Book Reviews

[1] As a Lutheran and a political scientist, I originally reacted to In Search of the Common Good as Gulliver: It seemed as though I had washed up on a strange beach, could not understand the native languages, and was uncertain whether I was surrounded by elves, giants, or horses. This is a book by, […]

[1] This is an important and timely volume for several reasons. First, and most importantly, it addresses a question that is nothing less than urgent in our fractured and morally uncertain times: Is it possible to formulate a framework for moral thought, speech, and action that has as its goal the good of all? This […]

[1] When they enter the field of bioethics, too many theological ethicists check their theological credentials at the door. Thus, they lose theological eloquence, as they learn medical-ese. Not so with Valparaiso University’s Gilbert Meilaender: he never loses fluency in that first language of faith. Not every Christian will agree with his conclusions on abortion […]

[1] Vergil puts these words into the mouth of the Trojan hero Aeneas when he was shipwrecked in a country he feared was populated with barbarians, in which case he would have been able to establish no common bond: “These men know the pathos of life, and mortal things touch their hearts.” It is always […]

[1] Witnessing for Peace: In Jerusalem and the World, written by Munib Younan and edited by Fred Strickert is available from Fortress Press, Minneapolis and is copyright 2003. xiv + 169 pp., paper, $16.00. For more information, or for purchase information, please visit the Fortress Web site. [2] This book by the bishop of the […]

[1] Must Christianity be Violent? “Of course not!” is the obvious answer of any faithful Christian. However, that is the title of this book, a compendium of lectures sponsored in March 2000 by the Center for Applied Christian Ethics of Wheaton College (Illinois). The impetus of these lectures was to engage the concern often leveled […]

[1] Must Christianity -defined as that theological ethos whose normative basis is the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ – be violent? This question, the title of the third book to be reviewed below, is answered with a definite “yes” by the first and emphatic “no” by the second. [2] To be sure, the […]

[1] One of Sharon Welch’s gifts is to take a common ethical question and discuss it in ways few have imagined. She transforms questions into prisms which invite us to turn them in the light and meditate on what the resulting refractions might mean for our moral vision. In After Empire, Welch approaches an issue […]

[1] On Sunday, January 20, 2005, three days after the “Report and Recommendations” of the task force for the ELCA Studies on Sexuality was released, there was no mention of the report, no notice in our bulletin, at my local church. In this respect, our response to this report was no different from our response […]

[1] Robert Benne’s The Paradoxical Vision: A Public Theology for the Twenty-first Century first appeared five years in advance of that century. A decade later there is plenty of the century left and the need for religious traditions to be constructively engaged with their “public environment-the economic, political, and cultural spheres of our common life” […]