Christian Living, Discipleship, and/or Spirituality

Editor’s Introduction – Building Trust

“We can’t go on together With suspicious minds, And we can’t build our dreams On suspicious minds” – Elvis Presley, “Suspicious Minds” [1] I must admit that despite my best efforts, this song was stuck in my head while reading the last chapters of Martin Marty’s 2010 book Building Cultures of Trust (Wm. B. Eerdmans, […]

Response to Building Cultures of Trust, by Martin E. Marty

[1] Do we trust this book? What an odd question! Books provide information, make arguments, tell stories. We evaluate them by verifying, assessing, and appraising — not trusting! We would be gullible to trust a book, right? [2] Not really. Books and media are constantly bombarding us – especially in an election year — with […]

Science and Religion as Conversation toward a Common Good: The Recent Work of Martin Marty

[1] Let me begin by explaining my part in commenting on Prof. Marty’s work, Building Cultures of Trust.1 Prof. Marty uses the intersection of contemporary Western science and religion as a primary “case study” to explore the ways in which attention to building trust can enhance the common good. Over the last 20 years, I […]

Virtually There: Martin Marty, Cyberspace, and Cultures of Trust in the 21st Century

[1] At the university where I teach, opportunities exist for students to receive funding to collaborate with faculty on summer research projects. This summer, one student working with me is investigating social forms beyond religion that provide non-religiously affiliated people (the “nones”) with meaningful community-based social ties and opportunities for civic engagement. To set the […]

Religionists versus Scientists: Why We Need to Build Cultures of Trust

[1] In Martin E. Marty’s Building Cultures of Trust, we, the readership, are initially introduced to a conversation between Marty, the historian, and several conversationalists who represent general exchanges that Marty has had with people about the focus of his book—building cultures of trust. These conversationalists inquire why Marty decides to write about trust. Although […]

The Moral Weight of Trust

[1] Near the beginning of her 1992 article “Trusting People,” Annette Baier notes that trust “cannot be given except by those who have only limited knowledge, and usually even less control, over those to whom it is given.” Therefore, she reasons, “an omniscient and otherwise omnipotent God will of necessity lack one ability that his […]

Trust: A Selected Bibliography

Baier, Annette. “Demoralization, Trust, and the Virtues.” In Setting the Moral Compass: Essays by Women Philosophers, edited by Cheshire Calhoun. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. ———. “Sustaining Trust.” In Moral Prejudices: Essays on Ethics. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1994. ———. “Trust and Antitrust.” Ethics 96, 2 (January 1986 ): 231–60. ———. “Trust and […]

Testing the National Covenant: A Covenantal Political Ethic for Lutherans?

Introduction [1] “The self and the social are the two great idols,” as Simone Weil’s memorable aphorism about our time puts it.1 In his compelling argument in Testing the National Covenant, William F. May explores how our current fears and appetites feed our collective idolatry of both the individual self and the economy in American […]

The Ethics of Missional Church

[1] I have two aims in this essay. First, I would like to respond to the self-confidence of the missional movement with a set of questions that raises the level of self-awareness and self-critique. [2] Second, I would like to bring to awareness in the professional ethicist community that there is a wide-open field of […]

The Silence of Easter

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” — Ludwig Wittgenstein [1] During the Easter season, I wander the halls of church and mutter on the bike trail, “He is risen!” I’m perennially hoping someone will overhear and respond. Often someone does. Even if I speak into silence, in the absence of others, I […]