The 2023 theme for the Society of Christian Ethics invites us to consider what fuels our collective imagination in the United States today, its impact, and implications for the future of the field of ethics. American exceptionalism, racial anxieties and fear help feed influential myths that prevent the nation from “making real the promises of democracy,” much less approaching the Beloved Community (King). Whereas ethics often focuses upon critique, its scholars and practitioners are also invited to undertake the work of (...) repair, which entails attention to affect, art, and activism—particularly given the malformation of moral imagination. Such shifts have implications for pedagogy and the framing and terrain of the field of Christian ethics, as well. (shrink)

Notwithstanding the commitment to the inclusion of historically underrepresented communities, Christian ethics continues to be dominated by the voices, concerns, norms and methodologies of scholars from the northern hemisphere. This paper analyses the state of the field through the lens of the Catholic Theological Ethics in a World Church network whose mission is to promote international exchange. It assesses the lacunae arising from the northern-centric nature of Christian ethics as practiced in the northern hemisphere, highlights the inflection points, and considers (...) the likely re-prioritization of concerns that will flow from the systemic inclusion of the multiple, diverse voices of majority world scholars. (shrink)

In Fratelli tutti, Pope Francis probes structural and ideological threats to people’s social instincts and shared good in contexts of fragmentation and false securities. His approach to these pervasive temptations to build a culture of walls “in the heart” and “on the land” employs structural analyses but also elevates ideologies abetting the harms these walls wreak, signaling a development in the use of social sin in line with related emerging theological scholarship. This essay traces and contextualizes Francis’s application of interconnected (...) dimensions of social sin in Fratelli tutti; interrogates its oversight of the social sin of sexism; and suggests that practices of encounter and discernment in the pursuit of social friendship serve as apt antidotes to the harmful dynamics identified. (shrink)

A collection of the plenary addresses from the 2018 Catholic Theological Ethics in the World Church conference in Sarajevo. The conference sought to identify global challenges, particularly climate and political crises, and to issue a call to theological ethicists to respond to those challenges in effective ways.