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1. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 34 > Issue: 1

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selected essays

2. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 34 > Issue: 1
Jean Porter

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Does morality depend ultimately on the rationally compelling force of natural law, or on God's authoritative commands? These are not exclusive alternatives, of course, but they represent two widely influential ways of understanding the moral order seen in relation to divine wisdom, goodness, and power. Each alternative underscores some elements of theistic belief while deemphasizing others. Theories of the natural law emphasize the intrinsic goodness of the natural order to the potential detriment of divine freedom, whereas divine command theories underscore God's sovereign freedom but at the risk of implying that the moral order is arbitrary and God's will is, at best, opaque. It might seem that these alternatives are not only distinct but fundamentally at odds, but we may well ask whether this is necessarily the case. Natural law and divine command theories of ethics have persisted because each seems to preserve some key elements of theistic belief, and for that reason, theists have a stake in holding on to each perspective if possible.
3. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 34 > Issue: 1
Robert Audi

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There are many versions of naturalism as an overall position, and there are several significant and influential kinds of naturalism in ethics. The latter views may or may not be realist, and, if realist, may or may not be reductive in one or another sense. The antirealist versions include the noncognitivist view that moral claims do not ascribe genuine properties and, unlike assertions of fact, are not strictly speaking true or false. Which of these views, if any, are harmonious with theism, particularly the monotheistic view that God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent? More broadly, which, if any, are a good basis for ethical reflection in the field of religion, conceived broadly as including nontheistic religions? One would think that, whether or not divine directives determine our obligations, the very existence of God would guarantee that there is a real distinction between right and wrong–or anyway that there are normatively authoritative standards of conduct, as there may be even in nontheistic religions. This essay will clarify naturalism in ethics, identify some major options for theologically oriented ethics, and sketch an ethical view that might capture many of the best elements in both perspectives.
4. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 34 > Issue: 1
Ronald W. Duty

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This article argues that congregations should be seen as grassroots public moral agents, on the ground working to bring what they discern as God's preferred future into being. Deliberations among congregations of all social backgrounds are a way of doing ethics "polycentrically," without a dominant center. Because cultural and social boundaries are permeable and people in various social groups can imaginatively enter the worlds of people unlike themselves, they can engage those perspectives morally on an equal footing. The essay addresses ethicists' participation in congregations' moral deliberation and action, and concludes with a plea for theological ethicists to consider congregations in their work.
5. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 34 > Issue: 1
Willis Jenkins

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Problems that overwhelm moral agency challenge methods of ethics that prioritize social practices. This essay explains how climate change exceeds moral competencies, criticizes climate ethics for eliding the difficulties, and the attempts to vindicate a practice-based approach by arguing for the possibility of doing ethics from incompetent projects. However, because incompetence easily becomes the excuse of injustice, I illustrate the argument with an indigenous peoples' climate justice project that both exemplifies the creativity my approach needs and bears a strong critique of its method.
6. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 34 > Issue: 1
Julia Watts Belser

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Given the unprecedented scope and stakes of contemporary environmental crisis, ethicists have raised critical questions about whether traditional religious texts can speak in a meaningful way to climate change and other environmental risks in the anthropocene. Building on the ethical urgency of the environmental justice movement, this essay offers a feminist reading of Jewish narratives from the Babylonian Talmud that centers attention on issues of power, privilege, and social inequality in the midst of disaster. Talmudic tales of the destruction of Jerusalem critique the moral oblivion of wealthy residents who failed to act in response to crisis. Articulating a Jewish feminist reconstituative ethics, the author uses these tales to trace the ethical costs of epistemologies of ignorance—the complex strategies and social processes through which privileged communities cultivate ignorance of environmental suffering, maintain social distance from environmental risk, and disown moral culpability for environmental injustice.
7. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 34 > Issue: 1
Kathryn D. Blanchard, Kevin J. O'Brien

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Many environmentalists believe that the ethos of capitalism is a primary cause of environmental degradation, arguing that only a fundamental shift away from the materialism and competition of the marketplace will allow humans to live within the earth's carrying capacity. A different strand of contemporary thought, free market environmentalism, argues the opposite: private ownership, individual choice, and the creative forces of human ingenuity are the best available means to solve ecological problems. This essay considers how Christian ecological ethics should respond to free market environmentalism, identifying its moral claims and the theoretical questions it poses to our field while also critiquing the shortcomings that accompany its economic view of human nature and character. We advocate a pragmatic approach that engages in a mutually educative dialogue toward the shared goal of protecting the earth and all its inhabitants.
8. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 34 > Issue: 1
Gerald W. Schlabach

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Both within and among churches that have traditionally held to just war teaching, various formulas in the last fifty years have allowed for the recognition that Christian pacifism is a respectable tradition alongside just war. It is not obvious, however, how historic peace churches can officially reciprocate with the same kind of ecumenical generosity by recognizing the legitimacy of the just war tradition. To do so, after all, would seem to require giving up their very claim to the confessional status of nonviolence, thus undermining their very identities as historic peace churches. Glen Stassen's well-accepted exegesis of Jesus's Sermon on the Mount opens up an unexpected path out of this impasse. If he is right that the sermon is organized around a consistent succession of triads in which Jesus first named "traditional righteousness,'' then diagnosed a "vicious cycle," then presented a "transforming initiative" for escaping that cycle, then the relationship between just war and pacifism can be reconceived in entirely fresh ways.
9. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 34 > Issue: 1
Letitia M. Campbell, Yvonne C. Zimmerman

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This essay argues that the antitrafficking movement's dominant rhetorical and conceptual framework of human trafficking as "sold sex" has significant limitations that deserve greater critical moral reflection. This framework overlooks key issues of social and economic injustice, and eclipses the experiences of marginalized people and communities, including immigrants and gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer people, whose welfare and empowerment have been key concerns for progressive people of faith. By asking what insights progressive Christian social ethics might contribute to shaping alternative perspectives on antitrafficking analysis and activism, we explore progressive Christian critiques of neoliberalism and feminist critiques of the heteronormative family as resources for crafting analyses of and responses to human trafficking that foreground queer, feminist, and antiracist commitments.
10. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 34 > Issue: 1
Rebecca J. Levi

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What can the Jewish tradition contribute to the current public debate about vaccination? Much of the rhetoric surrounding vaccine refusal appeals to concepts of individual autonomy and fears of political and intellectual authority, claiming that the individual is the best expert on his or her own health and on whether to actively deny accepted medical consensus. Unlike many other health decisions, vaccine refusal has direct and measurable consequences for one's community. The Jewish tradition's emphasis on community and the well-being of the collective, as well as its tradition of respect for intellectual authority, can be a critical support to the medical community in encouraging wide-spread vaccination.
11. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 34 > Issue: 1
Joshua Daniel

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This essay proposes two examples of avant-garde theatre, Jerzy Grotowski's poor theatre and Augusto Boal's theatre of the oppressed, as resources for Christian ethics. Both pursue theater as bodily copresent interaction whose moral labor is the liberation of the human body from conventional gestures for the sake of authentic encounter and from oppressive postures for the sake of social intervention. Focusing on the body in this way reveals that the place of narrative, while essential to Christian ethics, is ambiguous. The outcome of this argument is the possibility of combining the insights of monastic and liberation accounts of the moral life in order to release moral action in microsocial encounters, thus recovering the constitutive humility of Christian ethics.

book reviews

12. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 34 > Issue: 1
Paul J. Wadell

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13. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 34 > Issue: 1
Daniel Cosacchi

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14. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 34 > Issue: 1
Louis E. Newman

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15. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 34 > Issue: 1
Glen Stassen

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16. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 34 > Issue: 1
Michael Sohn

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17. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 34 > Issue: 1
Werner Wolbert

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18. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 34 > Issue: 1
Vincent Lloyd

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19. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 34 > Issue: 1
William Meyer

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20. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 34 > Issue: 1
René M. Micallef

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