Reenvisioning Sexual Ethics


Book Description

In Reenvisioning Sexual Ethics, Karen Peterson-Iyer's profound feminist Christian reframing of sexuality examines contemporary social practices and ethical sex, facilitating meaningful discussion about sexual agency and flourishing.




Reenvisioning Sexual Ethics


Book Description

In Reenvisioning Sexual Ethics, Karen Peterson-Iyer applies a feminist Christian framework to practical sexual issues facing young adults today, from “sexting” and “hook up” culture to sex work and sex trafficking. This feminist, justice-based approach to sexual ethics will facilitate meaningful discussion about sexual agency and flourishing.




Iconoclastic Sex


Book Description

Christian sexual ethics operates from a place of privilege when it does not consider those impacted by its moral prescriptions. A large majority of publications on Christian sexual ethics consider choices and images abstracted from lived conditions of the people called to make these decisions. As such, it leaves out many for whom sex is neither welcome nor a choice. As such, these same texts present images of sexual subjects that marginalize those that do not fit. As the book presents, sexuality, both Christian and otherwise, prioritizes a language of purity that strangles the life of those imaged impure. The present book remedies this emphasis through the language of iconoclasm that blasphemes these images and opens theological reflection beyond the boundary of image-based approaches. Utilizing a qualitative study of survivors of trafficking and those who grew up under evangelical purity teachings, Spaulding narrates sexual ethics in light of their testimonies and the theological resources of iconoclasm to articulate a more just and loving sexuality. The new emphasis on sexual ethics not only resists the prescriptions that create the conditions of sex trafficking but the creation of new communities capable of solidarity and mutuality with those caught in the web of trafficking.




Reenvisioning Christian Ethics


Book Description

Christian ethics is a wide and varied field; so diverse are the methods and approaches, theological perspectives and starting points, and scopes of inquiry and purposes—dare we even call it a discipline?—that the field is rarely considered as a whole. Christian ethics includes historical, descriptive, critical, constructive, and applied projects on countless topics. Lending creative energy to this field of study are a range of partner disciplines, including, most prominently, theology, philosophy, and sociology, each containing multiple schools themselves. To envision the entire field of Christian ethics is a difficult task; to reenvision the entire field may perhaps be impossible for one person. Thus, this publication includes original research by multiple scholars, each offering a distinct perspective from their primary partner discipline. Chapters include Roman Catholic and Protestant voices from Europe, Asia, and North America. In aggregate, these writings contribute to a composite reenvisioning of Christian ethics, refracting our collective vision through the prisms of diverse academic and methodological perspectives in this vast field of inquiry, study, and practice.




Sexual Ethics


Book Description

Two principles capture the essence of the Catholic tradition on sexual ethics: that each and every marriage act must remain open to the transmission of life, and that any human genital act must occur within the framework of marriage. In the Catholic tradition, moral sexual activity is institutionalized within the confines of marriage and procreation, and sexual morality is marital morality. But theologians Todd Salzman and Michael Lawler contend that there is a disconnect between many of the Church’s absolute sexual norms and other theological and intellectual developments explicitly recognized and endorsed in the Catholic tradition, especially since the Second Vatican Council. These developments include the shift from a primary static worldview to a historically conscious worldview, one that recognizes reality as dynamic, evolving, changing, and particular. By employing such a historically conscious worldview, alternative claims about the moral legitimacy of controversial topics such as contraception, artificial reproduction, and homosexual marriage can faithfully emerge within a Catholic context. Convinced of the central role that love, desire, and fertility play in a human life, and also in the life of Christian discipleship, the authors propose an understanding of sexuality that leads to the enhancement of human sexual relationships and flourishing. This comprehensive introduction to Catholic sexual ethics—complete with thought-provoking study questions at the end of each chapter—will be sure to stimulate dialogue about sexual morality between Catholic laity, theologians, and the hierarchy. Anyone seeking a credible and informed Catholic sexual ethic will welcome this potentially revolutionary book.




Bothering to Love


Book Description




Defending Same-Sex Marriage


Book Description

Today we find ourselves at a crossroads of two powerful, unrelenting currents that are completely at odds with one another. The movement for legal recognition of same-sex unions has gone beyond the separate but equal status of civil unions to demand equality in marriage for all couples. Progress is being made on many fronts: mayoral action, clergy officiating at same-sex marriage and union ceremonies, state legislative responses, and street protests, to name a few. Meanwhile, opposition to same-sex marriage has also been gathering strength. The struggle is sure to continue unabated for some time to come, pitting those who believe in the traditional definition of marriage as a union between a man and a woman—and who seek to codify this belief in the U.S. Constitution—against those who find the basis for marriage between two loving, committed individuals not only in the history of our civil rights legislation and court decisions, but also in scripture and sacred religious traditions. Those who believe in extending to same-sex couples the 1,049 rights conferred by marriage as well as the supportive embrace of religious communities seek to strengthen the institution of marriage by making it inclusive and by passing laws and broadening doctrines to uphold marriage rights for all couples. This three-volume set clarifies the legal, political, religious, cultural, and social ramifications of same-sex marriage for gay and lesbian couples and their families and friends, and for the general public interested in the future of civil rights in the United States.




Beyond Virtue Ethics


Book Description

"This book develops a contemporary model of spiritual struggle aimed at perpetual ascent to and in God. Spiritual struggle in this project, which ultimately shifts the emphasis from virtue's acquisition to its pursuit, is defined as the exertion of effort in all conceivable dimensions-physical, emotional, psychological, intellectual, and spiritual-with intent to attain a semblance of, knowledge of, and intimacy with Jesus Christ in community, for God and for others. Gregory of Nyssa's theory of epektasis assumes a basic three-tiered conception of perpetual ascent, beginning with purification and detachment from fleshly passions, strengthening the soul by increasing in similitude to God, and ending with unity with God, that is, with inexpressible and transformative experience of God. God-the infinite, the Good, and the Paragon of virtue-functions as the orienting principle of this perpetual ascent, mitigating the issues of the unity of the virtues and the self-centeredness and self-effacement of virtue. This book goes on to provide two of many potential concrete instantiations of this suggested model. The first is the application of this model to the body, which in turn will have implications for contemporary sexual ethics. The second is a reintegration of ethics and Scripture through the contemporary application of an ancient Patristic lectio divina"--




On Teaching and Learning Christian Ethics


Book Description

"This book addresses what it means to teach and learn ethics. While teaching ethics is universally applauded, how one goes about it is much more difficult and contested than is often recognized. The approach of the work is historical, philosophical, and theological. It begins with the historical transformation in the mid nineteenth century by Henry Sidgwick, who rejected establishing ethics on theology or metaphysics. G. E. Moore, John Rawls, Thomas Hurka, Bart Schultz, and Peter Singer later explicitly developed ethics indebted to Sidgwick. However, G. E. M. Anscombe and Philippa Foot's important interventions in modern moral philosophy opened new possibilities for teaching and learning ethics that bear strong resemblances to pre-Sidgwick moral philosophy. The common thread between them is Thomas Aquinas, who had a different understanding of human action than Sidgwick. For Aquinas, Foot, and Anscombe, ethics does not concern a procedure to guide action to what is right or what ought to be, but exists within a metaphysical and theological realm in which the good is more basic than the right. The good is attractive so desire for it is an essential element of the moral life"--




Ecological Moral Character


Book Description

"This book of metaethics focuses on Catholic virtue theory. To create an ecological model through which we can imagine the human moral character, the book integrates concepts of ecology with Aquinas' vision of moral character. The book describes the dynamics of a moral character in terms of the processes and functions that take place in an ecosystem. The virtues parallel species and other aspects of ecosystems, and other participants, such as the passions, the will, and the intellect, are also described in terms of this model. The book is a creative project with a solid and documented scholarly foundation. It aims to begin a conversation about a rarely discussed aspect of virtue ethics. The images we use to think about moral character are powerful. They inform our understandings of the moral virtues and the ways in which moral character develops. The book asks readers to choose deliberately the models we use to imagine moral character and offers this ecological virtue model as a good example for our own time"--