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1. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 36 > Issue: 2

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selected essays

2. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 36 > Issue: 2
William Schweiker

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This essay presents an apology for theological humanism drawn from Christian sources as the most adequate ethical stance for respecting and enhancing the integrity of human and nonhuman life into the global future. After clarifying the meaning and task of an apology, the essay begins with the ethical challenge posed by global dynamics and then explores the endangerment to future life by the expansion of human power. In order to formulate an ethics in this fraught context, the essay then explores the relation between the discourses of identity and responsibility as two dominant patterns of thought in current ethics and argues that claims about "identity" must be situated within an ethics of responsibility. The apology concludes by uncovering the ethical meaning of theological humanism in terms of Christian affirmation of being fully alive in love through Christ and before God.
3. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 36 > Issue: 2
Hans Joas

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In my writings on the history of human rights, the Axial Age, and the genesis of values, I have treated the experience of self-transcendence and the attribution of sacredness as a fundamental anthropological phenomenon. But this fundamental fact of ideal formation has a flip side: The sacralization of particular meanings is originally always also the sacralization of a collectivity. This I call the danger of self-sacralization. In this contribution I offer a brief, historically oriented sociological sketch of the tensions between "religion" and "politics" in light of this assumption, discuss H. Richard Niebuhr's relevance for this area of study, and illustrate my thesis with regard to contemporary cases where the danger of self-sacralization is particularly urgent.
4. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 36 > Issue: 2
Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela

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What does it mean to be human in the aftermath of mass trauma and violence? When victims and perpetrators of gross human rights violations live in the same country, and sometimes as neighbors, what strategies can help individuals and communities deal with trauma in a way that restores dignity to victims and enables perpetrators to be accountable for their crimes? This essay explores these questions and discusses examples that illustrate attempts to create sites for listening, for moral reflection, and for initiating the difficult process of dialogue at community and individual levels after mass trauma and violence. It is argued that in the aftermath of historical trauma, restoring human bonds requires a new vocabulary of rehumanization. This new mode of being human calls for a "reparative humanism" that opens toward a horizon of an ethics of care for the sake of a transformed society. Examples drawn from two sources are discussed to explore the idea of an "ethics of care.'' First, insights from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of South Africa are discussed to show how the work of the TRC enabled dialogic spaces in which new subjectivities emerged in the encounter between victims/survivors and perpetrators. Second, the essay engages in a reinterpretation of Simon Wiesenthal's book The Sunflower as a story that continues to pose a challenge about how to reclaim a sense of being human in the aftermath of unspeakable crimes against humanity. The essay concludes with a critical reflection on Emmanuel Levinas's ethics of responsibility and suggests that it is a compelling vision in societies facing a violent and traumatic past.
5. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 36 > Issue: 2
Grégoire Catta

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Francisco de Vitoria offers a stimulating vision of moral cosmopolitanism that foreshadows the cosmopolitanism implicit in contemporary Catholic social teaching. After drawing a distinction between mora/cosmopolitanism and politica/cosmopolitanism, this essay retrieves Vitoria's cosmopolitan vision in his efforts to defend "the rights of the Indians" through concepts such as subjective rights, ius gentium, the right to travel, and the inherent human dignity of all people. Nonetheless, he opposes all claims of universal sovereignty. Vitoria thus appears as advocating moral but not political cosmopolitanism, perhaps because his political imagination is shaped by monarchies, with their totalitarian tendencies, rather than by modern democracies. The final part of the essay explores how the distinction between different kinds of cosmopolitanism illuminates the variety of positions on the subject to be found in contemporary Catholic social teaching.
6. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 36 > Issue: 2
John D. Carlson

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Recent religious reflection on the nature of justice divides largely along two camps: Nicholas Wolterstorff and others perceive strong compatibility between Christian thought and justice-as-natural rights, while "right-order" theorists committed to premodern notions of justice, such as Oliver O'Donovan, challenge the theological integrity of rights. Much is at stake in this debate. O'Donovan worries that Christian enthrallment with justice-as-rights betokens conceptual desperation. Wolterstorff argues that justice-as-right-order discounts human dignity. There is some truth to each claim, although each thinker also overlooks important constructive possibilities. This essay offers an extended critique of justice-as-rights, identifying crucial missing biblical and theological features. It then sketches out a contemporary right-order account that responds to Wolterstorff s concerns about human dignity. The insights uncovered in this theological debate extend beyond Christian ethics in ways that reconceive the pursuit of justice in religiously pluralistic polities.
7. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 36 > Issue: 2
Neil Amer

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I document the historically unprecedented challenges and opportunities attending the prospect of devising ecumenical ethics endorsed by both Catholics and Protestants. First, I offer several reasons for attending to the connection between ecumenism and ethics. This topic has received insufficient attention from scholars of ethics, especially given the importance and challenge of reaching a common moral witness. Second, I review previous comparisons of Catholic and Protestant approaches in ethics. Such work transitions over the twentieth century from dismissive to appreciative. Third, I show how one of the key methodological differentiators softens in recent decades as there emerges an increasing consensus on the moral sources of scripture, natural law, and history. I conclude by emphasizing the humility required for progress in the pursuit of any ecumenical ethics. The route to a common moral witness that manifests the divinely given unity of the church is continual conversion through corporate dialogue on a global scale.
8. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 36 > Issue: 2
David S. Robinson

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Dietrich Bonhoeffer's account of a transnational "confessing" church, developed with allusion to W.E.B. Du Bois, offers critical potential for addressing the problem of the global color line. To make this case, I first trace the ways in which Du Bois's and Bonhoeffer's German-American exchange studies contribute to their critical standpoints. Bonhoeffer's "Protestantism without Reformation" is then examined to show that its view of American denominations is not mere German paternalism but a critique of how atomized churches can mask racial segregation, even as it takes seriously America's founding as a "nation of refugees." Finally, Bonhoeffer's references to intercultural encounter, particularly with respect to the Jewish diaspora in his later Ethics, provide for the extension of his ecclesiology beyond Germany and the "West." Specifically, Du Bois's own creedal language and pan-Africanism require that a truly global confession of the "form of Christ" must attend to unrecognized histories from the "Black Atlantic."
9. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 36 > Issue: 2
Jermaine M. McDonald

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Police and protesters clashed in the aftermath of fatal police violence against unarmed black men in Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore, Maryland. Commentators on all sides of the public discourse about these events invoked the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. to ground their opinions of the violent encounters as well as the public protests and protest movements that ensued in response. I explore the competing invocations, reflecting on what about King captures the American public imagination, what gets omitted, and what is at stake in the debate. Finally, I examine how King's theological ethics can both inform the means of public protest and address the abuses of American state power.
10. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 36 > Issue: 2
Nathaniel Van Yperen

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This essay offers a constructive, ecological extension of Martin Luther King Jr.'s social ethics using a phrase from Henry David Thoreau's classic, Walden, that King often used: "improved means to an unimproved end." King argued that this Thoreauvian theme "summarized" modern life; in particular, he employed this idea to address the systemic, interconnected forces of racism, materialism, and militarism. This essay argues that King's work is fertile ground for the cultivation of an ecological ethic capable of resisting the logic of commodification of the West.
11. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 36 > Issue: 2
Kerry Danner

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Economic cooperative practices increase the ability of agents and communities to resist or curb ecologically damaging practices and to adapt to inevitable cultural and material transitions due to climate change. The history of African American economic cooperatives demonstrates how such efforts can build practical and leadership skills, transform local culture, and lay groundwork for wider collective action. Such practices fit Willis Jenkins's model of prophetic pragmatism insofar as they draw on inherited traditions and transform culture and us. Contemporary Christians and church communities can encourage economic cooperation as a form of resistance to ecological destruction and, in doing so, encourage the habits of humility, hope, and courage.

special report

12. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 36 > Issue: 2
Stacey M. Floyd-Thomas

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book reviews

13. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 36 > Issue: 2
Oluwatomisin Oredein

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14. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 36 > Issue: 2
Rubén Rosario Rodríguez

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15. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 36 > Issue: 2
Rebecca Todd Peters

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16. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 36 > Issue: 2
Emily Reimer-Barry

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17. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 36 > Issue: 2
Andy Draycott

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18. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 36 > Issue: 2
Kathryn Lilla Cox

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19. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 36 > Issue: 2
David Barr

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20. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 36 > Issue: 2
Jeffrey Morgan

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