Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics

In this rehabilitation of the relational transaction of compromising, we follow Paul Ricoeur in arguing that at the intersection of diverse orders of value, compromising rises to the level of a moral duty. Thus, an ethics of compromise, rooted in recognition theory, provides a virtuous means of moral engagement with otherness in the context of pluralism. Virtue theory needs to move in an interactive direction by (a) enlisting moral epistemology, for a shift in focus from the individual agent (personal integrity) to the interaction of agents (social cooperation); (b) attending to the political theorists and sociologists who ground meaningful compromise in mutual recognition; and (c) tailoring such recognition to bounded human capacities for rationality and empathy, via “psychological realism”—all in service of attenuating the discomfort and even moral pain that agents may feel when called upon to compromise.

Recent immigrants and refugees are the growing edge both of religious diversity and of working poverty in the United States. In light of this phenomenon and the rise of the “religion of neoliberalism,” it is time for intentionally interfaith programs to include class analysis and theological reflection on class in their work. Drawing on examples from fieldwork, this article contends that interfaith dialogue and interfaith organizing models should learn from each other to (a) prioritize the leadership and issues of religiously diverse low-wage workers and (b) develop theologically rich foundations for this work. The article closes by offering one such Christian resource: an empire-critical read of Galatians 2 that calls us to unite across abiding doctrinal difference by “remembering the poor.”

Postcolonial theory ought to inform how we do Christian social ethics in North America. This essay engages postcolonial critiques of the “impossibility” that intellectuals can address the needs of unrepresented groups (Spivak). It also examines postcolonial theorists’ move to localize European thinking and, in so doing, to recognize European thinking as both “indispensable and inadequate” (Chakrabarty) to justice-oriented work. The essay engages contemporary postcolonial theory with the writing and work of Howard Thurman, William Stuart Nelson, and Bayard Rustin, midcentury black American Christian intellectuals, in order to show how postcolonial theory may be useful for contemporary Christian social ethics.

This essay considers how Augustine’s writings on the imago Dei might shed light on contemporary human dignity discourse and on debates about the sources, uses, and translations of these two terms. Attending to developments in Augustine’s expositions of scriptural texts and metaphors related to the imago Dei, I argue that his writings exhibit three distinct conceptions of the imago Dei that correspond to three accounts of the imago Dei and human dignity offered by Pico, Luther, and Aquinas, respectively. This plurality of meanings suggests that appeals to an “Augustinian” understanding of the imago Dei or human dignity threatens to confuse rather than resolve debates about the sources and uses of these terms. As long as Augustine remains an influential voice within the Christian tradition regarding the meaning of the imago Dei, the question of its translation into the secular idiom of human dignity will remain a live one because Augustine himself inaugurated quite diverse yet legitimate modes of interpreting these central tropes.

This essay examines how Michael Walzer and Dietrich Bonhoeffer understand practical moral dilemmas—what Walzer calls the problem of dirty hands—and how both conceive of the solution to the problem in terms of the concept of judgment. Walzer’s judgment is strictly political, and tragic; Bonhoeffer’s retains this political account but grounds it theologically, so as to overcome its finally tragic element.

This essay constructs a moral theology of reading scripture by retrieving habits and virtues of early evangelical readers that have potential to help evangelicals reengage one another on divisive topics such as marriage equality. I use this moral theology of reading scripture to diagnose power dynamics operative in commonsense assumptions around gender and plain-sense interpretive frameworks that privilege literal interpretations. I interact with the historical trajectory of evangelicalism that values conversion as the telos of reading scripture. Continental Pietists also read in a spirit of faithful dissent, allowing them to cast the interpretive net widely, to welcome new readers, and to challenge social barriers that excluded marginalized voices. Faithful dissent is a necessary habit that generates courage to be open to the Spirit’s work of blessing and renewal in the world.

A selective excavation of labor history (United States and global) and an analysis of recent worker experiences in Detroit’s bankruptcy expose the conflict of rights that shapes the US capitalist society. Masked by myths, forbidden memories, and selective values, the trumpeting of “workers’ rights” in the United States today weakens workers’ claims to rights, denying many “an existence worthy of human dignity” (UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights). Thirty years ago, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Economic Justice for All called for a “New American Experiment” establishing positive economic human rights. Today, the problems they identified have worsened, and the conversion they called for is absent from dominant political and economic discourse. The survival strategies of marginalized communities suggest a praxis of conversion creating possibilities for a future of human dignity.

This article examines the stigma surrounding mental health, drawing out implications for Christian theological anthropology and ethics. As I argue, the stigma surrounding maternal madness engenders the sociocultural and religious veiling of affective and sexual difference within Western Christian milieu reflecting a heteropatriarchal framework for articulating the value of bodies, emotions, and control. In practice and theory, this framework places mothers with affective mood disorders outside of economies (structures and practices) of care and goodness. Such logic veils the ways in which maternal madness calls us to embrace the transformative power of grace as dis-ease through (a) welcoming unpredictability within God, self, and others; (b) resisting easy fixes; and (c) actively discerning the politics of emotion.

I contend in this essay that there are theological and ethical problems associated with the application of the vices of “gluttony” and “sloth” to people of higher-than-average weight. Relying on an analysis grounded in liberation theology and fat studies, I call for the church to encourage an end to discrimination based on bodily shape and size. I draw from poststructuralist theory, biblical studies, and church historical resources as well as contemporary medical and sociological studies of diet to build my case. I then use the vices of “gluttony” and “sloth” as a lens through which to understand the contributions of the food industry to global weight and health patterns.

Although the new ethical challenges posed by biotechnology and digital surveillance have been the focus of close attention and heated debate among Christian ethicists, comparatively little attention has been dedicated to far more ubiquitous technologies: the internet and our smartphones. Yet evidence is mounting among cognitive scientists, sociologists, and psychologists that the internet and related media technology are profoundly reshaping human thought, behavior, and sociality (in some ways helpfully, in some ways harmfully). This is surely a matter for ethical concern if there ever was one. This essay argues that the medieval concept of the vice of curiositas is an apt diagnosis of the ways in which digital media can absorb and scatter our attention, often in pathological ways. I first offer a summary of what earlier Christian authors meant by curiosity, and I classify their concerns into a typology of seven forms of vicious curiosity. I then show how the phenomenon of online pornography addiction in particular and other forms of internet addiction more generally confirm the explanatory power of this older concept and especially Augustine’s distinction of the “lust of the flesh” and “the lust of the eyes.” I conclude by suggesting how the grammar of “vice” and “virtue” allows us to embrace the value of new technologies while consciously cultivating strategies of resistance to their harmful tendencies.