherents are [End Page 206] not easily reconciled. First, Jesus was nonviolent, and even those who construe rare and restrained violence as a form of neighbor love cannot deny that Jesus himself never expressed love in this way (121). Second, although Jesus calls disciples to participate in God's reign, that reign is but "eschatologically" present in a fallen world (119). Violence-transforming practices do not always work (125). Reconciling love may define kingdom discipleship, but when do we gauge love-in-action by the "present" reality of the kingdom, and when by the "not yet"? Third, according to Gushee, there is a difference (not separation) between church and government. This yields the conundrum that although their roles are different, Christians participate in both spheres, responsible not only for the peacemaking activities of the church but also for their social effects and for building just structures (5–6).Gushee does not claim to resolve these paradoxes. The collection underscores a more urgent challenge: to embody and expand Evangelical peacemaking as an integral dimension of discipleship and a powerful form of real-world politics. This book furthers theological-ethical analysis while leading scholars, students, and congregations to become active agents of change.Lisa Sowle CahillBoston CollegeCopyright © 2017 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

The incident in May-June 2007 involving a U.S. citizen traveling internationally while infected with drug-resistant tuberculosis involved the U.S. federal government's application of its quarantine and isolation powers. The incident and the isolation order raised numerous important issues for public health governance, law, and ethics. This article explores many of these issues by examining how the exercise of quarantine powers provides a powerful lens through which to understand how societies respond to and attempt to govern threats posed by dangerous, contagious (...) pathogens. The article considers historical aspects of governmental power to quarantine and isolate individuals and groups; analyzes the current state of quarantine and isolation law in the United States in light of the recent incident with drug-resistant tuberculosis; and explores global aspects of public health governance and law highlighted by this incident. (shrink)