Four highly respected thinkers discuss the need for a renewal of Christian ethical reflection in a dramatically and radically different world and offer their own unique points of view about how this should be done responsibly. This book is both a call for renewal in our thinking and acting and an introduction to the issues and bases for the formulation of meaningful responses to our new situation.

Selected by Christianity Today as one of the 100 most important books on religion of the twentieth century. Leading theological ethicist Stanley Hauerwas shows how discussions of Christology and the authority of scripture involve questions about what kind of community the church must be to rightly tell the stories of God. He challenges the dominant assumption of contemporary Christian social ethics that there is a special relation between Christianity and some form of liberal democratic social system.

"A college-level introductory text in Christian social ethics that combines theory, cases, and analysis"--

Applied Christian Ethics addresses selected themes in Christian social ethics. The book is divided in three parts. In the first section, “Foundation,” several contributors reveal their Christian realist roots and discuss the prophetic origins and multifarious agenda of social ethics. Thus, the names of Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich come up frequently. In the second section, “Economics and Justice,” the focus turns to the different levels at which economics has significance for social justice. These chapters discuss fair housing at the local level, the dialogue between Christians and Native Americans over property rights at the regional and national levels, and trade and international organization. In the third and final section, “Politics, War, and Peacemaking,” the content ranges from the existential experience of a soldier to that of a veteran of civil rights activism, from theorizing about peacemaking to commenting on the use of drones.

Christian ethics is less a system of principles, rules, or even virtues, and more of a free and open-ended responsible witness to God's gracious action to be with and for others and the world. Postmodernity has left us with the risky uncertainty of knowing and doing the good. It also leaves us with the global risks of political violence and terrorism, economic globalization and financial crisis, and environmental destruction and global climate change. How should Christians respond to these problems? This book creatively explores how Christian ethics is best understood as a witness to God's action, thereby providing the ethical framework for addressing the various problematic social issues that put our world at risk. Haddorff develops the notion of witness through a detailed study of Karl Barth's theological ethics. Barth, he argues, provides a language enabling us to know what a Christian ethics of witness actually looks like in both theory and in practice. In correspondence to God's gracious action, Christians remain free to think and act in faith, hope, and love in respondence to their unique circumstances, even in a world at risk. In their witness, Christians remain confident that God has not abandoned the world but loves and cares for its future.

Christian ethics has addressed moral agency and culture from the start, and Christian social ethics increasingly acknowledges the power of social structures. However, neither has made sufficient use of the discipline that specializes in understanding structures and culture: sociology. In Moral Agency within Social Structures and Culture, editor and contributor Daniel K. Finn proposes a field-changing critical realist sociology that puts Christian ethics into conversation with modern discourses on human agency and social transformation. Catholic social teaching mischaracterizes social evil as being little more than the sum of individual choices, remedied through individual conversion. Liberation theology points to the power of social structures but without specifying how structures affect moral agency. Critical realist sociology provides a solution to both shortcomings. This collection shows how sociological insights can deepen and extend Catholic social thought by enabling ethicists to analyze more precisely how structures and culture impact human decisions. The book demonstrates how this sociological framework has applications for the study of the ecological crisis, economic life, and virtue ethics. Moral Agency within Social Structures and Culture is a valuable tool for Christian ethicists who seek systemic change in accord with the Gospel.