What is the place of Christian love in a pluralistic society dedicated to liberty and justice for all ? What would it mean to take both Jesus Christ and Abraham Lincoln seriously and attempt to translate love of God and neighbor into every quarter of life, including law and politics? Timothy Jackson addresses such questions in Political Agape: Prophetic Christianity and Liberal Democracy. Jackson argues that love of God and neighbor is the perilously neglected civil virtue of our time and that it must be considered even before justice in structuring political principles and policies. To indicate the specific implications of civic agapism, he looks at such issues as the death penalty, Christian complicity in the Holocaust, the case for same-sex marriage, and the morality of adoption. The book concludes with Jackson s reflections on Martin Luther King Jr. as a Christian hero.

This study is the most comprehensive account to date of modern treatments of the love commandment. Gene Outka examines the literature on agape from Nygren’s Agape and Eros in 1930. Both Roman Catholic and Protestant writings are considered, including those of D’Arcy, Niebuhr, Ramsey, Tillich, and above all, Karl Barth. The first seven chapters focus on the principal treatments in the theological literature as they relate to major topics in ethical theory. The last chapter explores further the basic normative content of agape and discusses some of the most characteristic problems. “The book is in my judgment the best recent work in religious ethics. Outka brings together analytic moral philosophy and theological ethics, providing a masterly survey of views and issues arising in the past forty years. . . . I can think of few books of interest to scholars in both philosophy and theology, but Outka’s is one. Unlike some scholars who are at home in continental theology, Outka is also at home in secular analytic philosophy; he brings them together in a mutually illuminating way.”—Donald Evans “Outka has mastered this vast literature on love, and has brought a critical and clarifying analysis to bear upon it. This is a most important book on a most important subject, and brings the whole discussion into a new phase.”—John Macquarrie “The first thing to be said about Outka’s book quite simply is that it is excellent; in fact, it is probably the very best available book about contemporary Christian ethical theory.”—The Humanities Association Review

John Howard Yoder is one of the best-known Mennonite thinkers on peace. But before Yoder there was Guy F. Hershberger, whose reflections on war, violence and peace helped Mennonites navigate perilous times in early to mid-20th century, and who also laid the foundation for what became the Alternative Service Program in the U.S. during World War II. In the 1960s, he played an important role in guiding the Mennonite church’s response to the civil rights movement—nudging them toward greater openness to Martin Luther King’s call for justice for African-Americans. In this definitive biography, Theron F. Schlabach shows how Hershberger helped Christians live their faith in a world beset by war and injustice, at the same time pioneering creative ways to engage pressing concerns such as civil rights, economic justice and capital punishment. Says Stanley Hauerwas, Professor of Theological Ethics, Duke Divinity School: “What Schlabach has given us is an invaluable, honest account of a life lived in the tensions of the Mennonite church as that church explored the implications of being a people committed to nonviolence. The resulting account is a crucial account not only of Hershberger’s life, but of Mennonite life—an accounting I hope non-Mennonites will find instructive because it may help them understand Mennonites, but more importantly how Mennonites help us better understand what being Christian entails.” War, Peace, and Social Conscience: Guy F. Hershberger and Mennonite Ethics was made possible through the generous support of Mennonite Mutual Aid and the Mennonite Historical Society.

At the heart of Christian ethics is the biblical commandment to love God and to love one's neighbor as oneself. But what is the meaning of love? Scholars have wrestled with this question since the recording of the Christian gospels, and in recent decades teachers and students of Christian ethics have engaged in vigorous debates about appropriate interpretations and implications of this critical norm. In Love and Christian Ethics, nearly two dozen leading experts analyze and assess the meaning of love from a wide range of perspectives. Chapters are organized into three areas: influential sources and exponents of Western Christian thought about the ethical significance of love, perennial theoretical questions attending that consideration, and the implications of Christian love for important social realities. Contributors bring a richness of thought and experience to deliver unprecedentedly broad and rigorous analysis of this central tenet of Christian ethics and faith. William Werpehowski provides an afterword on future trajectories for this research. Love and Christian Ethics is sure to become a benchmark resource in the field.