This groundbreaking book provides an analytical tool to understand how and why evil works in the world as it does. Deconstructing memory, history, and myth as received wisdom, the volume critically examines racism, sexism, poverty, and stereotypes.

Hastings Center Report, Volume 52, Issue S1, Page S69-S71, March‐April 2022.

The prevalence of tainted legacies within Christian ethics, across the academy, and in contemporary public debate raises difficult questions about handling legacies implicated in traumatic pasts. This essay uses the concept of moral injury to illuminate the moral complexities of tainted religious legacies and employs feminist and womanist ethics to provide strategies for moral repair in the wake of these and other such legacies. It first argues that, despite significant limitations, moral injury provides purchase on the experience (...) of encountering tainted religious legacies by naming the type of agency involved, describing the moral harm tainted legacies cause, and highlighting the social and institutional context of that harm. It then argues that feminist and womanist responses to morally injurious forms of Christianity—particularly explorations of redemptive suffering—not only resonate with responses to Yoder’s case and other tainted legacies current in public debate but also provide criteria for assessing those responses. (shrink)

How do Black churches in the US participate in the down-ness/decline of black women in church and society? And how does such participation intersect with the twenty-first century surge of neo-fascism in the US? Negotiating the slogan that propels contemporary MAGA politics, Make America Great Again, the essay considers the challenge of constructive womanist ethics in the face of false narratives of decline that endeavor to make something that has never been great, great again. Finally, it considers the (...) triumph of black womensethical living amidst enduring structural evil and death-dealing traditions in the church. It does this via a hermneutical excursus on Martin Luther King, Jr., the most prominent of the “great race men,” by retrieving how his mother, Alberta Williams King - and not just the men of his ancestry - molded his prophetic preaching and his understanding of present glory. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:WomanistAlice Walker1. From womanish. (Opp. of "girlish," i.e., frivolous, irresponsible, not serious.) A black feminist or feminist of color. From the black folk expression of mothers to female children, "You acting womanish," i.e., like a woman. Usually referring to outrageous, audacious, courageous or willful behavior. Wanting to know more and in greater depth than is considered "good" for one. Interested in grown-up doings. Acting grown up. Being grown up. (...) Interchangeable with another black folk expression: "You trying to be grown." Responsible. In charge. Serious.2. Also: A woman who loves other women, sexually and/or nonsexually. Appreciates and prefers women's culture, women's emotional flexibility (values tears as a natural counter-balance of laughter) and women's strength. Sometimes loves individual men, sexually and/or nonsexually. Committed to survival and wholeness of entire people, male and female. Not a separatist, except periodically, for health. Traditionally universalist, as in: "Mamma, why are we brown, pink, and yellow, and our cousins are white, beige, and black?" Ans.: "Well, you know the colored race is just like a flower garden, with every color flower represented." Traditionally capable, as in: "Mamma, I'm walking to Canada and I'm taking you and a bunch of other slaves with me." Reply: "It wouldn't be the first time." 3. Loves music. Loves dance. Loves the moon. Loves the Spirit. Loves love and food and roundness. Loves struggle. Loves the Folk. Loves herself. Regardless. 4. Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender. [End Page 45]FootnotesFrom Alice Walker, In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose, 1st ed. (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983), xi; reprinted in Katie Cannon, Katie's Canon: Womanism and the Soul of the Black Community (New York: Continuum, 1995), 22; reprinted in Stacey Floyd-Thomas, Mining the Motherlode: Methods in Womanist Ethics (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 2006); reprinted in Alice Walker, We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting for: Inner Light in a Time of Darkness: Meditations (New York: New Press; Distributed by W. W. Norton, 2006).Copyright © 2012 University of Hawai'i Press... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Womanist-Buddhist Consultation as a Reading CommunityCarolyn M. Jones MedineIn Breaking the Fall, the late Robert Detweiler (1932-2008) imagines what a reading community, "a contemporary version of the old storytelling cultures,"1 might look like. He suggests that in such a community, "The accent on community itself would offer a balance to our excessively privatizing tendencies; the communal interaction could counter our relentless drive to interpret... with attitudes of (...) play and Gelassenheit (abandonment, chance, and relaxation); the writing and reading community especially as a liminal entity, could nurture a respect for the incomprehensibility of form and a reverence for mystery."2 This description offers an entry to the work of the Womanist-Buddhist Consultations. To reach a provisional understanding of the meaning of that work, I shall reflect on first what we mean when we say that we want to read something. Second, I turn to a conversation with Robert Detweiler, who was one of my mentors, as a way to address the form of reading that we do and the form of community that we make in the Womanist-Buddhist Consultations. Third, I want to draw on the thought of the consultations themselves, using Emmanuel Levinas's work on reading and ethics, to examine the capacity the consultations have to hold tensions creatively and to allow multiple meanings to be part of them. Finally, I want to address the goals for the consultations. I am thinking specifically of Melanie Harris's desire to see the consultations as generating practices that promote peace, compassion, and justice, and Charlie Hallisey's desire to generate a more complex reading of Buddhist texts in and of themselves.The Womanist-Buddhist Consultations have met three times between 2009 and 2011. We met at Harvard Divinity School and at Texas Christian University for sessions of four days each, and for an evening at the University of Georgia between the two longer meetings. The Texas Christian meeting included some previous members from the Harvard meeting, and added new ones. The University of Georgia meeting consisted primarily of students who participated in the reading practice.In the meeting at the University of Georgia, Charles Hallisey looked askance at me when I said that Buddhism offers an entry into peace and compassion; yet Melanie Harris, when she constructed the later session at Texas Christian University, deployed the terms "peace" and "justice" as descriptors for the work of the group. Hallisey's ironic glance occurred right before we read, at the University of Georgia, a text that contained magic and murder. His glance and the content of that text have prompted [End Page 47] me to think through Harris's claims and to see how our group achieves both a reading of Buddhism and an ethical practice that generates peace and points to justice.The instructions that Hallisey gives for the reading process describe a practice of "being and reading together" as we encounter a variety of Buddhist texts.3 The group's guide is the bodhisattva Manjushri, who has overseen our work through an image gracing the wall at all our meetings. Manjushri has a sword to cut through obstacles, and holds a book, signifying wisdom. The practice of reading with friends, Hallisey told us, comes from Jewish tradition: we need a friend to help us overcome what we can and to begin to see what we cannot. The work involves three steps:1. To read passages individually.2. To read the same passages together in small groups.3. To gather again as a large group and discuss what we have discovered.The major goal of reading is to encounter levels of ourselves to which we ordinarily have no access, by examining a text that becomes "generous" to us. Reading together, Hallisey asserts, makes the generosity of the text visible to us.This process of reading, I would argue, is different from what we usually do when we read and different from what we mean when we tell students to read. Patricia O'Connell Killen, an AAR Teaching Award winner, has delineated some of what we mean when we say to our students: "Read chapter 2 of 'X' and come to class prepared."4... (shrink)

Womanist religious thought centers the experiences of black women but addresses the holistic liberation of communities from multiple and hybridized religious, spiritual, and cultural identities, offering valuable insight for examining the moral aims of the common good and identifying challenges to the good of particular communities. This paper offers a womanist analysis of prevailing conceptions of the common good and accounts of architecture and urban planning’s relation to the common good and civic virtue within the work of Christian (...) theologians. It explores the architectural implications of the common good from a womanist lens and articulates a liberatory vision of the common good and its relation to architectural design and construction. Womanist critiques and insights suggest that the spirituality and participation of common people are vital for shaping architecture for the common good, especially as it addresses whose interests are to be served and how common ground is pursued. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist Resources for Womanist ReflectionMelanie L. HarrisA Buddhist understanding of unconditional love in dialogue with Christian social ethics addresses the utter disappointment in humanity when racism is exposed. This focus offers us yet another way into the dialogue of engaged Buddhism and Christian liberation theologies, and directly points to Buddhism as a resource for thinking about and healing from racism and other forms of oppression. My presentation (...) today is descriptive in nature, and as a Womanist scholar, I will lean toward the constructive—but I will leave room for our collective and communal discussion to help show us the signs of what a new vision of justice might look like as we learn to live together on planet Earth.womanist theology and the hard work of loveMuch of my work as a Womanist scholar and much of the field grounds itself inside of the nitty-gritty wrestling moments with Christian norms and concepts that disregard analysis that honors the complex subjectivities of women, including issues of race, class, gender, and sexual justice. Taking the call for social justice and the everyday lives and experiences of African and African American women seriously, Womanist theology and ethics are in fact forms of liberation theology. What makes Womanist perspectives unique is that they challenge Christian thought and all religious thinking to more fully engage the principles of love and justice. In the case of Christianity, Womanist scholars demand that those walking in the faith “practice what they preach” and respond to some of the following questions:• How are women of color treated in your religious tradition? Is gender equity normative in your tradition?• What is life-affirming in your religious tradition that honors the unique theological perspectives and voices of women of color?• How are women’s bodies honored, their sexualities spoken about, and their bodily choices and reproductive rights discussed?• How are women of color’s racial and ethnic identities and complex subjectivities honored by or embody the “touch of Jesus” or the “healing gaze of the Buddha” or the “prayers of Muhammad” or “the breath of Krishna”?• What are women of color’s unique perspectives on Earth justice? [End Page 107]• Finally, how are the stories of women of color whose bodies have been historically ravaged by rape and violence finding solidarity with stories of environmental degradation in which the sister/mother body of Earth suffers similar disembodiment and oppression?Looking into the hearts of Christian, Buddhist, and other religious perspectives and traditions Womanism offers a lens through which to examine understandings of God and the divine differently. It honors the perspectives of women of color, whose voices have been historically marginalized in normative religious thought and who have often experienced being dehumanized in society. In spite of this, many women who identify with the term “Womanist” have found faith, religious value, and restoration through an emphasis on divine embodiment, self-worth, and self-love.Over the course of the first and second waves of Womanism, scholars have raised important questions of how communal love points toward a moral imperative for Earth justice. However, more recently, third-wave Womanist activists and scholars are focusing on Earth justice and other social justice issues from a religiously pluralistic perspective. Third-wave Womanist scholars like myself have taken the term beyond the halls of Union “into the streets” as activists, have witnessed Womanist ideas transformed into political activism, and have experienced Womanist solidarity with women across various global contexts. Many of us are returning “home” to the conversation wiser and are more courageous than ever before and expanding the discourse by engaging religious pluralism, interfaith dialogue, and interreligious realities in hopes of finding new ways to confront multilayered oppressions.1buddhist resources for womanist reflectionIn 2009, Charles Hallisey of Harvard Divinity School and I received a grant from the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard to do something imaginative and creative. We invited several renowned Womanist and Buddhist scholars to Harvard to read Buddhist texts together in community and discuss whether there was anything inherent in both traditions that would expand Buddhist studies and broaden inter-religious dialogue in Womanist thought.There were some theoretical challenges and... (shrink)

This essay considers the complexities associated with faith-based initiatives for poor black people, as these initiatives have become one antipoverty strategy within some black churches. Deploying a womanist perspective on public policy, my contention is that faith-based initiatives have a contradictory nature in relation to ameliorating poverty among blacks. While these initiatives provide the necessary funding for many religious organizations such as black churches that are already doing antipoverty work, these initiatives simultaneously fail to consider how free-market institutions exacerbate (...) poverty in general and black poverty in particular. Black churches must acknowledge that faith-based initiatives are an insufficient strategy for the amelioration of poverty if such a strategy is not situated alongside more structural and class-based efforts to ameliorate systemic injustice. (shrink)

Monica A. Coleman achieves remarkable rigor in bringing together in one volume her long-standing interests in process philosophy and theology, womanist theology and ethics, African diaspora studies, West African religions, and African American women’s literature. Making a way out of No Way (2008) is a tour de force in contemporary African American constructive theology and especially in womanist discourse on the religious experience(s) of African American women. Coleman insists on understanding black women’s religious experience through the lens (...) of their complex subjectivity, which is irreducible to singularity or totality. As typically found in academic womanist theology, Coleman does not begin her theology with .. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Christian Ethics at the Boundary: Feminism and Theologies of Public Life by Karen V. GuthJulie Hanlon RubioChristian Ethics at the Boundary: Feminism and Theologies of Public Life Karen V. Guth MINNEAPOLIS: FORTRESS PRESS, 2015. 231 pp. $39.00In her promising first book, Karen Guth does "ethics at the boundary," reading the central figures of Martin Luther King Jr., John Howard Yoder, and Reinhold Niebuhr with an (...) uncommon generosity that allows for synthesis and opens up new potential for collective action. She challenges the Christian realists, witness theologians, and liberationists in contemporary Christian ethics to see overlap in their theologies, hear the questions that others bring to their work, and join together in bringing theology to the public square.This moment in politics and political theology seems to call for the kind of argument that Guth wants to make. Polarization in the academy mirrors that of the church and society, and potential for moving beyond it seems more elusive than ever.The key contribution of the book is shedding light on what is often overlooked in three key figures who continue to influence Christian ethics. At the "boundaries" or edges of their work, Guth retrieves Niebuhr's attention to ecclesiology as an essential part of his realist ethic; Yoder's willingness to learn from liberalism and translate theology for a diverse audience; and King's liberation theology of the streets, which enacted transcendence of the witness/realist divide.Equally significant is attention to overlooked feminist themes in all three thinkers. Guth argues that Yoder has the most developed feminist theology (especially evident in unpublished memos, 138–40), whereas King and Niebuhr, though often rightly criticized by feminist thinkers, have in their writings and sermons significant overlap with central feminist themes. By reading King and Niebuhr alongside feminist thinkers, we can begin to see King's "'feminist' and 'womanist' politics of love," which inspires a view of "churches as potential sites of divine creation" (183), and Niebuhr's call for the church to "confess its complicity with the world" for its failures, which coheres with feminist insistence that the church must "confess its complicity in women's [End Page 196] oppression" (111). In retrieving feminist themes, Guth offers a corrective to political theology's frequent lack of attention to sexism.Guth is careful to note that, in their personal lives, all three theologians failed to live up to their professed concern for gender justice. Despite this qualification, it is particularly difficult to read of Yoder's professed feminism in light of the overwhelming allegations of sexual abuse against him by over one hundred women. His perverse theological justification of the abuse and the ongoing tension among Christian ethicists about how to respond compound the problem. In 2017, SCE members held a prayer service to honor the testimony of Yoder's victims and to address the SCE's complicity in the harm done by him. Guth's response is that it is now even more important to correct misperceptions and uphold feminist themes in Yoder's work. However, it seems all but impossible to redeem his thought in this area. Yoder justified his abuse by melding together themes from scripture and liberalism. In light of what we know now, his justification of "revolutionary subordination" (even in the 1994 version of Politics of Jesus) is even more troubling. In these times, silence about Yoder may be the more appropriate way to honor his victims.Still, Guth's emphasis on intellectual charity, her articulation of the desire for beloved community as essential to the ethicist's task, and her willingness to risk standing at the boundary in order to illuminate the common concerns of those who see themselves as opponents are great gifts to Christian ethics. By complicating the reader's location of Yoder, Niebhur, and King, Guth makes a strong case that ethicists can form a better "community of argument" (190). In a course on social ethics, or in public or political theology, reading Guth would provide a way for students to synthesize the contributions of key thinkers, grapple with both personal and theoretical limitations, and think creatively about how to do their work with generosity and humility.Julie... (shrink)

Toward a Postmodern Ethic of Radical Freedom is one of the first, if not the first, to bring Cornel West and Michel Foucault together in a meaningful dialogue to formulate "a postmodern ethic of radical freedom." This dialogue begins with the practical posture of West, more specifically his notions of truth and reality and work, then goes back to his more theoretical work to explore the same notions. As a project in constructive ethics, this book examines Cornel West's epistemology (...) (notion of truth) and metaphysics (notions of reality) as foundational components for a postmodern ethic of radical freedom. These foundational components are then brought into a discursive conversation with aspects of Michel Foucault's archaeology and genealogy, with a method called reconstruction. This reconstruction results in two important trajectories, radical ontology and radical epistemology, which become the pillars for a postmodern ethic of radical freedom. The last chapter of the book weaves together all components with the womanist work of Monica Coleman and Patricia Hill Collins as examples of this ethic of radical freedom. Practically speaking, this postmodern ethic of radical freedom serves as a platform to ensure transcendence so that all people, regardless of race, gender, or sexuality, can enjoy a flourishing and fulfilled life. (shrink)

To build a front against neoliberalism, those in the alter-globalisation movement work across perceived divides. Such transversal openness, however, has not been embraced fully within the academic sphere, even though theoretical coalitions are also important for developing a life-affirming societal ethos. Meaningful opportunities for theoretical bridging do exist, particularly where alternative value systems, hitherto isolated, can be drawn into the wider global dialogue on societal futures. In this spirit, this article offers some transversal reflections on materialist ecofeminism, and one such (...) marginalised value system: the African ethic of ubuntu. (shrink)

The field of religious ethics contributes to practices of resistance and hope in broader society. In advancing my claim that religious ethics contributes to practices of resistance and hope today, I first tell a story about the changing demographics in the field of religious ethics and why this demographic shift is important. I next focus on womanist religious scholarship as an exemplary discourse in religious ethics and how it has contributed to practices of resistance and (...) hope in the academy and within contemporary society. While a few scholars in JRE over the last 50 years have cited and engaged womanist ethicists like Katie Cannon and Emilie Townes, I want to offer a more explicit argument on how the womanist idea has contributed to practices of resistance and hope. I maintain that womanist religious scholarship embodies the practice of undomesticated dissent and that such dissent might be understood as a contribution to larger humanistic inquiry within the academy. Finally, I briefly consider an objection to my argument through engaging Stanley Fish's claim that the purposes and ends of institutions of higher education should not be oriented toward activism. (shrink)

From Black Power to Black Lives Matter, political resisters protesting systemic racism have used riots and other manifestations of outrage as a way to grasp at flourishing. Yet such a tactic seems antithetical to the core concept of flourishing as recognized within virtue ethics. Building on the work of womanist and feminist ethicists and moral philosophers who have defended anger as a morally apt, even virtuous response to injustice, we reconsider the relationship between a community’s flourishing and public (...) manifestations of anger and rage. We argue for expanding the moral response to rioting as a tactic of political resistance, and we suggest that more culturally particular understandings of both virtue and flourishing can open space to better see the role anger may play in a community’s flourishing. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Women, Ethics, and Inequality in US Healthcare: “To Count among the Living” by Aana Marie Vigen, and: New Feminist Christianity: Many Voices, Many Views ed. by Mary E. Hunt and Diann L. NeuKelly Denton-BorhaugWomen, Ethics, and Inequality in US Healthcare: “To Count among the Living” By Aana Marie Vigen NEW YORK: PALGRAVE MACMILLAN, 2011. 304 PP. $31.11New Feminist Christianity: Many Voices, Many Views Edited by Mary (...) E. Hunt and Diann L. Neu WOODSTOCK, VT: SKYLIGHT PATHS, 2010. 384 PP. $24.99In this age of the Supreme Court Hobby Lobby decision, which declared that corporation owners’ religious commitments could provide a basis for denial of their employees’ critical reproductive health insurance benefits (with particular impact on the lives of women), ethical investigation of medical sociology, theology, and the realities of women’s lives is more important than ever. Originally released in 2006, Aana Marie Vigen’s Women, Ethics, and Inequality in US Healthcare makes important headway through these complex waters. And for this volume in the Palgrave Macmillan Series on Black Religion / Womanist Thought / Social Justice, editors Dwight N. Hopkins [End Page 202] and Linda E. Thomas set forth the goal to “pioneer conceptual work and boundary-pushing effort engaging Black Religion or Womanist thought, and social justice” (xiv).Rereleased in paperback in 2011 with a new preface, Vigen’s updated health statistics reveal how racial-ethnic minorities “continue to be overrepresented among the ranks of the uninsured and/or of those living in poverty” (xliii). Her project is to better understand what enables and perpetuates this inequitable distribution and oppression, and to suggest methods of redress and reform. But in order to accomplish any of this, society in general and especially those with socioeconomic power—including administrative leaders in health care, medical providers, and ethicists—need to listen much more deeply to the stories of those who are most vulnerable and are being most negatively affected by current health care systems and practices. For Vigen, this meant a decision to focus on in-depth interviews with eight black and Latina women with breast cancer, in addition to six health care providers.With this method, Vigen pursues a very ambitious goal to, as she puts it, “begin a conversation among several distinct dialogue partners: medical sociology, biomedical ethics, ethnography, theology, and feminist social ethics” (5). She uses a “reflexive” practice, striving for openness to the new insights and ideas that emerged from this creative, multidisciplinary encounter. However, even before launching her interviews, her analysis of the process to seek approval from the Institutional Research Board illustrates the “clash of cultures” she would encounter, as she writes, “one cannot take for granted that others will share the view that women of color are able to speak truth in their own right and out of their own experiences—without comparison to others—about human personhood, dignity, and adequate healthcare quality” (107). It is to Vigen’s credit that she remained undeterred; if anything, the struggle she encountered with powerful leaders helped to confirm and focus the value of this work: not to tell every story, “but to tell a few with care and attention to detail” (108).Vigen’s ethnographical method makes it possible for her to illuminate and address not only stark inequities but also much subtler dynamics of racism combined with socioeconomic discrimination. Along the way, she illustrates a wide variety of experiences of oppression. In contrast to the experience of white patients, these female patients of color tended to be sent to the accounting/financing office before being allowed to see the doctor (144). Though white patients may express strong emotions in medical settings, some women of color felt pressured to reassure white doctors that they could be rational and not overly emotional (141). Socioeconomic and racial discrimination often reinforced one another in these settings. Perhaps most alarming, Vigen notes, the white care providers she interviewed seemed to be very unconscious of [End Page 203] their own racial identity and its role in medical care encounters (165). Her final chapter concludes with a series of immensely practical ethical mandates that would help alter these oppressive patterns. Clergy, students of ethics, and anyone... (shrink)

This paper explores the power of womanist ethics to illuminate the Confederate monuments debate. First, I draw on Emilie Townes’s analysis of the “cultural production of evil” to construe Confederate monuments as products of the “fantastic hegemonic imagination” that render visible for whites the invisibility of “whiteness.” Second, I argue that Angela Sims’s work on lynching provides a vivid example of how “countermemory” functions as an antidote to the fantastic hegemonic imagination. Finally, I argue that Delores Williams’s re-evaluation (...) of the cross as a sacred symbol enables a reading of Confederate monuments as realist symbols of violence that require displacement from the center to the periphery of national sacred space. I conclude that although the debate on Confederate monuments is important, womanist analysis warns against an overly-narrow focus on this issue, lest we neglect the already obscured gendered, classist, homophobic, and xenophobic dimensions of structural injustice that the monuments represent. (shrink)

This project draws on scholarship of feminist and womanist scholars, and on results of interviews with scientists currently involved in molecular genetics. With reference to Margaret Urban Walker's “practices of moral responsibility,” the social practices of molecular geneticists are exphred, and strategies identified through which scientists negotiate their moral responsibilities. The implications of this work for scientists and for feminists are discussed.

What does it mean to claim that "lives" should be the cornerstone of ethical analysis and reflection? This question has been raised by the Black Lives Matter movement. However, public discussions of the movement have often devolved into rhetorical battles that elide the movement's central moral claims. This paper investigates the question by examining the role of "lives" in the Black womanist ethical tradition and in neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics. I argue that these two traditions, despite their differences, can (...) illuminate one another, and I explain and defend my position through a reading of Alice Walker's _The Color Purple_. (shrink)

Memory, funerals, and the communion of the saints: growing old and practices of remembering / M. Therese Lysaught -- God bends over backward to accommodate humankind...while the Civil Rights Acts and the Americans with Disabilities Act require [only] minimum effort / Mary Jo Iozzio -- Radical solidarity: migration as challenge ofr contemporary Christian ethics / Kristin E. Heyer -- Catholic lesbian feminist theology / Mary E. Hunt -- Theology of whose body? Sexual conplementarity, intersex conditions, and La Virgen de (...) Guadalupe / Katie M. Grimes -- Social conscience and politics in the United States of America: reflections / Mary Jo Bane -- Pope Francis, women, and the church for the poor / Lisa A. Fullam -- Floodwaters and the ticking clock: the systematic oppression and stigmatization of poor, single mothers in American and Christian theological responses / Julie A. Mavity Maddalena --What causes inequity? / Dean Baker -- Engaging the U.S. Bishops' pastoral on crime and criminal justice: from atomism to community justice / Robert DeFina and Lance Hannon -- Reconstructing the moral claim of racially unjust mass incarceration / Alison Benders -- The systemic erasure of the Black/dark-skinned body in Catholic ethics / Bryan Massingale -- Anti-blackness and white supremacy in the making of American Catholicism / M. Shawn Copeland -- White privilege / Charles E. Curran -- The Black Lives Matter Movement: justice and health equity / Michael P. Jaycox -- Mujerista theology: a challenge to traditional theology / Ada María Isasi-Díaz -- Faith of our mothers; Catholic womanist God-talk / Diana L. Hayes. (shrink)

The dominant figure in Western Roman Catholic ethics is Thomas Aquinas, and Catholic tradition references a centralized magisterium. Nevertheless, Catholicism is internally pluralistic. After Vatican II, three models of theology and tradition emerged, all addressing gender equality: the Augustinian, neo-Thomistic, and neo-Franciscan. Latina, womanist, African, and Asian ethics of gender present more radical approaches to tradition—suggesting a Junian stream. Catholic ethical-political tradition is not defined by a specific cultural mediation, figure, or model but by a constellation of (...) commitments shared by Catholic feminists: difference in unity, moral realism, social meliorism, human equality, preferential option for the poor, and interreligious dialogue. (shrink)

SCHOLARS OFTEN VIEW MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO political theology in the context of his philosophy of nonviolence. Drawing on feminist and womanist thought, I reconstruct King's theopolitical practice to construe nonviolence more broadly as including any "agapic activity" that forms and sustains community. In doing so, I uncover in King's thought a conception of agape that resonates with feminist emphasis on the relational and community-oriented nature of love, and I draw on womanist thought to highlight the (...) role of creativity, not solely love or justice, to King's ethical thinking. Both emphases suggest a vision of churches as communities of creativity with community-creating practices at the heart of their political roles. (shrink)

PAULI MURRAY WAS AN ACTIVIST, LAWYER, AND PRIEST WHOSE AVocation was writing. In this essay I first contextualize Murray's life and works, and I analyze her poetry and ethical vision. I focus on three themes in her poetry: race and interlocking oppressions, the "dream" of America and historiography, and the creative ethical power of productive anger. I engage womanist scholarship as a conversation partner throughout the essay. Moving inductively from my analysis of Murray's poetry, I offer several constructive suggestions (...) about the role and heuristic of poetry in contemporary theological and social ethics. (shrink)

The article draws on critiques in political theory and morality to argue that womanism, a worldview rooted in Black women's lives and history, provides an alternative conceptual framework to prevailing Eurocentric thinking, for promoting socially just institutions of higher education. Presupposing a positioned, encultured, and embodied account of identity, womanism’s social change perspective holds transformative promise. It foregrounds Black women’s penchant for reaching solutions that promote communal balance, affirm one’s humanity and attend to the spiritual dimension (Phillips, 2006 Phillips, L. (...) (Ed.). (2006). The womanist reader. Routledge.[Crossref], [Google Scholar]). Directed first towards scholars of color, fostering inclusivity, communalist values and acknowledged intersectionality offers an ethic of the embodied self. As a corollary, it argues for a universal that recommends at least two guiding principles for a pedagogical philosophy. It is, first oriented towards a love of self and second towards placing all disciplines within a cultural-historical context. In the first claim, there is potential for nothing less than suspending the symbolic and ontological violence to one’s sense of belonging in academia. In the second claim, such an understanding can position scholars of color to actively re-narrate their fields. As illustrations, we focus on three academic fields of education, theology in higher education, and criminal justice. (shrink)

This essay is a version of a presentation given at a session of the American Academy of Religion annual meeting in 2009, celebrating the work of Cuban-American theologian and ethicist Ada María Isasi-Díaz. The author traces the development of Isasi-Díaz’s work articulating Mujerista Theology and connects it with her own work as a Filipina in the United States developing Asian/ Pacific American Feminist Theology by pointing to 1) the intellectual kinship of having been formed in similar circles and circumstances and (...) 2) the shared cultural citizenship of having emerged from a Catholicism that was the particular legacy of Spanish colonialism. Grounded in the faith lives of Latinas, Isasi-Diaz’s theo-ethical perspective grows out of a grassroots yet globally-minded Catholicism in conversation with both Feminist and Womanist theologies. She remains committed to Latinas as her primary community of accountability. (shrink)

Marcella Althaus-Reid puts in print a discussion of sex, gender, and politics. For womanist theologian and ethicist, Townes, black women's experiences have been left out of the theoretical and material constructs of both black and feminist theologies in the United States. Townes argues that Althaus-Reid casts the reader in the role of voyeur as she describes the women lemon vendors in Indecent Theology. The reader observes them from the safety of their own cultural, economic, theo-ethical and sociopolitical mud huts (...) in the same way as the Europeans who queued to view the so-called'Hottentot Venus' in the early 1800s. Nevertheless, Althaus-Reid offers an integrated, interstructured analysis that helps pry open the dynamics of oppressions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:A Thicker Jesus: Incarnational Discipleship in a Secular Age by Glen Harold StassenSarah A. NeeleyA Thicker Jesus: Incarnational Discipleship in a Secular Age Glen Harold Stassen Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2012. 280pp. $25.00Glen Stassen’s A Thicker Jesus addresses how one can find a solid ethical identity that provides a framework and path in a rapidly changing world. Stassen begins by considering what those who have stood (...) the test of history, such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Karth Barth, Martin Luther King, and Dorothy Day, among others, have in common. He effectively argues that the common thread among these great leaders of resistance is a “thick” exegetical understanding of Jesus Christ that is implemented in daily life through incarnational discipleship. Such a “thick” interpretation of Jesus of Nazareth is rooted in Christian realism rather than Platonic idealism, meaning that incarnational discipleship does not attempt to apply lofty ideals to reality but is deeply involved, following Jesus of Nazareth, in historical struggles. Stassen then argues that this type of ethic can address all of the problems posed to ethics and faith in “a secular age” outlined by Charles Taylor’s book of the same title.Stassen’s framework of incarnational discipleship in a secular age addresses each of Taylor’s seven problems through a tapestry of argumentation that includes history, biblical exegesis, the tradition of Christian ethics, science, and politics. The work is critically engaged with historical figures in Christian ethics and current voices in the field. Stassen contributes a unique voice to the conversation by drawing upon his experiences with science as a trained physicist and with politics through his father’s gubernatorial career. Where many chose critical engagement with the natural and social sciences or with theological and biblical interpretation, Stassen does both. He approaches physics, politics, and economics with theological rigor, drawing upon traditional theological claims and offering his own critique and adaptation. Stassen, in his typical style, draws extensively on the Christian Scriptures. However, he does not simply reference numerous verses but further enhances the complexity of his argumentation through careful exegesis of the Sermon on the Mount, which he is known for, and of the Gospel of Mark.Stassen’s careful examination of the Sermon on the Mount and Mark offers the reader a picture of the particular understanding of Jesus that Stassen argues needs to be “thickly” interpreted; nonetheless, the book does not address [End Page 200] the consequences of other interpretations of Jesus being made “thicker” and the ethical dilemmas of such interpretations. To his credit, Stassen draws on several womanist interpretations of the cross as suffering in solidarity with the oppressed. But what about womanists who claim that any value placed on the suffering of the cross might lead to the excuse that the suffering of the oppressed is, in fact, redemptive suffering? Does a “thicker” interpretation of the cross necessarily address this problem?Overall, Stassen’s contribution to the field cannot be understated. He insists on addressing social problems on their own terms in the language of history, politics, economics, and science; he also rigorously engages theological and biblical ethics when such things have gone out of fashion in social ethics. As an added bonus, Stassen is clear in his call for pluralism and multiple ethical approaches while at the same time offering a rich account rooted in an interpretation of Jesus for Christians.Sarah A. NeeleyIliff School of Theology/University of DenverCopyright © 2013 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

Pharmaceutical memory modification is the use of a drug to dampen, or eliminate completely, memories of traumatic experience. While standard therapeutic treatments, even those including intense pharmaceuticals, can potentially offer individual biomedical healing, they are missing an essential perspective offered by Christian bioethics: re/incorporation of individuals and traumatic memories into communities that confront and reinterpret suffering. This paper is specifically grounded in Christian ethics, engaging womanist understandings of Incarnational, embodied personhood, and Johann Baptist Metz’s “dangerous memory.” It develops (...) an ethical framework of Christian “enfleshed counter-memory” that responds to the specific challenge of pharmaceutical memory modification, and traumatic experience generally. (shrink)

Ecofeminism refers to feminist theory and activism informed by ecology. Ecofeminism is concerned with connections between the domination of women and the domination of nature. Although ecofeminism is a diverse movement, ecofeminist theorists share the presuppositions that social transformation is necessary for ecological survival, that intellectual transformation of dominant modes of thought must accompany social transformation, that nature teaches nondualistic and nonhierarchial systems of relation that are models for social transformation of values, and that human and cultural diversity are values (...) in social transformation. Ecofeminist theology, ethics, and religious perspectives are particularly concerned with the integration of science and religion. Examples of religious or spiritual ecofeminisms are North American Christian ecofeminism, North American womanist Christian theology, neopagan Wiccan ecofeminism, Native American ecofeminism, and Third World ecofeminism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Graduate Student Member Spotlights Blog for SBCS:Chera Jo WattsChera Jo WattsMy name is Chera Jo Watts, and I am a first-year doctoral student at the University of Georgia in the Department of Religion and Institute for African American Studies. I am a mother, writer, gardener, yoga practitioner, and artist striving toward what Darlene Clark Hines labels a "Black Studies Mindset." As a first-generation college graduate from a poverty-class background, (...) my degrees include a Bachelor of Science in Psychology, a Master of Arts in Religion, and a Graduate Certificate in African American Studies from the University of Georgia. My broad research interests include African American women's religion and literature, focusing primarily on Womanism, and bridging the gap between the Academy and the everyday. I assert that we have much to learn from our ancestors and from each other while living and operating in what Black Buddhist bell hooks labels an imperialist white supremacist capitalist cispatriarchy. These teachings facilitate personal and communal healing as we continuously dismantle white supremacy in the tangible ways we can from the spaces that we occupy. Also, I currently serve as the Graduate Teaching Assistant in the Institute for African American Studies at the University of Georgia.Within SBCS, I am a graduate student member, and I strongly encourage other graduate students to consider membership in this organization. This community consists of imaginative and generous scholars, and you could make numerous international connections within the field of religious studies (along with other disciplines). As the current Executive Associate for Digital Services, I currently support the Society in a professional role through web updates, monitoring email, and various tasks as instructed by the governing board.How do your research interests relate to the SBCS? What are you working on at the moment?I am currently learning from published Womanists-Buddhists, and SBCS has published several journal articles focused on this thread of Womanist thought and scholarship (especially see Volumes 34, 2014, and 36, 2016). I am grateful to be in conversation with these folks through their work.In May 2022, I finished my Master's Thesis (published in ProQuest) under the direction of Dr. Carolyn Jones Medine. My thesis focuses on Womanist Buddhist thought in the works of Alice Walker while paying special attention to her first novel, The Third Life of Grange Copeland, and then tracing the importance of her Buddhist practice across other works, such as essays and poetry. My first peer-reviewed journal [End Page 273] article was also published in 2022. Reading between the Times: An Ongoing Womanist Buddhist Project may be accessed online through MDPI, and it was included as part of a Special Edition of the journal which focused on spirituality, identity, and resistance in African American literature. At the moment, I have a few journal articles in process which extend this work, and I expanded the analysis to include Black Buddhist bell hooks. For hooks, I am especially interested in her focus on living from a "love ethic," and I'm grateful for an upcoming panel presentation at the 2023 bell hooks Symposium hosted by Berea College this June. Finally, along with Dr. Carolyn Jones Medine, I am co-authoring an Oxford Bibliography entry for "Alice Walker," in which we acknowledge the importance of Walker's spiritual practices, including Buddhism, on her life and writings.Contact information: cheraw@uga.edu | University of Georgia | Institute for African American Studies and Department of Religion. [End Page 274]Chera Jo WattsExecutive Associate for Digital ServicesCopyright © 2023 University of Hawai'i Press... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Prophetic Evangelicals: Envisioning a Just and Peaceable Kingdom ed. by Bruce Ellis Benson, Malinga Elizabeth Berry, and Peter Goodwin Heltzel, and: Bearing True Witness: Truthfulness in Christian Practice by Craig HoveyGuenther “Gene” HaasReview of Prophetic Evangelicals: Envisioning a Just and Peaceable Kingdom EDITED BY BRUCE ELLIS BENSON, MALINGA ELIZABETH BERRY, AND PETER GOODWIN HELTZEL Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2012. 225 pp. $35.00Review of Bearing True Witness: Truthfulness in (...) Christian Practice CRAIG HOVEY Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011. 258 pp. $27.00Christian thought and practice in North America—especially in the evangelical world—has undergone significant changes in recent years. Prophetic Evangelicals and Bearing True Witness deal with two areas where this is evident: first, the attention many evangelicals are now giving to social justice and peace and, second, their determination to witness to the truth about Christ in a manner consistent with the Christian gospel. Prophetic evangelicals is the name the editors apply to a new generation of evangelicals who believe that the gospel of Christ requires a commitment to proclaim and embody “the just and peaceable kingdom” (2). These evangelicals view Jesus as inaugurating “a new social order that is a radical alternative to the order of empire” (7).This trend among evangelicals to move beyond the preaching of the gospel in a narrow sense (over against the liberals’ emphasis on social justice) is the culmination of a trend that has been happening since the publication in 1947 of Carl Henry’s The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism. What is new about many younger evangelicals in recent decades is their embrace of the Anabaptist perspective on justice and peace. It is clear in the introductory and concluding chapters by the editors—with their appeals to John Howard Yoder and Stanley Hauerwas and their references to the “cultural captivity” of the church—that this is the trend they have in mind. One also reads hints of liberation theology in the editors’ references to the needs of the people being “holy” (12), to God’s being on the side of—and the gospel always being in favor of—the “least” (47), and to a critique of “the order of empire” (7). Of course, [End Page 221] non-Anabaptist evangelicals are also concerned with these themes as part of their commitment to justice and peace. But it is the distinctive emphasis of this book—with some exceptions among the contributors—that it highlights the ways Anabaptist evangelicals are prophetic.The chapters consist of expositions on the following biblical themes: creation, shalom, justice, kingdom, news, Mary, the cross, church, freedom, reconciliation, resurrection, and hope. The authors include a wide range of evangelicals: from a Kuyperian (Vincent Bacote on creation) to a committed Anabaptist (David Gushee on shalom), to postcolonial Christians (Gabriel Salguero on the cross, and Raymond Alfred on freedom). Although the term is slippery, the inclusion of two contributors raises the question about who the editors consider to be an “evangelical”: Helen Slessarov-Jamir (on justice) agrees with her students’ desire not to learn theology from “dead white men” (77) and embraces religious pluralism (85); Pamela Lightsey (on reconciliation) embraces liberalism and liberation theology and calls herself a “womanist theologian” (169).The chapters contain a diversity of contributions in length and quality. Some are good, short expositions of themes: creation (Bacote), kingdom (Christian Collins Winn), Mary—actually about suffering—(Ruth Padilla DeBorst), church (John Franke), and resurrection (Cherith Fee Nordling). Gushee’s chapter contains a good exposition of the Anabaptist view of shalom, along with typical sweeping statements about the “Constantinian compromise” and the evangelical compromise with the state (72). Two chapters deserve special recognition. Chris Boesel’s chapter, “News,” is an excellent account of the Christian call to justice as part of the full goodness of the gospel. He criticizes both liberal-progressive and evangelical-conservative assumptions about the church’s mission and calls for a “recovering evangelical faith” that pursues justice with repentance, humility, and a reliance on the Holy Spirit. Telford Work’s chapter, “Hope,” also articulates a perceptive critique of the activism of both the Christian Right and the Christian Left. Rejecting all alignments with worldly power, he calls on the... (shrink)

Structural evil impacts persons’ experiences differently, a reality that feminist philosophers Claudia Card and Lisa Tessman have termed “moral luck.” As Christian ethicists grapple with privilege and oppression, we lack a satisfactory framework to describe how particular life circumstances impact moral lives. This essay develops a Christian virtue account of moral luck, drawing on Thomas Aquinas and womanist theologians including Melanie L. Harris and Rosita deAnn Mathews. Moral luck helps Christian ethicists attend to the impact of difference on the (...) moral life as well as to the common experience of contingency harming virtue, requiring dependence on God’s grace. (shrink)

In this paper I take up the ambivalence we rightly feel toward leaders by examining the relationship between charismatic authority and moral exemplarity. Drawing on the social theory of Max Weber, and in dialogue with a case study of an anti-militarism movement called the SOA (School of Americas) Watch, I demonstrate that through a “politics of sacrifice” leaders synchronize their own stories with those of communally recognized exemplars and act in ways that evidence a solidarity in the suffering of those (...) exemplars thereby generating their charismatic authority. While performing crucial strategic, motivational, and pedagogical roles, this charisma also introduces problematic temptations to authoritarianism that short-circuit the practical reasoning that exemplars supposedly help to form. In the end this leaves our sense of ambivalence intact. What is needed, I argue, are practices of critique that reopen the distance between leader and follower and thus allow the possibility of practical reason. (shrink)

A textbook designed for the mandatory semester ethics course at the United States Naval Academy by USNA Ethics Section, with contributions by the Distinguished Chair in Ethics.

Name der Zeitschrift: Jahrbuch für Wissenschaft und Ethik Jahrgang: 20 Heft: 1 Seiten: 293-302.

Aggregative consequentialism and several other popular moral theories are threatened with paralysis: when coupled with some plausible assumptions, they seem to imply that it is always ethically indifferent what you do. Modern cosmology teaches that the world might well contain an infinite number of happy and sad people and other candidate value-bearing locations. Aggregative ethics implies that such a world contains an infinite amount of positive value and an infinite amount of negative value. You can affect only a finite (...) amount of good or bad. In standard cardinal arithmetic, an infinite quantity is unchanged by the addition or subtraction of any finite quantity. So it appears you cannot change the value of the world. Modifications of aggregationism aimed at resolving the paralysis are only partially effective and cause severe side effects, including problems of “fanaticism”, “distortion”, and erosion of the intuitions that originally motivated the theory. Is the infinitarian challenge fatal? (shrink)

The new business opportunities and prospects emerging in Europe within the Common Market and other Western and European countries also raise important ethical challenges. This work comprises a collection of ethical insights to enhance the conduct of business in an evolving Europe.