Project MUSE®: Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/584
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics.daily12026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 32 (2012) through current issueLatest Articles: Journal of the Society of Christian EthicsTWOProject MUSE®Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics2326-21761540-7942Latest articles in Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Preface to Volume 45, No. 2 – Fall/Winter 2025
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974133
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The rev. dr. martin luther king jr. and Rev. Theodore Parker’s invocation of “the arc of the moral universe” is of course familiar. In appealing to it as the thematic frame for the 2025 annual meeting of the Society of Christian Ethics, “Riding on the Moral Arc of the Universe,” President Emilie M. Townes invited all members of the Society “to explore (affirm, challenge, rebut, offer alternatives, etc.) the implicit assumption that moral progress occurs over time and that humanity tends toward justice, equality, and fairness.”Townes does not shy away from her own invitation in her presidential address, which is the lead essay of this issue. Rather than musing on the veracity of moral progress per se, Townes
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/584/image/coversmallPreface to Volume 45, No. 2 – Fall/Winter 20252025-11-05text/htmlen-USPreface to Volume 45, No. 2 – Fall/Winter 20252025-11-052025TWOProject MUSE®105962026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-11-05Shadow Boxing the Ridiculous: Riding on the Moral Arc of the Universe
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974134
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AFEW YEARS AGO, I introduced my late colleague Daniel Patte, who was a French American New Testament scholar, to the powerful novel Texaco by Black Martinican writer Patrick Chamoiseau.1 Chamoiseau writes in a creative blend of French and creole in his novels, not enough of which have been translated into English. I suspect that this is because it is hard to capture his free-form use of the French language in English, as his extraordinarily complex and fluid mixture of creolism bends sentences and creates stunning word pictures that linger in the imagination. Patte was so taken with Chamoiseau in English that he began reading his untranslated work and discovered the novel Un Dimanche Au Cachot: Roman (A Sunday at
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/584/image/coversmallShadow Boxing the Ridiculous: Riding on the Moral Arc of the Universe2025-11-05text/htmlen-USShadow Boxing the Ridiculous: Riding on the Moral Arc of the Universe2025-11-052025TWOProject MUSE®407102026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-11-05Hope in Faithful Witness: De-Temporalized Eschatology in Black and Latin American Liberationist Thought
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974135
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FIVE YEARS AGO, James McCarty put it this way: hope’s on the ropes. Scholars from various critical disciplines see in hope a colonial construct calibrated to justify injustice in the name of progress and an ever-receding better future. In 2017, Miguel De La Torre added his own forceful disavowal of hope, arguing that appeals to hope function to excuse and apologize for the gravest injustices and, on his account, anesthetize praxis, especially among the privileged. In place of hope, for De La Torre, Christians and ethicists must embrace hopeless praxis, a position that has generated criticism from David Gushee and Codi Norred.1 Their primary critiques of De La Torre suggest that his disavowal of hope
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/584/image/coversmallHope in Faithful Witness: De-Temporalized Eschatology in Black and Latin American Liberationist Thought2025-11-05text/htmlen-USHope in Faithful Witness: De-Temporalized Eschatology in Black and Latin American Liberationist Thought2025-11-052025TWOProject MUSE®756222026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-11-05Christian Ethics and the Arc of the Universe: King, Augustine, and the Philosophy of History
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974136
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MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. said in different ways and at different times that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”1 Sometimes he omitted the word moral. Sometimes he paired it with a favorite stanza from James Russell Lowell about a God “keeping watch above his own.” After one invocation in his 1956 speech ending the Montgomery bus boycott, King declared, “we have lived under the agony and darkness of Good Friday with the conviction that one day the heightening glow of Easter would emerge on the horizon.”2 The bending arc, for King, was a succinct expression of his Christian faith in the redemptive shape of history, especially in the face of what he frequently called our Pauline story
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/584/image/coversmallChristian Ethics and the Arc of the Universe: King, Augustine, and the Philosophy of History2025-11-05text/htmlen-USChristian Ethics and the Arc of the Universe: King, Augustine, and the Philosophy of History2025-11-052025TWOProject MUSE®872942026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-11-05The Arc of Return: Afropessimist Temporalities and Relational Justice
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974137
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KELLY BROWN DOUGLAS FRAMES HER BOOK Resurrection Hope: A Future Where Black Lives Matter as a conversation with her son, who is skeptical that Christianity, even Black liberation Christianity, is of any use in the struggle for Black life: “‘I get it, that Christ is Black, but that doesn’t seem to be helping us right now,’” her son observes.1 At an existential and theological nadir, Douglas writes, “At this point, all that was standing between me and the hopeless despair of Afropessimism or a white racist God was my maternal grandmother.”2 By the book’s end, Douglas finds hope beyond the cross in resurrection, and in the resilience of her ancestors. Douglas contrasts her hope with this bleak read of Afropessimism:
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/584/image/coversmallThe Arc of Return: Afropessimist Temporalities and Relational Justice2025-11-05text/htmlen-USThe Arc of Return: Afropessimist Temporalities and Relational Justice2025-11-052025TWOProject MUSE®784832026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-11-05Praying into the Void: Curative Eschatology, Crip Ancestry, and Disability Justice
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974138
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AS A PHYSICALLY DISABLED PERSON, I am quite accustomed to curious yet intrusive questions, often from complete strangers, about my body and medical history. What happened to you? Were you born this way? Is there a surgery or a cure? When I entered Christian communities, these questions took on a theological inflection, transporting my body across time. Some took me back to creation (“Do you believe God created/caused/allowed your disability?”), others forward to this life (“Do you pray to be healed of your disability?”), and some even to the eschaton (“Do you believe you’ll have a disability in heaven?”).Such temporal framings of disability find historical support throughout the Christian tradition. As an example
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/584/image/coversmallPraying into the Void: Curative Eschatology, Crip Ancestry, and Disability Justice2025-11-05text/htmlen-USPraying into the Void: Curative Eschatology, Crip Ancestry, and Disability Justice2025-11-052025TWOProject MUSE®814222026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-11-05Bending the Biotechnological Arc Back Toward Justice: A Critique of Historical and Contemporary Rhetorics of Scientific Progress
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974139
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IN MARCH 1912, the Very Reverend Walter Taylor Sumner, Dean of the Episcopal Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul in Chicago, announced a new policy for the cathedral: “Beginning with Easter, no persons will be married at the cathedral unless they present a certificate of health from a reputable physician to the effect that they are normal physically and mentally and have neither an incurable nor communicable disease.”1 Explaining his motivation for establishing the policy, Sumner wrote: “there shall not be left in the wake of a married life sterility, insanity, paralysis, the blinded eyes of little babes, the twisted limbs of deformed children, physical rot, and mental decay.”2 As an institution that seeks to
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/584/image/coversmallBending the Biotechnological Arc Back Toward Justice: A Critique of Historical and Contemporary Rhetorics of Scientific Progress2025-11-05text/htmlen-USBending the Biotechnological Arc Back Toward Justice: A Critique of Historical and Contemporary Rhetorics of Scientific Progress2025-11-052025TWOProject MUSE®1120692026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-11-05The Parables Ethic: Practicing Just Futures with Young People
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974140
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. . . the one thing that I and my main characters never do when contemplating the future is give up hope. In fact, the very act of trying to look ahead to discern possibilities and offer warnings is in itself an act of hope.DYSTOPIAN PREDICTIONS pervade popular culture as humanity tries to make meaning of climate catastrophe, novel pandemics, and political instability. Increasingly, young people turn away from ethically bankrupt exclusivist religious futures. Alternatively, young people’s central role in speculative/science fiction (SF) cultivates a moral imagination that resonates with a desire for authenticity and social change. For those labelled “faith unbundled,” who no longer find meaning in traditionalist
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/584/image/coversmallThe Parables Ethic: Practicing Just Futures with Young People2025-11-05text/htmlen-USThe Parables Ethic: Practicing Just Futures with Young People2025-11-052025TWOProject MUSE®796852026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-11-05Doing Theology in the Wake of Genocide: “Can Our Theology Ever Be the Same Again After [Gaza]?”
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974141
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IN THE AFTERMATH OF THE HOLOCAUST, Johann Baptist Metz asked a provocative question: “Can our theology ever be the same again after Auschwitz?”1 His answer was that it could not. Christian post-Holocaust theologians wrestled with the silence of God amid suffering and confronted anti-Jewish teachings in the Christian West, arguing that never again would require Christians to reckon with their own theological tradition and repudiate antisemitism in all its forms. Today, amid Israel’s war on Gaza—which, as of July 20, 2025, has killed more than 58,800 people,2 including more children than in any other recent war,3 has internally displaced the majority of Gaza’s population,4 and destroyed Gaza’s health and education
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/584/image/coversmallDoing Theology in the Wake of Genocide: “Can Our Theology Ever Be the Same Again After [Gaza]?”2025-11-05text/htmlen-USDoing Theology in the Wake of Genocide: “Can Our Theology Ever Be the Same Again After [Gaza]?”2025-11-052025TWOProject MUSE®1060152026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-11-05Religion and Human Rights: An Introduction by Laura E. Alexander (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974142
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In this book, Laura Alexander has done the academy a helpful service on many levels. Both undergraduate and graduate students as well as scholars in various fields will find this a most helpful and wide-ranging introduction to the complex reality of religion and human rights. Further, even many scholars (such as myself) who specialize in human rights and are practitioners of religious human rights in a pluralistic world can find a great deal to learn. This wide range of analysis is the greatest strength of the book: it covers a great deal of breadth, even if not full depth on any particular tradition.One great strength of the book is how it explicates the way in which religious traditions have utilized human rights
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/584/image/coversmallReligion and Human Rights: An Introduction by Laura E. Alexander (review)2025-11-05text/htmlen-USReligion and Human Rights: An Introduction by Laura E. Alexander (review)2025-11-052025TWOProject MUSE®56662026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-11-05Burdened Agency: Christian Theology and End-of-Life Ethics by Travis Pickell (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974143
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In modern times, it has become increasingly difficult to die well. Pickell offers a substantial and compelling account of this reality, drawing on an impressive range of sociological, philosophical, bioethical, and theological material. He delivers a clear, focused critique of the modern cultural understanding of agency and dignity in dying, which in the presence of advanced medical technology has placed us in the burdensome position of having to choose how and when to die. Pickell then turns to Christian theology and practices to re-narrate the meaning of the modern self and set aside our desire for total control in favor of accepting our finitude and dying in self-surrender to God.The central concept of Pickell’s
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/584/image/coversmallBurdened Agency: Christian Theology and End-of-Life Ethics by Travis Pickell (review)2025-11-05text/htmlen-USBurdened Agency: Christian Theology and End-of-Life Ethics by Travis Pickell (review)2025-11-052025TWOProject MUSE®60552026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-11-05Building a Moral Economy: Pathways for People of Courage by Cynthia D. Moe-Lobeda (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974144
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In a climate of economic cynicism and rising inequality, Building a Moral Economy leaves no room for pessimism, inspiring an urgent response to economic and ecological injustice. Moe-Lobeda neither sidesteps responsibility for the Global North’s perpetuation of extractive economic practices nor overly burdens her reader with blame, but rather constructively seeks to spur critical engagement. She issues a call to action, derived from the Christian vocation to neighbor-love, to transform economic moral life into “more equitable, ecological, and democratic economies” (4). In an approach reminiscent of kinship models of ecological justice, she imagines economic life as a web of relationships, and she leverages personal
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/584/image/coversmallBuilding a Moral Economy: Pathways for People of Courage by Cynthia D. Moe-Lobeda (review)2025-11-05text/htmlen-USBuilding a Moral Economy: Pathways for People of Courage by Cynthia D. Moe-Lobeda (review)2025-11-052025TWOProject MUSE®59532026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-11-05Beyond Civility in Social Conflict: Dialogue, Critique, and Religious Ethics by Russell P. Johnson (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974145
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What is it to seek and speak justice and peace in a communicative world marked by antagonism, violence, and culture war? Russell Johnson’s new book compellingly answers this question and charts hopeful pathways for addressing entrenched disagreement and conflict. Drawing on traditions of nonviolent direct action, communication ethics, and rhetorical theory, it speaks to scholars and activists alike of the challenges of speaking across deep difference and the generative possibilities of engaging in loving forms of disagreement.The book begins by identifying three “voices” in communication ethics: Civility, which champions dialogue constrained by moral rules, social etiquette, and democratic norms; Victory, which
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/584/image/coversmallBeyond Civility in Social Conflict: Dialogue, Critique, and Religious Ethics by Russell P. Johnson (review)2025-11-05text/htmlen-USBeyond Civility in Social Conflict: Dialogue, Critique, and Religious Ethics by Russell P. Johnson (review)2025-11-052025TWOProject MUSE®62522026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-11-05Eight Theories of Justice: Perspectives from Philosophical and Theological Ethics by Karen Lebacqz and Matthew J. Gaudet (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974146
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In Eight Theories of Justice: Perspectives from Philosophical and Theological Ethics, Karen Lebacqz and Matthew J. Gaudet offer a compelling and welcome update to Lebacqz’s Six Theories of Justice (1986). Rewritten for new generations and an ever-changing world, this edition includes two new chapters: “A Communitarian Rebuttal: Michael Sandel,” and “A Womanist Critique: Katie Geneva Cannon.” The authors also significantly change previously existing chapters. In particular, the chapter on Catholic social teaching now emphasizes the contributions of Pope Francis, and the chapter on Liberation Theology shifts to include James Cone and Black liberation theology.The parable of blindfolded explorers examining an elephant
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/584/image/coversmallEight Theories of Justice: Perspectives from Philosophical and Theological Ethics by Karen Lebacqz and Matthew J. Gaudet (review)2025-11-05text/htmlen-USEight Theories of Justice: Perspectives from Philosophical and Theological Ethics by Karen Lebacqz and Matthew J. Gaudet (review)2025-11-052025TWOProject MUSE®64562026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-11-05Family and Christian Ethics by Petruschka Schaafsma (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974147
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As part of the New Studies in Christian Ethics series of the Cambridge University Press, Schaafsma’s work discusses the question of what the “concept of family” really means, as well as the connected question of what is at stake, when the concept of family is elaborated on, that leads to such heated debates in the western context (13). Schaafsma discusses the concept of family as “mystery” rather than “problem,” drawing from scripture, art, literature, philosophy, experiences, and the phenomenon of change. Change here includes changes within and in relation to the family, for example, changes in one’s partner, changes in relation to children and child-rearing, and changes in the position of the family within
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/584/image/coversmallFamily and Christian Ethics by Petruschka Schaafsma (review)2025-11-05text/htmlen-USFamily and Christian Ethics by Petruschka Schaafsma (review)2025-11-052025TWOProject MUSE®48772026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-11-05Enfleshed Counter-Memory: A Christian Social Ethic of Trauma by Stephanie C. Edwards (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974148
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Beginning with Ruby Sales’s question, “Where does it hurt?” Stephanie C. Edwards offers a personally reflective yet globally expansive account of the demands and promise of Christian social ethics in Enfleshed Counter-Memory: A Christian Social Ethic of Trauma. Adeptly weaving feminist trauma scholarship with womanist theological ethics and Johann Baptist Metz’s concept of dangerous memory, Edwards calls Christian ethicists to attend carefully to the physical, psychological, and spiritual wounds inflicted by massive global structural injustice and interpersonal violence alike. The result offers an unabashedly engaged and practical social ethic grounded in “the life of Jesus, the original ‘enfleshed counter-memory’”
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/584/image/coversmallEnfleshed Counter-Memory: A Christian Social Ethic of Trauma by Stephanie C. Edwards (review)2025-11-05text/htmlen-USEnfleshed Counter-Memory: A Christian Social Ethic of Trauma by Stephanie C. Edwards (review)2025-11-052025TWOProject MUSE®62332026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-11-05Orthodox Tradition and Human Sexuality ed. by Thomas Arentzen, Ashley M. Purpura and Aristotle Papanikolaou (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974149
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The authors of this anthology recognize how Orthodox teachings on sexuality and LGBTQ+ issues have promoted “a tragic marginalization” and fostered alienation, discrimination, and homophobia, leading many young people to leave the Orthodox Church (x). Drawing from the rich Orthodox tradition, this collection uses scriptural, patristic, theological, historical, and scientific sources to propose ethical, anthropological, and methodological revisions to move the Orthodox Church forward on sexual ethics issues.The volume includes a foreword by Metropolitan Ambrosius, Helsinki, and fifteen essays engaging the Orthodox tradition’s “black-and-white propagandistic views concerning the diversity of sexuality” (ix). It is
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/584/image/coversmallOrthodox Tradition and Human Sexuality ed. by Thomas Arentzen, Ashley M. Purpura and Aristotle Papanikolaou (review)2025-11-05text/htmlen-USOrthodox Tradition and Human Sexuality ed. by Thomas Arentzen, Ashley M. Purpura and Aristotle Papanikolaou (review)2025-11-052025TWOProject MUSE®68802026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-11-05Pope Francis, Marriage, and Same-Sex Civil Unions: Foundations for the Organic Development of Catholic Sexual Doctrine by Todd A. Salzman and Michael G. Lawler (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974150
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In the wake of his passing, people across the world celebrated Pope Francis as a Latin American priest and a Pope of the people who was willing to listen. In Pope Francis, Marriage, and Same-Sex Civil Unions: Foundations for the Organic Development of Catholic Sexual Doctrine, Todd Salzman and Michael Lawler argue for the development of Catholic Sexual Doctrine to “support the legal recognition of same-sex civil unions, the blessing of such unions, and the right of same sex couples to adopt and foster children” based on Pope Francis’s views on sexuality—a significant aspect of his papacy (16). Therefore, the book anticipated Fiducia Supplicans, which supports the blessing of same-sex unions. Yet, it goes further by
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/584/image/coversmallPope Francis, Marriage, and Same-Sex Civil Unions: Foundations for the Organic Development of Catholic Sexual Doctrine by Todd A. Salzman and Michael G. Lawler (review)2025-11-05text/htmlen-USPope Francis, Marriage, and Same-Sex Civil Unions: Foundations for the Organic Development of Catholic Sexual Doctrine by Todd A. Salzman and Michael G. Lawler (review)2025-11-052025TWOProject MUSE®64032026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-11-05On Helping One’s Neighbor: Severe Poverty and the Religious Ethics of Obligation by Bharat Ranganathan (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974151
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Few affluent Christians deny that they have an obligation to use their resources for the greater good of humanity, especially to alleviate severe poverty. But to whom—and how far—does this obligation go? In a world with over 8 billion people, during a time of institutional tumult and political isolationism, this question merits a serious theoretical response. Bharat Ranganathan provides this response in a clear, elegant, and persuasive monograph.Ranganathan’s book represents a pioneering effort as one of the first religio-ethical contributions to the controversial “effective altruism” movement (EA). Often associated with anglophone utilitarian philosophers such as Peter Singer and Toby Ord, EA primarily asserts
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/584/image/coversmallOn Helping One’s Neighbor: Severe Poverty and the Religious Ethics of Obligation by Bharat Ranganathan (review)2025-11-05text/htmlen-USOn Helping One’s Neighbor: Severe Poverty and the Religious Ethics of Obligation by Bharat Ranganathan (review)2025-11-052025TWOProject MUSE®60462026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-11-05Moral Debates in Contemporary Catholic Thought: Paradigms, Principles, and Prudence by James T. Bretzke (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974152
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Bretzke outlines a useful method for navigating divisive moral debates in US Catholicism beyond conversation-stoppers like communion bans, canonical penalties, and appeals to intrinsically evil actions. The substance of his argument shifts the focus from whether certain actions should be absolutely prohibited, to how to handle disagreements, for example, about the limits of law to regulate such actions, or about appropriate pastoral responses.Rather than, “is Action X always and everywhere wrong,” Bretzke wants Catholics––clergy and laity alike––to ask, how do we “think well” about law, engage legislators, and dialogue within the church and society about these actions? Bretzke encourages church leaders
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/584/image/coversmallMoral Debates in Contemporary Catholic Thought: Paradigms, Principles, and Prudence by James T. Bretzke (review)2025-11-05text/htmlen-USMoral Debates in Contemporary Catholic Thought: Paradigms, Principles, and Prudence by James T. Bretzke (review)2025-11-052025TWOProject MUSE®59652026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-11-05Modern Catholic Family Teaching: Commentaries and Interpretations ed. by Jacob M. Kohlhaas and Mary M. Doyle Roche (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974153
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This outstanding volume offers commentaries and interpretations upon major documents in modern Roman Catholic family teaching (CFT). Part I (Foundations) considers the use of scripture and natural law in CFT, its ecclesiological contexts, pre-modern documents, and engagement with racial memory. Part II (Commentaries and Interpretations) represents the core of the volume, in which diverse scholars analyze texts from Leo XIII through the present. The conclusion synthesizes the history and future trajectory of CFT. Appendices include Francis’s letter on the Eighth World Meeting of Families, a helpful timeline of documents and themes of CFT (i.e., gender and sexual morality; marriage and family life; children and
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/584/image/coversmallModern Catholic Family Teaching: Commentaries and Interpretations ed. by Jacob M. Kohlhaas and Mary M. Doyle Roche (review)2025-11-05text/htmlen-USModern Catholic Family Teaching: Commentaries and Interpretations ed. by Jacob M. Kohlhaas and Mary M. Doyle Roche (review)2025-11-052025TWOProject MUSE®59312026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-11-05A Pilgrimage of Justice and Peace: Global Mennonite Perspectives on Peacebuilding and Nonviolence by Fernando Enns, Nina Schroeder-Van’t Schip and Andrés Pacheco-Lozano (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974154
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The volume of collected papers from the Second Global Mennonite Peacebuilding Conference and Festival from 2019 begins with the editors’ introduction describing a quilt. The quilt itself grew out of the visions of peace depicted by participants and sewn into what is described as a “Peacework” piecework quilt. The quilt is an apt metaphor for the book as the breadth of topics covered is vast but united under a common theme—global peace and nonviolence.Laying the groundwork for all that the GMP conference covered, several papers elevate the significance of ecumenicism in striving for justice and peace. From there, steps are taken in the pilgrimage via the “formative paths” that address important questions before
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/584/image/coversmallA Pilgrimage of Justice and Peace: Global Mennonite Perspectives on Peacebuilding and Nonviolence by Fernando Enns, Nina Schroeder-Van’t Schip and Andrés Pacheco-Lozano (review)2025-11-05text/htmlen-USA Pilgrimage of Justice and Peace: Global Mennonite Perspectives on Peacebuilding and Nonviolence by Fernando Enns, Nina Schroeder-Van’t Schip and Andrés Pacheco-Lozano (review)2025-11-052025TWOProject MUSE®59652026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-11-05Rethinking Equal Opportunity: Dignity, Human Capability, and Justice by Harlan Beckley (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974155
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The theme of equal opportunity frequently recurs in social and political discourse. It functions as a kind of shorthand to assure Americans across the political spectrum that historically oppressed peoples have access to genuine meritocratic opportunity without denying historically advantaged groups their merit, thus avoiding the trap of equality of outcomes. Beckley’s book draws from twenty-five years of work around what equal opportunity should mean. Unfortunately, overuse and misuse of this phrase has led us to the point that, at best, “equal opportunity” usually just means “economic opportunity.” Beckley wants to move beyond mere economic gain and articulate a “morally, socially, politically, and
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/584/image/coversmallRethinking Equal Opportunity: Dignity, Human Capability, and Justice by Harlan Beckley (review)2025-11-05text/htmlen-USRethinking Equal Opportunity: Dignity, Human Capability, and Justice by Harlan Beckley (review)2025-11-052025TWOProject MUSE®60062026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-11-05The Routledge Companion to Christian Ethics ed. by D. Stephen Long and Rebekah L. Miles (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974156
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The Routledge Companion to Christian Ethics takes up the ambitious task of modelling a practical approach explicitly rooted in doctrinal reflection, bringing together systematic theology and Christian ethics. The volume divides into three parts, according to the persons of the Trinity. It gathers together diverse scholars from across Christian denominations, each of whom reflects the integration of theology and ethics by taking up an ethical issue in light of a doctrinal category. The division of essays in this manner, rather than according to areas in Christian ethics, sets this volume apart.Opening essays from Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt and Karen Baker-Fletcher invite the reader into “a larger theological
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/584/image/coversmallThe Routledge Companion to Christian Ethics ed. by D. Stephen Long and Rebekah L. Miles (review)2025-11-05text/htmlen-USThe Routledge Companion to Christian Ethics ed. by D. Stephen Long and Rebekah L. Miles (review)2025-11-052025TWOProject MUSE®61982026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-11-05Remaking Humanity: Embodiment and Hope in Catholic Theology by Adam Beyt (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974157
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When it comes to embodiment, how Catholic theological anthropology arrives at conclusions perhaps matters as much as—and is woven into—what it concludes. In Remaking Humanity, Adam Beyt offers a new method for arriving at theological claims about bodies in response to John Paul II’s personalist method, found prominently in Theology of the Body. Putting Dominican theologian Edward Schillebeeckx into conversation with philosopher Judith Butler, Beyt proposes “a Catholic theological anthropology situated within an eschatological horizon aiming to remake humanity by validating embodied difference in hope for nonviolent worlds” (4). This “remade” humanity embraces embodied difference and the ever-changing nature of the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/584/image/coversmallRemaking Humanity: Embodiment and Hope in Catholic Theology by Adam Beyt (review)2025-11-05text/htmlen-USRemaking Humanity: Embodiment and Hope in Catholic Theology by Adam Beyt (review)2025-11-052025TWOProject MUSE®63772026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-11-05