THIS ESSAY MAKES AN ETHICAL CASE FOR UNBOUNDED BUT NOT UNLIMited economic growth. The preliminary case for such growth is its correlation with significant reductions in global poverty and the wealth that is created by economic growth. The essay then seeks to show that opposition to growth often rests on controversial assumptions about the nature of markets and productivity. I challenge these assumptions by presenting two important developments in economic theory: new growth theory, especially as related to the work of economist Paul Romer, and evolutionary economics, a trajectory that has evolved into "complexity economics." An ethic of "creative abundance" is presented as a framework from within which to evaluate the prescriptive claims of the essay.

IN CHRISTIAN ETHICS AND THE SIT-IN AND WAR AND THE CHRISTIAN CONscience, Paul Ramsey describes politics as a realm of "deferred repentance." Despite several troubling implications of this phrase, I believe the concept of repentance in his work provides an illuminating point of entry into a theological discussion of political judgment. I begin with the question of what Ramsey means by "deferred repentance" and proceed to a wider discussion of his theology of repentance and call for creative political reconstruction. This involves recognition of his debts to H. R. Niebuhr's war articles from the 1930s and '40s and his use of repentance as the determinative motif for a Christian response to war. I also examine the significance of the concept in Ramsey's debates in the 1960s and '70s over how the Vietnam War might be justified. He uses repentance in each of these engagements to demonstrate the reliance of all political judgments on a prior theological account of certain features of human interaction, namely, the contingency and temporality of created existence.

CONTEMPORARY MUSLIM SCHOLARS WHO SEEK TO RECONCILE GENDER egalitarian values with the premodern patriarchal Islamic tradition face a dilemma. Because the two values—gender egalitarianism and patriarchy—are fundamentally at odds with each other, scholars must choose one to privilege over the other. If the premodern Islamic tradition is privileged, then the ideal of gender egalitarianism is compromised. However, favoring gender egalitarian values at the expense of the premodern Islamic tradition leads to the loss of authority within the believing community. This essay explores the options available to Muslim scholars as they negotiate the egalitarian—authoritative dilemma in the context of the Qur'anic exegesis of the husbandly privilege to discipline wives in Qur'an 4:34.

THERE IS A RELATIVE DEARTH OF THEOLOGICAL CONTRIBUTION TO PRESENT-day discussion about the status of territorial borders. Secularist discourse tends to divide between "partialists" and "impartialists." Partialists work with an ideal of states as distinct cultural communities, which justifies priority for the interests of citizens over refugees. Impartialists work with an ideal of states as cosmopolitan agents, which takes into account equally the interests of citizens and refugees. The aim of this essay is to show how selected biblical texts help to rethink these categories and offer different, theologically informed ways of construing the meaning of borders. The need for an "ethic of answerability" is established and initial suggestions are given as to how this approach might be developed.

THIS ESSAY EXAMINES THE RELEVANCE FOR RELIGIOUS ETHICS OF BUDDHIST Abhidhamma texts, those dealing with the analysis and systematization of mental states arising in and examined by meditation practice. Developing recent scholarship on the prevalence and significance of interlocking lists in Buddhist canonical texts and commentaries, the Buddhist use of lists in the Abhidhamma constitutes a kind of narrative expression of moral development through the sequential occurrence of carefully defined mental states. Attention to this narrative dimension of the moral life, while related to other recent proposals about the place of narrative in religious ethics, offers a way to employ this underexamined genre of religious literature (lists) drawn from a comparative context (Buddhist and Christian ethics), in service of a more nuanced account of moral development.

ALL SCHOLARSHIP OCCURS IN CONTEXT, AND ACADEMIC SILOS—WHERE scholars interact with only a narrow circle of specialists like themselves—too often eclipse the biases of academic disciplines. This essay recommends interdisciplinary work by Christian ethicists, reviews some fruits available from substantive engagement with mainstream economics, and urges graduate programs in Christian ethics to encourage and enable students to do substantive coursework in another discipline to broaden and deepen Christian ethical engagement with contemporary moral problems.

THIS ESSAY EXPLORES THE IMPLICATIONS OF A NATURAL LAW ACCOUNT of marriage for the gay marriage controversy, starting from the concept of the natural law developed by scholastic jurists and theologians in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Certainly, the scholastics themselves unanimously condemned homosexual acts, and probably never entertained the possibility of same-sex marital unions. Yet this fact taken by itself does not mean that their overall concept of the natural law and the approach to marriage developed out of that concept must necessarily rule out gay marriages. We are the heirs of several centuries of further experiences with and reflection on marriage, and through this process our own conceptions of both marriage and sex itself have changed—leading to perspectives very different from the scholastics yet recognizably products of a trajectory of thought that they initiated. In this essay I argue that the scholastic concept of the natural law, when developed and applied within a contemporary context, does not rule out gay marriage but on the contrary gives us reasons to support the legal recognition of such unions.

EVE ENSLER'S CONTROVERSIAL PLAY, THE VAGINA MONOLOGUES, HAS INcited both passionate support and harsh protest. Among its most vehement critics are those lobbying to ban performances at all Catholic colleges and universities. Most critics argue that the text challenges traditional Christian norms of heterosexual marriage. While not incorrect, I argue that visceral reactions against the word "vagina," together with fears about the liturgical and evangelical qualities of Ensler's play and the V-Day organization, may factor even more heavily in people's condemnations. I encourage readers to see the movement not as an attack on Christianity but as an attempt to meet needs that orthodox traditions have heretofore left unmet, and a call to acknowledge the disastrous effects for women and girls that arise from inappropriate silence and undue delicacy surrounding matters of female sexuality.

THIS ESSAY EXAMINES GLOBAL WATER PRIVATIZATION EFFORTS IN LIGHT of the environmental teachings of both Islam and Christianity, proposing that although environmental ethics is more developed within Christianity, Islam offers more ethical sources for thinking about water due to the arid climate in which Islam developed. Furthermore, this essay advocates full-cost pricing as necessary to attain closed loop water recycling, maintains that full-cost pricing does not further disadvantage the poor, and argues that full-cost pricing more easily fits Muslim and Christian moral imperatives than present water policies do.

THE ETHICAL GROUNDS OF HUMAN RIGHTS FROM THE ENLIGHTENMENT TO today have been almost exclusively centered on the experiences of adults. This essay argues that human rights are not fully "human" unless their very bases are transformed in response to the third of humanity who are children. The essay is an exercise in what is broadly termed "childism": not just applying ethical norms to children but restructuring norms themselves in light of children's experiences. Human rights in particular should be reimagined along postmodern and religious lines, not as protections of autonomy but as responses to difference. This notion is illustrated through the ethics of political representation, including conceptions of democratic citizenship and voting.

RABBI SIMḤAH ZISSEL ZIV OF KELME, LITHUANIA, WAS ONE OF THE EARLY leaders of the Musar movement, a pietistic religious movement in nineteenth century Europe that attempted to place concerns with moral character at the center of Jewish life. This essay introduces Simḥah Zissel's virtue-centered approach to the Torah's central commandment that one "love one's fellow as one-self." For Simḥah Zissel, love is a disposition of the soul, with emotional and intellectual aspects culminating in action. Love demands a sense of partnership with others and a sense of care that should extend to all of God's creatures; love requires that we not privilege ourselves over other people; and the highest level of love is "sharing the burden of one's fellow," compassionate love characterized by empathy and responsiveness, which can only be cultivated through great effort.

MUCH RECENT SCHOLARSHIP HAS CALLED FOR THE INTEGRATION OF NATural law theory with biblical revelation, yet few writers have pursued such a project in detail. This essay presents the foundations of a constructive account of natural law grounded in an overlooked biblical text and in Reformed covenant theology, in conversation with contemporary biblical exegesis and recent Protestant and Roman Catholic literature on natural law. It explores the character of the Noahic covenant established with all creation (Gen. 8:20—9:17) and argues that this covenant provides necessary theological foundation for understanding nature and common human moral obligations. This account of natural law provides a sound way to integrate natural law theory with the biblical narrative and to conceive of natural law as a universal God-given standard mediated through a fallen world.

TRAGICALLY, ETHNIC CONFLICTS HAVE BECOME ONE OF THE HALLMARKS of the post-Cold War era. In response to this, two distinct traditions appear to be emerging.The first continues the classical just war tradition while the second represents a new "reconciliation tradition," built largely around questions of restorative justice in areas of social division. Our goal in this essay is to begin a rapprochement of these divergent traditions by asking the question, what does a restorative justice perspective offer to the just war tradition? We proceed in three stages: first, we survey the current state of the just war tradition; second, we introduce the reconciliation tradition, drawing on both reconciliation thinkers and the practical experience of experiments in social reconciliation in South Africa and Rwanda; and third, we draw these two traditions together with a series of constructive proposals for how the reconciliation tradition can enrich the just war tradition.

THIS ESSAY EXAMINES INNER-CITY NEIGHBORHOOD MURALISM TO ILLUMINATE the practical relationship between theological aesthetics and the ethical principle of the common good. I suggest collaborative public art as a viable resource for reframing or revisioning the common good in a way that counters its often conceptual, abstract, and pragmatic tendencies with an organic, selfcritical, and creative relationality that arises from the mutually dependent transcendental categories of the beautiful, the true, and the good. Ethical reflection on this public art exposes the mystagogical components of the common good, which foster the often-overlooked intuitive, experiential, tactile, and nonverbal potential of this central idea in Christian ethics.

THE CONCEPTS OF HEALTH AND DISEASE ARE FOUNDATIONAL TO BIOMEDical ethics. This essay critiques two widely used approaches to understanding health and disease: the World Health Organization definition of health as "complete physical, mental and social well-being," and the attempts by Thomas Szasz and Christopher Boorse to define health and disease in objective, value-free terms. Drawing particularly on the thought of Karl Barth, I argue that in Christian perspective, health must be understood in terms of the goods and goals toward which human life is directed, which must themselves be understood in terms of God's good purposes made known in Christ. We are called (in Barth's phrase) to "will to be healthy" and resist disease, but understanding what this entails in particular concrete situations requires skills and habits of attentiveness to God's command, cultivated in the context of the Christian community and its practices.

IN THE LAST TEN YEARS SEVERAL MAINLINE PROTESTANT DENOMINATIONS have gone on record as supporting reparations for slavery. Reparations represent a new approach to racial justice and a transformed understanding of racial relationships from that which has characterized mainline US Protestantism since the civil rights movement. These initiatives importantly raise the issue of whiteness and white moral agency as these pertain to racism, without attention to which, the author argues, racial justice efforts will be inadequate. The essay engages in analysis that juxtaposes the difference between reconciliation and reparations approaches to healing racial injustice, locating these in historical moments in US Protestantism. It then explores movements for reparations in the Presbyterian Church (USA) and the Episcopal Church in the United States and considers how these do and do not demonstrate a new (and more adequate) paradigm for understanding racism.

THIS ESSAY EXPLORES THE POSSIBILITIES FOR RETRIEVING THE CONCEPT OF moral cooperation with evil for Christian social ethics. It begins with an exploration of the history of the concept and then argues that while discussions of social sin in political and environmental ethics correctly identify the problem of complicity, they fail to provide a way to distinguish among competing goods. The reality of competing goods presses the difficulties of making choices in a complex world referable to a duty to identify evil and avoid furthering its course.

THIS ESSAY SEEKS TO REDRESS THE SHORTCOMINGS OF CHRISTIAN ENVIronmental ethics by proposing Franciscan environmental ethics drawn from the affective and embodied experience of Francis of Assisi plus the Franciscan theological tradition that he inspired, as exemplified by Bonaventure and John Duns Scotus. Drawing its inspiration from the love Francis of Assisi had for nature, the Franciscan tradition holds that creation bursts with religious significance. This tradition interprets Francis' affective and direct sensory experience of the natural world with theological concepts creatively reworked from scripture and patristic sources, especially the Incarnation and theTrinity.The Franciscan understanding of the Incarnation emphasizes continuity between humanity, creatures, and elements. The Franciscan vision of Trinity as community-ofpersons, inspired by Francis's Canticle of Creatures, supports a more inclusive vision of the moral community. Franciscan environmental ethics can inspire an enhanced moral imagination and the praxis of an ethic of care.

THIS ESSAY CONSIDERS THE COLOR-BLIND MORALITY OF POSTRACIAL discourse, whether racial identity is to be considered suspect or simply "forgotten," or whether it can play a constructive role in public life. I pursue this question by turning to two accounts of racial identity, a liberal-multicultural conception and a social perspective conception of racial identity. The latter, I argue, better meets the primary objections to the former and offers an advantageous framework within which to evaluate postracial assumptions. Racial difference does not need to be considered a threat to political community but can be envisioned in a way that supports the kind of political and moral deliberation necessary to support and advance a society committed to justice.

IN THE UNITED STATES, 25 PERCENT OF PEOPLE LIVING WITH HIV/AIDS HAVE spent time in the correctional system. HIV is known to spread among incarcerated individuals through high-risk behaviors including unprotected sex, injection drug use, tattooing, and body piercing. When released from prison, persons living with HIV can spread the disease in the wider community. This essay explores the complex problem of HIV infection among US prisoners from a common good approach rooted in Catholic social teachings by examining available data on US prison populations, describing recent trends in the prosecution of drug-related crimes, and proposing concrete policy recommendations for HIV prevention interventions in US prisons.