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101. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 33 > Issue: 1
Stanley Hauerwas Bearing Reality: A Christian Meditation
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In this essay I draw on the work of novelist J. M. Coetzee and philosophers Cora Diamond, Stanley Cavell, and Stephen Mulhall to reflect on what it might mean to do Christian ethics without denying the "difficulty of reality." I then turn to John Howard Yoder's 1987 SCE presidential address to show how his call to see history doxologically enables the Christian to acknowledge the "difficulty of reality" without succumbing to despair. To acknowledge humanity's limitations without falling into despair or hopeless skepticism is only possible because the community founded on the crucified and risen Lord means we never bear reality alone.
102. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 33 > Issue: 2
Frits de Lange Loving Later Life: Aging and the Love Imperative
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The biblical love imperative—reframed as "Care for the aging other, as you care for your aging self"—is fundamental for an ethics of aging. Kantian, utilitarian, and eudaemonist theories assume an ageless, rational, active individual. Frail old age, however, comes with dependency and decay. An ethics of aging therefore needs to be relational and must account for the fear of aging. The elderly remind us that death is inescapable; the body, fallible; and self-esteem, transitory. The love command offers a relational ethics that overcomes the fear of aging and enables us to see that love for our aging self makes good elderly care possible.
103. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 33 > Issue: 2
Christopher Spotts The Possibilities of the Hebrew Sabbath for Black Theology
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Within the sources of black theology no narrative is more important than the Exodus. Its importance within the slave religion and the civil rights movement has made it foundational for understanding the nature of God, the work of Christ, and the purposes of humanity. However, the Sabbath, which is the Israelite response to the Exodus, has not been adopted as a part of the Exodus narrative. As such, it has been underutilized as a form of social ethical critique. A rediscovery of the Sabbath provides a meaningful way of reinforcing the extant concerns of black theology and providing avenues for new exploration and conversation. The purpose of this essay is to point out a few of those meaningful avenues and to argue for continued exploration of the theological and ethical possibilities presented by the Sabbath.
104. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 33 > Issue: 2
Miguel A. De La Torre Doing Latina/o Ethics from the Margins of Empire: Liberating the Colonized Mind
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The uncritical appropriation of Eurocentric ethical paradigms can be detrimental to disenfranchised communities of color, especially the Hispanic community. This essay argues for an ethical methodology rooted in the hopelessness found within Latino/a marginalized communities. Advocating for an ethics para joder (screw with) disrupts a normative Eurocentric ethical discourse that at times normalizes and legitimizes "empire." The essay begins by casting a critical gaze at the academy before analyzing the overall social context in which Hispanics find themselves.
105. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 33 > Issue: 2
Judith W. Kay Middle Agents as Marginalized: How the Rwanda Genocide Challenges Ethics from the Margins
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A narrow conception of who counts among the marginalized can blind ethicists to the precarious position of groups who function as middle agents between elites and the lower class. The imposition of middle agency on such groups is a form of oppression that leaves them vulnerable to abandonment and attack. In Rwanda, discourses emanating from colonialism, classism, and racism obscured the Tutsi as middle agents, despite white Catholics' dedication to the poor. By neglecting to recognize middle agency as a type of marginalization, missionaries contributed negatively to the genocide. Liberatory practices are recommended so that ethicists can expose and challenge the dynamics of middle agency and include all the marginalized in liberation strategies.
106. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 33 > Issue: 2
Karen V. Guth To See from Below: Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Mandates and Feminist Ethics
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Scholars celebrate Dietrich Bonhoeffer as a "prophet of justice for the oppressed" who identified the need "to see the great events of world history from below." But few address the thorniest aspect of Bonhoeffer's ethics for the marginalized: the mandates or divine commissions in church, marriage, work, and government made concrete within certain orders of relationship and authority. Bonhoeffer's marriage mandate poses particular problems as it reinforces unjust social structures. Fortunately, striking similarities between Bonhoeffer's ethics and feminist thought—attention to concrete contexts, the role of emotion in moral reasoning, opposition to harmful dualisms, and emphasis on relationality—suggest that feminists are well-placed to critique and reconstruct Bonhoeffer's account. Construing the mandates as contexts for "genuine communities of argument" repurposes them to combat rather than condone injustice.
107. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 33 > Issue: 2
Maria Gwyn McDowell Seeing Gender: Orthodox Liturgy, Orthodox Personhood, Unorthodox Exclusion
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Eastern Orthodox theology affirms the liturgy as an anticipatory icon of God's reign that establishes a pattern of relationships by which Christians are called to live in and for the world. Taking at face value an Orthodox theological claim that the liturgy is the sole source for deriving ethical actions, Orthodox theologians typically address the question of female priesthood within the existing visual parameters of the liturgy in which men exercise authority. Given patterns addressed by both aspects of ritual theory and contemporary anthropology, the articulation of anthropologies that likewise limit the authority and capability of women is to be expected. However, these defenses of the exclusion of women from full participation in the liturgy, including sacramental ordination, are the result of a reductionistic view of the priesthood, the liturgy, and human persons. Neither Orthodox personalism, nor its ethical implications, nor a few rarely glimpsed snippets of the Orthodox tradition support such reductionism. Rather, recognition of the unique capabilities of women by the community and their welcome participation within the community encourages the joy that underlies the transformation of a people who live for the life of the world.
108. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 33 > Issue: 2
Autumn Alcott Ridenour The Coming of Age: Curse or Calling?: Toward a Christological Interpretation of Aging as Call in the Theology of Karl Barth and W. H. Vanstone
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While Simone de Beauvoir's inaugural reflection in The Coming of Age depicting the aging experience as one of social marginalization and lament seemingly endures, a surprising source for offering hope to aging persons may be found in the theology of Karl Barth in congruence with W. H. Vanstone. This essay reconsiders the meaning of aging within a Christological interpretation that not only values the various life stages along with intergenerational relationships but also offers meaning for the embodiment of active and passive agency during the aging stage of life.
109. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 33 > Issue: 2
Karen Peterson-Iyer Mobile Porn?: Teenage Sexting and Justice for Women
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The practice of sending and receiving sexually explicit images via mobile phones ("sexting") has grown exponentially in recent years with the accessibility of cellular technology. This essay examines this practice, when conducted by teenagers, in light of a Christian feminist approach to justice. Without harmfully exhorting girls' sexual "purity", we must nevertheless develop a moral framework that challenges the practice of sexting while simultaneously empowering young women to claim primary control over their own sexual experience. For Christians, justice, addressed to sexting, must attend to sexual injustice even as it promotes genuine freedom, embodiment, mutuality and relational intimacy, and equality.
110. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 33 > Issue: 2
Nichole M. Flores Latina/o Families: Solidarity and the Common Good
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Solidarity is a key virtue in Christian family ethics. Emphasizing the institutional and practical dimensions of this principle, this essay claims that inter- and intrafamily solidarity are critical aspects of a Christian family ethics emanating from Latina/o theological anthropology and family practices. Interfamily solidarity, exemplified by the Latina/o family practice of extended communal family, emphasizes the integral dynamic between family solidarity and the common good. Intrafamily solidarity simultaneously critiques abusive dynamics in Latina/o families while asserting the necessary dialectic between individual and familial flourishing. This articulation of family solidarity asserts a robust role for extended communal families in fostering cooperation across difference in civic life.
111. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 33 > Issue: 2
James W. McCarty The Embrace of Justice: The Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Miroslav Volf, and the Ethics of Reconciliation
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Drawing on the final report of the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission and on theology, this essay builds on Miroslav Volf's social Trinitarian account of reconciliation as embrace. Specifically, this essay argues for the necessity of various forms of justice in social and political reconciliation and against the priority of forgiveness in reconciliation argued for by Volf. The heart of this argument is a theological anthropology that claims that to be created in the image of a perichoretic God who is Trinity is necessarily to be interdependent beings. This interdependence is manifest in the interpersonal, social, and political relations that constitute and are constituted by individual humans and the institutions in which they live. Therefore, the creation and maintenance of just institutions is necessary for the formation of persons capable of practicing reconciliation, and for reconciled persons to live within.
112. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 34 > Issue: 1
Gerald W. Schlabach "Confessional" Nonviolence and the Unity of the Church: Can Christians Square the Circle?
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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.
113. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 34 > Issue: 1
Joshua Daniel The Human Body and the Humility of Christian Ethics: An Encounter with Avant-Garde Theatre
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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.
114. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 34 > Issue: 1
Rebecca J. Levi Community, Authority, and Autonomy: Jewish Resources for the Vaccine Wars
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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.
115. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 34 > Issue: 1
Willis Jenkins Atmospheric Powers, Global Injustice, and Moral Incompetence: Challenges to Doing Social Ethics from Below
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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.
116. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 34 > Issue: 1
Robert Audi Ethical Naturalism as a Challenge to Theological Ethics
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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.
117. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 34 > Issue: 1
Jean Porter Divine Commands, Natural Law, and the Authority of God
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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.
118. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 34 > Issue: 1
Julia Watts Belser Privilege and Disaster: Toward a Jewish Feminist Ethics of Climate Silence and Environmental Unknowing
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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.
119. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 34 > Issue: 1
Ronald W. Duty Doing Christian Ethics on the Ground Polycentrically: Cross-Cultural Moral Deliberation on Ethical and Social Issues
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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.
120. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics: Volume > 34 > Issue: 1
Letitia M. Campbell, Yvonne C. Zimmerman Christian Ethics and Human Trafficking Activism: Progressive Christianity and Social Critique
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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.