Abstract

This chapter calls Christian ethicists to engage the Bible as responsibly “involved” readers, that is, as readers seeking to become aware of how their various relational entanglements shape their reading and writing about the Bible. Such awareness requires attention to ethicists’ own normative commitments, and how those commitments relate to normative claims discernible in biblical texts. The chapter surveys approaches to ethics that prioritize ethnographic study of moral worlds, foundationalist normative evaluation, political critique, or the development of a single moral tradition considered in isolation from others, suggesting that each approach tends to minimize aspects of ethicists’ involvements with the world, including with texts such as the Bible. James McClendon’s “baptist” ethics are then described as an alternative approach that emphasizes a broader range of ethicists’ involvements. McClendon’s treatment of the “principalities and powers” passages in the Bible shows him to be a more comprehensively involved reader, and helps ethicists grapple with their own powers of reading. The conclusion indicates where McClendon minimizes his racialized and gendered involvements, and urges ethicists to read the Bible with the marginalized.